Burnout: Twelve Signs
It is through our personal experience of burnout as well as our personal research on the topic that Goulven CHAMPENOIS and I came up with this humble exhaustion evaluation method: The Twelve Signs.
If you think you are experiencing burnout on a personal or professional level, you can use this tool below to assess your situation. If you check more than 3 items, it may mean that you are already exhausted without realising it. In this case, we recommend you to act quickly and seek help.
Please note that this evaluation method is not academic and has been created based on our personal experience. We are not health professionals and this tool doesn’t replace proper medical assessment nor any official evaluation tool.
- 1/ Reduced effectiveness asking for more effort,
- 2/ Lack of focus, weaker memory, shorter attention span,
- 3/ Extra hours needed to compensate,
- 4/ Persistent fatigue not affected by rest,
- 5/ Thoughts focused on work and work issues even outside the workplace,
- 6/ Mood swings, irritability, sadness or unjustified anger bursts,
- 7/ Feeling of loneliness and isolation, even if surrounded by people,
- 8/ Back pain, headaches, often sick, heart rate up, food issues (too much or not enough)
- 9/ Increased or sudden consumption of coffee, alcohol, tobacco,
- 10/ Nothing makes sense anymore, everything looks impossible,
- 11/ Risky behaviour towards oneself or other people,
- 12/ Cynism, robot-like behaviour, emotional distance.
You might also want to assess your general level of exhaustion and your feelings towards it. We have created this “tired little monkey” scale:
What is your situation?
If you are past the monkey in the middle, towards the lowest one, if you checked 3 or more boxes in the list above, it doesn’t necessarily means you are already in the process of burning out. But it is most likely that some things in your personal and professional life are not making you happy at all and drain a lot of your energy.
It can also be that your situation is much worse than you think. These tools have been created so that anybody can quickly assess their situation. Denial is a very classic reaction to the warning signs of burnout, so take a step back and examine your situation objectively and truthfully: ignoring problems is a very uneffective way to solve them. It is time to face the truth that you are not feeling as well as you thought: it is the first step towards slowly climbing one step up and avoid sliding down towards burnout. Because the lower you go, the harder it is to climb back up.
Next steps
Now it’s time for you to act: take some rest, talk to someone (anyone) around you about what you experience, book an appointment with your doctor or therapist, take a few days off, a few steps back… In any case, those symptoms are telling you something. Please listen to them.
