Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday May 30 2019, @05:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the running-on-empty dept.

Burnout is now an Official Medical Diagnosis, Says the World Health Organization:

If you feel chronically exhausted or frustrated with your work, keep making small mistakes or feel stuck in a cycle of unproductiveness, you may want to take a trip to your doctor. Even if it isn't burnout, it's worth getting checked out.

Why does burnout happen?

Burnout occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally and mentally depleted and unable to keep up with constant demands at work. As stress continues to mount, you may feel hopeless, disinterested and resentful when it comes to your work life.

According to the American Institute of Stress, Americans now work longer and harder than before: In one generation, the number of hours worked increased by 8% to an average of 47 hours per week.

Some other startling statistics from the Institute of Stress:

  • 25% of workers have felt like screaming or shouting because of job stress
  • Nearly 50% of workers say they need help learning how to manage stress
  • More than a third of workers (35%) say they feel their jobs harm their physical or emotional health

And from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health:

  • 40% of workers report their job as being very or extremely stressful
  • 75% of employees believe on-the-job stress is much higher than it was a generation ago
  • Workers associate job stress with health issues more than they associate financial or family problems with health issues

As for what to do about it? There are no hard-and-fast rules, but the suggestions basically amount to separating from activities that lead to "immediate reaction required". Only check your e-mail in the morning, at lunch, and at the end of the day. Log out of chat applications whenever possible. Reduce the amount of time spent on social media. Go for a walk without your cellphone or media device.

In a nutshell: take back control of your life.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 4, Informative) by darkfeline on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:02AM (5 children)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:02AM (#849209) Homepage

    If burnout is just about not being able to manage your work, I recommend reading Getting Things Done by David Allen. I generally dislike self help books and productivity scams, but GTD is the real deal. It describe a meta-method for organizing the work you have to do so you feel in control. While the book gives a detailed example of implementing a GTD workflow, you can do GTD using whatever you want: paper, post it notes, text files, apps, etc.

    GTD is comprised of a handful of "obvious" core principles, like gathering up mail, emails, "stuff", organizing them into desired outcomes, actionable steps, and reference material, and reviewing everything regularly, but it's really helpful to explicitly read about all of the principles and follow them intentionally. I have found it very useful as a software engineer for managing all of the projects, bugs, meetings, documents, and changing priorities that are part of normal software eng work.

    Chances are, whatever workflow you have, is already a partial implementation of GTD: you're deciding on things to do and putting them on a list somewhere, possibly in your head and so forth. Even if your workflow works, I would still recommend reading GTD so you have an explicit awareness of all the parts of a working system that you can use to tune your workflow to accommodate changing demands.

    --
    Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +2  
       Informative=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Informative' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   4  
  • (Score: 2) by Farkus888 on Thursday May 30 2019, @12:14PM

    by Farkus888 (5159) on Thursday May 30 2019, @12:14PM (#849262)

    I use a modified form of Agile to manage chores in my home, post its and all. It really helped with that aspect of stress that comes from knowing things need done and aren't getting done. More things get done now, the system is more than worth the effort. Now I'm happy at home but still burned out at work. I get projects done at work but work in an environment that is all stick and no carrot. The machine eating all of my rewards causes the same existential hopelessness as nothing getting done meaning no rewards to be had.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by DavePolaschek on Thursday May 30 2019, @02:01PM (3 children)

    by DavePolaschek (6129) on Thursday May 30 2019, @02:01PM (#849291) Homepage Journal

    The Checklist Manifesto [wikipedia.org] helped me a lot, and was simpler to grok than GTD. Basic idea is "make a list." And for me, the important bit is "once something is on the list, you don't have to think about it." And not having to think about eleventy-kabillion things helps keep stress (and thus burnout) at bay.

    • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @02:17PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 30 2019, @02:17PM (#849294)

      I tried this several years ago. I failed at it. My list became so large that it took more time to manage than just doing the critical things that came up every day (purely reactionary). The list also got overwhelming and a bit depressing as it showed all the great things I couldn't do because the list was too large and there was no way to get through it all. I spoke to my manager about it and his response was that he was impressed by the ownership I showed and how I wanted to make things better. He also said my priorities were way off. I needed to do what others wanted me to do (and only that), and not build a better product so it didn't fail next week. He said to let it fail, and then respond to the requests to fix it at that point. He actually said to care LESS about everything, and do what management wanted, and look happy about it. I migrated into management shortly after that point in hopes of changing things from a higher level. But that is a story for another thread.

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:30PM (1 child)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Thursday May 30 2019, @07:30PM (#849403) Homepage

      Good things don't come free. Making a list is just one of many core principles; that alone is not at all sufficient, as shown by the experience of the sibling AC post. Understanding all of the principles in GTD takes effort, much like learning any worthwhile skill or knowledge.

      Just making a list often leads to stress and a feeling of being overwhelmed, like the sibling AC post. The next principle is making sure your list of tasks only contain actionable items with clear outcomes. Not "plan birthday party", but "Call bakery to ask for cake list and prices".

      --
      Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
      • (Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday May 31 2019, @02:49PM

        by urza9814 (3954) on Friday May 31 2019, @02:49PM (#849809) Journal

        Just making a list often leads to stress and a feeling of being overwhelmed, like the sibling AC post. The next principle is making sure your list of tasks only contain actionable items with clear outcomes. Not "plan birthday party", but "Call bakery to ask for cake list and prices".

        ...And personally, that's precisely where I always hit the infinitely expanding list problem that sibling AC mentioned.

        "Finish program X"...no that's too general, so I'll go to "Finish functions x, y, z and implement features a and b"...so then I work on function x, but I don't complete it, so it's "Finish tasks j, k and l in function x". But then j turns out to be more complicated than I thought...pretty soon "Finish program X" turns into "Complete task j1, j2, j3, j4, k, l then functions y, z and features a and b"...and then I've gotta go break down k, l, y, z, a and b......

        I tend to work with nested lists instead. I have a list of programs I want to work on, then each program has a TODO file of features or bugfixes I'd like to implement, and if those features are contained in separate source files I might have another TODO list commented at the top of each file. So if I come back six months later, I can remember what I had been planning...but I don't have this huge imposing wall of tasks looming over me all the time. The main list isn't necessarily tasks that I'm going to complete soon, or even ever...it's merely a collection of options so I can narrow down what is most useful to do right now. I know I can't do everything that I'd like to, and I know tomorrow I might have an idea that's more useful than anything I have planned today.