Personal Growth – How to Reclaim Your Energy and Purpose in life to achieve more.
In the last blog, I discussed the steps to achieve maximum output by investing significantly less time and how to improve your productivity at work.
In this blog, we will discuss the next topic for productivity and personal growth. That is “burnout”.
What is burnout?
“Burnout” – Is it a real thing or is it another excuse for Absenteeism?
According to a study, Approximately 28% of workers say they burnout “very often” or “always” at work and 24% of workers report that they “rarely” or “never” feel burnout at work.
There are a few days when we feel productive and energetic even after working for long hours and on the other hand, there are also a few drenched days when we feel burned out even before lunchtime. This happens to all of us. Agreed?
Burning out directly impacts our productivity and personal growth. I have published a productivity tips blog on How to increase your productivity at least 5 times without any extra effort.
In this blog, I am not considering frequent burning out due to health issues. This blog is for people who tend to burnout very easily due to overwhelming tasks either professionally or personally.
What are the burnout coping strategies?
Let’s try to understand this using an example of 4 candidates(Sandra, Dave, John, and Laura) working in a corporate/company. All 4 candidates work in the same environment and have similar facilities. Their performance is also competitive. Now let’s observe how they behave whenever they face burnout or frustration during their work.
Sandra tries to escape from work and go for a run or the gym and this helps her think straight and now she feels more energetic and motivated once she is back to work.
Dave indulges with more people outside the work who are in a similar field and tries to seek help by discussing the situation.
John, on the other hand, tries to discuss the situation with his team and tries to understand the problem better from his current team.
Laura escapes from all distractions, gets herself a silent corner, and thinks about the situation.
Every working professional suffers from burning out from time to time. The key is how to cope. People adopted multiple coping strategies to avoid burnout. The above examples depict the coping strategies of each individual.
According to an article published in Gallup’s on Fighting Burnout with Strengths: People have different types of coping strategies when it comes to dealing with burnout. A survey was conducted on 3000 such employees to figure out their coping strategies. These coping strategies were categorized into 4 themes, also known as CliftonStrengths:
Executing Theme:
- In order to cope with burnout or frustration, People tend to return to work as quickly as possible or do some physical activity (exercise). Anything that could give them a sense of accomplishment. People in this category take immense satisfaction in being busy or productive.
Influencing Theme:
- People who tend to spend more time with their family or friends outside of work or talk about their work with them to seek help on how their work can contribute to their future goals. People with dominating influencing themes also try to speak up for others and make sure they are heard. Talking more about the future gives them a sense of a bright future and they tend to make a bright future their strength and work towards that.
Relationship-Building Theme:
- People with dominating Relationship-building themes show awareness of how involving others can create good relationships among team members. These people try to take some time to think about how others will feel at the same time. They take pride in including more people in the conversation.
Strategic Thinking Theme:
- Strategic thinkers tend to allow themselves the space to think through their frustration when burned out. They are more likely than others to stop and take time to think through their situation or take more breaks during the workday to relax.
Which coping strategy is suitable for personal growth?
No wonder people have various coping strategies. However, as per another research, there were a few more interesting facts:
- The most common coping strategies were not most effective for them, and still, people preferred to stick with these ineffective approaches.
- This becomes more interesting with the fact that people were aware of the “not so effective” nature of the approach and yet they went ahead with that.
- The same person was not choosing the same theme for all the situations. At multiple times, they tend to choose 1 strength in 4 themes.
Now, if you look closely at the survey result below, you will find no matter what the coping whim of each theme, but people always tend to do one common thing “Stop and take time to think through their situation”.
Hence, There are multiple techniques to cope with the burnout. You just need to follow one of the strategies to overcome. There is no good or bad theme, and the choice does not reflect the personality of a person. So, next time whenever you are having a burnout attack, take your time and go for any of the strategies that you feel is right and viable option.
Conclusion
So, when was the last time, you considered thinking about the burnout you are having? If you are reading this blog then you are planning something to overcome this issue or you are on your path for personal growth. I have curated a handmade plan for personal development and time management. This will help you create a plan and analyze the issues with your daily schedule.
An important point – The above plan is not a silver bullet that can resolve everything. It needs your full attention. A line from the song Nothing comes easy rightly describes it
“And nothing comes easy, no nothing at all. But if we believe it, we’re a hundred foot tall”
Sons of the East
[AUTHOR’S CORNER]
I think, I am more of an “Influencing Theme” person, and most of the time, I tend to discuss the situation with a person outside the work to get an unbiased view, quite a few times, I am also an “executing theme” person as I like going for the gym or for a run during such situations.
Few bonus articles to read:
- No-Nonsense Guide to Measuring Productivity by Harward Business Review.
- Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs is one of the best models for understanding personal development and growth.
Courtesy: Gallup.com for survey results, videos, and text suggestions.
