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Understanding Burnout
Cognitive Dissident writes "New York Magazine has posted a feature story about the growing phenomenon of 'burnout' and the growing interest of both healthcare professionals and even corporate management in this problem. Probably the most surprising thing learned from reading this article is that work load is not the best predictor of burnout. Instead it has more to do with perceived 'return on investment' of effort. So work places are having to learn to adjust the work environment to reduce or prevent burnout. From the article: '"It's kind of like ergonomics," [Christina Maslach] finally says. "It used to be, 'You sit for work? Here's a chair.' But now we design furniture to fit and support the body. And we're doing the same here. The environments themselves have to say, 'We want people to thrive and grow.' There was a shift, finally, in how people understood the question."' NPR's Talk of the Nation also had a recent feature story based on this article."
I'm a very busy individual with peaks and valleys -- I go from 80 hour weeks for 3 months to 5 hour weeks for 3 months (on purpose). I see a lot of people in my fields burn-out regularly, and I wonder if it really has to do with workload, or if it has to do with a lot of other secondary causes. For me, the closest I came to burn-out was during a time of my life when my workload wasn't excessive (maybe 20 hours a week of billable labor and 20 hours a week of secondary support work). The workload was feeling stressful, but it was everything else in my life that was really having an effect that I didn't realize. I vented at the job, but it was carryover from other problems. I had a house that was too big ("housing prices always go up!" they said). I had big new cars that we replaced too often ("never buy anything on credit that depreciates"). I didn't take time to congregate with family and real friends -- my only friends were either employees, customers, or people in my field of work. I didn't take time to really have a vacation -- vacating from "reality." I wanted the newest toys, and I wanted them before others ("bragging rights.") My relationship with my significant other was cluttered with just that -- clutter. We had junk everywhere, and when we got our big 4 bedroom home, we had to fill it with more clutter or it felt empty. That clutter around me ended up cluttering my thought process peripherally, adding to the stress.
So what did I do? I downsized the clutter (physical, emotional and labor) and upsized the real personal time. I don't discuss business or politics or religion with my real friends and family -- instead we talk about reality, the now, the past. I "fired" a few of my worst customers who never seemed to pay on time but always called with this or that emergency. Sure, the billable rate was great, but the peripheral stress didn't balance out. I sold my home (and bought a few mobile homes throughout the regions I work and vacation in). I sold all 3 new cars and bought 2 used cars. We sold almost all our possessions except for our books and heirlooms (including all our technology, clothing, household goods, etc), and when we moved into our tiny 2 bedroom home, we bought new items that would last until our grandchildren would inherit them.
Now life is much easier. Work never stresses me, even when deadlines happen. I don't feel like I have to worry about traveling or spending time with my aging parents or younger siblings. I am able to really work on building real friendships of honesty and caring. My relationship with my significant other is so much better because we actually have time for one another, not for the junk and clutter we used to have. I actually work MORE now than I ever have, but I still have time for myself and for others.
Many of my old friends are burning out right now -- a few of them are millionaires who can't keep a grasp on living for today. I'd say a huge percentage of them are in major debt (50%+ of their gross income), some are living way beyond their means even though they're in the top 5% earning bracket. They hate their job, their spouses, their kids, their homes, their cars, and their lives -- because there is just too much. Where do they vent it? At work -- the place they spend 8-10 hours a day invested in. Their offices are clutter piles, their cars are messes, and their face and eyes show it.
If an outsider met them, they'd say that they work too much. They wouldn't blame the (leased) BMWs, the (mortgaged) McMansion, or the (on-credit) Armani sunglasses. They'd not even notice that they're living 1 person to a bedroom and practically 1 person to a bathroom, whereas historically we've seen the average around 2:1 on both, even 3:1 in some cases. They don't realize that the more you have, the more your mind is occupied on some level with all that stuff. On top of all that overhead, they're also paying probably 40-50% of their gross income to all the various government taxes, fees and costs. That's something most forget
This sorry platitude should be dragged out on the street and shot. The head should be put on a stick and tied to the bridge for all who enter the city to see that this just doesn't apply in the modern world.
Work is first and foremost labor/expertise in exchange for some wages and it's done at the pleasure of your boss with your consent.
"Thriving and growing" is something that the worker concentrates on exclusive of work. Should "thriving and growing" intersect with work it should only do so to increase the salary the worker at their current or next job. Period.
"Burnout" is another one. The employee is totally responsible for this as the employer will extract as much productivity as their morals allow with no consideration for "burn out."
In some cases, there are benevolent employers, but this is the rare exception.
Sorry for the rant, but these HR platitudes are a pet peeve of mine.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
If I am working on something where I see great results that positively impact my company's clients, I feel great ... even if I'm working 80 hour weeks. If I am doing something that I view as trivial or unnecessary (but cannot get out of doing it), I quickly feel burned out within a few weeks.
... and we wonder why our kids hate school and aren't doing well.
If I'm working on a project and not making any progress, another four hour day at work seems unbearable. If I'm making great progress and enjoying way I'm doing, I'll forget lunch and dinner and find myself starving and exhausted 14-16 hours later, but quite happy. Progress I think is the key.
Dekker Dreyer
Burnout is ages old, in my experience, its been around since before the computer. Now, with the advent of the computer are all kinds of new stresses: Operator overload, ergonomics (is that listed as a real word yet?) and distraction stress etc. ad nauseum.
Previously, neither management or worker knew about ergonomics and distraction stress, then workers knew but couldn't get any support at work, now bosses know... still not much support to rid the workplace of it. AFIK, countries other than the US are well out front in the race to reduce workplace stress.
One of the little known problems in the workplace (not trolling here) is scent! If you are distracted continuously by nasty perfume of co-workers, it causes higher stress levels from everything else. Even the little things have to be taken into account when trying to reduce stresses in the workplace.
There are government agencies and laws to support getting a better workplace environment... its just a big effort to get it implemented without causing huge amounts of more stress.... sigh
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In my view, burnout occurs due to the reason that people do not have a well-conceived goals.
Understand that, and work for it - you wont have burnout at all. People with real well-conceived goals, work for 100 hr weeks and they are the happiest there could be (cant say the same for the family though )
But, if you are working for the sake of working - or to just to feed yourselves and family, they you are a prime candidate for burnout.
I have come pretty close to burnouts - and it is not during the time when I worked 85 Hrs/week; it was when I was doing stuff for which I had no interest at all. Even though I knew it all along, I understood that money was not my goal in my life pretty much late in my life. Once I understood that, everyday of work was a horror. I was working maybe 5/6 hours a week - and still I was close to burnout.
rajmohan_h@yahoo.com
I've always felt that within the lyrics to the song, "Outside In," Poster Children has an excellent definition for what directly leads to the phenomenon of burnout.
"Trade the future for a payment
On a suitable replacement
For everything you've lost along the way."
Eventually, it begins to feel more automatic to simply stop caring about what you're not doing instead of working and otherwise engaging in preparation of the acquisition of things like physical possessions or the proposition of stability, which is sadly often just a cycle that feeds itself. The burnout comes when your brain realizes that life has been passing you by while you've been instead focusing on things that are really supposed to be enabling you to live it.
--"It's easier if you don't think about what's missing at the end of every week."
Without the moral blabla, yes - burnout as I've seen it in both myself and others is the feeling that you're wasting your time and that you as a being are being wasted. ROI is one factor - if what you do doesn't seem to matter, your chances for burnout increase. Most people, however, will simply lower the investment. I know quite a lot of good people who could probably work twice as effective and twice as hard, if only they hadn't stopped caring a year or two ago. Some of them because management has saved on 5-10% of salary raises and another 5-10% of overhead costs for a training or some perks. So congratulations, dimwits, you've just saved the company 15% of expanses at the price of a 50% loss of productivity.
And they call it "burnout" to make it seem there's something wrong with the employee.
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Instead it has more to do with perceived 'return on investment' of effort. So work places are having to learn to adjust the work environment to reduce or prevent burnout.
//perception// of the reality being the problem, rather than the reality itself. In other words, this is being sold to management as a way to create mere perceptions of work ROI, rather than actually creating work ROI. In short, they're coddling the industrial tendency to insist upon exploiting workers with deception.
So in other words, these geniuses have JUST DISCOVERED that workers tend to react badly to being overworked and undercompensated? Welcome to the party, Boss! It's good to see you finally made it to reality!
What disturbs me, of course, is the framing of this as the
Trust me, Boss. The perception is not the problem; it's the reality.
.. that burnout is a built in ROI calculator for the individual, then its probably a good mesure for the companyy as well.
;-) )
Here we have two projects. An ass-old- buggy, poorly written code base and the new one that is just starting. I dread the old code base, because it brings on immediate burn-out. The return is so little for that code base that we've stopped developing it except for easy enhancements and bug fixes.
Other times I've experienced burn out is when you just go too hard at a goal that is too far away. It is better to take things into small steps that can be checked off. I also find that when you have the option to work in one project with little changes, it is best not to linger. Instead, let the change requests stack up. Then hit the code base hard, and thereby forcing yourself to feel productive as you check each one off.
But nothing still keeps me more motivated than seeing the $$ behind the work. Early on each feature has a profit margin to it. By the time you're in a maintenance cycle, you're doing it to keep the software functioning as it should. Its not nearly as sexy.
The other thing is the right tools. Having to deal with asinine tools negates your agility to get the changes implemented timely. You should be able to focus on things from a customer perspective and not how hard it is to implement. A good tool is worth its licensing fees many times over. (I'd include a shameless plug for Qt from TrollTech, or Perforce, but I'm not going to
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
From the abstract:
How this is a surprise is precisely the root of the problem.
The biggest reason for burnout, from the perspective of one who has suffered a lot of burnout, is almost entirely the return on investment issue.
When you work long, hard, thankless hours, or do work that others have no idea how to do, and do not get either of adequate recognition, appropriate remuneration, or personal satisfaction, it piles on you until, one day, you end up looking at where you've been and where you are now, and see that your standard of living is not any better (possibly worse), or that you don't have the respect or position you feel you have earned, or you simply do not feel that you are achieving what matters to you in your life. And on that day, you feel either inadequate, slighted, or unappreciated. The result, in all of those cases, is that you burn out.
While some people might tell you to pick yourself up by your bootstraps and take life by the horns, it is not always so easy to do --- especially if you try and try and nothing seems to change. It can be demoralizing at best, and the peception of getting nowhere just makes it ever harder to pick yourself up and try again.
The answer for employers who want to stem the effects of burnout is to help their employees achieve meaningful, real satisfaction from their work.
Providing wages that (at least) keep up with cost of living, making available opportunities to advance one's position, offering employees ways to share in the profits of their work, supporting employee achievement of what is important to them, giving them recognition and appreciation for their contributions, and simply respecting them as people are the tools you need. A nice chair doesn't hurt, but it doesn't stop the burnout. Burnout is more psychological than physical.
Now, employers don't have to just give things to their employees on a silver platter, either. It's all about reciprocating peoples' efforts in a meaningful way. Unless they're starving, a holiday turkey once a year isn't as meaningful as some people think. Neither is a gold watch after thirty or more years of work. If employees can look back just one year and honestly say to themselves that they are better off now and are on the road to achieivng what is important to them, you'll see the burnout rate go down and the productivity rate go up (probably exponentially).
Most people actually thrive on a challange, but only when the potential reward is right. While stress plays a factor in burnout, it is simply contributing to the phychological complications that are at the root of the problem. A sense of achievement is a very real queller of stress. People can handle schedules, deadlines, and crazy hours. It just has to be worth it to them.
Now, if you are the one suffering from burnout, what you need to do is to take proactive measures to accomplish something meaningful in your life. It can be all at once or baby steps. It doesn't matter which. It doesn't have to contibute to getting that mansion on the beach, or the expensive sports car, or even popularity and fame. You just need something to reaffirm that you are capable of getting to where you want to be in life and that you are getting something from your work --- that you are not just a slave to the grind.
If your mind constantly wanders to money issues, look for a better income opportunity or some supplemental income opportunities, like moonlighting, freelancing, or merchandising. If you yearn for more respect, appreciation, or personal satisfaction, you would be amazed how much you get from doing some charity work or pitching in to help out with community projects. If you just need to get some inkling of enjoyment from what you've earned instead of funnel
Your employer does not cause burnout. They pay you to do your job. Sometimes the jobs of two or three people. Does this push you outside your comfort zone? Does this cause you stress? Coping with difficulties is a skill just like everything else. Just because you are exceptional at the bold points of your job description doesn't mean that you will be treated like a king. We have climate controlled buildings. We get bathroom breaks. We even get our special needs met no matter how trivial to the employer they may be. Suck it up or find a different job. There are plenty of people out there that are praying to get the opportunities that you have. We should all feel incredibly lucky that we get paid to use our brains to make a living.
Lisa, if you don't like your job you don't strike. You just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That's the American way.
- Homer Simpson
I don't see what's so surprising about this observation.
Anyone who's ever done double shifts for a month to meet a deadline knows that you feel pretty great when it all comes together. You bond with your team mates, eat pizza and rock out in the halls out 3am, brainstorm to come up with elegant solutions to challenging requirements, and generally make the world a better place in some small way.
On the other hand, you can start to feel pretty shitty when you're working regular hours for years and years on a project, where there are no written requirements and the customer keeps changing his mind, repeatedly obsoleting big chunks of your previous work.
Oh yeah, and don't even think about refactoring that old code to better reflect the new requirements, because that would require us to test it again. Just add some new functions to the old classes.
"Classes? What are these "classes" you speak of?", asked the team lead. "I don't see why all the variables can't be static. After all, there's only ever one socket connection.". I shit you not.
One day you wake up and realize that four years of your life have gone by, and all you have to show for it is a mass of spaghetti, (that would probably take you six months to redevelop if you started from scratch tomorrow), a few bucks in the bank, some new grey hairs and a collection of cute puffy stress toys.
So yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that return on investment is a more important factor than workload, in causing burnout.
A republic cannot succeed till it contains a certain body of men imbued with the principles of justice and honour.
"I'm wondering if our farming ancestors back in the day when everyone farmed ever suffered from burnout."
Probably not, since they could see tangible results from their labor. Ever done farm work? It's harder than coding, I can tell you! But it's also very satisfying.
If they worked hard, and the crop failed anyway, then they had MUCH bigger worries than their state of mind!
I think they definitely felt those frustrations and burn-out. But I think they felt it to the degree to which they had control over their lives.
It's a concept called , and it was just as true for them as it is for us.
If you have an internal locus of control (you believe that you have control over your life and progress) you are much happier than if you have an external locus of control (you believe that other people and circumstances have control over you).
If your life is dictated to you by bosses, deadlines, and pushy clients at work, then you go home and feel like you have no control at home, you are bound to get burned out and / or depressed.
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Bingo, burnout is all in who you're working for.
I dropped completely out of a 15 year professional career after one incompetent manager too many. Any time I've had a competent manager other circumstances ended it (retired, business sold etc...) Incompetent managers tend to lie to and mistrust employees because their incompetence provides no solid foundation for healthy relationships with employees.
I just cannot work for someone who has no clue what they're doing. I just can't do it anymore, I'm too old for that bullshit in my life. Someone above mentioned that burnout is your brain telling you that you're wasting your life, I think that is a good assessment.
Unfortunately, it is more and more common for the incompetent to be promoted out of harm's way into management positions.
Losing respect for the entire system has a lot to do with it as well. When corporations and credit reporting agencies can, without justification whatsoever, completely ruin a persons life, leaving an individual no recourse whatsoever, its just not worth fighting anymore.
Incompetent management, all powerful corporations, corrupt law enforcement and government - with no way to correct any of it... its just not worth fighting anymore, the anger and frustration was destroying me. The only solution was to drop out.
To survive, one must learn how to not care anymore, and that my friends, is burnout.
My family, however, are extremely conservative Christians who are in denial that I grew up and realized that their religion was just one of many and completely uncompelling. I have to sit calmly and let comments like "God is looking out for you!" float by after I comment that I just got a nice bonus for my hard work on a project at work. I'm cool with that. I'm the bigger person. I don't say "Wow that was lucky!" when they claim that their god was the root cause of some pleasant event in their lives. If I stood up for my beliefs the same way they shove theirs in my face knowing that I reject their claims of a god...there would be unhappiness.
I feel for you. I'm a Christian, and I would NEVER say anything like that because I believe (and I believe the Bible supports this thought) that God stopped "looking out" for everyone 2000 years ago. That was the reason for Christ's birth, death, conquering of death and return -- to remove God's demands for obedience from the picture, to replace it with what Christians call the Holy Spirit -- something that guides you to do right. God's not there killing people and promoting people, He's in His Kingdom ruling forever. That's it. You got a raise? I say be thankful that God created you with those hands and that mind and that drive. I say be thankful that the Spirit leads you in proper decisions, even if you're not a Christian and don't believe in the Spirit. A Christian that wonders why God doesn't answer prayers is one who isn't reading their Bible and is instead listening to some blowhard pastor who also isn't reading their Bible. A Christian who condemn loss of others as "Satan" or "God's Will" is in that same group. I am embarassed by these Christians because all I see is them wasting their lives, and ruining a good faith for others.
When Christians start living their lives based on what Jesus said and did, the feeling of hypocrisy and ridicule will go away -- maybe even opening the door for others to look at the faith from a perspective of how to better their own lives, and avoid judging others. God's rule over this fleshly world is over -- He's done what He needed to do, and He left us all with a very simple and basic path that really isn't all that difficult to understand. It's the egomaniacal pro-force Christians that have ruined it for the world, methinks.
I apologize for your family's distasteful comments and lack of allowance for you to live your life as you wish. They're probably "turn or burn" Christians, right?
You have apparently missed the point entirely, but in so doing, have managed to come up with the perfect case-in-point.
The medieval farmer presumably led an exceedingly harsh life by modern standards, as did his wife (who would probably die during childbirth or from getting severely burned by a kitchen accident). They worked hard, lost a lot of kids, and rarely, if ever, saw any improvements in their overall situation.
I'll not linger on the point that they would not need to (or, in fact, even be encouraged to) use their brains a lot like we do today, nor that their situation would be exactly the same as that of their peers unlike a lot of burnouts, nor that there is a significant amount of folk medicine from that day intended to deal with depression (indicating that it happened).
However, they saw return on investment. In a much more direct way than we do today.
Every day, they would see *exactly* what their work amounted to, and every harvest, they would reap the fruits of their labour.
A similar case can be made for high-stress work today, like for example firefighters, where I'd be surprised if the burnout-rate, compared to the stress, is as high as elsewhere.
The conclusion? Pretty much the same as the original post: it doesn't really matter how hard it is, as long as you see that your efforts amount to something.
Oh, and please try not to come across as so condescending when you've never experienced something like this firsthand; until you've debated with your coworkers whether to drive back to work or into a concrete wall while doing 80mph, or considered what would be the least painful way for your loved ones to find your corpse after you decide to kill yourself (an accident prevented me; incidentally, a barbiturate-diamorphine overdose was my choice), you have no idea what it is like, and what it takes to live through it.
You've just proven his point -- if you believe what he said, he's already considered the stuff you pointed out and rejected it. Whether you realize it or not, you just tried to convert him again, which I doubt he appreciates (I certainly wouldn't have if you had been replying to me).
By the way, being thankful to something you don't believe in (as you suggested regarding "the Spirit") doesn't make sense to me. What's you're rationale for that?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz