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."

Comments

Are we sure it comes from work?

[dada21]

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

Re:Are we sure it comes from work?

[sprins]

Burnout isn't work related. It's stress related. You can also burn out on other places than the workplace. Too much stress, for too long without relief results in Burnout. Stress itself isn't the problem either, it's healthy and can cause you to excell. It's the long periods without relief that's the killer.

Re:Are we sure it comes from work?

[Foolicious]

I don't discuss business or politics or religion with my real friends and family

Why would you want to do that? Those are the people you're SUPPOSED to discuss those things with. Your points about the financial aspects of our lives (aka accumulating "things") are well-taken and, IMO 100% correct; however, in my experience discussing business and politics and religion with people I care about and love and respect does far more for me than, say, either bottling these feelings up completely or letting them spew to faceless, nameless beings on the Internet.

Re:Are we sure it comes from work?

[nine-times]

I realized at some point that work wasn't really quite exactly the problem, but more like work-habits. While I was working at one job that was fairly high-stress, I was feeling close to burnt out. But I realized that the problem was that I was procrastinating on some of my projects, and I started feeling better when I tackled those problems instead of putting them off. Sometimes pushing through can be somewhat therapeutic.

But then I also realized that working through it wasn't quite enough. I started limiting myself to 8 hour workdays unless there was an emergency, making sure I used my vacation time and took my lunch break, and making a habit of taking lunch outside of the office. Getting outside every now and then helped a lot. I also found that it didn't really have as much of an adverse result on my productivity, because I was more productive when I was rested and happy.

So the problem wasn't the work itself, but the fact that I wasn't putting limits on my work. Without limits, the work overran the rest of my life. I would work through lunch and stay for 12 hour work-days even when it wasn't absolutely necessary, which put lessened my outside-of-work time, which made me unhappy, which made those twelve-hour work-days less productive.

Re:Are we sure it comes from work?

[AuMatar]

And politics don't have an impact on your everyday life? They sure as hell do on mine- every time I drive on a road, pick up my mail, pay sales tax, etc. I'm an atheist, but I know religious people think that religion is the major facet of their daily life. I really don't see how you can call someone a friend if there's huge subjects you can't talk about because it will cause a fight. I discuss all of the above with friends all the time- there's rarely agreement, but never heat.

Re:ROI leading to burnout - so true

[nine-times]

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.

Perceived progress

[dekkerdreyer]

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.

Re:We want people to thrive and grow

[TheWoozle]

I call bullshit. I've seen burnout first-hand. TFA says it best: "Getting the most out of people didn't actually mean getting the best."

An employer is *stupid* to "extract as much productivity as their morals allow with no consideration for burn out.'"

You sound like Stalin; marching an infantry battalion through a minefield is defintely an effective way to clear it, but don't expect the troops to be up for much of a fight the next day!

My View

[thePig]

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.

Re:Causes of Burnout

[Tom]

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.

Re:Burnout Solution!

[flatt]

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

No shit, professor

[aquabat]

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.

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.

Re:Because we have very different politics?

[dada21]

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?