This is the first part of a two-part series about burnout and how to prevent burnout at work.
As a Consultant turned Product Manager, I viewed my job as a series of sprints, literally and figuratively. I thought I could continue the pace in consulting and tackle PM the same way. This approach worked initially. It led to feelings of accomplishment, rapid personal growth, and expansion of responsibilities, in what felt like accelerated timeline. And I told myself: if I can just power through one more sprint, I can finally relax and take that long vacation. Of course the sprints never ceased. Until one night I was lying in my bed and it was 2am in the morning. I couldn’t sleep. And I barely slept the night before. I knew something was wrong. And it turned out that I was burned out. In honoring the Mental Health Awareness Month, let’s talk about burnout and languishing at work.
Burnout, the product of relentless work-related stress leading to physical or emotional exhaustion, loss of personal identity, and reduced sense of achievement, is unfortunately common. A Deloitte study revealed that 77% of people have experienced burnout at their current job, with nearly half of millennials confessing to leaving a job due to burnout. Even if you are not burnout, you may be languishing — the feeling of ‘meh’ characterized by a lack of excitement or joy in one’s job and life. As psychologist Adam Grant puts it, “Not being depressed does not mean that you are not struggling. Not being burned out does not mean that you are fired up.”
The reality is that being in product is hard, stressful, and filled with anxiety-inducing dynamics. Most new products (around 75%) fail, timelines shift, scopes adjust, priorities change, and managing many cross-functional partners can be tricky. PMs and by extent product teams are constantly dealing with something on fire. The expectations and pressures (both external and internal) can easily weigh you down and slowly burn you out.
Watch out for signs that you may be experiencing burnout at work:
- Lack of motivation to show up
- Feeling of void and emptiness
- Feeling of exhaustion and depletion easily
- Irritability
- Sense of helplessness
- Feeling of getting stuck at your project and task constantly
- Thinking of quitting constantly
- Insomnia
While many of the factors that lead to burnout are external, how you deal with the stressors is not. You have agency and you have control. Ask yourself: “Given the current state of my job, can I continue at this pace for a year, two years, five years, or ten years?” If the answer is no, then it’s time to start planning and optimizing for long-term sustainability over short-term wins. After all, no product is built by one sprint alone; nor is your career.
In the next post, I will write about practices that we can all adopt or do more in fostering wellbeing at work and preventing burnout.
Sources:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/pressure-proof/201308/six-sources-of-burnout-at-work)
