Tag: #business

Burnout: What is it?

Brad

I was asked recently to speak to a small gathering of students at my alma mater. My presentation was one of three segments, each of which delivered by a different alumnus on a different topic.

My topic was “burnout”.

Now, I didn’t select the topic and I would have preferred to share personal finance wisdom or my favorite research on personal development. Regardless, I eagerly accepted the invitation and dove headfirst into the assignment.

Upon reflection, I realized, I actually had quite a bit of experience and examples to leverage. Crafting a message might not be that difficult after all.

I started with the statistics as a hook. I needed the audience to buy in and I certainly didn’t want to bore them with an uninteresting lecture after their day full of classes.

According to recent studies…

  • “75% of workers have experienced burnout, with 40% saying they’ve experienced burnout specifically during the pandemic.
  • Prior to the pandemic, just 5% of employed workers and 7% of unemployed workers said their mental health was poor or very poor. Now, 18% of employed and 27% of unemployed workers say they are struggling with mental health issues. (that’s a 3-4x increase!)
  • More than three-quarters (76%) of respondents agree that workplace stress affects their mental health and burned-out employees are 23% more likely to visit the emergency room.
  • Only 60% of workers can strongly agree that they know what is expected of them at work.”

Talk about a rosy picture…

I then defined burnout, and it was more or less what one would expect it to be – a period of extreme fatigue, the development of apathy, and a resulting decline in various aspects life.

For college students, it might be brought on by any combination of the following:

-Overwhelming work demands and long periods of intense stress (most common)

-Having the wrong friends

-The wrong level of support

-The wrong major

-The wrong goals

Notably, because any one of these can lead to burnout, other functioning may actually remain adequate.

My research unearthed some interesting gems when I discovered the different types of burnout.

Types of Burnout

  1. Overload Burnout (traditional, what you might think of when you hear “burnout”)

“This happens when you work harder and harder, becoming frantic in your pursuit of success. If you experience this, you may be willing to risk your health and personal life to feel successful in your job.” 

  1. Under-Challenged Burnout

“This happens when you feel underappreciated and bored in your job. Maybe your job doesn’t provide learning opportunities or have room for professional growth. If you feel under-challenged, you may distance yourself from your job, become cynical, and avoid responsibilities.”

  1. Neglect Burnout

“This happens when you feel helpless at work. If things aren’t going right, you may believe you’re incompetent or unable to keep up with your responsibilities. Such burnout can be closely connected to imposter syndrome, a psychological pattern in which you doubt your skills, talents, or accomplishments.”

My eyes got wide when I got to “under-challenged burnout.” I told the students that this was likely less of an issue in college as it is in the workplace but acknowledged this as the category I most identified with. It never crossed my mind that this was a form of burnout.

For the type-A’s out there, this may ring a bell. The feeling of not being in the right place to fulfill your potential. A dearth of challenge and productive struggle. I believe strongly that one must focus on what they can control and to seize any and every opportunity you can. Beyond that, you must seek out growth. It doesn’t always fall into your lap.

In closing, I discussed preventative measures.

Prevention

What is right for me may not be right for everyone. Count on it.

But there are some of what I will call “foundational” components that are universal.

-Sufficient sleep

-Quality nutrition

-Exercise

Beyond this, I am a huge fan of journaling. The genesis of my journaling was not to mitigate stress or burnout, but I have found it to be the best way of unloading what is on my mind.

I have persuaded some close friends to give it a try and it does wonders. They rave about it.

Even something as simple as conversing with a close confidant can be highly effective.

Ultimately, I told them to “find their thing”. Whatever that may be.

Will the COVID-19 Pandemic Upend the Way We Do Business…Forever?

Brad

It’s 2:15pm, and you’ve just taken a quick break from work to check your phone. You open the social media folder in your iPhone, where you have applications like Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn, and Instagram. You open Twitter to check the feed for any important pieces of news you might have missed. The first tweet you see is something that someone you follow has retweeted, and instead of getting caught up on current events, you spend the next 30 minutes reading through the battleground taking place in the comments.

No, you’re wrong. I hate you.

That’s the takeaway you get from accidentally sinking so much time trying to figure out why unknown people from all over the country – even the world – are fighting to the virtual death over a fairly innocent tweet expressing a rather uncontroversial opinion or introducing a novel concept.

Now, imagine just two years into the future, and the overwhelming majority of corporate jobs are performed remotely. All communication takes place over company instant messaging platforms, meetings are performed over Zoom and the face-to-face interaction that has come to dominate the business world is effectively non-existent. What impact will that have on how we do business?

Social media, despite the demonstrable benefits that it brings, has also created quite the divide…will the same happen in the business world? What other surprising effects might there be?

Of course, no one knows what the future will look like in two years, but it certainly isn’t an out-of-this-world prediction that the move to online work will have a significant effect on how we interact. Humans are built to be communicative. We do that at our best when we are able to have conversations with one another, and really think about and digest what the other person is saying. The internet and social media have made communication easier, faster, and ubiquitous. There is no doubt…the effects have largely been borne out. The era of social media began more than a decade ago, and we now have years of history to examine some of the key effects. While some fields – most noticeably the technology industry – have had a remote-work capability for years, it was uncommon before COVID-19 for the broader economy.

Here are some of the key things to look for as we get deeper into this new decade, and business becomes less face-to-face.

Business from Afar

  • Employees often cite company culture as one of the biggest factors in determining where to work, and whether to stay. How will company culture – and by extension, employee satisfaction – be affected by little-to-no personal interaction? If employees become unsatisfied and turnover increases, what impact will that have on the viability of the company, and perhaps even entire industries?
  • Much has been said and written about when it comes to the rise of technology and its potential negative impact on future job creation. While a great number of jobs have been and will continue to be created as a result of technological advancement, the jury is out on whether there will be more or less overall jobs in the long-term. Will online work help us or hurt us?
  • If you can work anywhere in the world, why would you live where you live? I understand this question reads negatively, but really, do you need to or even want to be where you are if you are no longer required to be physically present somewhere? And if not, where would you move and how would you live? I’m sure this is a question that someone working in the real estate industry would love to have answered and is without a doubt a question they are already beginning to explore.

However, it isn’t just about real estate. Where people live is also where they spend money, and most importantly, where they live determines the way in which they spend money. For example, someone living in Florida spends money in service-oriented establishments (Disney, beach bars and restaurants etc.), whereas someone in Utah likely spends money on skiing and other forms of outdoor recreation.

In closing, the world will be different. That much we know. The rest is anyone’s guess, but it might just pay off to be thinking ahead.