Are you more irritable and less patient with others? Do you feel disillusioned and no longer derive satisfaction from your accomplishments? Have your sleep or eating habits changed? Have you been feeling more and more stressed at work? Are you experiencing headaches or neck or lower back pain? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you might be suffering from job burnout.
And, if it’s any consolation, you’re not alone. According to a nationwide survey by Career.com, a whopping 77% of employees say they feel burned out on the job.
Why? Here are some of the most common causes of burnout:
- Working harder and longer due to staffing cuts or fear of losing your job.
- Lacking appreciation, recognition, or rewards for your efforts.
- Having unclear or impossible job expectations.
- Being in the wrong job or profession.
- Performing monotonous or unchallenging work.
- Working in a dysfunctional, chaotic, or high-pressure environment.
Certain personality traits can also contribute to burnout. For example, you might be a perfectionist who wants total control and refuses to delegate tasks to others. Also, certain professions suffer from a higher degree of burnout due to the innate stress or even trauma of the job, such as healthcare or social work. Read on to learn how to handle (or avoid) this all-too-common situation.
How to Prevent or Treat Burnout on the Job
If you’ve been asked to take on a lot of additional responsibilities and your feeling exhausted and burned out, how do you actually slow down.
In today’s business environment, many of my clients are having to take good old-fashioned time management to a new level. Here are 10 solutions I offer my executive coaching clients that will help get you back on track.
1 – Set personal and professional goals and priorities.
Use them as a template for how you make decisions about your time and work. Will a given work assignment help bring you closer to your goals? If not, someone else might be a better fit. If the requests for your time don’t match your goals and priorities, politely turn them down. Make your objectives known to your boss, discussing them openly and volunteering for projects and assignments that match them. As you build momentum toward your professional goals, your morale will increase and burnout will subside.
Set personal goals as well. Do you want to travel more? Be more involved in your kids’ lives? Enjoy a mutual hobby with your significant other? Envision what you want your personal life and downtime to look like, so you can turn it into a reality.
2 – Schedule yourself first.
Work overload has a powerful negative impact on your physical and mental health. This can trigger a negative feedback loop in which you feel increasingly more exhausted and less able to be productive, leading to even more stress. You need to break this cycle now by putting your health first. Don’t start your day in overdrive. Cut the adrenaline rush and avoid burnout by spending the first half hour of the day in relaxation mode. (Hint: TV news and talk radio are NOT relaxing.) Disconnect from technology—don’t answer emails or check your Facebook page. Spend this time reading, listening to music, staring out the window, or playing with your cat.
3 – Live a balanced life.
Examine your lifestyle. Are you spending enough time on the people and things that are most important in your life? Nurturing yourself as a whole person who has interests outside of work? Consider taking up a new hobby, or take a non-work-related class at a nearby community college. As an added bonus, sometimes a new perspective can make you more creative at work.
4 – Determine what you can and cannot control.
The best place to start is with yourself. Exercise, eat healthy foods, avoid self-medicating, and get plenty of sleep. Eat a decent breakfast rather than grabbing a cup of coffee as you head out the door. Take control over the things you can control, and the challenges that are stressing you out may not feel so insurmountable. Your overwhelm may subside, allowing you to think more clearly and use your time more effectively.
5 – Learn to set boundaries.
Set and maintain strict boundaries around your time. This can include limiting work hours or making sure you take time off for lunch. It can also mean taking all your vacation time and not taking work-related calls or checking your email during nights and weekends.
Start by isolating your time-suckers. For many people, it’s emails or phone calls. For others, it’s meetings or drop-bys. (You know drop-bys—those colleagues who peer through your office door five times a day and ask, “Got a minute?”) Then bundle. Set a specific time (or times) each day to return emails and phone calls. Turn off the nasty little chime that rings every time “you’ve got mail.” Develop a courteous but firm response for the drop-bys, asking to chat later at a specified time. By sticking to scheduled times for email, meetings, and other distractions, you’ll manage your time more effectively and get more work done.
6 – Develop delegation strategies.
You may be able to have a subordinate handle much of your email and phone communication. You may be able to combine, or even eliminate, some of those meetings. But for really effective delegation, give away an important project, something that makes your coworker or subordinate feel essential. Make it something that will bring satisfaction and recognition, preparing that person for a position of increased responsibility. By delegating important work as well as lower-order tasks, you will be preparing your subordinates to advance and avoiding burnout at the same time.
7 – Talk to your boss.
Express your concerns, frustrations, or suggestions in a constructive way. Share ideas and explore “win-win” opportunities for reprioritizing your to-do list or eliminating some items altogether. Show how you’ll be able to focus on higher-level projects by eliminating those that are less essential, or propose solutions like automating certain tasks or opening a new entry-level position to handle them.
8 – Revitalize your job.
Find ways to break the monotony and make your job more enjoyable. Change your routine or volunteer for challenging projects. Come to work at a different time or redecorate your office. Having a reorganized or redesigned space can be a breath of fresh air.
9 – Find a mentor.
Mentors can be a valuable sounding board and source of ideas and advice. Find someone you respect, who has been around the block and shares your values. Having regular conversations with a mentor can do wonders to increase motivation by helping you envision how to take the next steps in your career.
10 – Monitor overload warnings.
Your body will be the first to let you know if your job burnout is reaching the danger zone. Are you having trouble sleeping? Experiencing back pains or an upset stomach? Having accidents or mishaps at home or at work? Getting frequent colds? If any of these job burnout warning signs occur, consider whether you need to hone in on any particular points in this list. Most importantly, be patient with yourself, since it can take time and practice to get good at all of the things on this list.
If you’re suffering from burnout, these solutions will help you pull yourself out of the rut you’ve gotten into. Taking these steps will help you achieve work/life balance, giving you renewed energy and enthusiasm for every aspect of life.
Joel works with clients in challenging situations to design custom strategies for creating work/life balance and improving productivity. Contact Joel now to find out how he can help! Read his book Time Management Mastery for more actionable advice on lowering your stress level and increasing your job satisfaction as well.
