How to prevent, beat, or retreat from professional burnout

Work is boring. It’s tedious, repetitive, energy-sapping. You drag your feet, clock in at 9:01, check your emails a few dozen times a day, and itch for the clock to move. Then go through the whole routine again the next day.

Are you nodding your head?

Ideally, work should be more than just a means to a paycheck — it should be satisfying, productive, fulfilling, fun. (Or at least most of the above, most of the time.) Being bored for eight hours a day can lead to low confidence and self-image, physical issues such as stomachaches, and even anxiety and depression.

For some people, work is their calling; for others it’s something they do for a living and more or less enjoy. Surprisingly, both types are susceptible to boredom, or its more intense and debilitating cousin, professional burnout.

Devora is a case in point. She was passionate about the organization she worked for, and that gave her drive and enthusiasm for the first few months she served as a fundraiser.

“I worked from home, calling potential donors and basically schnorrering,” she says with a rueful laugh. “The job didn’t suit me, I didn’t enjoy asking for money — but I really identified with the organization and how much the community needed its services.”

Devora tried to ease the stress of the job by asking for a salary per hour, instead of getting commission from each donation. Her employers understood and accommodated this, but even so, she soon felt burned out.

“I’d make calls for hours and get absolutely nothing,” she shares. “Or people would get nasty, slam down the phone, insult the organization — or me. In a group environment, maybe I could’ve laughed it off, but I was working from home, and after a while it was just too hard.”

Eventually, Devora switched jobs. But burnout doesn’t necessarily need to lead to that.

Chronic Dissatisfaction

Burnout is a word we toss around a lot.

“Ugh, more grading, I’m soo burned out!” a teacher complains. But she’s not burned out; she loves her job, her students, and preparing lessons. She just hates grading finals.

Chronic workplace boredom or severe professional burnout is more all-encompassing. Some indicators are feelings of anxiety or depression while at work or while thinking about work, and a rise in complaints about all aspects of the job.

“Feelings of inadequacy or resentment, a chronic lack of enthusiasm, lack of concentration, or constantly leaving tasks half-finished all indicate that something’s not going well,” says Karen Barron, a psychotherapist who practices in Ramat Beit Shemesh.

In short, professional burnout is a constant negative feeling toward your job. It’s dreading going to work, and counting the hours until you get to leave.

“It got to the point that I hated the job,” Devora says. “I’d sit by the phone, calling potential donors, and dread hearing the busy signal — but even more than that, I dreaded that someone might actually pick up the phone.”

There are three factors involved in clinically defining the symptom of burnout, according to Michael Leiter, PhD, a professor of psychology and widely published author on work engagement and professional burnout. They are: 1) exhaustion, 2) cynicism or disconnect, and 3) low efficacy or feelings of ineffectiveness in one’s role.

“The opposite of these three feelings would be high energy, involvement, and efficacy,” he writes in his book Banishing Burnout, coauthored by Christina Malsach. According to Leiter and Malsach, these feelings exist on a spectrum. The more positive feelings one has in these areas, the more engaged they are with their workplace and job. And if an employee is at the negative end of all three spectrums, it’s a classic case of workplace burnout.