My prior job was for a company full of the most passionate people you have ever met. The level of energy among most of them was both inspiring and, at times, frightening. For many, they had gotten their dream job, or at least a dream-adjacent job that would eventually get them to it.
During my first month, I had four different people that I work with pull me aside to warn me about burnout. Over the next year, when they and others saw me putting in late nights and working so hard, I got even more warnings. They were saying that it was easy to work too much when you love what you do, and find yourself yearning to escape that high pressure environment.
They were right, but for the wrong reason.
You see, I didn’t experience burnout because of how much I was working or how hard I was working. I loved my job, I cherished my team, and I thrived on the creative collaboration which was taking more and more of my time during the day. Putting in the work to get to the best idea or solution, and then empowering and trusting the people with the skills to implement them fueled me.
I hit burnout because of the increased frequency of the things I hated about my job.
Nearly every job will feature some things the worker doesn’t like, or outright hates. There is no avoiding it. People are different, so you would most likely have to craft a different job description and modified processes for every individual to change that dynamic drastically. Practically, we know that’s impossible in any scaled business, so we aim for the best case scenario of a low frequency, and usually miss somewhat. My personal job environment started missing a lot more often, and hard.
Measuring the frequency of things an employee hates is how you predict burnout.
If you have an environment of radical candor, this is pretty easy: “What things do you hate or strongly dislike the most about your job?” and then “How frequently, on average, do you experience each of those things?”
If you’re still working on radical candor, here’s the sneaky way: ask questions that offer relief from the common items people hate.
For example, I declared email bankruptcy after 16 months at my job. The demands of being my entire team’s point of contact for our corporate group’s rapidly growing international staff, language barriers and all, was too much. I hadn’t seen inbox zero in six months. When I told some coworkers about what I was doing, the wistful sighs and looks of hope were more sad than encouraging.
“Rank these items based on how much your enjoyment of your job would increase if it happened tomorrow: (A) declaring email bankruptcy, (B) no meetings before 10 AM, (C) technology upgrade, …” Add some spaces for them to write-in their own after they’re in the right mindset.
These are the things people hate about the environment you have allowed to develop around their work, likely sorted loosely based on how much they dislike them and how often they occur. Follow that survey up with one around how often they encounter their top rated items. Huge bonus points if you can simply address some of these without needing the follow-up.
Even for things you can’t do much about, which there are some but not many, you will improve the environment simply by listening and ensuring your colleagues feel heard. And if you’re still working towards radical candor, here’s a good chance to practice by being honest and empathetic about those things.
