Identifying
Burnout Pressure Points
As we have already
discussed, part of the cause of burnout
lies with your situation. The other part
comes from within yourself: From your ideals,
your ambitions and your goals.
This simple tool gives you the opportunity
to think about what you want to get out
of your job, and then to compare this with
the reality of your situation. This helps
you to identify possible areas of mismatch,
as these mismatches are possible pressure
points that may develop into burnout. Knowing
these pressure points helps you to manage
the situation to avoid burnout.
Using the Tool:
To start using this tool, list the things
that give real meaning to what you do.
Write down what attracted you to your current
job or profession in the first place. List
the things about it that you find fulfilling
now. Include the value of the profession
to humanity and what excites you about it.
Think about what you want to achieve within
it, and what you think is important to doing
the job well.
This will give you a long list of things
that are good about what you do. From this
list, identify the five things that give
the greatest meaning to your work. These
should be the things about the job that
most inspire you. Write these down in order
with the most important item at the top
of the list. This list shows you the things
that you should protect as much as you can.
Next, write down the things that frustrate
you most about your work. This may involve
things like inadequacy of resource, lack
of recognition, or bureaucracy. As well
as this, list the factors that are causing
you difficulty and which are likely to cause
stress in the future.
Now work through the list of things that
give you meaning item-by-item. For each
item, look at the list of frustrations.
Where these threaten the things that are
most importnat to you, note these down:
These are particular pressure points that
you need to monitor.
Think these through carefully, and plan
in advance how you will handle build-ups
of stress in these areas. Our article on
avoiding
burnout can help you to do this.
Summary:
You are most vulnerable to burnout when
the stresses you experience impact negatively
on the things that you find most fulfilling
in your job. Not only do you experience
the unpleasantness of stress, you lose the
job satisfaction that counter-balances this.
This simple tool helps you to identify
the things that give meaning to the work
you do. It then helps you to understand
where the stresses that you experience undermine
these. These are often the stresses that
are most likely to cause you burnout.
As well as this, by understanding what
gives meaning to your work, you know how
to steer the development of your job to
give yourself the greatest job satisfaction.
The
next
article helps you test yourself for
burnout...
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