Identifying Burnout Behaviour and Ways to avoid it

There is an enormous difference between regular stress and everyday work pressures to that of a full scale, systems shut down, burnout.  Both factors are unpleasant but each are characterised by different extremities.

Everyday work stress is a factor that we all contend with and suitably manage to the point that despite the anxieties experienced, we come out the other side proud of our accomplishments and perseverance to succeed. Now take this kind of pressure, amplify it by a thousand and sprinkle it with extra apathy, mix in some cynicism, leave out any hint of motivation and you have yourself a crisply toasted burnout.

Some say that when your personal life or personal relationships begin to fracture, it means that you are due for a promotion. While this may be true to some, there are ways in which to avoid such catastrophic results and maintain a bountiful career and life balance.

True to the new buzzword; Work-life balance, it is possible to find a means to an end to workplace burnout. But instead of providing you with an airy-fairy means to achieving this sense of workplace Nirvana, I plan on offering workable solutions to this damaging emotional and physical shutdown.  Prepare to follow a path that will lead you to ways on how to identify symptoms of burnout behaviour and ways to achieve a work-life balance.

Firstly the most important thing to say is that there is nothing wrong with healthy pressure and motive to keep us on our toes. Without goals or deadlines nothing would ever get done and no forward movement would be made. Encounters with stressor stimuli are a healthy driving force that keeps the cog turning. It's when such demands become unmanageable and overwhelming that we tend to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel and get consumed by a crushing sense of lost control in our jobs.

Symptoms of Burnout Behaviour

Admitting that you have a problem is the very best place to start and in order to do that you need to be able to identify burnout behaviours and symptoms of a breakdown. To follow are typical tell-tale signs that the work-life balance is in conflict.

Depleted Mental, Emotional and Physical Energy Levels

The overwhelming feeling of being tired in every way imaginable is one of the most common signs of job burnout. Regardless of how many hours of sleep you squeeze into a day or night, neither cat naps nor sleeping pills help and short of hypnosis, even the smallest of tasks leaves you with a sense of utter exhaustion.

Touchy and Short-tempered

Some people are just natural born grouches; however I highly doubt that you are one of them. Despite this fact, you may be finding yourself constantly annoyed with every other human being in existence. Whether these people haggle you at work, in the traffic at the shops, or worse yet, those at home, everyone seems to be draining you of your vital life force. Not only are people making your skin crawl but situations also seem to be extra demanding and tend to leave you angered by the slightest request. Having a short fuse 24 hours a day is a sure sign that your emotional capacity to cope with routine occurrences' is floundering due to an imbalance and impeding burnout.

Self-criticism, Cynicism and Apathy

Let's be fair, we all have bad days and we all go through experiences that make us feel pessimistic, lack interest and ultimately result in us being harder on ourselves than anyone else can ever be. I don't mean to suggest that you are scheduled for a meltdown from having a series of bad days or months. What I am trying to illustrate is that when these feelings accompanied by the other indicative symptoms of a bad burnout are present this is when you need to pay attention to yourself. When constant negativity leaves you feeling bleak about every aspect encompassing your life, this is when things are becoming a problem. The intensity will shift from something being unpleasantly manageable to that of something so colossal that you cannot see past the multitude of hurdles you are expected to defeat.

Recurring Physical / Medical Ailments

When anyone is under pressure, often our bodies have a way of waving a white flag at us in an attempt to slow us down and seek some rest and relaxation. The human body is in fact one of the greatest tools known to mankind and far surpasses anything that technology will ever be able to duplicate. Your body knows you better than you know it which is why we should quietly listen and pay attention to it when it has something to say. Often people encountering a burnout suffer from chronic and recurring physical ailments. Such complaints often manifest in the form of acute headaches or migraines and others may experience debilitating stomach and digestive conditions. Some also tend to experience either excessive weight gain or weight loss, both of which are detrimental to your health in a very big way. Whatever the complaint may be (everyone is different after all) when these ailments become undefeatable and severely incapacitating, it is your bodies way of telling you to stop what you are doing and pay attention to what you need and lack on the most basic human level.

Strains on your Consciousness

People under the kind of pressure sufficient enough to send us over the edge include the presence of a volatile sense of consciousness and delusions. Minus the delusions, volatility sounds like a terrific trait to have but on the contrary, such instability results in lost sleep or the desire to sleep all the time. Delusions on the other hand, we know are never a good sign. Dancing through the halls of your office with a gang of oompa loompa's, is of course not what I am suggesting but rather delusions in the sense that you may be plagued with paranoia, anxiety and unwarranted guilt. Any pressure added to our consciousness makes coping with stress that much more trying and combined with other symptoms, is cause to affect a downward spiral in a very big way.

Preventing and Managing Burnout Behaviour

Finding yourself in high pressure zones during your day is an unavoidable element we all need to learn to handle. Provided you are trying to achieve any sense of career advancement, the more we take on, so the pressure mounts.  With this being the very nature of the 'career growth disease', prevention is better than cure and to follow, are solutions and coping mechanisms to practice to avoid a workplace burnout.

1.       What is distracting you?

Often distraction and lost focus is the root of added pressure and a feeling of not having enough hours in the day to complete your tasks. Identify if you are battling to stay focused during your day and if so what is causing this distraction. If it is something that shouldn't be distracting you is, it is up to you to remove this point of interruption in an attempt to regain control over your tasks.

2.       Open the Lines of Communication.

Being a slave horse is wonderfully commendable as an attempt to over deliver. While there is nothing wrong with having a hunger to strive, often we bite off more than what we can chew and bury ourselves in work that is unworkable. You are but one person. Sure you may be super productive but even bumblebees take a break. Communicate an unrealistic workload to your employer and try to find a meeting ground or at least extend deadlines where ever possible. Keep your employer in the know about your workload and communicate disparities as and when they occur so as to alleviate, if anything the anxiety of letting someone down.

3.       Strategise your week.

Prepare weekly reports, if only for yourself to track your progress. By constantly being aware of your responsibilities and weekly output requirements, this breaks things down into manageable parts. Weekly update reports help you to prioritise and guide your duties in the most systematic way possible. Not only do weekly reports serve a proactive function but they serve a motivational service too. After completing each task on your weekly list of priorities, instils a sense of accomplishment. Despite the pressure you may be experiencing, check boxes display the headway you are making after each week comes to an end.

4.       Just Say No

People pleasers and the nice guys always come last. While I'm not suggesting you refuse to offer a helping hand or go above and beyond the call of duty (this is what makes you such a great employee after all), don't take on additional responsibilities that are going to remove from your core focus. If these added pressures are becoming a little out of control and you are headed for a burnout, admit that there is only so much that you can cram into your day and being a people pleaser is not one of them.

5.       Take some Me Time

Try to find a pastime that brings you joy and peace. Whether it is for only 20 minutes a day, nothing removes from the power of taking a moment for you. Naturally, work is not the time nor place to do so but whether it is in your car on the way home or once you get home, in the morning or the evening, be quiet with yourself. Clear your head of your worldly obligations and just be. The peace found during this time will replace anxiety and apathy with self love and esteem.

6.       Mend Failing Relationships

Now try not to laugh, but once a week as you would the extra hours into your work day, force a date night into fractured relationships. By date night I don't mean that it has to be candle light dinners and romance and the Blue Danube. What I'm referring to is choose a night once a week between Monday and Friday and make a habit of spending time nurturing personal relationships that may be faltering under extreme pressure. Spend time with people who care about you and whom you care for. This is both good for your soul and tends to repair disparities and problems in broken relationships. By consciously committing to sharing in quality conversations and concentrating on uncomplicated, positive aspects shared, gives you something to look forward to and destress during times of reclusive stress.

7.       Have a Bedtime and Stick to it

As mentioned above, I think we all tend to forget the significant impact that sleep and sleep deprivation has on us. During a burnout, sleep can be affected on both sides of the scale. If you suffer from insomnia when under pressure at work, nine out of ten times your anxiety and stress is heightened. Sleep is of vital importance to the human body and mind in the sense that while we sleep our brains unpack the events of the day and file them into the correct places so that upon waking, the same information can be easily accessed. If you are battling to sleep during times of tension, neither you body, nor your mind, has an opportunity to heal and recuperate. Try to have a set bedtime and do everything in your power to stick to it. If you are having a hard time sleeping, keep a pad of paper and a pen next to you bed and write down the thoughts that you are having and the concerns that are flooding you mind and starving you of much needed rest.

8.       Turn to a Life Coach

The final step to dealing with stress that you can't seem to get around is finding a life coach to help you process complex information as well as esteem issues. Life coaches are professionals who understand the complexity in finding a work-life balance and assist in providing solutions to overwhelming life experiences. Through guided counsel and unbiased opinions, a life coach can make the world of difference in helping you to discover resolution to personal and professional issues that may be contributing to the immanent burnout you don't need to experience.

We are all destined to find the work-life balance we crave in order to live a fulfilled and successful personal and professional existence. By indentify burnout behaviours and apply effective and straightforward solutions to the complexities of our lives, a burnout is avoidable and success ordained.

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