This certainly isn’t the first time that I’ve written a post on the subject of burnout and it likely will not be the last. Burning out is very common for people who work from home, particularly those who are self-employed. Because we can work at any hour of the day, we may feel that we should be working at every hour of every day.
As a result, you might burn out. You get buried under an increasingly large (and self-inflicted) load of work and you start to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. However, a distinction has to be made. Being overworked and getting burned out are not necessarily the same thing. They can exist independently.
Burned Out, But Not Overworked
This scenario is more common that most of us would like to admit. You’re sitting at your desk and you feel like you’re burning out. You feel like you’re overwhelmed with the work load and you just can’t get started on any of it. Instead, you procrastinate and distract yourself accordingly.
Guess what? You’re feeling the effects of burnout, but you may not actually be overworked. This is more an issue of motivation. It is very hard to get yourself motivated about tasks where you have no passion and no interest. The work load may indeed be reasonable, but you may be bored or disinterested. That leads to a feeling of burnout.
Overworked, But Not Burned Out
And here is where the flip side is particularly compelling. What if the workload really is more than you can probably handle, but you don’t feel burned out at all? No, I haven’t drifted off into some mythical dreamland that does not exist.
For the fortunate few who don’t have to choose between success and happiness, pursuing a passion might not feel like work at all. They have way too much to do, but only because they choose to give themselves this much to do. Because of this elevated level of interest and investment, the individual may not experience the symptomatology of burnout.
Overworked and Burned Out
Yes, this is the most commonly cited combination, but it may not actually be the most common scenario. If you are feeling the effects of burnout, though, evaluate your situation carefully. Are you not taking enough breaks or are you simply not pursuing the right kind of work?
As a side note (since this isn’t a Grammar 101 post), both “burned out” and “burnt out” are acceptable spellings for the same term.
I’m not sure I follow your definition of burn out Michael. In the second paragraph you say: As a result, you might burn out. You get buried under an increasingly large (and self-inflicted) load of work and you start to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel.
Burnout to me is not an overload of work sitting in front of me. I define burnout as not wanting to do the work because I have gotten tired of of. Even if it is just one assignment, it’s burnout because I don’t want to do it, I’m tired of doing it and want to do something different.
What you describe above feels to me like procrastination or lack of will power to do the work. It wasn’t too much until you procrastinated.
Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Because you don’t want to do the work (because you are tired of doing it), you let the work get piled up. That leads to burn out, because the less you want to do it, the bigger the pending work load becomes and this self-perpetuates itself.
But Michael, it’s not the pile that creates burnout, it’s the burnout that creates the pile. You can be lazy and create the pile by procrastination, but then the burnout would be because you didn’t want to do the work in the first place and created the pile. So, the burnout comes before the pile.
Actually it sounds like the chicken and the egg quandary.
Yup, that’s closer to my point. It’s a chicken and egg scenario that self-perpetuates itself.
This is quite true. Sometimes, we either overestimate ourselves or we feel it’s something we just have to do and this kind of undertaking usually ends up getting procrastinated over the course of time and the ensuing pile frustrates you even more to the point of burnout without even having done much work at all.
That is truly something to ponder, both your points are valid! I am currently buried at work! Considering upper management created the pile, and then some additional responsibilities without thinking of the true cost. One can only do so much to keep up with ones pile before it takes a complete toll on one’s health. I think I would define it as overworked and after years it becomes burn out.
do you have fb?