01/23/2025

How to Recognize Burnout Before It Burns out of Control

Here are some tips to alleviate burnout

Raise your hand if you have, at some point, experienced burnout. I spent the last four years of my career as the FBI spokesperson in Northern California. The news cycle doesn't recognize weekends, vacations or time at the beach, so I was on call 24/7 for four years. By the end, I was irritable, impatient and without a support network because, guess what? I had no time for interpersonal relationships.

COVID-19 is blamed for much of the burnout we hear about today. By April 2020, 2.6 billion people had gone into lockdown, and 81 percent of the global workforce were fully or partially closed. A large number of people began to work from home.

We have moved beyond the pandemic. But it revealed the truth behind the curtain — things were not as they seemed in the land of Oz and hadn't been for quite some time. Burnout reared its ugly head long before COVID-19. Organizational burnout originated in the 1970s; the pandemic was merely an accelerant.

Please select this link to read the complete article from SmartBrief.