Burnout

Burnout is real. But it is also avoidable. Before someone totally burns out at work, there will be warning signs.

This comprehensive guide to burnout will help you identify these signs and help you prevent burnout early enough that it doesn't affect you. Or if you're already exhausted, this guide will cover everything we currently know about recovery. (And as you'll soon see, it turns out we don't know much).

Why does this guide exist? There are already many articles written online about burnout, but many of them are mostly anecdotal. These burnout stories are important! They tell us what it looks like in real life. But if we want to stop burnout early and deal with it before it affects our careers, anecdotal accounts aren't enough. We also need to look at research.

This guide aims to solve this problem by summarizing the best scientific studies on burnout (links provided, of course). After all, we don't want to base our understanding of a subject on purely anecdotal accounts.

Who is this guide for? We think it's best to read this guide if you think burnout prevention is of interest to you, or if you're currently affected by burnout at any stage in your career.

Let's get started.

If you are a Commoncog member, download the electronic copy of this guide here. If not, fill out this to get a copy of the ebook:

Burnout is a psychological state caused by the prolonged stress of a job.

There are three key characteristics of exhaustion:

Overwhelming exhaustion. Feeling of cynicism. And a feeling of ineffectiveness.

Originally, researchers thought that burnout was an individual problem. But our current understanding of burnout is that it is an experience of stress in a social context.

What does this mean? As psychologist Jacinta Jiménez puts it, “a big contributory factor [to burnout] is a social environment in which a person works…” Burnout pioneer Christina Maslach writes: “This three-dimensional model (...) clearly places individual stress experienced in a social context and involves the person's conception of self and others. »

The three characteristics of burnout (exhaustion, cynicism, inefficiency) form a measure known as the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI). The MBI is a widely recognized measure based on comprehensive psychometric research. It has been validated in many different languages.

The MBI is crucial to understanding what burnout is, as it shows that there are several factors before you are considered burnout. You can be physically and mentally exhausted, but not exhausted, because you don't feel cynical or ineffective in your work.

For example, Mary may hate her boss, and repeated arguments with him leave her exhausted for weeks. However, her work is meaningful and she continues to be effective in achieving her goals. If you meet Mary after a series of grueling professional battles, you might think she looks awful or that she might not last in her current job. But the reality is that it is far from exhausted. Exhausted, maybe. But not burned.

(However, if the battles don't stop, Mary may become cynical about her job or start failing in some of her responsibilities. If this happens, we can say that she is more at risk of burnout Here's what the burnout progression looks like; we'll look at the stages of burnout later in this guide.)

Traditionally, burnout was seen as an occupational hazard in more people-oriented professions, such as doctors, nurses, and teachers. People in these roles face issues more commonly associated with service-oriented jobs, but also suffer from a general expectation of dedication that most other professions don't have. For example, doctors and nurses are expected to work long hours for their patients (and they must be able to deal with death on a regular basis). Teachers are expected to go the extra mile and give their students the best education possible. In fact, a 1981 story indicated that almost every use of the word "burnout" was preceded by the word "teacher".

But that has changed: burnout can happen in any profession. A good example of t...