How to Avoid Burnout in Your Career

During your career, there’s a strong chance you’ll find yourself shifting toward burnout. Generally, burnout involves a sense of persistent exhaustion relating to your position. It may come with feelings of frustration, anger, or boredom. At times, burnout occurs when a job doesn’t unfold the way you expected, leaving you disenchanted with the position.

When burnout occurs, disengagement typically follows. You may struggle to remain motivated, find yourself becoming short-tempered, or have issues managing stress effectively. Fortunately, there are steps you can take to avoid burnout in your career. Here are some strategies to try.

Find the Meaning

When your work feels meaningful, it’s far easier to avoid feelings of burnout and focus on the positive. Consider how each of your contributions align with a greater mission or one of your core values. That can make tedious tasks feel more vital, leading to higher engagement. Similarly, it can assist with stress management, as it helps you see the importance of what you’re handling.

If you can’t connect your work clearly to a greater meaning, consider focusing on how it helps someone else instead. For example, if your efforts make a colleague’s job easier, that could also serve as a source of motivation, as you know that providing quality work positively impacts another person.

Assess Your Workload

In many cases, even if you’re not entirely satisfied with your job, there are aspects that you enjoy. Review your existing duties and determine which tasks you find genuinely engaging and worthwhile. Once you do, you can strategically position yourself when you handle those activities, allowing you to create a sense of ebb and flow between less desirable duties and those you like.

Additionally, spend time considering whether handling everything on your plate is genuinely doable. In some cases, becoming overloaded happens by accident, as managers don’t always realize how much work an individual employee is tasked with. If that’s occurring, speak with your manager about your workload. Outline all of your responsibilities and describe the time required to handle them. If it’s clear your plate is too full, you can talk with your manager about expectations and priorities, as well as the possibility of delegating some of the duties to another employee who isn’t overtasked.

Seek Out New Challenges

If the source of your burnout is boredom, seeking out new challenges could be the perfect pick-me-up. It allows you to explore something new, and that can be highly engaging.

One option is to speak with your manager about stretch assignments or projects. Often, these involve skills that are close to what you’re handling but outside of your direct expertise. As a result, they can be growth opportunities.

Another strategy is to find out if any training opportunities are available. Similarly, these let you explore new knowledge areas while growing as a professional. Plus, they don’t always come with the pressure associated with a stretch project, as you aren’t necessarily contending with needing to deliver quality outputs or progress fast enough to hit a specific deadline.