ist magazine September 2021

Feature

Stop the Wheel, I Want to Get Off! Five Steps for Beating Burnout By Kate Zabriskie

Step Two: Look for root causes.

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ake up, coffee, shower, of fice, meeting, call, meeting, call, work, work, call, store, gas, home, dinner, walk,

Once you know where you want to go, think about what got you to where you are and whether it’s hap pened before. People who find them selves overwhelmed and overworked often arrive at their destinations more than once. They take on too much, frantically shed activities and then, again find themselves in the same position. How does it happen? More easily than you might think. Despite dealing with the activities their choices created, repeat offend ers often fail to address the root cause of their predicaments. If you’ve been on the wheel more than a time or two, look for patterns. Do you take on activities before thinking through the costs versus benefits? Do you make decisions that don’t factor in the long-term impli cations in addition to the short-term rewards? Do you take joy in being busy, and then it becomes over whelming and you just shut down? The faster you recognize the source (or sources) of your unpleas ant busyness, the quicker you can start to do something to avoid getting back on the wheel. h

So, how do you stop the churn? The same way it started: one step at a time. Step One: Imagine a better future. The first step in addressing burnout is picturing the ideal versus the reality. If you could wave a magic wand paired with a dose of reality, what would your day look like? Fewer meetings? Less travel? More interesting people? Less chaos? Whatever it is, get a clear vision in your mind about what “energized’’ looks like. Once you do, you’ll have a destination toward which you can strive.

work, bed, repeat. Busy, exhausted, and less satisfying than the last – if this describes your day, you may be dangerously close to big-time burnout. How did you end up in this seem ingly endless cycle? More than likely, a little at a time. In other words, the problem gradually evolved. We said “yes” when we shouldn’t have, we took on projects that added little value, we made choices that were pennywise and pound foolish, and the list goes on.

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September 2021

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