18 Apr This Is How To Overcome Burnout: 6 Secrets From Research
It’s been said by some that the last year (or two) has been the year of burnout.
With constant stress and uncertainty, happiness, including happiness at work has become difficult (at least for some).
But the good news is there’s good research to support a number of strategies; strategies that help overcome burnout and promote more happiness and wellbeing …
via Eric Barker
It feels like just one more minor inconvenience could tip you over into the abyss.
Not so much bad emotions but an erosion of emotions. Reduced energy, enthusiasm and confidence. An incessant buzzing of stress only restrained by exhaustion. Perpetually a half inch from overwhelmed. Life is less meaningful. A negative spiral of not feeling like you can do it, so you do less, which causes more problems that you can’t handle, so you do less. Repeat.
YEESH, that’s dark. Your high school guidance counselor didn’t cover burnout. And maybe they should have. According to Gallup, 76% of employees experience burnout on the job at least sometimes, and 28% say they are burned out “very often” or “always” at work.”
And in 2016, Stanford found workplace stress caused $190 billion in health care costs, a staggering 8% of the total. Oh, and it also resulted in 120,000 deaths.
Burnout has been with us for a long time, just under different names. Neurasthenia. Melancholia. Nervous breakdowns. Midlife crises. Why haven’t we found a solution? What do you, personally, need to do to beat this? Well, that’s the bad news…
Burnout isn’t a personal problem. There’s no one little change you can make in your life to fix it. It’s largely an organizational issue. As two of the leading researchers on the topic wrote, “Burnout is not a problem of the people themselves but of the social environment in which people work.”
So instead of “it’s not you, it’s me”, well, it’s not you – it’s them. The company you work for. I’m usually intensely skeptical of self-serving answers but the literature is pretty clear on this. It’s not your fault. True burnout is a mismatch between you and the place you work.
I’ll spare you the quick, easy “lifehack” glibness — in many cases, quitting may be the only way to address it. But let’s not pull the fire alarm just yet. This is the part where things look insurmountable but we have a few surmountings we can try…
We’re going to try to diagnose the situation and see if it’s within your power to change it. Maybe you can alter how you do things or ask your supervisor for help. And then we can decide if it’s truly a fundamental mismatch and you really do need to move on from your corporate dystopia.
But first we gotta raise the Veil of Maya on burnout and discover what it is and what it isn’t. To try and better understand this exhausting phenomenon I’ve drawn on a wide range of sources: “The Truth About Burnout“, “The Harvard Business Review Guide to Beating Burnout“, “The End of Burnout“, and “Banishing Burnout.”
Wow, that’s a lot of burnout. I feel like I’m playing “literary canary in the coal mine.” (Note to self: the canary usually dies, Eric.)
Anyway, let’s get to it…
… keep reading the full & original article HERE