NEW AGE FRIEND- BURNOUT

What is Burnout? When stress gets unmanageable, it can lead to what is known as "burnout

What is Burnout as per WHO?  Burnout has 3 main symptoms

1: Feeling Depleted Energy, Feeling overwhelming exhaustion

2: Feeling negativity or distancing from Job/People, Cynicism

3: Overall reduced effectiveness

In Simple words: One is struggling to get things done, that we need to do in order to maintain work and life in general.

 Is Burnout a medical condition? No, it’s different than Depression or Anxiety, although burnout can lead to either of the medical conditions. It’s classified as a function of one’s occupation it does leak out into the rest of the personal life hence, we can find symptoms across the personal or professional wellbeing. In short, burnout can lead to Depression or Anxiety.

What is the difference between Stress and Burnout?

We need to understand that Stress might not always be a bad thing! We have bad Stress and Good Stress too- It’s the amount of stress that keeps us moving and motivated to push forward and create and innovate.

Imagine we have a teacup and stress is the tea we are pouring so let’s look at the scenario:

Scenario 1: No tea in the cup could lead to no motivation as we might be in our comfort zone and don’t feel the need to innovate or work hard toward goals

Scenario 2: Half of the cup is filled with tea, now we know we have some stress but it’s all under control as we can do all tasks in time with the best quality

Scenario 3: The cup is almost full of tea; this is when the stress moves from a motivator to a demotivator and starts to harm productivity.

Scenario 4: The tea is overflowing from the cup. This is the burnout situation because our stress level is beyond what we can take, and we have too much to do but we feel no matter how much energy we put the output is not satisfactory.

What can cause the cup to overflow? It can be anything for one or more than one reason – Work, Skills issues, Resource Challenges, Non-Inclusive Environment, Non-encouraging leader, etc.

So basically, when you feel over-full to take any more stress in one cup

Its continuation of too much stress over time makes us feel the 3 main symptoms of burnout we talked about earlier.

Why talk about Burnout now: Because so many people are experiencing it these days, Numbers suggest 3 in 5 workers feel burnout, Localization and technology have made it harder than ever to disengage from work, Hence affecting work-life balance.

(We close our eyes looking at email and open our eyes by looking at emails) we are accidentally putting more hours at work and feel more disengaged with colleagues in professional or personal settings (We are all missing the watercooler conversations that helped us destress pre-pandemic) 

One side effect of burnout is that one feels a loss of energy or focus on things hence reducing productivity at the workplace.

Isolation and lack of social support particularly during the pandemic have added to the higher rate of Burnout. We are unable to go to the gym or the dinners or the live concert, these things are needed to make us feel more human which has been missing for a while now

Why is Burnout Dangerous? Burnout is classified as a work-related concern however it leaks out or interferes in personal life as well

How to recognize Burnout? One can really see the glimpse of burnout anywhere and everywhere, at home: feeling out of control, challenged parenting, the stress in relationships, feeling frustrated with the situations, unable to concentrate/remember things, irritability, poor or no attempts to cope, unusual worries about the future.

Burnout can be caused by one or more factors causing overall more sensitivity to feedback and higher reactivity than usual, this can be really challenging at the workplace now that more people are feeling these symptoms at varying degrees.

How do we stop the transition of stress to burnout?

1: A great place to start is by creating a balance, and creating boundaries to separate work life and personal life.

2: Practice being mindful by leaving all the gadgets and focusing only on the task at hand and try to pull yourself more in the moment.

Example: Doing Dishes cannot be categorized as healing but staying in the moment enjoying the experience and the mindfulness of the task at hand can become the first line of defense against being out of control. With practice, this will help us move away from the permanent merry-go-round of thoughts and worries that surround us even when we are not involved. Checking all the way in is the key.

The experience of Checking all the way in may vary from person to person, some can have mindful reading or mindful breathing work the same way.

3: Break the monotony, challenge your brain to do things that make you uncomfortable.

Example: Personally, I start my day with lemon honey water, to break the monotony I will switch it with fresh orange juice, move on to changing the brand of toothpaste, wear the color that I never will pick etc. The key is to focus on small things and make the challenge more fun by changing at least 5 things in a day.

4: Ask questions to check on yourself, why was I doing it in the first place? What is important to me? What are my core values and am I sticking to them or not? Have I been exercising enough to stay healthy?

Basically, this is to stay aligned with what’s important to us, That’s the BEST defense.

5: Switch off if you need to. If you feel you need help let’s not hesitate to ask for it. We have our family, friends, kids, parents, colleagues, and managers who can really step up in a time of need. It sometimes takes lots of courage to be vulnerable but the rewards are always worth the effort. As colleagues, if we can set up fewer meetings and cover for the other person when needed, it creates a support group that believes in taking care of each other.

Finally taking responsibility to be aware and consciously plan to work towards reducing stress and avoiding burnout is an individual’s responsibility. It takes effort to plan to work out, healthy eating, canceling meetings, and taking breaks similarly we need to plan our day by including elements that can destress us.

The great news is that burnout doesn’t last forever and by implementing a few changes and planning and being more mindful we can move away from unhealthy stress and use it to our advantage by making it healthy stress.

Are there practical ways to find fulfillment in the jobs? One of the keys for me is my values, by staying connected to my values and connected to what’s my mission as an individual? Ask questions like what the mission of my organization is and align myself with them. This is to make sure as long we are managing stress which can be good, bad, or otherwise, we have a framework for us to understand why we are doing what we are doing.

When a company’s goals have aligned the feeling of fulfillment doubles even in the accomplishment of small things like encouraging team members to be a better version of themselves because it aligns with company values to grow together.      

Also, one way to feel fulfillment is to stay close to the values that help you flourish like being humble, showing gratitude, working as a team, and effectively communicating to become better, all these attributes are the opposite of burnout.