by Peter Vajda Ph.D.

Created on: December 06, 2007

One of the most common topics of conversation with coaching clients and colleagues these days centers around burnout. Interestingly enough, burnout happens as much to companies and businesses as it does to individuals.

Burnout is a state or condition where one experiences fatigue, exhaustion, or frustration as a result of an intense focus on or attention to a goal, a cause, a lifestyle or a relationship that fails to produce the expected reward. In other words, there is a burnout formula: expectations divided by a reality that does not meet your expectations, regardless of the effort you expend, equals burnout. There is no direct correlation or relationship between hard work and burnout. There is, however, a direct correlation or relationship between hard work that produces little or no reward, and burnout. In fact many folks do actually work to exhaustion and they do achieve recognition, acknowledgement and reward. For these folks, burnout is not a part of the equation.

Am I experiencing burnout?

Burnout is a slow burn. Burnout is not an event; it's a process. Burnout is similar to erosion. One day you view a huge boulder under the waterfall. One day you return and it's half its original size. Then one day it's become a small stone; then a pebble. Burnout is an insidious and pernicious internal erosion.

Early symptoms of burnout include a deep sense of fatigue, tiredness, or exhaustion that seems to extend from the surface of your skin, through the tissues, ligaments, muscles, and deep into your bones and into the very cells of your body. Emotionally, you feel you are at or near the end of your emotional rope. Psychically, you live in a realm of negativity experiencing a sense of dread, helplessness, hopelessness, negativity, cynicism or frustration. Relationships in and out of work suffer, They become exhausting; they are no longer fun and enjoyable. Work, itself, becomes an effort. Concentration is challenging. Staying focused is a formidable challenge. You feel and become detached, maybe even unattached from work and from the people in your life.

In the extreme, burnout manifests as an "uncaring" about life in general, about work life, family life....life. In the extreme, one cannot even muster the energy of anger, or resentment, or frustration; there is no energy, period. No feeling on any level (mental, emotional, physical, psychological, or spiritual). Just a numbness. Exhaustion. Life itself. becomes a huge effort.

Curiously, burnout affects folks who once

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