5 ways to fix jobs burnout
- Get Real
Acknowledge how you are feeling about your work life. Journal it, talk about it with someone you don’t have to censor yourself with, but stop holding it in. The more you try to ignore how you really feel, the more anxiety and frustration you will feel about your situation. The sooner you identify how you feel, the sooner you can address it.
2. Get Inspired
Find a book, audio book, or podcast—something that tells someone else’s success story and read it or listen to it. The focus here is to connect with their ups and downs on their journey and the challenges they had to overcome to reach their goals. Let their success motivate you to press towards your vision despite how you feel right now.
3. Take Control
Are there too many meetings and tasks on your to-do list? Become a guardian of your time and energy by mastering your schedule. Limit the number of meetings you have a day: if your limit is four meetings, then meeting number five that comes to your inbox gets declined or proposed for another day and time. Set up a system for managing emails and prioritizing requests. Make sure you get outside or get to connect with other people so you are not functioning in isolation every day.
4. Play A Different Role
Are you the team member who organizes everything? Or are you the ad hoc tech support person for your team? Maybe you’re the one everyone goes to when there’s a last minute crisis. Taking on a specific role within your team may have boxed you in and now you can’t get out. Whatever hat you normally wear—take it off. Changing how you engage can change how you feel about your work and your colleagues.
5. Make A Plan
It can be really hard to stay motivated if you can’t see a light at the end of the tunnel. Most people stay on the road to nowhere because they haven’t made a map to go anywhere else. Start putting together a plan for how you are going to escape or move into another role or change careers. It could mean going back to school, updating your resume for a lateral move within your company, expanding your professional network—the point here is to move from being dominated by feelings of frustration to a place of action.
As professionals, we’ve all likely experienced burnout at one point or another in our careers. If you’re feeling burned out and identify with the seven signs of job burnout mentioned above, give these five tips a try. By changing your mindset and taking specific steps to change your strategy at work, you can learn how to fix job burnout for good.
