It’s unbelievable that someone like you – driven, almost a workaholic, always upbeat with limitless energy – one day can dread getting out of bed for work. A sickeningly indifferent and sluggish feeling takes over you. You witness yourself impatient with easy tasks and not even up for the most attractive opportunity.
How did your mysterious fuel of motivation get depleted?
Many scratch their heads at this question. For some, it’s straightforward: a terror boss, a toxic environment, or a lack of autonomy. It’s perplexing, though, for those who admittedly have great bosses, meaningful work, and incredible opportunities.
This Loss Of Motivation Has A Name: “Burnout.”
Though often associated with physical tiredness, stress, and anxiety, burnout is more about emotional exhaustion and loss of motivation.
“… burnout is a reaction to prolonged
exposure to chronic stress that results in
emotional exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced
professional ability. “
Burnout Is Prevalent In The Technology Industry
And burnout has become very common in the fast-paced, stress-inducing tech industry. Multiple reports by Blind and Yerbo have shown shocking findings: around 60% of top Silicon valley giants’ employees reported burnout.
Source: Blind
Women are more likely to experience burnout than men.
Source: Yerbo
Fix your burnout before fixing your career
I bet the thought of resignation has crossed your mind. Maybe, you are also considering a change of career path.
But you are exhausted; your entire being yearns for a break. You are likely uninterested in working out something with your current company. Your pessimistic lens makes everything look gloomy. You can hardly feel the appeal of an ideal job, nor would you feel confident about a career you very well qualify for. This pessimism will prevent you from making any changes – after all, what’s the point of choosing between bad and worse?
My toddler loves everything space – astronaut (she calls every single person wearing a motorcycle helmet an astronaut), spaceship, aliens, and rockets. However, when she arrived at a big space museum in Paris following a 5-hour commute from Lyon, she was indifferent to all the rockets and shiny satellites
Source: My exhausted 3-year old
How did she lose her motivation to explore? Simple. An exhausted person hardly feels motivated with anything. So if you look around, you will find yourself losing interest not only in work but many other things in life (if you have a life at all).
Trying to make a significant career decision will lead to an impulsive decision or endless ruminating, which drains even more of your energy. It’s critical to recognize that you are not in a good place to fix your career right now.
Get out of the rabbit hole of burnout first.
Give Yourself The Permission To Unplug
It’s simple: when we are tired, we should rest. But we busy and important people think it’s too costly to take a rest. We tend to overestimate how much our work needs us. It’s us who need work for self-worth and identity construction.
You feel like juggling many balls – each of which requires your extreme attention, and no one can take over without causing damage. Even stepping away for a brief moment sounds catastrophic. But at the same time, you know you can’t go on much longer, and the moment will soon come that you collapse, forced to drop all the balls.
How interesting, you cannot imagine pausing for even a week, a day, an hour, to take a breath. But you are willing to pay the price of a total breakdown.
Permit yourself to unplug from this situation. If some balls have to fall, let them. Your teammates will take over if the impact is significant. As many people have discovered, we are not as important at work as we thought. Whatever role we perform, the company usually doesn’t go bankrupt because we take leave. We don’t get a minus in performance rating; the project we managed will not end up more miserable.
Speak to your boss about your being at limits. Get support for taking paid or unpaid leave, long sabbatical, flexible working hours.
The Many Causes of Burnout
Both the company and ourselves have a part to play in creating the situation of burnout. The external causes can include excessive workload, lack of control, toxic environment, organizational changes, and many more. There are also a few mindsets that make us more prone to burnout.
- Perfectionist tendency, setting impossible targets such as being perfect at all times.
- Self-critical instead of a growth mindset, especially in new domains with a steep learning curve.
- Too detached from life with all “doing,” no “being.” In such cases, we lose the capability to connect with ourselves, our purposes, and most importantly, our present.
We know that if we reduce ourselves to actions
and surface details—what can be seen—many
of us will disappear.
– Sonya Huber
Lastly, burnout may come from a shift in your world. I have met many at the junction of shifting priorities. They no longer want to optimize everything in life to get the most out of their career. Instead, they recognize that life is more than a career. They want their career to support the life they want.
If you see yourself going through such a transition, know that it’s natural to feel guilt and self-doubt. You are not becoming complacent. You are just becoming more true to yourself.
If you have difficulty hitting the “pause” button even knowing the benefit of unplugging, resting, and getting “me” time, know that this is common. People hijacked by burnout often struggle to free themselves.
Get help.
I have personally worked with many clients to reset and recharge. Trust me: when you see your life change, you will be so glad that you had sought help. After all, you are never alone in this life journey.
