Look for these tell tale signs of burnout

Burnout is a term that gets tossed around often in the workplace, but it’s more than simply feeling tired or overworked. It’s a continual sense of pessimism about your present and future that can lead to a decline in your work performance.

Often triggered by extreme pressure, burnout is far from simply a buzz word for stress. Burnout is associated with symptoms such as exhaustion, depression, and the inability to cope with simple tasks.

Even the most driven people are susceptible to this sense of negative exhaustion. Because when you don’t take the time for self-care and evaluating your priorities, burnout is almost inevitable.

Burnout is a state of overwhelming exhaustion, mental, emotional and physical. It can be caused by work pressures, lifestyle factors, even certain personality traits. It’s more than everyday stress. Burnout is characterized by overpowering, unrelenting stress over a long period. The mind and body are so beaten down that simple daily functioning seems like an overwhelming burden.

Being burned out has a tremendous impact on both your physical health and mental well-being. As the extreme stress continues, the result is often life altering illness, depression, and a sense of extreme failure. Essentially, there is nothing left to give and the body starts shutting down.

One of the main reasons why this takes place is because the symptoms all consist of things that every one of us experiences, at some time or another. As a result, telling the difference between ordinary fatigue or illness and the chronic depletion that heralds a serious problem is tricky.

Some common signs of burnout might include:

• Having trouble concentrating or making decisions at work
• Experiencing relationship problems at home
• Talking negatively about your work performance
• Avoiding or complaining about interactions with coworkers
• Experiencing chronic stress and potential health issues

Mental signs:

• A pervasive sense of failure and self-doubt
• Feeling helpless, incompetent and defeated
• Loss of motivation and interest in your job, hobbies or family
• A very negative, irritable and impatient attitude
• Lack of a sense of satisfaction and any feelings of accomplishment
• Feeling detachment and distant from the rest of the world
• Experiencing a vicious cycle of overwhelm while the world is crashing around you
• Frequent distraction and an inability to focus or be engaged in a conversation.
• A feeling of pushing yourself harder with no results
• A pattern of memory loss, forgetting where you put things or what you are doing

Physical signs:

• Extreme exhaustion and lack of energy, feeling completely drained
• Loss of appetite, interest in intimacy or insomnia
• An increase in sickness or a general feeling of unexplained illness
• Frequent headaches, back and neck pain, muscle and joint aches

It’s easier to cure any condition if you catch it early, and that includes burnout. So don’t shrug off early warning signs just because they seem mild. If they’re ignored, far bigger problems could be lurking down the road.

Conclusion

Learning how to manage stress is critical when you’re on the path to burnout. It is much easier to avoid burnout, than to recover from it.