What is Burnout?

Burnout is a state of poor professional mental health, where the feeling of being overwhelmed or a lack of enthusiasm impacts your effectiveness. It can be caused by a mixture of mental or physical exhaustion, lack of belief in the work, and lack of belief in yourself. Each individual has a personal expectation about an ideal work environment on these dimensions. When reality becomes too far detached from this ideal, the result is burnout.

If you are currently burned out, you probably already know it. It feels like a crippling inability to get things done or to even care. It’s hard to ignore. But it’s also common to slowly be trending towards burnout without realizing it until it’s too late. If you think you might be at risk of burnout, ask yourself the questions in the Burnout Risk Checklist.

Burnout can severely impact your attitude, professionalism and performance at work. It’s also one of the leading causes of attrition.

Well-being and Performance

Personal well-being is the best leading indicator of professional success. Think about all the people in your career that have left a company, whether it was their individual choice or they were actively managed out. If that person chose to leave, they were likely unhappy in their work situation. If they were managed out, they were likely unhappy in their work situation, and that resulted in poor performance. It’s relatively rare for someone happy and engaged to have severe performance issues.

Now think about high performers you have seen over your career. They were likely universally enthusiastic, and engaged in their work. They were happy in their work situation.

This is especially true for a leader. Your well-being is highly visible. It also directly informs the well-being of others and the performance of the larger organization.

Own Your Mental Health

The more senior you get, the more you will need to manage yourself. It’s true for career growth, but also for well-being. You won’t always be maximizing growth, impact, and well-being at the same time. You may have periods where you are trading off one for another. There will be well-being fallow periods. Part of your role as a leader is navigating yourself — and others — through those periods.

Everyone is responsible for their personal expectations about an ideal work environment. But leaders have a greater effect on both the expectations and reality of the work environment for others. Part of your role is taking ownership of the well-being of everyone.

You can do this by providing a narrative that ties short-term goals to long-term strategy and impact. That’s critical for your well-being too, as more senior roles have longer cycles for impact. By owning your well-being, you are taking control of your performance, longevity in the role, and ultimately the impact of the organization. Doing what’s necessary for your well-being is doing the best thing for the company.

To be alert for personal burnout, you need to learn to identify the warning signs. You need to be able to diagnose burnout signals in yourself and others.

Diagnosing Burnout

Lack of action is the number one leading indicator of burnout. If you notice in yourself a distinct lack of activity relative to your baseline norm, it’s worth digging in to see if you may be on the path to burning out. If you manifest any of the overt warning signs of burnout, then move on to trying to figure out which flavors of burnout you are experiencing.

You may be experiencing poor mental well-being due to a mix of exhaustion, depersonalization, or ineffectiveness.

Exhaustion

Exhaustion means that you feel mentally or physically tired, consistently, over a period of weeks.

Taking an extended vacation may help. Utilize general stress management techniques. That means sleeping well, exercising, focusing on a healthy diet, seeing family, and engaging in hobbies.

Making lists can also help. What things in your personal life do you find the most engaging? What things are you grateful for? Try tracking your mood over time with a journal or app.

If you get energy from spending time with other people, make room for that in your work week. Traveling to a shared working space or social event can be time well spent if it’s combating mental fatigue and re-igniting well-being.

Depersonalization

Depersonalization is a lack of belief in the impact of your projects or the lack of alignment with your values and well-being.

Actively connecting the reality of your work to your ideals is the general mechanism for addressing depersonalization. Make and update lists of your accomplishments. Think of it as preparation for your next self review. This will serve as a forcing function to articulate what you are doing, and what the impact is.

You might find that work that you previously thought was not valuable did deliver impact. Format your notes to briefly describe the situation you were in, the behavior you demonstrated, and the impact on the business. If you feel stuck, you may need to force yourself to document even the smallest impact. After doing this, you may find that some projects did not have impact. Use that to inform what you choose to work on in the future.

Make a list of all the places you have worked. For each one, write down four or five projects that stick out as the most memorable. These are likely to be the projects that align most closely with your values. What did you enjoy about them? Translate these into generic themes like “mentorship”, or “hiring”. Brainstorm some side projects that you could be doing now for each theme.

It’s OK to take on new projects, if it’s something you are going to be excited about, or you feel confident it will have an impact. If needed, make space for this by punting — or delegating — items that you are not as enthusiastic about. Just make sure to inform any stakeholders that may be counting on you to complete a project. A good source of project ideas are items that you have heard other folks propose and own, but which are stalled out. Ask them if you can take it off their plate!

Start small, and pile up quick wins. Making forward progress on items that naturally engage you is the more surefire way to build back up your sense of making a difference.

Ineffectiveness

Ineffectiveness is burnout stemming from a belief that a project cannot be completed, either because they are generally infeasible, or because of your lack of ability.

Remind yourself of projects that are being completed, no matter how small. Try tracking and celebrating wins that are happening. As a manager, it’s common to focus your conversations with others on things that are not going well. Try to intentionally do the opposite. Talk to folks in 1:1s about what projects are succeeding. Compile and send an update on recent successes. Intentionally spend extra time giving others public kudos or otherwise show your appreciation.

You also need to keep in mind that your ability can change over time. Focus on what you are learning. This is known as a growth mindset. Try keeping a list of things that didn’t go well, and what you learned from them.

Talking about Burnout

You should talk about burnout with significant others, family, and friends. You should talk about it with your boss and other coworkers, provided that you have the necessary psychological safety. If your boss has already proactively raised the topic with you, talk about your plan to reestablish well-being.

Like a midlife crisis, burnout at work is ultimately caused by the gap between your ideals and reality. Both are likely to be most accurate after major changes. If that’s the case, give yourself time; this isn’t something that will be fixed quickly. Self-reflection will be important. If talking to friends and family is not enough, then seek professional therapy.

Acceptance is the other half of the equation. Increasing self-engagement will be very helpful. Take the opportunity to reexamine your ideals about your work environment. Whether your self-worth is too tied to your engagement in your professional life is a question only you can answer.

Don’t Give Away (All) Your Toys

Especially when you are digging out of a burnout hole — but anytime — it’s OK to spend time on some things just because they boost your well-being. Sometimes senior leaders delegate too many things, including their favorite work. You may have gotten the advice to stop coding altogether. But, if you find it engaging, and the code will have an impact, give yourself permission to continue doing it. Everything is in moderation. Just don’t neglect your core responsibilities.

Never sit around with nothing to do. You can always invent impactful work. If all else fails, read an article or a book for professional development. Take ideas from that and implement them.

Don’t wait for an exciting project to come down the pipe before you re-engage. You need to proactively be fixing your engagement, first. You are ultimately accountable for staying engaged and managing your own burnout risk.

Burnout Playbook

Chase Seibert