The Art of Burnout Proofing

High job demands, low control, and effort reward imbalance are risk factors ~ WHO

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Key Takeaways

The What of Burnout

Diminishing Returns with Burnout

Your Brain on Burnout

Burnout Enlarges Your Amygdalae & Fractures

Connectivity

What Drives Burnout?

Burnout Proofing Your Psychology

Burnout Proofing Your Physiology

Diagnostic

Take the Burnout Diagnostics & Address Your Risk Points:

Take the Psychological Burnout Immunity Test

This looks at the key causes of burnout and begins the process of defining your current relationship with work by generating a profile of the six strategic areas. Your job in this test is to give a critical evaluation of every component of your current job, in terms of the degree of “fit” or “match.”

For every question, you will be asked to indicate whether things are “just right” (that is, a good fit), a “mismatch,” or a “major mismatch.” Be picky! Don’t say something is just right unless it really is. Your comparison reference in this test is your ideal work situation (and not what you will put up with just for the sake of being reasonable).

The higher the number, the bigger the mismatch, and the more active recovery will be required to reset.

Exercise

For Identified Risk Points, Make a Plan to Address Using One of The Following:

Change Yourself-Expand Your Capacity (Physiological Burnout Proofing)

Change the Situation Take Active Measures and Address the Vulnerability You’ve Identified

Change Your Relationship to the Situation Restructure Your Position to Remedy the Vulnerability

Glossary

Maslach’s 6 Burnout Triggers

Burnout Trigger 1 — Lack of Control Your sense of control over what you do is undermined or limited and you don’t have a lot of say in what’s going on. Example: Lack of autonomy, lack of ownership, micromanagement.

Burnout Trigger 2 — Values Conflict There is a disconnect between your own core values and the core values of the organization or workplace. Example: You believe in environmentalism, your company doesn’t. You value honesty, your coworkers don’t.

Burnout Trigger 3 — Insufficient Reward You feel taken for granted, not recognized, and/or undercompensated. Example: Lack of pay, recognition, reward.

Burnout Trigger 4 — Work Overload Your workload is too much, too complex, or too urgent. Example: You’re working too much!

Burnout Trigger 5 — Unfairness You or others are treated unfairly, there is a culture of favoritism, and assignments and promotions are made in an arbitrary fashion and discussed behind closed doors. Example: Nepotism!

Burnout Trigger 6 — Breakdown of Community You have to work with patronizing colleagues, there is no mechanism for conflict resolution, and feedback is non-existent. Example: Toxic culture, low performing colleagues.

You Have To Solve The Root Problem To Solve The Burnout!

Burnout: Burnout is now recognized as a legitimate medical disorder by much of mainstream medicine and has been given its own ICD-10 code (Z73.0 – Burn-out state of vital exhaustion).

Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job, and is defined by the three dimensions of exhaustion (overwhelming exhaustion), cynicism (cynicism and detachment), and inefficacy (a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment).