When the demands you shoulder are too much for too long, you can suffer burnout.
Burnout is not classified as a medical condition, but symptoms can mimic mental health diagnoses such as depression and anxiety, with people often experiencing sadness, fatigue, nervousness, and irritability. What makes burnout unique is that it stems primarily from chronic workplace stress.
Working too many hours with too few resources are common causes to burnout, but according to psychologist and executive coach Sharon Grossman, there can be another reason at bay. “A lot of it has to do with our relationship with ourselves, our relationships with other people, and how we navigate these two worlds,” Grossman said.
Seeing more and more people suffer from burnout at her clinical practice, she decided to write a book about it. In “The Burnout Solution: 7 Steps from Exhausted to Extraordinary,” Grossman lays out science-based strategies to overcome workplace stress, so people can achieve their goals with energy to spare.
American Essence: Many of us work more hours in order to advance in our career. But you say this actually makes us less productive. How so?
Sharon Grossman: We obviously need to be doing a certain amount of work, otherwise things don’t get done. But we can take it too far.
There’s research that shows that after working 55 hours over the course of a week, productivity deeply declines. When people that are working 70 or 80 hours a week, they have diminishing returns on those extra 30 hours. You can’t focus, so you’re not doing your best work. When you push as hard as you can for as long as you can, I think that it comes back to bite you. We’re humans, not robots.
There’s an actual science around this that looks at the relationship between stress and performance. What it shows is that when you have low stress, then performance is low. It’s kind of like when you’re not motivated, you just don’t care.
On the other end of the spectrum, when stress is incredibly high, you see performance decline because people get burned out. The optimal range is somewhere in the middle, where performance is at its highest, and stress is in the moderate range. You’re giving yourself some challenges, but you’re not overdoing it to the point where you have nothing else in your life.
AE: Let’s talk about the flow state, where we’re at our peak of productivity and performance. How do we achieve this?
Ms. Grossman: The flow state is when you’re so immersed in the task that time just flies. It doesn’t feel hard or challenging. Two hours can feel like five minutes. But we have to create the conditions for us to get into that state. Normally, we are so reactive at work that we don’t plan for that.
Most people are not very intentional when it comes to work. They wake up in the morning and the first thing they do is they pick up their phone and check their email. They start with those low energy tasks—things that don’t require a lot from them. But most people have the most amount of energy first thing in the morning when your battery is charged.
To get into a flow state, you need to put a block of time on your calendar where you turn everything off, where you cannot be found, or where everybody knows that you are focusing and not to disturb you. If you have a block of time that’s protected, you will get more done.
AE: Do you have specific advice for high achievers?
Ms. Grossman: Everybody has a breaking point—even the highly competitive, type A individuals who push beyond where others might slow down or give up. What I’ve found over the years is that so many of them burn out because of the demands they put on themselves, not because of what the job requires of them.
They often insist on doing it all themselves. Because they’re used to being more capable than their peers, they have trouble delegating responsibility. As a consequence, their work piles up, and they become overwhelmed.
Another vulnerability for high achievers is a perfectionist mentality. That thing that you’re perfecting might be really, really good, and you might feel really great about that, but you’re procrastinating on 99 other things. So the quality of all those other things is going to suffer. The key to overcoming this dynamic is to find a more balanced approach. Shift your mindset out of this black-and-white thinking. You don’t have to do everything perfect. Do what is more reasonable given the time that you have. Periodically zoom out from the single task that you’re trying to perfect, and look at the big picture.
