Burnout: Stress at Work

Work occupies an enormous amount of our lives. If we work for 40 years, that is at least 80,000 hours and perhaps as much as 120,000 hours or more. Mind-boggling isn't it? Sometimes those hours are among the most rewarding, proud, and fun parts of our life.

Unfortunately, for many of us work is often the source of much stress, unhappiness, resentment, shame, boredom, neglect or even abuse, harassment, discrimination, and dehumanizing conditions. In the US, 55% are stressed or angry about something at work. Since it is such a big part of our lives, it is important to make it as good as we can. Many people are simply in life-situations that require them to work at jobs that are hard, dirty, uninteresting, unpleasant, repetitive, and isolate the worker from others with common interests.

Not everyone can make or find an exciting, enjoyable job. But there may be ways to make the job better--more tolerable and more interesting, if not exciting. There are several very different approaches to bad job situations. The different solutions might be classified into three rough groups: change-the-system, or change yourself.

Change-The-System

Burnout, in this view, is usually the result of a bad job situation, not something fixable by self-improvement or by developing superhuman motivation. First, burnout may involve several feelings or conditions, e.g. feeling tired or overextended, doing as little as possible, feeling ineffective or inadequate, having too much work to do, feeling stuck and stagnant, believing your work is meaningless, and having work relationships that are strained or distant.

Change Yourself

There are some who take a change-yourself approach to problems at work--actually there are hundreds of them if you include the stacks and stacks of motivational and inspirational tomes in bookstores everywhere. Some are especially for people who lack confidence or have their confidence easily shaken. They focus on helping you acquire the master skill of how to develop various skills. In doing this, they encourage creativity and looking for the resources each person has. There is also success-induced burnout; where some cut back on their workload, some change careers, some change life-style (e.g. using drugs), some are just unhappy and don't know what to do.