Are You Burning Out?

Deadlines, E-mails, phone calls. Deadlines, E-mails, phone calls.

At times it may feel like work has taken over your life. You begin to answer e-mails outside the workplace, and can’t seem to detach once you’ve left the office. Despite your relentless efforts you continue to feel undervalued and unappreciated in the workplace. You tell yourself, “I’m just stressed out”, but “stress” is not “just stress”.

Excessive workplace stress can impact your performance, productivity and psychological health. If workplace stress is not managed or recognized it may lead to “burnout”.

Burnout is characterized by emotional, mental and physical exhaustion, yet is not recognized as a clinical diagnosis. Burnout is frequently mistaken as the result of a bad cold or terrible boss. It’s apparent that recognizing burnout isn’t that easy, so we’ve put together a list of 7 red flags for recognizing burnout.

1.)Perceived lack of control over your job or how you do it.

Including allowing work to carry over into your home life

2.)Feeling undervalued and/or disconnected from your colleagues, managers and other people in your life.

3.)You’ve become overly cynical.

We all know the colleague who can’t converse without sarcastic remarks. Are they truly trying to annoy you, or attempting to cope with burnout?

4.)You’re messing up routine tasks and begin experiencing self doubt

5.)You’ve engaged in negative or catastrophising thinking patterns.

“Everything will fall apart without me”

6.)Taking days off work when you’re not sick or going to work and being unproductive.

7.)You’re always tired.

How can you fight burnout and get back to living stress-free or stress-reduced?

Develop boundaries between work and personal life to help you improve balance between work and life (i.e Disconnect your work email at 6pm)
Actively connect with friends and family outside work hours
Schedule regular breaks (even if only 5-10 minutes) regardless of how busy you are. This will help you maintain productivity.
Manage negative thoughts by refuting them with positive thoughts. (i.e writing down counterproductive thoughts and refuting them with positive thoughts.)
Say NO to EXTRA work.
Exercise at least 3 times a week
Take a vacation or treat yourself regularly, because you deserve it.