November 10, 2023
As an associate trainer at SVC, Amanda Collinge delivers a variety of workshops and professional development courses to help you in the workplace. Here she continues her look at how to beat burnout at work.
As an organisational psychologist who specialises in positive psychology, Amanda Collinge has seen the consequences burnout can have on a person’s work life and personal life.
In this second blog in her series about how to beat burnout at work, Amanda continues her to look at the ways in which you might first notice the early stages of burnout and, crucially, how this can make you aware how simple changes might make all the difference to you.
Quite often there are signs that are easy to spot in hindsight, but not so easy to see when you’re in the middle of the stresses of life. Are you arguing at work or finding yourself being preoccupied with your job but seeing your performance slip?
Or perhaps you just get that sense that something is not right but you haven’t yet joined the dots to work out what is going wrong?
Here Amanda identifies five more warning signs to be aware of that might be early indicators that you could be suffering from professional burnout.
1. Relationship Problems at Home and at Work
Do you recognise that you are having more conflicts with people at home or work? Or do you recognise that you are more withdrawn than you used to be or that even when you are physically there, you have tuned out? These could be symptoms that you are struggling with burnout.
2. Not Taking Care of Yourself
When experiencing burnout, some people find themselves engaging in unhealthy coping strategies like drinking too much, smoking, being too sedentary, eating too much junk food, not eating enough or not getting enough sleep. Perhaps you recognise you are drinking more alcohol at the end of the day to de-stress or even drinking more coffee to summon up the energy to drag yourself into work in the morning.
3. Being Preoccupied With Work … When You’re Not at Work
Do you find it difficult to switch off from work? Perhaps you find yourself revisiting the day, over-analysing the day and can’t shrug those intrusive thoughts about work. If so, this preoccupation can be exhausting and can interfere with your ability to recover from the stresses of your day. In order to recover, you need time to yourself… time to switch off from work altogether.
4. Slipping Job Performance
Has your performance dipped and are you not as productive or efficient as you were in previous years? Because burnout tends to happen over an extended period of time, taking this long-term view might reveal whether you’re in a temporary dip or experiencing more chronic burnout.
5. Health Problems
Over a long period of time, serious chronic stress can create real health problems such as digestive issues, heart disease, skin problems, reduced immunity as well as mental health problems including anxiety and depression.
In the next article in this series of Amanda’s blogs on beating burnout at work, Amanda identifies ways to tackle burnout. Read more here.
