9 Questions to Help You Figure Out Why You’re Burned Out
Originally published by Harvard Business Review.
It’s no secret that managers and employees have been suffering from burnout for quite some time.
There are multiple factors that can cause burnout, including individual, organizational, industry, and societal contributors. It’s typically not any single cause, but usually the convergence of a number of elements that, when unaddressed or unmanaged over time, ultimately lead to burn out. It’s more than simply feeling tired or spent. The World Health Organization characterizes burnout as comprising three key dimensions: sustained feelings of exhaustion, feelings of personal inefficacy, and increased mental distance from one’s job (typically involving feelings of negativity or cynicism).
The specific drivers within each of these three aspects of burnout will be different for each person. Below are some reflective questions to ask yourself so that you can pinpoint your own primary drivers within each facet of burnout. While the answers to the questions below may be clear (either immediately or after some reflection), they likely don’t represent a quick fix, so consider them as a starting point. And depending on what these drivers are, you may or may not have control over some of them. Nonetheless, identifying them is a first essential step.
Sustained Feelings of Exhaustion
This is more than being tired at the end of the week, or even at the end of a busy season. It is a sense of utter depletion or fatigue that comes from being over-extended for a prolonged period of time, without adequate or regular recovery periods. If you are feeling perpetually exhausted, ask yourself:
What one or two things have been most exhausting or stressful for me?
What has been stopping me from getting adequate rest or taking regular breaks?
What energizes me that has been missing from my work or my life?
The loss of energy that comes with burnout may be a result of a myriad of factors, such as picking up the slack for a poor performer on your team, where the performance issue has not been properly addressed. Or perhaps expectations from your manager — or even a client — are unreasonable and need an adjustment. Maybe perfectionism, reluctance to ask for help or inability to push back on unreasonable requests is leading you to work more than is needed, creating both unnecessary extra work and stress. Likewise, if you get energy from collaboration or more creative work — or say, from exercise — but have none of these built into your work or your life, there won’t be enough energy to sustain you while performing the other demanding, but less exciting work that needs to get done.
Personal Inefficacy
When you feel like Sisyphus, pushing the same boulder up a hill each day at work, only to have it roll back down, it not only creates tremendous feelings of frustration, but also greatly diminishes any sense of accomplishment, productivity, or meaning that we might derive from our work.
To home in on what’s preventing you from feeling a greater sense of efficacy, or creating unnecessary friction, ask yourself:
Where do I feel the most ineffective?
What is most frustrating to me or getting in my way?
What is taking significantly more energy than it should?
These feelings of inefficacy may be the result of excessive red tape or bureaucracy that slows things down or creates needless friction in getting even seemingly simple things done. Likewise, some teams or organizations may be overly consensus-driven, resulting in decisions and meeting proliferation that endlessly drag on, when in fact, not everyone needs to agree.
Or, in the case of a tech company I worked with, employees shared that there was so much change that they never felt like they accomplished anything — the focus and goal post was constantly shifting, rendering any prior progress on the last abandoned goal meaningless. It was the same hill, but a different boulder.
Increased Mental Distance
The last hallmark of burnout is essentially disengagement, characterized by feelings of cynicism or negativity towards one’s job. While some mental distance from work can be healthy, like putting work into perspective and not having your identity too wrapped up in it, this type of withdrawal or mental distance from your job is more pronounced and can manifest as antipathy, aversion, or even loathing. This is in contrast to what every employer and employee want — a sense of engagement, fulfillment, or even pride you take in your work.
If you find yourself experiencing this type of mental withdrawal from your job, ask yourself:
What is making me feel negative or cynical?
What did I previously enjoy about work that I no longer do?
When did this shift occur and what prompted it?
It may be harder to pinpoint or articulate answers to these questions and will likely require some deeper reflection to unpack what’s causing this mental distance. The answers may also be informed by some of your answers to earlier questions listed.
Ultimately, asking yourself all nine questions will help you to uncover core issues to diagnose what’s causing your burnout. It’s likely a combination of factors, requiring a number of changes over time to fully address it, and not something a one-off vacation can reverse right away. It’s one thing to not be burned out. It’s another thing to feel re-energized and re-engaged. Nonetheless, this exercise serves as a starting point and can inform steps you can take to address your burnout and possibly prevent it from happening again in the future.