By Rachel Boehm, burnout coach, consultant and public speaker and member of NAWBO Greater DC
Burnout. The word is thrown around a lot these days, which is great because more people are talking about it, but not so great because most media doing the talking don’t know what it really is. So there’s almost a false awareness that is making it hard to banish burnout.
As a three-time survivor of burnout, I firmly believe that you need to know what burnout is and all the different ways it can manifest because you’ve worked too hard to get where you are to let burnout steal it from you.
So let’s at least scratch the surface so you can take meaningful action in your life and organization.
Three things to know:
1. There are three broad contributors to burnout in the workplace.
- Individual factors (e.g. low resilience, “Type A” personality, poor physical health, private life stress, loneliness, gender, age, low self-esteem, values or skills mismatch with the job or organization, poor financial health, poor mental health)
- Organizational factors (e.g. culture of hyperconnectivity, lack of flexible work arrangements, limited career progression, fragmented teams, toxic culture, too little reward and recognition, unclear hierarchies, lack of belonging, immediate responsiveness expected)
- Work/job factors (e.g. lack of autonomy, micromanagement, unrealistic expectations relative to workload, unfair distribution of work, constant deadlines, constant interruptions, rigid processes)
2. It’s a slow extinguish.
- There are different stages of burnout. Some research puts it at 12. It can start with your best intentions, which is why I like to use the visual of spiraling down Dante’s Inferno.You start out saying yes. But then you feel like you have to keep saying yes either because you can’t say no or because you need to keep proving yourself. Then, to meet those obligations, your work hours expand, pushing out other things and people. You start skipping workouts, meals, sleep, hobbies, doctors appointments or time with friends or family, maybe even showers.You know it’s not sustainable, but you’re too overwhelmed to figure out an alternative, so you dig in and think “if you can just get through this” next project or phase, things will calm down. But they don’t. There’s always a next.And on and on, with relationships straining, your values skewing, every day feeling like groundhog day, and you’ve lost that thing that made you feel like you and called you to your work in the first place.If it keeps going like this, you end up at the bottom, physical and emotional collapse needing medical attention. And it started with just one too many yes’s. As someone who nearly hit that stage, trust me when I say you do not want to hit it.
3. “Self-Care” Is a Tool Not an Antidote
- Self-care practices can be awesome tools. But they’re not enough. You can’t bullet journal, bubble bath, face mask or exercise your way out of burnout. And I say this as someone who loves all of these. I’m not knocking them. I’m saying they are just tools. You have to know if they are the right tools for the job.For example, if the causes of burnout are at the organizational or work level, you can use self-care to try and help you muddle through, but it’s not enough. You can only be so resilient. You have to change that environment or remove yourself from it.And if the causes of burnout are within you, that often includes struggles with time boundaries. This means most likely you will struggle to consistently set aside time for yourself to journal, take a bubble bath, enjoy a face mask or exercise.The antidote then, if there is one, is not commercialized self-care, but self-awareness and true self-investment, which is less sexy and easy, and harder for the media to sell, but a hell of a lot more rewarding.
I tend to shy away from short, tough-love articles for fear of the important nuances that can get lost in the limited word count. But with burnout continuing to rise and the stigma being slow to ebb, it’s vital that we talk about all that burnout is and looks like.
It might be common, but it’s not normal. And, I haven’t met one NAWBO member who is here because they were fine settling for normal.
About the Author…
Rachel Boehm is a burnout coach, consultant and public speaker helping executives and business owners banish burnout in their own lives and/or across their organizations. She’s the founder of BS On Burnout®, a nationally board-certified health+wellness coach through the NBHWC, and is a PhD candidate focused on business psychology. Learn more here.