In depth article about Burnout

There's a very in depth article directed from MindHack about Burnout.

Burnout was coined by psychotherapist Herbert Freudenberger in 1974, when it was used for social workers or caring professions. At that time, burnout was considered a noble affliction. Freudenberger analyzed the reason why those people who work to help others feel such way:

Because many of these people were idealists, and because they worked with the hardest-luck cases, they were highly susceptible to disillusionment. Those who burned out were not only physically and mentally exhausted; they were cynical, detached, convinced their efforts were worthless. They held themselves in contempt. Worse, they held their clients in contempt. They began to loathe the same people they originally sought to help.

However burnout has spread from caring professions to other sectors, often those prestigious professions such as wall street traders, professors, high level managers, lawyers and so on. Barry Faber, professor who researches burnout of teachers defines burn out as "the gap between expectation and reward"

In the study from Michigan University, they found younger surgeons have emotion exhaustion than older surgeons. The reason suspected is that

Older workers, as it turns out, have more perspective and more experience; it’s the young idealists who go flying into a profession, plumped full of high hopes, and run full-speed into a wal

They also found married people (as long as their marriages are good) and people with children burn out less than those who are not.

Our society is designed in a why people are fed with inflated expectations. Especially the rewarding system to lure young employees to work hard to get stock offers and climb higher. The intention is to make people to work harder, even to an extend that they can't physically or psychologically afford.

Ironically, burnout has turned the most potential people to opt out. Some companies now work to avoid losing these talents. Some researches found people from the most desired professions turn them into studying religion at the average age of 37.

Milton Moskowitz, co-author of Fortune magazine’s annual “100 Best Companies to Work For,” keeps a mini-compendium of things that companies do to prevent burnout. Intel, for example, allows its employees to take an eight-week sabbatical once every seven years. (Of course, most Europeans take this much vacation every year, but still.) The managers at Boston Consulting Group place their consultants in a metaphorical “Red Zone” if they work 60 hours a week and send someone to come talk to them if the trend continues. And once a quarter, Dow Corning has a no-meetings week.

Where does this article lead us? I am not sure I can put myself in the burnout population. (they say its 10% of every profession in the US) But certainly I can see myself on the edge of becoming one on the list. (or already is?)

There are really things we need to ponder about. How to achieve the balance between losing our passion or losing our mind? Are we going to admit that comprise is a virtue? (anyway we often are disillusioned about what we should believe) If you're goal is to have a long way on what you believe in, it probably would be a better way to go.