Productivity is a subject everyone is talking about, from YouTubers to motivational speakers. People value the hustling mindset a lot nowadays and use the productivity advice from these speakers in a way to fuel their hustling habits.
Sometimes these habits may go to an extent of becoming an obsession to addiction unknowingly. Your body may give you certain cues which may easily go unnoticed until it escalates to a serious issue. It then becomes important to realize your limits and intervene before that happens. It is also equally important to understand that this is normal and that you are not a superhuman. Let us have a look at the other side of the coin of productivity and hustling.
The symptoms that come with all the productivity advice and the mind-numbing art of piling tasks on top of tasks. These 10 signs may just make you realize that you are not lazy you are burned out!
Before going to the signs let us understand what is burnout and who can suffer from burnout?
Burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors at work or home. It is usually called Burnout Syndrome (BOS). The term “burnout” was first coined in 1974 by Herbert Freudenberger, in his book, Burnout: The High Cost of High Achievement. Burnout can happen to anyone at any age from children to adults and elderly. One can be a student or a professional or just a housewife. Anyone and everyone may suffer from burnout. Following are some of the signs:
Exhaustion
Do you feel tired and sleepy the entire day? Are you compelled to drag yourself out of bed every morning? If the answer to these questions is yes then you may be exhausted. Exhaustion can be both emotional as well as physical. The most common physical symptoms of exhaustion include frequent body aches, difficulty in concentrating on a task, feeling of being drained out always, and irritability.
Negative Mood
You may find yourself becoming cynical about the things you liked to do previously or towards people with who you didn’t have a problem being with. You may develop a negative attitude at work and not enjoy what you are doing. You may even isolate yourself from your friends or colleagues and stop socializing. Pessimism takes a toll when you are burned out.
The feeling of Being Useless
A burned-out person may start feeling out of purpose and useless. You experience the feeling of being no good and start doubting your capabilities. The things you used to do, you may want to do it better and the loop keeps repeating. You then end up procrastinating and avoiding the tasks which add to the stress. Trying to be more productive and pushing yourself further is a major sign of burnout
Not Being Satisfied
Dissatisfaction with the never-ending demands and expectations professionally and personally is another sign of being burned out. Due to this feeling, you may want to escape from reality and feel like running away or going on a solo vacation. Taking that trip may help and relieve you from burnout. If you are thinking on these lines, it is not too late to go take a break.
Not Taking Care of Yourself
Being burned out, you may not want to engage in tasks that are not related to work and making yourself a priority takes a backseat. You may have made that appointment for a spa session or just for a haircut but pampering yourself goes down the list. Self-care is sacrificed in the name of workaholism.
Emotional Outburst
It is natural that when a person is burned out his emotions may not always be under control. You may go through a sudden outburst of anger, sadness, or any negative feeling. You may lash out at a person for the most trivial reason and not understand what happened. Going through extreme emotions is a very common sign of emotional exhaustion due to burnout.
Trouble Concentrating
Although you are a workaholic and want to finish your work on a given deadline you may not able to fully concentrate on the task at hand if you are burned out. It becomes difficult to pay attention to a job or to a person which can be your spouse or your friend. You may find yourself drifting off in another world when someone is talking to you. Your body is trying to escape from burnout and uses this as a coping mechanism.
Insomnia
Sleepless nights are a common sign of burnout. You may find yourself torn between being productive and not being able to finish your tasks that add on to your stress and you lose sleep over it, or you may find yourself waking up in the middle of the night. Burnout is one of the contributing factors to insomnia.
Resorting to smoking, drugs, or alcohol
As a part of escaping from burnout, people may resort to what is called escape fantasies which involve smoking, alcohol, or even drug abuse. They feel less stressed by having a cigarette or a peg of alcohol and when these things make the burned-out person feel better about himself, he may start using them more eventually getting addicted.
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Lifestyle Diseases
The burnout combined with the workload and the stress may bring in many lifestyle diseases, from hypertension to diabetes. In today’s world, people are already susceptible to these diseases due to the growing sedentary lifestyle, and burnout may aggravate them further. Also, if you are burned out and you do engage in substance abuse then it is double the trouble.
You may be the best at what you do and you may want to push yourself out of the comfort zone but nothing is worth putting your physical and mental health at risk. You matter the most, so before running that rat race in which the world is stuck and proving yourself to be better you need to ask yourself, are you really being productive? Are you really you’re challenging yourself? Or if you are seeing these signs, are you burned out? Let us know what you feel in the comments section below.
Author: Dr Pooja Nilgar (Content writer and editor)
