How to Combat Job Burnout

Job burnout can occur after years of doing the same old thing at the same old job. Job burnout can also occur soon after starting a new job that you're either under- or over-qualified for, have too much work to handle, or relegated to boring tasks.

People usually know immediately when job burnout hits, because they will have an intense desire not to go to work. They'll find themselves calling in sick, being late, leaving early, sneaking long lunches and surfing the internet during work hours. If this happens, the thing NOT to do is ignore it and hope things will get better. Nine times out of ten, they won't. And living in la-la land with your head in the sand is likely to get you canned and tarnish your job history.

So what can you do to combat job burnout? First, you need to identify the reason (or reasons) for job burnout. You can't do anything to change a situation until you have a good grasp of what it is. Spend some time thinking about your job, its pros and cons, what excites you about it and what you loathe. Write all of this down and then study it. You will then have a better idea of what you're dealing with.

If the list of cons and things you loathe are long and there aren't many good things about your job, you're better off quitting right now, or at least starting a serious hunt for a new job. If things are this skewed towards the negative, there's likely not much you can do to combat job burnout.

However, if you can see that the reasons for job burnout are situational, you can begin to look for ways to improve things. If you have been given too much work, start to chronicle your day and where you spend your work hours. You can then present this to management and ask them to re-assign some of the tasks to someone else. If boring tasks are part of your job description, look for ways you can make them more enjoyable. For example, if you are responsible for opening all the company mail, imagine that each piece of mail is a check made out to you. Yes, it's silly, but it takes the drudgery out of opening pile after pile of mail. And anything you can do to make your workday more fun will combat job burnout.