Overload Burnout

This is the first thing most people think of when it comes to burnout. It’s what happens when we have too many things to do and not enough time to do them in. It might happen at work, or school, but it also might happen in our personal lives or organizations we’re part of, but don’t get paid for. It isn’t impacted as much by how we feel about what we’re doing or who we’re working with, it’s just the sheer amount of tasks and rushing through everything. 

This can come from a lot of places. Working more than 8 hours a day, being given too soon a deadline for an important project, being assigned an impossible workload, working a full time job while also dealing with an unpaid workload that takes up the rest of one’s time, taking a too rigorous courseload of college classes, leading an organization that doesn’t have sufficient members or volunteers so one has to compensate for empty positions, planning an event, trying to fulfill a caregiver role by one’s self for a person with high support needs, and many other circumstances can lead to burnout. 

This type of burnout can result in irritability, mood swings, headaches, digestive issues, dreading work you previously enjoyed or felt neutral about, persistent stress event outside of the stressful environment, difficulty completing tasks in and outside of work (or the setting causing the burnout), and/or a deep seated feeling of tiredness that doesn’t go away, even with a full night’s rest. This is physically and emotionally taxing, and can lead to mental health conditions like depression, as well as physical health conditions such as ulcers or heart attacks.

What can we do about overload burnout?

The first thing we can do is accept that it’s okay to feel tired in reaction to too much work, and we need to take care of ourselves well while we deal with this. We cannot guilt, punish, or bully ourselves into having more energy. It will not work, and we will feel even worse and get less done. Energy is finite, we have to restock eventually. We need to give ourselves grace, listen to what our bodies and minds try to tell us, and speak kindly to ourselves. 

A break might help but it might not. If you can take a vacation, you might feel better afterwards, but that isn’t always an option, and if this is a long term problem vacation availability might not be proportional to the amount of breaks that would be needed. Taking days off is important, if you have time off that’s part of your benefits package, not taking it is losing benefits you are entitled to, but it’s not always a solution to burnout.

Talking to the boss might help. We cannot control how people react to things but we can control what we do and say. It is important to approach these conversations as honestly as we can while remaining professional and protecting ourselves. This can be especially helpful if part of the reason we are burned out is we were accomplishing things so well that no one noticed we might be tired or overworked. We don’t want to be too confrontational but approaching this with “I don’t think all of these tasks can be completed within the given time frame, what would you like me to prioritize,” or “I notice this task is taking a lot of effort from our team and myself, I am wondering if we could find a way to make this situation more efficient,” may be appropriate ways to approach this depending on the work environment. If the environment causing the burnout isn’t a paid professional environment it’s also reasonable to talk to leaders, professors, friends, and family about receiving grace on timelines or more support. 

We can keep records of the tasks we accomplish, for two purposes. The first purpose is to ask for a raise using the workload as justification. More money doesn’t automatically lead to less stress, but can be used to reduce the amount of work happening outside work. It may be worthwhile to pay for grocery delivery, take out, house cleaning, daycare, transportation services, or other things that will reduce the amount of work overall. The second purpose is so when asking for support we have specific tasks we can point to.

We can take stock of how much work our peers are doing compared to ourselves. Does everyone have a lot of work? Burnout might be a feature of this environment and that’s something to keep in mind. If we, however, notice that we’re staying later than other people, or we have more on our plate, it might be time to draw attention to it. Is part of the problem taking on work that other people should be doing? It might be time to speak with them about it directly, get a superior or HR involved, or just stop doing it. This can be difficult. Confrontation isn’t fun, and none of us want to be seen as complainers, but we can’t wait around for the magical day that someone suddenly changes their behavior, and there’s a good chance that if the work is getting done, that no one notices who is doing it or the toll it is taking. It is not our responsibility to make sure everyone’s work gets done, we need to do our own part, and we need to be able to trust the people around us to do theirs.

We can try to put in less effort. Sometimes pride in our work gets in the way of completing it. Done is generally speaking usually better than perfect. There are some things that are worth giving 100% of our focus and energy to, but we shouldn’t be doing that for most things. We don’t need to craft the perfect email every time we email someone. We can turn in a report that’s kind of ugly if the information in it is correct and legible. It’s okay to get the paper plates with the weird pattern on them for the event. Someone might notice, and might even comment on it, but if we do the important things correctly it’s okay to cut corners in other places. Learning to recognize when something is low stakes is a learned skill and it takes some practice, and so does saying “it isn’t worth my sanity or happiness to get this right.”

Sometimes we have to change some things and that’s okay too. This might mean looking for a new job or a new school, it might mean reducing our hours or courseloads, it might mean hiring someone to help, which depending on the situation could be a new employee if you’re the boss, a tutor if the trouble is school, a babysitter or nurse if caregiving duties are part of the heavy load, or something else. Quitting is also an option. It’s a difficult decision and we don’t want to drop anything crucial before we establish some type of safety net, but sometimes we stay in situations we don’t have to longer than we should and it’s worthwhile to ask ourselves if that is what’s happening right now.

This may not be easy to figure out. It can help to talk with a friend, family member, a trusted coworker, or a therapist if you’re not sure where to start.