Are you feeling burned out? Find ways to regain balance
Feeling burnout has become all too familiar in today’s fast-paced and demanding world. We often find ourselves uttering those words, “I’m burnout!” or “Feeling burnout!” But what exactly is burnout, and how can we navigate through it? To gain expert insights on this crucial topic, we conducted a Q&A session with Sridhar Laxman, the Founder and Executive Coach of Lucid Minds Coaching. In this exclusive interview, Sridhar shares his expertise and provides valuable answers to help us understand and overcome burnout. Let’s dive into the conversation and uncover the insider details about this phenomenon.
What can burnout feel like?
Emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion resulting from prolonged stress or overwork, affects people from all walks of life and leads to burnout.
Individuals suffering from burnout feel emotionally depleted. They may also feel overwhelmed, tired and find it hard to deal with work-related challenges. Some other indications are apathy or a sense of alienation from their job.
Burnout can also result in mood fluctuations, impatience, and increased emotionally charged responses. Individuals may feel heightened annoyance, irritation, anger or melancholy and struggle to control their emotions in work and personal situations.
What are the signs and symptoms of it?
Burnout can appear in many ways; watching for it and taking preventive action is essential. Some common signs of burnout are:
- Physical symptoms, such as fatigue, headaches, or muscle tension
- Emotional exhaustion, feeling drained or unable to cope
- Reduced performance or lowered productivity
- Detachment or cynicism towards work or colleagues
- Lack of motivation or interest in work
- Decreased satisfaction with life or work
What strategies can help maintain a healthy work-life balance and prevent burnout?
Burnout is preventable with mindful habits and behaviours. The first step is to attend to well-being by taking care of the fundamentals, i.e. exercising regularly, eating nutritious meals on time and getting sufficient sleep. Next is, developing effective coping mechanisms since stress is a common trigger for burnout. These include:
- Practicing mindfulness: Learning to be in the here and now
- Deep breathing: Regular deep breathing can help in staying calm and grounded. It also supports emotional regulation.
- Journaling: Capturing thoughts and identifying or naming emotions
- Meditation: Meditation can help you focus your mind and reduce stress.
- Talking it out, seeking support and help during times of high pressure
How can one prioritize tasks and manage workload to avoid becoming overwhelmed?
Planning and prioritizing tasks are essential for effective time management. Some helpful approaches for the same are:
- Capture tasks in a system, written or virtual.
- Sort them by importance and impact.
- Gather necessary data, and tools before jumping into action.
- Ask for help and seek clarity to overcome potential roadblocks.
- Set mini goals to avoid overwhelm.
- Get started with the top three priorities.
- Work in a focused manner, the Pomodoro technique of 45 -5-45 is known to be quite effective (work for 45 minutes, take a break for five and then work for another 45 minutes and so on )
- Celebrate small wins
- Reflect, capture learnings and use them moving forward.
- Work towards excellence, not perfection, the latter is a trap.
How vital are boundaries, and what are some practical ways to set them?
Boundaries are healthy and essential for an effective working relationship and peace of mind. Here are some ways to set boundaries effectively
- Acknowledge your needs
- Identify and overcome fears of saying no when needed
- Think through and agree to realistic expectations
- Stay objective, learn to regulate your emotions
- Communicate your needs clearly, leave no room for assumptions
- Take a stand on values that matter to you
- Dont tolerate inappropriate behaviours
- Empathize where needed, however, don’t own someone else’s problems
How to practice self-care and maintain well-being during stressful periods?
Stress is given at the workplace; learning to manage is a skill and is learnable. Self-care requires you to acknowledge that your needs matter as much, if not more, than that of others. Some ways to attend to your self-care and well-being during stressful times are:
- Begin before the stress gets unmanageable.
- Work to develop harmony in work and life.
- Establish a self-care routine and carve out time for yourself.
- Exercise, eat healthily, sleep well
- Meditate, spend time in quiet reflection
- Hydrate sufficiently
- Build a hobby to help take your mind off the pressures of work.
- Develop meaningful and helpful connections.
- Drop judgements and high standards for self
- Express yourself, communicate your needs
What steps can one take to stay motivated and engaged in work, even during challenging times?
Motivation and engagement come when work has a sense of purpose and meaning. Seek workplaces with a healthy culture, high levels of trust and a sense of belonging. Check for values alignment between you, your manager, the workplace, and your teammates.
Learning to be mindful, open and accepting of yourself and others helps, as does developing your emotional intelligence. Being organized, planful and goal-oriented enables higher productivity, better time management and preparedness for challenging times. Regular breaks, an optimistic attitude, offering help, and investing time and energy in learning can help you grow and succeed.
What role can leaders and organizations play in preventing, reducing and managing employee burnout?
Organizations and their leaders can influence the workplace culture by fostering a healthy environment, enabling high levels of trust and rolling out numerous employee well-being initiatives proactively. Prioritizing inclusiveness, belonging, and psychological safety can lead to better mental health in the workforce. Leaders have the responsibility to role model all behaviours expected of the workforce; by doing so, they can make it easy for others to adopt the same. Ensuring creativity, practical workloads, and alignment with employee strengths are other ways to enable well-being.
How can coaches help leaders and their teams avoid and manage burnout?
Coaches create a safe, non-judgmental and confidential space for leaders and their teams to express their thoughts, feelings, aspirations and fears. Talking it out helps clients let go of heavy emotions and, in the process, increases their self-awareness and develops new perspectives and insights. Coaches also use proven coaching methodologies and frameworks to support clients in getting clear and developing empowering plans and action steps to achieve their goals. By getting clients to reflect and focus on the possibilities instead of ruminating on the limitations, coaches can support clients to create forward momentum and experience quick wins.
Does technology help in managing or adding to the risk of burnout?
Technology can be a powerful tool and a blessing, or a curse when used mindlessly. Excessive screen time, mindless, “doomsday” scrolling, and comparing self to others based on their social media presence are all disempowering and unhealthy habits. On the contrary, using technology to schedule time, plan better, analyze data, improve decisions, and automate repetitive tasks can help free up time and avoid boredom.
Being clear on the intent, the goal of using technology and being mindful of the time and energy spent on it can help ensure its productive and serves us rather than the other way around.
