What is Burnout and How to Avoid It.

Burnout is one of those things that tends to creep up on you, often without you realizing it.  When it does it can significantly affect your mind and body, causing complete exhaustion, anxiety and often causes depression. If you dont stop burnout before it takes hold, it can lead to more serious issues such as heart attacks or strokes.  As I said, often we do not even see it coming. A few things to be conscious of:

Take a serious look at your Workload. Be realistic about the hours you are putting in at work. Also take into account how many hours you are working without taking a break as this will contribute to burnout.  Remember when it is break time, you must take it, take time away from your job to relax your mind and body, even if it is only a short ten minute break. Breaks are necessary to refresh and rejuvenate your mind. Go for a walk, read a book, or just remove yourself from your source of tension for a few minutes.

Next, be critical of your time management techniques.  I know from my own experience, I would tend to be working on one task and then move to an email when it came in, then back to the task etc. You must learn to work efficiently, complete tasks before moving on, avoid interruption in order to do so and you will find you achive more in less time.

Be in tune with your body and know when you are reaching overload or exhaustion. Look for the warning signs and think through what you can do to avoid things getting worse.  It may be that you need to take a day off, or a weekend away or simply spend time at home relaxing both your mind and body, away from the telephone and the computer.  Work out what it is you need to do in order to take time out to recharge! If you find that you take a short vacation or a day off only to find the old feelings welling up again, then perhaps its time for a re-evaluation of where you are in life, and perhaps a life change is necessary to avoid burnout altogether.

I think the single most important thing you must do if you are to avoid burnout is to learn the art of saying NO. It is great to be accomodating and helpful however not if it is at the expense of your own health.  Quite simply nothing is that important if it comprimises your health to that degree.

For quite sometime I worked overseas with a lot of international travel thrown in. I was expectected to put in the long hours, jump on a plane and head off overseas for a week, then back again and into the 60 hour working week.  Unfortunately I didnt see the warning signs until it was too late.  It took a complete re-evaluation of my life and where I was at and to make some serious life changes before my health suffered more than it already had.  Once you reach burnout believe me, its difficult to work your way back from it.

Michael Licenblat, an Australian who devoted a large part of his life to people as a Shiatsu Massage Therapist with a Bachelor of Science (Psychology), has put together an excellent ebook on recognizing and relieving stresses and pressures whilst increasing your productivity.  Well worth the read and I only wish I had read it sooner!  Get your copy here. Click Here!

By MaryAnn Roche.

Tags: anxiety, burnout, de-stress, exhaustion, life balance, Success, Time Management

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 6:10 am and is filed under Personal Development Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.