Working Life > Healthiness > Burnout

Burnout: Chronic Exhaustion in the Job

Definition, Explanation	Tips, Checklist
Articles

Definition, Explanation

Different definitions attribute the following features to burnout:

• State of frustration and physical, emotional and mental exhaustion
• especially for persons who deal intensively with other people, outspending themselves psychically and physically so much that they
• have no more power and motivation to continue to do their work as usual

In burnout, you get an disbalance of the challenges and the capacities of a person. People who are especially in danger are:

• people who are especially committed and getting into things (only who burns for something, can burn out)
• very ambitious people expecting much of themselves
• people who do not accept their limits of capacity
• people who put aside their own needs and interests
• people who take on new assignments
• people seeking acknowledgement

Stages and symptoms of burn-out-syndrom:

• Ambition turns into obsessional performance
• Instead of delegating work: increased diligence
• Use of drugs as alcohol, tobaccos, coffee and medication to satisfy needs and to cope with sleeping problems
• Lack of energy, and misperformance such as unpunctuality, unreliability etc.
• Change of values: shifting of priorities, resetting of goals, bluntedness
• Repression of problems: isolation, cynicism, aggressiveness, intolerance. Significant performance loss, physical symptoms
• Disorientation and hopelessness, alienation. Increasing compensative satisfaction by drugs
• Strong changes in behaviour
• Lack of fulfillment
• Feelings of emptiness – anxiety, panic attacks, phobias
• Depression, possibly thoughts of suicide
• Total exhaustion, and cardiovascular or gastro-intestinal diseases

Not only people working in social occupations are endangered – today, many people working in an office fall 'sick' with burnout, as well. Managers, IT workers in deadline-exceeding projects, and self-employed are just as prone to burnout, as well as people who often face frustration in their jobs, maybe doctors or teachers. They are especially hit by overload, low autonomy and low reward. In total, in Germany, at least 300.000 people suffer from burnout. Reasons are:

• Overload
  out of time pressure, overchallengedness, pressure to decide can provoke permanent stress
• Lack of autonomy and self-responsibility
• out of strong hierarchy and control can demotivate,
  impede the full use of people's capacities and make them discontented
• Lack of reward and recognition
  from not being esteemed makes employees not identify with the company

Tips, Checklist

Employees:

• Take a minute, in times of high pressure, and see the problem
• Set priorities
• Ensure a good time-management that includes resting phases
• Pay attention to yourself. Think about your way of life and your goals. Do not give away the control of your life
• Say “No”, and request support when you are being confronted with new tasks
• Take breaks
• Create yourself some freedom in working by defining objective agreements and by broadminded interpretation of the instructions
• Regard your successes and celebrate them with your colleagues or project team-mates
• Recognize your own limits and capacities. Make your own working tempo
• Learn to delegate
• Cultivate your social contacts and be open towards comments that hint at a “change” in your personality
• Use the professional support of psychotherapy which helps you appraise your capacity better and prevent being overloaded
• Have an optimal work-life-balance, deal with your stress in a healthy way, and live healthy in general
• In your time-management, make sure to include recreation phases and times for yourself in which you do fun things like sports, music, hobbies. The use of it is to find some distance to your work and to see the tasks from another perspective
• A team should give every member tasks that are adapted to their individual capacities, with no under- or overchallenging, and define realistic goals. Communication is of particular importance for that
• Think if you could improve and change your situation by means of downshifting

Executives:

• Be aware of your exemplar role
• Make your employees see the sense and the value of their work for the company
• Delegate equally
• Speak out praise and recognition
• Give your employees freedoms and possibilites to be creative
• Offer tele-working / home-office working

Articles

• How To Cope When You're Feeling Exhausted; Dumb Little Man, July 21, 2009

Last update: 01/26/2010