Something about Burnout..

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Food for Thought: Who or What to Blame for Burnouts

Posted by Alex as Attitude and Outlook, Work and Career

Burnout is every worker’s (or student’s) worst enemy. It spells that you’ve hit the bottom and the next pit that you might crash into is a nervous breakdown. You don’t have the drive, the energy and the interest to continue whatever you’re doing. Fighting burnout starts with knowing what’s causing it. Could it be your boss, your workload, or you?

I’ve experienced burnout a few times already and it had me thinking what really caused my burnout. I tried jotting them down and here are what I got.

The Type of Work

The type of work shouldn’t be a major burnout factor. It’s something that you should have the capability to do. If you don’t then I guess that’s either your fault (for lying about certain skills) or human resources’ for hiring you.

In any case, sometimes, being subjected to a line of work that you aren’t properly trained to do can be out of your grasp. Like if the company just downsized and they “transfered” you to this spot where you probably lack training to be able to handle competently. And I bet your bosses would just say that “it’s just the same with everybody else.”

Still, if you begin to be uncertain of yourself and your competence on the job, it’s better to raise a red flag than try to “keep on doing it.” Chances are you’d find extreme difficulty in coping with the demands. Challenges are good but know that trying to beat a monster with your bare hands and your fighting skills only come from watching Chuck Norris is plain futile.

The Workload

You’re good at the job and you like it. But what’s killing you is the amount of work that keeps piling and piling on even if you’re working a 60-hour work week. Being overloaded every single day can be caused by two things - 1) your time management or 2) the management’s crappy planning.

Perhaps you’re spending just too much time on slack and procrastination. If focus is your problem you just have to put on the proverbial horse blinkers and focus on the task on hand. You aren’t doing yourself a service bumming around as the stress of the mounting workload will get the best of you sooner or later.

Still, workloads can be the fault of horrendous planning on the part of your boss.

The Boss

Is he or she the Pointy-haired Boss (in Dilbert) or is he (or she) Beelzebub incarnate. Slave driver bosses are the bane of smart employees. Not only do smart people hate being overly micromanaged, they also get pissed off with the fact that they know they can do better than the manager.

I’ve had a boss who just wouldn’t listen and kept throwing away the brilliant plans and ideas that I kept proposing. It had me overly frustrated that I just upped and left. Last time I heard, their business is doing bad. Hah!

The Space

Environment plays a lot in build-up of a person’s burnout. If you’re cramped in a small cubicle for the duration of 9-5. I’ve observed that for creative people, just the thought of a tiny, cramped and unattractive workplace can already cause stress. Such work environments just suffocate them.

If your nerves are frayed chances are, an empty water cooler can even burn you out just a tad bit more.

The Policies

So maybe it’s not the work and the workload. It’s probably the guillotine of a clock that’s posed to chop your head off. Or the way you have to log in everything you do in a logbook that will be checked like a grammar school spelling quiz. Work places can have out-of-this- world policies that can just choke the life out of the worker. Does your workplace have one? Chances are the reasons behind the policy are out of this world too.

The People

Oh who hasn’t had an annoying co-worker. Yes, those types who slack off and get away with it. Or maybe there are those who just are plain annoying like office pranksters and smart Alecs. Sooner or later you’ll start hating the person for wearing corduroy pants.

Perhaps not a co-worker but clients. People who deal with customers often are subject to the most torture in terms of keeping in line with customer relations efforts. Take people in technical support for example. Those guys are probably the most liable getting strapped with a straightjacket for the amount of abuse and “smart” questions they get.

The Self

We just don’t want to blame ourselves, right? But chances are, we’re just giving ourselves stress, probably even more than a stupidly planned workload, a Pointy-haired Boss, and no water in the water cooler. Are you sure about the career direction to which you’re heading? Are you even self-motivated enough to work?

Other Factors

Other factors include issues outside the workplace. It can be your nagging wife. Your out of control kids. The credit card debts. The house mortgage or rent. Those things can affect the way you work and your attitude towards it.

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If you are top-level management, you might want to look into these factors to assess why there’s such a high attrition-rate in your company. Even one kink in your system can drive a person crazy.

In any case, the simplest answer is all of these factors can contribute to the process of burnout. It just depends on the level of stress each factor brings into the equation. The dangerous thing is that burnout affects everything, particularly how you approach working itself. So even though some things do not really stress you out, sooner or later you will start blaming those things and you continue to sink in utter depression fast.