3 Ways to Stop Overworking at Work
Dr. Christina Maslach, a leading burnout researcher, has shown that burnout manifests with 3 distinct symptoms: exhaustion, cynicism, and professional inefficacy. This blog post is the first in a series of posts covering ways to prevent those symptoms at work.
The first symptom of burnout is exhaustion, which directly correlates to the amount of work you have to do. When you feel that you have to do too much you feel exhausted and are more susceptible to burning out. How do you counteract this? Here are a few different ways:
If you already feel like you have too many things to do, try to write out all of the tasks you perform in a typical week. When I have felt overwhelmed at work listing out all of my responsibilities helped me judge whether I really did have too much to do or if there were just certain projects that were stressing me out more than others. A list will also help provide evidence for discussion with your manager. If you're able to say "I've looked at all of my responsibilities and I think I would be more productive if we gave task X to another coworker." that will typically be much more effective than just saying "I feel like I have too much to do."
Decide how long you will work on a task before starting. Tasks tend to swell in importance with the time allotted (an adage known as Parkinson's law). If you tell yourself "I'm only going to spend an hour on this" ahead of time and commit to it, you can reduce the amount of time you spend on tasks overall, which can help you get home sooner.
Be very selective of which projects you take on. One popular philosophy for taking on projects is "If it's not a hell yes, it's a no". Workers in healthcare are particularly susceptible to taking on too much. We work in healthcare because we like helping people. That desire can cause us to take on too much work. But that's a bad move in the long run - if we overwork ourselves in the short term and burn out then we end up helping fewer people in the long term. If you only feeling lukewarm about a particular project you are probably better off declining it and saving your energy for something you are more passionate about.
Next week we'll look at the second symptom of burnout - Cynicism. Sign up for my mailing list to receive an email when my blog post (along with other recommendations related to mental health and wellness at work).