Is This What Burnout Looks Like?
I thought I needed to find balance with my job. What I realized was that I may actually be facing burnout.
On the morning that I started writing this article, I woke up feeling irritated. Irritated that I constantly felt like I had no time for myself. Irritated that every waking moment I had Monday through Friday was dedicated to my job. And irritated that I felt like I was watching my life pass me by without doing anything I really enjoyed.
I don’t even have a husband or kids and I still had no time for myself. How can that be?
I thought the answer was balance. We hear so much about work-life balance and that sounded like what I needed. More “me time” and less time spent glaring at a computer screen full of emails.
While that is an obvious approach that’s likely to be effective if you’re feeling drained, what became more apparent over the next few months was that balance might not actually be the issue, I might actually be deep in the trenches of burnout without even realizing it.
Was Balance Actually the Answer?
My original article (well, more of a rant really) on needing balance started after a particularly difficult week at work. Two of my four team members had recently quit and another girl was out on vacation. I went from a fully staffed team to digging within myself trying to cover the roles of four people.
Never going to work, you say? You’re absolutely right. I am not superwoman and that is a recipe for disaster.
By the time I got to Friday of that week I was so fed up with all the questions and problems and requests coming my way that I was starting to take it out on my colleagues. I was frustrated and defeated.
Part of the issue I was experiencing that week was definitely balance. During weeks like this, I realized that I would put myself dead last every day. I would skip the gym, grab quick meals instead of eating nutritious food and force myself to stare at the computer until I literally could not take it anymore.
But I had done this before, and in the past, I had so much more willingness to just get things done. So what was different now?
The truth is that powering through weeks like this is going to happen to many of us who are in management roles and have career ambitions. We get through it, and eventually, things do get done, and we staff back up. We even find a certain pride in coming out stronger on the other side of work’s inevitable challenges.
In fact, it’s arguable that you are going to get out of balance when working towards big career goals or focusing on critical projects at work. In their book, ‘The One Thing’, Gary Keller and Jay Papasan argue that the only way to achieve great results is to focus solely on one goal and allow less important things to temporarily fall to the wayside.
And they’re right. And I realized that balance was not my problem when I began to acknowledge I had a shift in attitude.
After all, I had been through this very week before. Not just once, but several times. I had worked 60–80 hours a week and had given up weekends in order to get through busy times at work. I took pride in those moments. I rolled up my sleeves, got hyper-focused on a goal and went to work. There was energy behind it.
But after the tenth or twentieth or fiftieth week like this, it starts to get a bit old. The problems we need to solve become boring. We lose interest and the pride of powering through loses its lustre.
Because balance doesn’t matter when you’re excited about what you’re going after. It also doesn’t matter when you feel you’re clocking in and out Monday through Friday with no sparks of joy throughout the day. You can have all the balance in the world, but when 40 hours a week sets a poor tone for your mood, it doesn’t matter.
It wasn’t just that I needed balance. It was that I needed something that lit me up again.
The Many Faces of Burnout
A few months before my “trigger week” a colleague had actually asked me if I was burnt out. She was, and I wasn’t the only one that knew it. My immediate response was to her was “No.”
To me, burnout meant that you worked 80 hours a week, every week, for years on end and physically just could not anymore. It was something that happened to more important people in more important places. I also had the perception that it was partly a personal problem for having let yourself get so exhausted.
Obviously this is wrong. That is not the only way to describe burnout.
According to Ken Coleman, burnout is, simply put: feeling trapped doing something that doesn’t light your heart on fire anymore. I think I hit the 15-second rewind button 2 or 3 times when listening to this on a podcast because that resonated with me.
Feeling trapped doing something that does not light your heart on fire anymore.
Bingo. I had my diagnosis.
I loved my colleagues, I felt valued and appreciated by leadership, my hours weren’t too crazy anymore and clients were generally happy. But I felt trapped.
It wasn’t about balance. It was about wanting more and feeling stuck. Feeling like wanting more was wrong. How could I rock the boat that we worked so hard to build?
I had never thought about burnout in these terms before. Burnout can be as straightforward as overworking yourself. But it can also be complex. It can show up as a period of apathy that follows intense spikes of work. When you give your all to a goal and then have to keep giving and giving your flame may eventually go out. You may become bored of the thing you’re giving to.
Coleman describes burnout as “build-up.” He points to 5 key identifiers or possible situations that will begin to build up over time and lead to burnout. They are:
- Lack of passion. You don’t have passion for the job anymore. Maybe you once did, and you’re probably good at it, but it’s not lighting your fire.
- Toxic environment. This can take all sorts of fun shapes at work. It could be poor leadership, high attrition rates or dramatic and unsupportive colleagues.
- Feeling overwhelmed. You don’t know how to say no. You’re so valuable, how would you ever walk away? You can’t breathe.
- Feeling underwhelmed. You’re not challenged, you don’t have a mission, you don’t see the point, you’re bored.
- You’re under-appreciated. You’re working tirelessly and nobody cares.
When I heard this explanation, the key piece that jumped out was that burnout isn’t just about physical exhaustion. It’s about passion exhaustion, motivation depletion, and lack of drive. Your flame literally burns out.
How to Reignite Your Flame
On the brighter side of burnout is the promise that you can regain control of your energy.
Before we even get into actions to take, start by showing yourself some grace. Know that life is always in a stage of creation, maintenance or destruction, and you may be entering your stage of destruction where new creation is on the way.
Then consider the root cause. You should be able to identify pretty quickly if you’re in a toxic environment or feeling under-appreciated. In either of these situations a change of company within the same industry may be the answer. Luckily, that is usually a pretty easy change to make.
If it’s boredom, try a change of function. You may have hit your ceiling in one role but supporting your company’s mission from a new perspective will offer a new way to engage and help you realign with the value you bring to the team.
Lack of passion can be the most difficult to address. This could include a function change, an industry change, or both. What if you don’t know what you’re passionate about or you have no clue what to do next? That can be a seriously debilitating feeling.
Coleman recommends that you start by looking at how you got to where you are. Trace the decisions you made along the way. Why did you make those decisions? What was the root of your motivation? What clues have been left along the way?
For example, after I graduated from college I moved to South Korea to teach English for a year. If I’m retracing my decisions in search of clues, I have to pick apart why I made that decision. It wasn’t because I loved teaching or kids or needed a break from my boyfriend (though the last one is kinda true). The why to my decision making was that I had a deep curiosity of how other people lived and a desire to explore the world.
The clue that I left myself as I now search for my real passion may be that I’m drawn to work that involves understanding other people, connecting with those who are different than me and standing in awe of the incredible diversity that litters this planet.
If that’s my clue, it’s no wonder I get bored after a year in the same role.
So my first actions to address my burnout were to remind myself to always do my best, even when I feel discouraged, and look for new opportunities to light my fire again. Some of that is outside my work life and some of that meant telling my boss I was getting bored and needed something new to work on.
For those of you who also feel your flame growing dim, it’s time for action. The answers are within you and you have the power to find your joy once again.
Mind Cafe in Your Inbox
Want to stay up to date with our top-performing posts each week? Sign up for email updates by following this link.
