Recognizing Burnout in Yourself and Others

Everyone has had the experience of being exhausted by a difficult workday. And we’ve all had hard seasons that we’ve needed to get through and were so glad they were over. But if this continues day after day for months or years on end, it can lead to burnout. We’ve all been worn out, or stressed out. But have you ever felt truly burned out by a job? If so, you know that the feeling is unlike anything else: The feeling of dread when waking up, or even sleeplessness as your mind races through your next day… a knot in your stomach as you go through your morning routine, and maybe even a sense of hopelessness throughout the day.

Burnout can come when you ‘spend’ more than you ‘receive’ on an ongoing basis. In other words, the demands on you are higher than the fulfillment you get from doing your job (whether that be satisfaction, energy, and/or money). This might come from unreasonable expectations on you, where you are essentially doing more than one person’s job, or you have not received the training or resources needed to work effectively and efficiently.

But it’s not always simple to recognize burnout as separate from simply having a stressful job. Leadership consultant Jimmy Burroughes, author of Beat Burnout, Ignite Performance: The Leaders’ Playbook For Building a High Performance Culture, suggests a useful tool to help identify whether what you’re experiencing is burnout: AEIOU:

• A: Anxiety – The morning (or overnight) worry about your day ahead, including your meetings, and the dread of what might happen.
• E: Exhaustion – The feeling of not having enough energy (“enough gas in the tank,” as Burroughes puts it) to do what’s expected of you today.
• I: Isolation – Pulling back away from social activity, both inside and outside of the workplace. This might include keeping your office door (if you have one) closed to hide from the world.
• O: Overwhelm – The feeling of “another thing to add to my plate” anytime a new piece of work comes your way. This might include having an unwieldy inbox and an inability to keep up with new messages.
• U: Uncaring – “I just don’t care anymore.” This is the biggest red flag; the others don’t happen in any particular order, and you might experience only two or three, but usually burnout results in Uncaring, the final nail in the coffin.

Especially with the final step, it can be easy to mistake burnout for laziness, but studies show that burnout happens primarily with people who have historically cared a lot about the work they do and keep taking on more to prove themselves or keep moving things forward.

If you recognize burnout in yourself or others, Burroughes suggests using the acronym PACED:

• Purpose: Individuals, teams, and organizations need a clear sense of purpose to know why they are doing what they do. If this is missing, add clarity.
• Abundance: Trying on a mindset that this is not a competition; a rising tide lifts all ships, and there is enough resourcing for every member of the team to succeed.
• Connection: Countering isolation with community. People are hard-wired for community. Make sure that you are connecting with other people; if you recognize that someone on your team is isolating, invite them to share lunch, or coffee, or a walk outside.
• Exploration: Create space to innovate and learn, even if it’s as simple as a 15-minute block each day to do something creative or explore resources or classes unrelated to the task at hand.
• Downtime: Help yourself and others to set healthy boundaries and, wherever possible, leave work at work. It’s also possible to create space for downtime during the workday, with brain breaks using fresh air and/or even naps! If nothing else, a physical state change can do wonders for your brain.

This Week’s Tip:

Whether or not you notice any current red flags of burnout for yourself or your team, use the PACED framework to counter burnout in the future. This might take discussion, and, more than likely, it might not be a simple one-time fix. You might consider taking time to collaboratively discuss each element of the PACED framework on an ongoing basis during team meetings, or using chat channels encouraging people to share how they’re experiencing each element of PACED today.

Try this out this week, and let us know how it goes! We’d love to hear from you.

You can subscribe to our feed here, or sign up for our weekly newsletter to get these articles directly in your inbox.