Series: Preventing and Overcoming Burnout - Part 3

Part 3: Tips for Individuals to Overcome Burnout

From time to time, most people have felt burnout at work. While normal, it is important to have access to a range of effective coping strategies that can help diminish stress and frustration.  Workers can minimize the extent of which they experience burnout during their daily work activities by understanding their talents—what comes naturally and easy to them, as well as their non-talents—what may not come easily or considered challenging. 

Gallup recommends the following three actions.

• Understand which burnout coping strategies tend to be effective and which do not. For example, most people benefit from reminding themselves they can succeed, and most people do not benefit from lowering their expectations.

• Lean into the effective burnout coping strategies that align with your strengths.

If you lead with Executing themes, you may feel less burned out after taking actions that help you get things done.  However, if you have dominant Strategic Thinking themes, you benefit from pausing to think through the situation.

• Consider trying some new coping strategies. 

You may find that some of these work better than your default choices. For example, people with dominant Relationship Building themes may overlook inward-focused strategies, like meditation, that can help reduce burnout symptoms.