Burnout

Have you ever felt exhausted, like you lack satisfaction in your achievements, are cynical or critical at work (or school), or feel like you’re dragging yourself to do work or getting started at work? Chances are, you are/were experiencing symptoms of burnout. Burnout has been defined as a psychological response to work stress with 3 major components: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and feelings of reduced personal accomplishments (Maslach and Jackson, 1981).

Typically, we feel more or less burnout depending on the job demands or work stress that we have, as well as the resources that we have available to cope with the incoming demands (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007). As I’m sure you’ve felt before, burnout is typically associated with job withdrawal, decreased productivity and overall job satisfaction, which can lead to turnover and absenteeism (Halbesleben and Buckley, 2004).

Did you know that about 70% of full time workers have reported feeling more burned out than not (Deloitte, 2018) and over 70% of graduate students reported stressors that inhibited optimal functioning (El-Ghoroury et al., 2012)? While these numbers seem high (and they are), fear not, there are ways in which burnout can be combatted to help you either decrease the likelihood of reaching burnout, or if you are already burned out, ways to return to pre-burnout phases.

With the world living in our current pandemic, burnout is not uncommon in employees, especially with more people working from home and balancing family responsibilities as well as work responsibilities. Employees often find themselves losing the distance between work and home because they are now able to work at home at any and all hours.

so what can we do about it?

1.) Find value in your work. Even in the most boring and tedious jobs, it’s possible to find value and reason for doing the things you are doing. When I am reading articles on a topic that doesn’t interest me, I try to remember that regardless of my interest now, as a student, I need to be well rounded in my knowledge base so that one day in the future, if something like, say burnout, comes up in conversation and I need to be able to draw on my learnings to help others, that I am able to do so. Similarly, while you may feel cynical about your job right now, maybe remember that there are good parts of your job too like supportive coworkers or managers, maybe you have more autonomy than you did in the past, all of these things are important to remember and to remind yourself to do.

2.) Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness has been found to help decrease feelings of burnout over time. And while mindfulness seems daunting to practice at first, it’s actually very easy to start. Just take a few minutes every day to find some peace and quiet in your life while you focus on your breathing. There are a lot of apps that will lead you through guided mindfulness trainings as well! I’ve been trying to keep up with my app whenever I feel myself getting overwhelmed at work or by school.

3.) Set boundaries! Especially in this pandemic, keeping our work and home lives separate is hard, but put that phone away during dinner, don’t answer emails past a certain time, don’t start your morning with your phone in your face checking emails or texts. Give yourself some time to do what makes you happy, whether that’s exercising or binging the latest Netflix show, don’t feel tied to your phone because you’re scared work is going to need you to respond to emails. When you set boundaries, also communicate those boundaries to those around you. My manager and I have a very open line of communication where I always have blocked off hours of when I’m working and when I’m not, this way I can still set time aside from work to do school-related tasks and work on my dissertation topic.

But no matter what, always remember that you’re not alone in feeling burnout, and that it’s okay to be burned out! Keep in mind that burnout doesn’t last forever and there are ways for you to work towards decreasing the burnout that you feel. Let the people around you know how they’re feeling and maybe just having those connections, having people to confide in, can help too

Keep me updated on your burnout journey and as always, let me know if there’s anything I can help with!