Hi there,
I recently had a conversation with a colleague, and she said, “it takes everything in me to get out in the mornings, although she may not be necessarily sleeping and during the weekends, she doesn’t even want to cast a second look at her laptop. I am sure a couple of us out there may feel the same way. You literally feel cynical and unmotivated and exhausted sometimes. You feel a desire to eat and engage in other activities besides work or you just wish, you could sleep and wake up and everything will start afresh. If these sentences resonate with you, then it is possible that you are experiencing burnout.
You are not alone if you feel this way. Studies have shown that about 23% of people in the labour market experience burnout a little more frequent than others, while another 44% feel burnt out seldomly. Summarily, nearly two-thirds of the employees are burnt out during the course of work especially around the end of the year such as we are right now. With the increase in burnout of employees, the need to discuss it has become pertinent because of the impact it has on physical, psychological, and mental health. Being burnt out triggers a full physical response such as high blood pressure, vulnerability to illnesses and insomnia as common symptoms. Nonetheless, the impact can remain even after someone recovers.
Burnout has been found to change the neural circuits in the brain thereby causing a vicious cycle of long-term neurological dysfunction. In other words, the brain is physically altered after a burnout and leaves you operating less sharp, less focused, or less innovative in the future. So next time you are up those late nights, pushing through, ask yourself: are you okay trading in today’s brain for tomorrow’s fogginess?
One of the best solutions to burnout is exercise, it is a powerful remedy to stress and burnout while you can engage in some form of exercise right at your work desk, few minutes of exercise early in the morning when you wake up or a quick 10 minutes’ walk around to stretch your muscles. It has been quite a long year and the fourth quarter is the period of tying all things that has happened in the year together, you could have a lot to deal with or attend to but take breaks when you must, for the sake of your neurological health. 21Search is a manpower development and management organization and provides trainings, recruitment, and standardization services. Kindly send an email to e.mbahon@21Search.ng to get started.
Until I come your way again, stay safe, work smart and not just hard.
Love,
Lizzy.