The Overworked Professional Who’s Burning Out
When I say “burn out,” what’s the first thing you think of? A corporate professional, bloodshot eyes, shakily holding their 10th mug of coffee as they stare at emails at 9pm? (side note: please do not drink 10 mugs of coffee). The thing is, that image is pretty dramatic, but there’s a grain of truth in it.
Before I learned more about it, I thought of a person who’s so exhausted they can no longer function. There’s an exhaustion component, but the symptoms present much differently than I thought. According to the World Health Organization, burnout happens when an employee endures a prolonged period of stress without successfully managing it. The key word here is prolonged.
When you work while highly stressed for months, or even years, your cortisol spikes, and your nervous system is overloaded. You’ll notice yourself not caring about what you’re doing, even though you’re great at your job. You might talk to friends after work and not even remember most of your day, because your short term memory is zapped. You might want to change careers, but that requires energy, and your battery is at zero.
High performing professionals often lack boundaries for these reasons:
-They don’t want to let down the team
-The culture of the office enforces overwork as high performance
-They feel like they can’t take a step back or they’ve “failed”
-Financial or family demands
When your VP tells you that working 70 hour weeks is normal because she did it, it’s hard to prioritize self care. When you have an elderly parent who needs care and you’re the only one who can help with that, it’s hard to set limits. When you have student loans…you know what, let me not get started on that. I shudder just thinking about it.
So how do we stop burnout in its tracks, given all these life demands? I’m gonna give you a really boring but effective answer: setting strict boundaries and prioritizing self care.
You don’t have to quit your job with no backup plan, but do you have to answer your director’s texts at 11 o’clock at night? When’s the last time you got at least 7 hours of sleep? Are you taking on too much of the labor at home and at work?
Find one, small boundary you can set at work, write it down, and start it today.
