Burnout

The continuous inflow of projects in the past few months has made me really tired… so tired that I began to ask myself, am I sick of my job? By clocking 12 hours a day in the office, who wouldn’t be sick and tired right? No matter how much we love our job, too much of it will cause a burnout.

But for me, the problem didn’t lie so much with the job itself, it was the mind that was causing the problem. When working, I should only work but my mind was on something else. I wasn’t living in the present moment. As a result, my progress was slow, my work got affected, I took twice the amount of time I would normally need for my projects. My mind was on a holiday that I wanted badly. I kept reminding myself I’m tired, so much so that my body began to ache!

Well, yes I’m physically tired due to the lack of rest. But now that I’ve completed most of the major projects, I think this workaholic can slow things down a bit. Time to breathe.

For fellow workaholics, here is a quote from another great teacher, Thomas Merton:
“To allow one’s self to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit one’s self to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything is to succumb to violence. Frenzy destroys our inner capacity for peace; it destroys the fruitfulness of our work because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes that work fruitful.”

If you suspect you’re also facing a burnout, check against the warning signs below. I noticed some of them in me recently.

Some Warning Signs of Burnout
1. Inability to be in the moment - mind is constantly problem-solving, can’t be present in life
2. Too busy to evaluate - always rushing from one have-to to another with no time to heal, renew and savour
3. Fantasising another lifestyle - hoping for a different way of life
4. Product, not process, becomes primary - just want to get it over and done with, actual joy is gone
5. Too much for too many - try to be everything to everybody and not putting first things first
6. Physical disharmonies - untraceable aches and pains, sudden drop in energy, loss of appetite, indulge in comfort food, interrupted sleep
7. Emotional disharmonies - impatient with what once brought joy, mood swings
8. Mental disharmonies - mental block, cannot yield another creative thought or offers the same one over and over again
9. Quality begins to suffer - projects, ideas begin to sound predictable
10. Service becomes servitude - enthusiasm and inspiration for serving is dulled or completely gone

Adapted from Barefoot on Holy Ground - by Gloria D. Karpinski