Working Well

According to Mind Tools, burnout happens when people who have previously been highly committed to a job lose all interest and motivation. Sadly, this can spell the end of a successful career.

It mainly strikes highly-committed, passionate, hard working and successful people – and it therefore holds a special fear for those who care passionately about their careers and about the work they do.

This section explains what burnout is. It then helps you to recognise the warning signs in yourself, shows you how to avoid it, and helps you to know what to do if you have already burned out.

Understanding Burnout
Two important definitions of burnout are:

"A state of physical, emotional and mental exhaustion caused by long-term involvement in emotionally demanding situations."
               Ayala Pines & Elliott Aronson

"A state of fatigue or frustration brought about by devotion to a cause, way of life or relationship that failed to produce the expected reward."        
               Herbert J Freudenberger

Between them, these definitions embrace the essence of burnout, with the first stressing the part that exhaustion plays in it and the second stressing the sense of disillusionment that is at its core.

Anyone can become exhausted. What is so poignant about burnout is that it mainly strikes people who are highly committed to their work. You can only 'burn out' if you have been 'alight' in the first place. While exhaustion can be overcome with rest, a core part of burnout is a deep sense of disillusionment and is not experienced by people who can take a more cynical view of their work.

Signs and Symptoms of Burnout
The signs of burnout tend to be more mental than physical. They can include feelings of:

- Powerlessness
- Hopelessness
- Emotional exhaustion
- Detachment
- Isolation
- Irritability
- Frustration
- Being trapped
- Failure
- Despair
- Cynicism
- Apathy 

Exhaustion – An Important Factor
Hans Selye, one of the founding fathers of stress research, looked at burnout and over many hundreds of experiments Selye looked at the way in which animals handled long-term stress. What he saw was that after an initial period of adaptation, they survived very well for quite a long period of time until, all of a sudden, their resistance collapsed without any obvious direct cause.

Selye also saw this with bomber pilots in the Second World War, who would fly effectively for many missions, but who would then fall apart as pilot fatigue set in.

We have probably all seen similar patterns in the past where people become exhausted and their performance suffers. We may all have worked so hard at something, for so long, that the easy things become difficult and life loses its flavor. These are times when rest (often in the form of a good holiday) helps us to approach the situation with a new vigor.

Exhaustion and long-term stress contribute to burnout, but they are not the most destructive parts of it.

Disillusionment – The Underlying Cause
The real damage of burnout comes from the sense of deep disillusionment that lies at its heart.

Many of us get our sense of identity and meaning from our work. We may have started our careers with high ideals or high ambitions and may have followed these with passion.

This is easy to see in doctors and teachers who may have a strong desire to help other people to be the best that they can be. Good lawyers may have a passion for justice. Others may be ambitious for promotion or may want to 'make a difference' to people or organisations in some other way. In all of these cases, these ideals can drive a highly motivated, passionate approach to work.

It is incredible what we can achieve when we truly believe in what we are doing: we are hard working, effective, full of initiative, energetic and selfless. We can find ourselves doing much more than we are contracted to do, working much longer hours. Even more, we enjoy doing this. We find it easy to enter this hugely satisfying state of flow, particularly, when we are appreciated for what we do and when we are able to see good results from our work.  This satisfaction can help us to overcome enormous difficulties.

It is not surprising that people showing this level of resilience and commitment to their work are often spectacularly successful.

The problem comes when things become too much. Perhaps exhaustion sets in because people have been working too hard for too long. Perhaps performance begins to slip because of this. Perhaps the problem being solved is too great, and the resources available are too meager. Perhaps supportive mentors move on and are replaced by people who do not appreciate the heroic job that is being done or do not subscribe to the ideals that drive performance. Perhaps co-workers or team members make too many emotional demands or people being served prove to be ungrateful and difficult.

Being proactive, energetic, committed people, it is likely that we respond to obstacles like these by increasing our commitment and hard work. However, in these circumstances it is possible that these efforts may have little or no impact on the situation.

This can be where burnout begins to set in. As we get less satisfaction from our jobs, the downsides of these jobs become more troublesome. As we get more tired, we have less energy to give. If our organisations fail to support us, we can get increasingly disenchanted with them. We become increasingly disillusioned.

In extreme cases, we can lose faith completely in what we are doing, and what our organisations are doing, becoming cynical and embittered and feeling that our ideals and meanings in life count for nothing.

This is full-scale burnout.

Symptoms of Burnout
Given what burnout is, the symptoms of burnout are much as you would expect them to be. Physical symptoms can include physical fatigue, frequent illness and sleep problems.

Emotional symptoms include disillusionment with the job, the loss of a sense of meaning and cynicism towards our organisations or clients, feelings of helplessness, frustration of efforts and a lack of power to change events, strong feelings of anger against the people we hold responsible for the situation and feelings of depression and isolation.

Behavioural symptoms can include increasing detachment from co-workers, increased absenteeism, an increased harshness in dealing with our teams, marked reduction in our commitment to our work, and increased alcohol consumption. These symptoms reflect exhaustion and a loss of satisfaction with work.

Article: Can't Get No Satisfaction
John Robinson, the University of Maryland sociologist who calculated those expanding leisure hours for the time-use survey, argues that our obsession with efficiency at work has unfortunately seeped into our attitudes toward leisure, with the multitasking of our downtime as the loony and paradoxical result. We run on the treadmill while listening to music while watching TV. We cook while flipping through a magazine while yakking on the phone. All of which raises a question: If our leisure isn’t restorative, aren’t we more apt to burn out?

“Oh, yes, I would think so,” says Schaufeli. “Because that’s what burnout is, in essence. A mismatch between effort and recovery.”

Read more ...

References

Helpguide

Stress Management from Mind Tools