BURNT AMBITION
AVOID THESE 7 CAUSES OF JOB BURNOUT AND ENJOY
SUCCESS ON YOUR TERMS BY DAVID FERRY
Steve Blank’s oh-shit moment
came during a Friday afternoon
sales meeting. He had been
divid ing his time between
two tech jobs, one for a
company serving the defence
and intelligence communities,
and the other for a
microprocessor producer
called Zilog. He was good at
his work – necessary, even. He
put in six or seven 16-hour
days a week and accepted
the crazy schedule.
At the Friday meeting, “about
three-quarters of the way through
my workweek,” as Blank puts it, a
colleague reminded him about
upcoming classes he needed to
teach. “The devil is in the details,”
the colleague advised. Blank
nodded and went for the obvious
defence contractor joke: “I’ve got
it under control, as long as the
devil coming at me isn’t an
SS-18.” (He was referring to a
Russian ICBM dubbed “Satan”).
Expecting at least a chuckle or
two, Blank saw only
uncomprehending stares. Weird,
he thought. Then it hit him: these
weren’t his defence contractor
coworkers. He wasn’t even at his
defense gig. He was at Zilog and,
to his growing horror, he realised
that he had no memory of driving
across town to get there, no
recollection of greeting his
colleagues, no idea how he’d
gotten through most of the
afternoon without even knowing
where he was. Blank later left
the meeting and sat in his
office looking befuddled.
“Take it easy this weekend,” the
head of sales told him. “You look
a little burned-out.”
Most of what you think you
know about burnout is probably
wrong. Occupational burnout
like Blank’s is not a simple matter
of fatigue or boredom. Nor is it
tied solely to level of
compensation. Severe burnout
can be debilitating. You may
find yourself growing profoundly
cynical and feel like you never
accomplish anything at work;
you may hate your clients and
colleagues and struggle to
find the courage to get out of
bed; you might feel detached
from your life, almost as if
you’re operating on autopilot.
Burnout syndrome, at its worst,
can ravage workers and even
entire companies.
According to psychologist Dr
Michael Leiter, 25 per cent of the
workers he’s studied suffer from
at least one symptom of burnout,
and he suspects that figure is also
true of the workforce at large.
Burnout doesn’t discriminate,
and it affects people across the
board – blue collar and white
collar workers, entrepreneurs,
call centre employees, tech
pros, teachers. In this always-on
age, when reading a new email
from the boss on your
smartphone may be the first andlast thing you do every day, it’s
not surpris ing that the problem
is worsening.
“It’s cultural – real men work
till they drop,” says Blank. “I
learned it from my boss, who
learned it from his boss, who
probably learned it from
some Neanderthal.”
“There’s no question that we’re
at greater risk of burnout today
than we were 10 years ago,” says
Dr Ron Friedman, a psychologist
who works with private and
corporate clients. Men and their
supervisors may have
misconceptions about
what burnout is and have little
idea how to stop it. One
assumption is that employees
crack because they can’t
handle their workload. This
view assumes that something
is wrong with you if you’re
struggling, “that you must be
weak, not competent,” says
psychologist Dr Christina
Maslach. But burnout isn’t just
about being overworked. In
fact, researchers have
identified several common
causes. Here’s a rundown
and, most important, how
to avoid them.IT’S CULTURAL REAL MEN WORK TILL THEY DROP.
I LEARNED IT FROM MY BOSS WHO LEARNED IT FROM HIS
BOSS WHO PROBABLY LEARNED IT FROM SOME NEANDERTHAL
CAREER