5 Essential Tips on How to Overcome Burnout in the Workplace

The modern working life is a complicated entity, with as many people thriving as there are those who struggle to get through their daily routine. Whether you’re the former or the latter, the fact is that everyone is susceptible to falling victim to workplace burnout. Learning how to overcome burnout is what sets people apart and falling victim to burnout can easily cause someone to leave a job in some cases.

As such, understanding the root cause and the ways in which to battle workplace burnout are two things which go hand in hand.

How to Tell You’re Suffering

The first step to recovering from burnout is to understand and recognize that you are suffering from it. Although you can't technically diagnose it, knowing yourself and how you function in the work environment can help you.

Sometimes, burnout can be very subtle, even subtle enough to fool yourself into thinking you’re fine. Ultimately, the biggest indicator of workplace burnout is the consistent dread that comes from being at work. It's usually paired with apathy as to whether or not you achieve anything in the process of working.

Dread and apathy are the biggest clues that burnout is occurring, so don’t simply ignore them.

Understand Why

The source of burnout can vary massively from person to person. The fact is that one person could experience burnout from too much pressure while another may experience it due to lack of important things to do.

Either type of burnout is valid and the more important part is learning to recognize how the burnout happened in the first place. Once you diagnose its cause, you can start to treat the symptoms and hopefully lead yourself to the cure.

If you can’t find the source of your burnout, then recovering from it can be almost impossible. As with anything, treating the disease at the source is the most effective road to recovery.

Organize Your Time

Do you dread going to work every day? Is the idea of getting up in the morning tiring? Is there just too much work to do and not enough time to do it?

Chances are you’re suffering from an organizational problem. After all, the more organized your day becomes, the better you will start to feel about the work ahead of you. You will be able to manage each day a little bit easier.

Learn to Say No

“No” is a powerful word. It can be seen as a negative factor but overall, it can actually be a positive force in your daily working life. After all, too much work and stress can fall on your shoulders, thanks to saying yes far too much.

Saying no can help alleviate the pressure ever so slightly or completely, depending on your current coping methods. For example, if you’re not coping, then saying no can be a massive help to your everyday life.

Having no time for yourself and feeling worn down by both work and your personal life can be overwhelming. This is where learning to say no can become so important. Say no to the extra work, the after-work activity, and giving up your all-important ‘me time’.

Invest in it and you'll be surprised by how much better you start to feel over a short period of time.

See Also: The Courage To Say No

Sleep More, Work Less

Sleep isn’t a cure-all, but you might be surprised as to the number of ways sleep can work to improve your life or conditions you may be suffering from. One of the easiest ways to exasperate your feeling of burnout is to add a constant sense of fatigue to your daily life.

Tiredness can make work harder to cope with, which leaves you feeling sluggish and makes everything you do in a day harder to achieve. Practicing a good sleep routine is important to alleviate burnout and improve your general health.

And if you have a habit of taking your work home with you, just stop. The fastest way to exhaust yourself is to work throughout the day and then continue when you get home. You need to give yourself a time of day to switch off and relax.

Eat Well and Exercise

Eating well and exercising should be a simple part of everyday life, but it can also help you recover from everyday burnout and weariness. It gives you something to do every day, which isn’t thinking about your work-related concerns and complications.

Ultimately, a healthy lifestyle can help spill over a new level of positivity into your work life as well. So ensuring that this is the case can be vitally important, especially when you want to try and help yourself recover from burnout. Take healthy lunches to work, exercise before you get into the office everyday, and make sure that you are working toward more positivity in your everyday life.

As a whole, working to recover from burnout can be just as tough as all the things that got you into a burned-out stage in the first place. But, you can’t live your life falling into the same routine that's causing you a tremendous amount of stress.

Work at giving yourself time and take back control over the factors that caused the burnout. Those are the first things you need to do if you want to know how to overcome burnout.

See Also: How To Avoid Burnout At Your Job