The human type that generates burnout is usually a person that feels responsibility and wants to do his job right. He is not indifferent. This usually is noticed in work groups and person is known to perform well. When his manager is asked to perform some hard task, this person is his go to guy. Even if the persons work load is at 100%, the manager will still turn for this person for any new and challenging task. It’s partly because the manager want to succeed in his job and only way to do it, is to focus tasks to the best person to do the job. This is very common problem in coding and in almost all task.
And because the focus employee is responsible and want’s to show that he can handle the job, he doesn’t say no. The work load keeps getting higher as old jobs are not taken away, and new projects are build over the old.
Another reason is how complicated the job is, if any employee is faced with overhelmed tasks, it will make the burn out risk much higher. The possibility or lack of possibility to get support to handle these jobs that go beyond his capabilities is a major contributor for the feeling that he cannot do it. And even if he could do it with normal timeframe, the time given is usually too short and the pressure of keeping the deadlines is a extra load. He Makes a mistake or two and the time is even shorter and the load even higher. it’s always much easier to handle high workload if you know you can handle it. But if the task difficulty is too high, it’s much more stressing. But even the most skilled person can still be pushed to burnout if the time is too short and the work is overload over the old jobs and Management demands the person to attend to meetings that also waste the rest of the time.
There is good quides how to threat burnout, but they are much more powerfull when used beforehand to prevent burnout. The problem in burnout is the interference to the persons daily life rutine. This includes sleeping, eating, and the separation of work and rest. So you could say, that person that can uphold his rutine in sleeping, eating, and separating work and free time is much more unlikely to burn out.
So , hold the rutine, Sleep at night, eat breakfast, do the job at the workplace, not at home, eat lunch, eat at home. Go to sleep at given time. Don’t take your laptop home, as it makes you work at home. Regular eating schedule gives structure to the day and also keeps the body well nurished. Keep your coffee breaks away from the job position. Take some time as a target time to go home.
It’s also very beneficial to do sports reqularly, Burn out makes the people give up his routines like sports, and if you can keep it, you are little less likely subject for full blown work exhaustion. Also stress at work makes the body act like it’s in danger, the blood pressure raises and body is ready to jump and run, but that never comes in work, This causes you to have hard time to get sleep as you are so ready for action, that never comes, Working out after work stress can release this readiness and you can feel it how much power it has. Without the physical work the body cannot release it self from this stress situation.
Don’t eat any empty energy, Sugar, Coca Cola, or ships. This all is replacing real food and nutrition from your body. You don’t get any iron or mineral from these kinds of foods. If you also eat enough real food, the total energy amount you are eating is so high that you are going the get fat. If you are not getting fat and still eating lot of sugar, you are most likely lacking in vital vitamins and minerals and your blood values are going to worsen over time.
Eating only real food is also the easiest and the most lazy way to keep your weight, as dropping weight is very hard, and you need to feel hunger in most cases to drop weight, but when you never get overweight, you don’t have to drop it. That is the easiet way. The main focus is to follow your weight always, at least every half year, that you don’t start to gain weight. And also set some stop loss limit which causes you to take drastic methods if that is exceeded. This is not usually necessary, as when you notice weight going slowly higher, you cut little intake before that line is even reached.
Actually the most common way for people to get obese is to gain 1kg per year starting from 20years old. This way they are 30kg overweight at 50.
Self medicating: Don’t dring too much alcohol or work with pain killers to fight off flu and continue work with the power of pain killers. Limit drinking to some small amount during week and try to drink only in certains days of week. Also don’t overdrink during weekends. It’s very common to handle the stress this way, as if you are really hyped after busy day, drinking is a way to slow it down, but it will just add to the exhaustion if you do it everyday and cause health problems.
After burn out the the person is basicly never the same again. The pressure that he can take is never again the same. Many times the person learns the meaning of work to life balance and power of routines. And the fact that work is not life. It’s only part of it, even though it takes major part of life. In many cases also frends and social contacts are defined through work.
One way to understand burn out is to compare it to fatique fractures or other sporting injuries. In mental job the fracture is not developed to a leg, it’s in the mind. And it comes with long exposure to overload.
The way people work is how they do most things in life, people that embraces new things in his personal life, cannot be indifferent in work, it would be against his personality. If person doesn’t jump to new things in personal life, he most likely has some trouble to jump to new things in work. People cannot turn of personality. This is one of the reason why responsible overachiever is so easily pushed to burn out. At first it feels that he can handle anything management throws at him and he gets joy out of working this way. This is part of his personality. Good thing is that he can outgrow the need to show that he can, and in many cases, the manager could see him as less powerfull employee after that transformation, but he will last longer, maybe feel more fullfilment and joy towards the life and can work up to the retirement without major burn out.
-JP-
James Parus research inc. 