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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 wondering if our farming ancestors back in the day when everyone farmed ever suffered from burnout. Did they ever stand up and say "that's it, no food this winter, I'm not plowing one more row!" After all, these farmers had no room for personal growth, very little way to express themselves creatively on the job, had very hard deadlines, and most of their lives were affected by things well outside of their control (weather, taxes).
Sorry if I'm bucking the feel-good trend here, but I think this is a load of nonsense. Of course I have bad days, even a bad week or so. But that's all it is. Life has its ups and downs, and you learn to roll with them as you grow up. Giving those downs special names and wondering if we should call them an illness seems far-fetched and frankly silly to me.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
I agree and I'll say this.
You have your LOGICAL mind that says you can safely jump 30' off the building into the water.
Then you have your emotional/hormonal mind. You can push it to jump off the building a few times, but if it doesn't enjoy jumping then it will find a way to stop you from doing that.
And my point...
Your emotional/hormonal mind is strongly influenced by your hormone levels.
Men who are taking high levels of testosterone can be come very aggressive and fearless. It's not that they conciously overcome their fear- they literally don't experience it- even enjoy the stimulation.
So pay attention now because this is important:
At 40 to 50 many men's hormone levels drop precipitously. They become whiny, anxious, unhappy, dissatisfied, need more extreme erotic stimulation to react (hence suddenly needing younger chicks). In the past, we've put this off to a mental/age process. But if you are experiencing this, get your free testosterone levels checked out. You might save your self an incredible amount of grief if you do this. In my case, mine were so low that I basically de-aged about 10 years when they got me back to normal levels. You don't need shots-- they have multiple brands of creams that soak through the skin.
If you still feel like your life sucks after you do this, then go ahead dump your family, buy a sports car, and start dating 20 year olds. But you may only feel like your life sucks because your hormone levels are sub 300 (270 is absolute minimum I believe).
The two biggest problems people can fix are hormones and thyroid. Both are fairly easy to diagnose and fix.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Then the company went bust, and I got downsized, so I went back to my last job, end user support at a 20,000 seat corporation. Everything is siloed into it's respective department. Where I used to have control over the Novell tree in my OU and allowed to create my own login scripts, print queues, network shares, now I do Windows desktop support, and nothing but desktop support. I do no projects, no builds, no login scripts, no evaluations of new equipment. The engineering lab evaluates all software, and creates install packages and OS images for everything, and hands it to us. I create nothing.
I come here every day, sit down, surf the web about 4 hours a day, do mindless trivial bullshit the rest of the time, then go home. I sit in a cube and don't have a direct view of anyone else, like a cell. My co-workers don't talk much, and they don't have much interest in technology. I entertain myself with writing scripts and batch files for the limited access I have to the systems, but I don't have anyone who's interested to show them to or to bounce ideas off of.
The money is good, the benefits are good, the work is easy, it's 8:30 to 5 Monday to Friday, I should have no complaints, but the boredom and lack of any sort of challenge is freaking killing me.
I was looking through my resumes directory, and I must have at least 30 cover letters I've sent out in the past 3 years. I've been on at least 20 interviews, and still haven't had any offers. I've got a lot of knowledge, but not enough experience on the resume, I guess. I've gone through the 5 stages of grief about my career, for a long time I was just freaking out about being stuck here, angry, then depressed, and now I'm just into acceptance. I'm tired of sending out resumes and not getting called, even more tired of getting interviewed and not getting hired. I come in, stare at my monitor for 8 hours and go home. 20 years till retirement. Whoopee!