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Are You Burned Out

by bernt & torsten

Have you ever felt that the job you do make you feel drained, have you asked yourself if you are burned out or if you hate your job? You should.

Many signs of burnout (cynicism, depression, low energy, and more) might just be signs that you hate your job and are ready for a change. You need to figure out what It’s, and there is a tricky distinction between being burned out and you hate your job, and it’s up to you to figure it out.

Experiencing burnout is nothing new for people. If you work non-stop for years on end with very few breaks, then eventually the human mind is going to say “stop!”. And if you choose to ignore that inner voice, then you will become exhausted to the point that you will hate your job and everything associated with it.

Burnout is also associated with the impression that those who work less are not ambitious enough or loyal enough. People feel the need to prove themselves to their boss and colleagues. They volunteer for overtime every day, they do the exhausting business travel, they come in at weekends and holidays, they run themselves into the ground to impress their employer. In this era where jobs are scarce, people are scared to do anything that would jeopardize their source of income.

To determine if you are burnout or just need a change, there are some questions you could ask yourself, to figure out your next move.

Are your symptoms bodily?

Your body can break down doing something you hate every day, while a dislike of your job is less likely to manifest itself in your body the same way true burnout would. If symptoms like headaches, backaches, panic attacks, or stomach issues are weighing you down, it’s likely burnout that you’re dealing with.

Does your work take too much time?

Are you expected to have your smartphone on and accessible at all times? Are you regularly working 60+ hour weeks? Its the ability to take time off – personal days, sick days, and otherwise – limited? Burnout can be caused by plain old exhaustion, and it’s easy to feel fatigued when your job demands more time from you than is healthy. If the time constraints of your work are low and your dread of doing the work is still high, you might just hate your job.

Make a list

So when you start to feel burnt out, you need to step back from your job a bit and ask yourself why you decided to be what you are. What made you a project manager in IT and not a managing director for a Bank? Get a notebook and make a list. What attracted you to the job? Why

Get a notebook and make a list.

• What attracted you to the job?
• Why is that attraction now gone?
• Can you get it back?
• Why is the meaning of life?
• Maybe you wanted to work on something specific but got sidetracked?
• If so, can you rewind a bit and do your pet project?
• Do you have a passion that is secretly throbbing inside your head?
• What is holding you back?

Or go for a walk and think about these questions in your head.

Can you see yourself being happy in another job?

Whether you’re burnt out or over it, writing traditional pros and cons list likely isn’t that helpful. Try to brainstorm what might make your work situation feel more palatable can give you some helpful insight into what the cause of your current distress is. The apathy and fatigue uniquely associated with burnout make coming up with ideas (even vague ones) about how to improve your situation a supremely difficult task, so if you’re struggling to create even a basic list, you’re likely burned out.

Does a mini-break help?

Take a tiny break should give you a clue as to whether your feelings toward work are related to burnout. Take a three-day weekend. Sleep in. Do things that you like,  turn off your phone. Back at work see if the dread of going into work has subsided at least a tiny bit.

Being Burned Out – try this

So how do you get to love your job again?

Remember Why You Fell In Love With Your Job In The First Place

Quite often, it is easy to forget why we fell in love with our chosen profession, to begin with. When you begin the job, it is the start of something magical where anything could happen. You’re an idealist. A real go-getter.

Read Inspirational Success Stories From Others

Maybe it’s just me, but when I am burnt out from the job, it helps to read about others in the same field who succeeded against the odds. It makes me feel I can do it too after all.

Schedule Regular Leisure Time & Separate It From Work Time

One of the mistakes you can do is working non-stop day and night 7 days a week. If you do that and think that you will be successful if you did not take a break. This will affect your family, marriage, and health as well.

Schedule at least one day in the week when you take the entire day off from work. Switch off all computers and mobile phones. No checking of email, Facebook, or Twitter. Your empire won’t collapse because you took a day off.

Slow Down!

Many people make the mistake of thinking that they have to cram a huge amount of work into a small period of time. The phones are ringing, the email inboxes are filling up with [URGENT!] subject lines, customers are visiting the office and demanding your immediate attention….it gives a whole new meaning to the term Multitasking.

But multitasking doesn’t mean working yourself to death. Do one thing at a time – everything else can wait. Prioritize each task in order of importance. And work to the best of your ability. Why build up a pension when you won’t be alive to enjoy it?

Exercise!

Exercise gets the blood pumping and the body reinvigorated. It also makes you more fit – go for a bike ride start long-distance cycling.

If It’s Self-Doubt About Eroding Skill Sets, Find Ways To Remedy That

If you been in a job for a while and when you think to yourself that the skills you thought you had were degrading. You lose confidence in how to do your job.

You’re passing your project management duties onto colleagues and starting to doubt yourself, which is the real enemy.

It’s also easy to doubt your skill sets because everything changes so fast. New technologies come out at lightning speed, new services are popping up with new training courses, seminars, software.

So the solution is to find ways to update your skills. Look for free online courses or talks on YouTube. If you need to update your computer programming skills, go to Udemy. If you need to update your foreign language skills, go to Duolingo.

Alter The Way You Do Your Tasks

When you reach a state of burnout, maybe what’s needed is to jumpstart the brain with a new way of doing the task at hand? For example, in my writing situation, whenever I see Microsoft Word now, I feel really exhausted and I don’t want to do the required task. I’ve seen Word too many times over the years, and now I can barely get a single word down if I am using the software. So I suddenly switched and after trying out various other apps, I finally settled on Scrivener.

For example, as a project manager in IT, I use MS Project with the Waterfall model, try a new project management tool for the agile(scrum) model e.g scrumwise. I like to hear from you, so let me know what your view is.