11 Causes of Burnout

Posted on November 05, 2014 by Diantha Boardman, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

This is part two of my series on Burnout:

When it comes down to it, work and love are the two most significant aspects of the human experience and the most important to get right if we want to be happy. Burnout is a huge sign of unhappiness and new research from Monser.com reveals that four in five workers experience burnout at their jobs. That is a ridiculously high rate but that’s why it’s important to understand what’s driving it.

Identifying the signs of burnout is a good first step but before you begin dealing with it, it helps to first identify what’s causing it. In many cases, burnout is work related but anyone who is overworked and undervalued can be at risk (ex: hard working stay-at-home moms or dads). In addition to work, other factors that contribute to burnout involve lifestyle and personality traits. Here are some of the most common:

1) Job Demands: This relates to unclear job descriptions, unrealistic requirements, and/or expectations when working in a chaotic, high-pressure environment. Perfect combo for frequently overwhelmed employees.

2) Big Consequences For Failure: If you’re regularly making mistakes at your job, you may want to consider if it’s the best fit for you, but ultimately everybody makes occasional mistakes. In some lines of work, mistakes can result in serious consequences (i.e. a surgeon killing his patient) but in high stakes jobs that should be considered an infrequent but valuable part of the learning experience. In less intense professions, to enforce severe and disproportionate consequences (i.e. suspension, docking pay, termination, etc.) for failure encourages mistrust and unnecessarily high stress levels.

3) Lack of Control: It’s empowering and satisfying to feel you’re able to decide how and when your work is done, and handle problems when they arise. The less involved you are in decision making processes, the more you feel like you’re just following orders, and the higher the rates of burnout.

4) Insufficient Recognition or Award: There’s a ton of research on the success of positive reinforcement predicting positive behavioral outcomes, so it seems pretty obvious that hard work should be rewarded appropriately. More money and social recognition are great motivators for this purpose, but when you’ve busted your ass and you don’t get the recognition you deserves, you end up feeling unappreciated and under valued while still being expected to do more.

5) Monotonous Work: Ongoing, repetitive, boring, unchallenging, low-stimulation work is the worst! This kind of work isn’t difficult, it’s just tedious, dull, uninspiring and soul-sucking. Being under-challenged may cause you to become more cynical about your work and cause you to distance yourself from anything related to it.

6) Lack of Support: This includes little to no support from your boss or organization, no mechanism for conflict resolution or feedback, and not enough close and supporting relationships in your personal life.

7) Too Much Work & Not Enough Life: Working long hours and not making time for things like relationships, hobbies, exercise, etc. can be draining and lead to burnout. When you get home from work, you need to make time for the stress reducing activities to bring your life back into balance. If you find that you have little time for fun, friends, and sleep, it may be time to start planning a vacation.

8) Values Conflict: Your job can be much more rewarding if you feel like values of the organization you work for are consistent with your own. Unfortunately, just because an organization has a compelling mission statement doesn’t mean that they always follow it, which can lead to significant disappointment.

9) Perfectionist: It’s great to hold yourself to high standards when it comes to the quality of your work but if you view achieving less than perfect results as a failure, you’re putting a dangerous amount of pressure on yourself.

10) Feeling Stuck: You’ve accepted that you’re unhappy and burnt out at your current job and would love to find another position somewhere else, but due to the job market, your lack of energy to go job hunting, needing the money, etc. you feel trapped.

11) Pessimism: If you tend to believe that the world is a dark and scary place, and you expect more bad things to happen than good, you are a pessimist. This mindset is clearly not going to make you feel better about a frustrating job but fortunately, optimism can be learned.

Some of these causes of burnout you can control, others you can’t. Once you get clear on the major causes of your burnout, you can determine whether you want stay in your current job and learn to manage the stress of it better, or re-evaluate your career happiness goals and try something new. This is the part that can get tricky because it requires you to make some changes and we, as a species, do not like change. But I’ll talk more about that, and ways to manage and prevent burnout, in my next post.

What do you think is causing your burnout? I’d love to get y’all’s feedback! :)

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Thanks for reading!