![]() Perhaps you work with an office bully, or you feel undermined by colleagues or your boss micromanages your work. If you’re unclear about the degree of authority you have or what your supervisor or others expect from you, you’re not likely to feel comfortable at work.ĭysfunctional workplace dynamics. So could a lack of the resources you need to do your work. An inability to influence decisions that affect your job - such as your schedule, assignments or workload - could lead to job burnout. What Is Burnout?Īccording to Mayo Clinic, burnout is “a state of physical, emotional or mental exhaustion combined with doubts about your competence and the value of your work.” According to the Association for Psychological Science, “Ultimately, burnout results when the balance of deadlines, demands, working hours, and other stressors outstrips rewards, recognition, and relaxation.” It can feel like a lot of different things, including depression, negativity, irratability, anxiety, lack of motivation or inability to take action, extreme fear of failure, you name it.Īnd burnout has a bunch of causes, all related to overwhelming our ability to cope with an unhealthy modern work culture: I’m not suggesting that anyone dial back their FIRE plans (goodness knows I’m doing everything I can think of to accelerate ours!), but it’s worth taking the time to recognize what’s motivating your career exit, and whether your “why” has to do with your current work culture or with work itself. It could very well be that the thing that will make you happiest isn’t leaving your career entirely, but just making a move to a different company or field. It just might be your company or field, and a culture that has developed there that burns people out. This is a pretty un-PC thing to say to a bunch of people interested in retiring early, but if you have that feeling that work isn’t working for you, work itself might not be to blame. So that we know why we’re trying so hard to retire early in the first place. Today we’re talking all about learning to tell the difference between a true dead-end and temporary burnout or disenchantment. And while it can feel horrible and all-consuming, burnout is also fixable. It’s considered to be a result of stressful jobs that cross beyond our ability to cope with them. Recognizing the difference between work and work culture isn’t always easy, but it’s worth doing so that we don’t mistake the negatives of work culture for work itself.Īnd likewise, it’s worth learning to recognize the difference between a truly unfulfilling career or job (work itself) and solvable problems like disenchantment and burnout (side effects of work culture).īurnout is a real and significant psychological condition that can arise from unhealthy work circumstances, and I’m convinced that it’s what I’ve been feeling this year - the anxiety and dread, the lack of motivation, the negativity, the feeling of exhaustion. ![]() Work lets us create things and contribute value to the world. It gives us purpose and connection to other people. Whereas work itself is something that most of us crave. Those are all artifacts of work culture, which has evolved in western society into a fairly unhealthy thing. And people are always trying to steal our staplers.īut the interesting thing is that none of those factors is inherent to work itself, or even inherent to work done on behalf of other people. The pressure to be increasingly productive only gets worse with each passing year. Work these days is less fulfilling than in the past (blame the industrial revolution and the advent of soul-sucking factory jobs for that, so says this TED Radio Hour). For many of us pursuing financial independence and early retirement, it’s a near passion to talk about how eager we are to leave work.
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