E13: Feeling Burned Out? Tips for Recharging and Finding Purpose in Your Work

E13: Feeling Burned Out? Tips for Recharging and Finding Purpose in Your Work

Work it, Remote podcast

All rights belong to host, Erika Bergen.

Published February 25, 2025

 [00:00:00] Today, I want to talk to you about burnout.

How many of you have said or heard someone else say recently? Oh, I feel so burned out The reason why I want to talk about this is because earlier this month, McKinsey, one of the top management consulting firms in the world released a study that said roughly a third of those in the workplace are experiencing burnout.

One third, that's a huge number. in this episode. I'm going to share a little bit more about this data. I'm going to define what burnout means, why it happens. and what you can do about it and how you can get ahead of it so that you don't have to experience burnout again.

And by the end of this episode, you're going to walk away with three different exercises you can start today to start getting more joy out of your work. And no, none of them include getting a new job, having a difficult conversation. These are all exercises that you can do on your [00:01:00] own to get more joy.

out of your work. Let's dive into it.    

Okay, so McKinsey Co, again, one of the top global management and strategy consulting firms out there, came out with a report and the report is really about organizational performance.

 It takes a look at the three major working models, in person, hybrid, and remote, and looks at how those working models are impacting people's experience in the workplace, The survey was done in 2024 and it's a sampling of about 8, 500 workers across the U. S. They also looked at about 3, 500 executives 

and there's two key takeaways that I'll share. The first is people are generally happy. with [00:02:00]whatever working model they're in.

It's not a source of stress or frustration, broadly speaking, across the groups of people that were surveyed. And so, that's a good thing, right? We're spending so much time thinking about and talking about where people sit. Ultimately, at the end of the day, people seem to be happy wherever they are. with where they're sitting.

That's not the source of friction. The source of friction is more around the practices of the organization. So it's less about policy and more about what's going on. practices. 

And that's actually the headline of the report itself. McKinsey calls it returning to the office, question mark, focus more on practices and less on policy. That the working models aren't that important when it comes to work environment. It's more about how the organizations are practicing these five different things that McKenzie calls the key components of spurring a healthy organization.

, and those five things are collaboration, [00:03:00] connectivity, Innovation, mentorship, and skill development, 

You can read the report if you're interested in digging in more into the details. And there are some really good nuggets there. 

What I was most interested in when I read it, and it's a 12 page article. Was the two paragraphs on burnout.

The report says that 28 percent of hybrid workers are experiencing burnout 35 percent of in person employees are experiencing burnout.

36 percent of remote workers, 36 percent are experiencing burnout. This is an extremely high number. It's a third of those surveyed and McKinsey notes that these high levels of burnout defined as chronic imbalance between job demands, what we're expected to do and the job resources, what we have available to do it, the people, the money, the time we have available to meet the expectations of [00:04:00] us.

That chronic imbalance should worry leaders, particularly because these levels are higher than the global average seen throughout the pandemic, especially for remote workers. So we are more burned out today than we were during the pandemic.

The pandemic, which you could argue and build a very strong argument that the pandemic was one of the most stressful moments, if not the most stressful moment in recent history. We are more burned out now than we were then. That is insane for me to think about. And this research was conducted in October.

Since October, we have experienced even more change. And we are in the middle of February 2025 and the amount of change. would be difficult for me to summarize in this episode 

 and so I would imagine that this number 

36 percent of remote workers feeling burnout, that that number today is even higher than it was back in [00:05:00] October, 

 let's talk about how to identify whether or not you are feeling burned out. These are some of the symptoms. Are you having a hard time getting out of bed Are you feeling jittery? on Sunday night because of all the dread or the anxiety that you have going into your work week.

Do you feel less motivated in your work? Are you seeing less purpose in the work that you're doing?

 Have you lost your patience? Has your sleep changed? Are you grabbing that extra glass of wine on a Wednesday night that you normally wouldn't do? Do you feel yourself doubting your skills or abilities or feeling like you're letting down your colleagues ?

 Have you had physical symptoms? Headaches? Depression? High blood pressure? All of these things are symptoms of burnout and stress 

But if you're experiencing any of these things, then you start to disengage and disconnect from your work And look, everybody has good days and bad days, but when you're experiencing chronic [00:06:00] burnout and you're not doing anything to recharge, then chances are is that you are consistently showing up in a way that's out of step with who you really are.

I would imagine that many of you have a sensitivity around how you're showing up. 

 there's just so many things that you're dealing with in your day to day and the stakes are so extremely high, not just because you need to deliver for your organization and because it's important for the business that you're in, but because you need to do well.

in order to protect your job security. You want to keep and hold on to your job. You love your job. You enjoy your job. You need it to provide for your family. And so the stakes are really high. So you keep giving and giving and giving and giving because that's what the moment demands, but you're not recharging.

 And so when you're doing this, you're in a vicious cycle of just give, give, give, give, give. Ultimately you're undermining the very thing that you're trying to accomplish. You're working hard because you want to deliver. But you cannot [00:07:00] deliver if you're not finding a way to give back to yourself.

You are a human. Humans are not robots. Humans cannot keep going and going and going and going. That is not the way that we work. 

We need time to recharge and reset. And there's a model I want to share from this book. It's called resonant leadership. It was published in 2005. It's by Richard Boyatz and Annie McKee. And it talks about this idea of power stress   

So let me define power stress. Power stress is a unique brand of stress associated with being a leader. Because leaders are. in positions of having a lot of influence and responsibility over others. They uniquely have to face complex decision making and communicating during times of uncertainty. 

 They're also pretty isolated, right? When you're at the top, it can be lonely there. And so they're isolated from genuine relationships and honest information [00:08:00] flow due to their position of authority in the organization.

So this idea of being in a complex decision making environment, having to communicate under conditions of uncertainty. Feeling isolated, , these definitions of power stress is something that I think can apply to people up and down an organization.

And the reason why I bring this up is because the book gives us a nice framework in which we can think about power stress and burnout, 

And this model is twofold on one side of sacrifice and on the other side is renewal. And think of it as a circle. So one half of the circle is sacrifice and the other half of the circle is renewal. There's sacrifice on one side and then renewal on the other side, and they have to go hand in hand. It's a ying and yang. You sacrifice and then you renew, you sacrifice, and then you renew. Now the truth is, 

All leaders experience sacrifice. We give ourselves to our work in such a way where we are sacrificing a part of ourselves in that work. There are secrets that have to be [00:09:00] kept. There are complex decisions that need to be made

so that sacrifice is inevitable 

you're gonna have it that's a part of the job But the problem is is when you are experiencing this chronic stress consistently over a long period of time, you lose your effectiveness. even the most effective leaders are not able to sustain their effectiveness when they are in chronic stress So if you want to sustain yourself in your position, then you need to find a way to create time for yourself You cannot lead with sacrifice all the time. There's a time and a place to sacrifice. There are moments when you've just got to step up. You've got to do the work. You've got to put in the hours and you've got to get it done. But when that moment passes, you have to set aside the time for renewal.

The human body needs it. And when you don't set aside that time to recharge and renew, and you start to be chronically sacrificing, that's [00:10:00] when you get into burnout. And once you get into burnout, it can be hard to get out of it. Because then you're starting to feel those physical impacts. And then you're not even sure why you're burned out anymore. Just like, I just can't do this anymore. I'm done. Right? That's when people start to just look for new jobs because they're so tired of it. So you want to get ahead of it.

So what can you do if you're in this chronic power stress sacrifice mode, what can you do? What is your pathway to renewal? How can you get to the other side of the circle and begin to recharge? 

There's four steps you can take again, this is inspired by the resonant leadership book, which will be linked in the show notes. The first is mindfulness. Plug into yourself and be vigilant about that. Know who you are and when you're feeling overextended and listen to the cues. You know when you're out of step with yourself.

The second is hope and I want to spend more time with this at the end, but it's about finding your why. Tapping into your why can [00:11:00] move you into renewal. Why are you working? What's the thing that keeps you going when you're having a difficult day? 

The third is compassion. 

 It can be so easy to put our heads down and have this very self centered, not intentionally self centered, but we get so focused on what's going on in our lives that sometimes giving our time to others puts our challenges into perspective. And then the fourth idea is joy.

Remembering the things that give you joy. and finding space for that. If you can tap into that when you're feeling like you're about to lose it, when you're in sacrifice mode, if you can tap into something that gives you joy, you can move into your path for renewal. So the first is mindfulness, 

 the second is hope. The third is compassion, . And the last one is joy. 

Now here's three takeaways for you. 

The first is you can listen to episode number five. of this podcast. It's with Christine Lu Sing. She's a breathwork coach and [00:12:00] intuitive guide. And we talk a lot in that episode about mindfulness, meditation, and joy. And there are really great tips in that episode, including a live meditation to help you get more in touch with yourself and help you find joy.

 So that's one easy thing that you can do to start to find joy in your work again. The second thing you can do is think about your values. Do a values exercise. This is a tried and true exercise that helps you get in touch with your why.

Think about it. Organizations have values. Businesses have mission statements. They have purposes. They have their reasons why. What are your reasons why? What do you care about most? If you only had three things in this world, what would they be And this is not an easy exercise. I've done it twice.

I did it once in my early twenties and again in my mid thirties. And it was really interesting to see the shifts and it aligned very much with how my life had changed and my perspective had changed. But the idea is, is that you get a very [00:13:00] long list of values Google. values exercise there's stacks of cards you can buy, and each one has a different value on it.

You could probably also just google lists and have it, but a great values sheet will have probably a hundred or more different values on it, and it could be everything from faith to health to adventure to ambition to achievement, anything you can think of that someone could value you want to have on your list, 100 or more different things and go through them one by one and whittle it down slowly.

So first down to 20 then go down to 10 and then from there. Pick your top three to five. This is a very difficult exercise because when you're trying to choose between love and faith, or health and adventure, when you're trying to make these choices, you start to get very clear on, well, what does this word really mean to me?

How am I connecting with this word? [00:14:00] And if I had nothing else, could I live with just these three things? And by the time you get to your three. You'll have a lot more clarity around what drives you, what is most important to you. And from there, you look at your work and your life and you draw the dots. I really value freedom. Well, this part of my job gives me that freedom. I value stability. This gives me stability. I really value growth.

This gives me growth. So you start to draw the dots between where your personal values are. And. what you're contributing in your organization, in your team, in your community. And it starts to shift your perspective it takes your work to a higher level, right? It's not just about getting the task done for the day, but it becomes about how is this. fueling me? How is this work [00:15:00] giving back to me? What is it feeding me?

So that can be a great exercise to do to help get you clear on your values and find inspiration in the work that you're doing. It's also good for a number of other reasons, but for the purposes of this episode, this can really help you get more in touch with your why and find the hope, which can put you back on a path of renewal and out of sacrifice mode.

The last thing I'll leave you with is what does renewal look like for you? What is renewal? So renewal is a holistic journey. And again, this is inspired by resonant leadership The link will be in the show notes, but renewal is.

An interconnection of mind, body, spirit, and heart. So if you get a piece of paper or you get the book and you draw these interlocking circles and put mind in one, body in another, spirit in the third one, [00:16:00] and heart in the last one and spend 20 minutes thinking on this. What do you do? How do you renew your mind?

How do you renew your body? How do you renew your spirit? And how do you renew your heart? What are the things that bring you deep joy and connection and really allow you to be with yourself and find yourself? And when you go through this exercise, you might find that , you have a lot in mind, but you don't have anything in body or you have a lot in spirit, but you have nothing.

In mind . And because renewal is a holistic journey, when we're recharging, we're not just running on a treadmill for 30 minutes. That's not [00:17:00] true renewal. When we're doing true renewal, we're hitting on all four of these things. And so getting in touch with what those things are for you is an important part of your journey.

And being able to truly renew and recharge after a period of sacrifice. So those are your three takeaways. Listen to podcast number five with Christine Lu Sing and learn about meditation and joy. Two pathways to renewal.

The second takeaway. is to do a values exercise, get in touch with your why so that you can feel more connected, have more purpose in your work And then the last one is once you get into a renewal mindset 

What are you doing? To renew yourself, 

 I wish everybody great renewal 

Go make some time for yourself. It's important. We cannot [00:18:00] give all the time. We have to give back and recharge for ourselves. 

If you enjoyed this episode, please hit subscribe and you can go to workitremote.Com to learn more, get the show notes and connect to the community. Thank you so much for listening and I'll see you next time.