How Can We Beat Pandemic Burnout as the World Begins Reopening?
We've been living through unbelievable turmoil, restrictions, fears and changes that no one could have imagined in January of 2020 — changes that have undoubtedly affected everything from how we work to how we manage our mental health. Billions of people all over the globe are experiencing many different types of mental health effects as we continue to navigate the uncharted territory that makes up the process of emerging from the COVID-19 pandemic.
Of course, conditions like burnout, which is caused by prolonged and intense stress, were a present long before we were dealing with the novel coronavirus, but the pandemic has intensified its effects, creating untold levels of stress in everyone's lives — including those of us who may have previously managed our stress levels effectively. After months of worrying about our health, our loved ones, our homes, our communities and our jobs, the future feels uncertain and, in some ways, scary. Let’s take a look at some things that can help us navigate the pressure as society reopens.
What Is Causing COVID-19 Burnout?
As many of us have discovered, burnout can happen, even when we’re working from home. In fact, because of all the extra stress, uncertainty and trapped feelings related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the chance of experiencing burnout while working from home has been even higher than usual. A survey conducted by Eagle Hill Consulting found that almost half of U.S. employees who have worked during the pandemic have experienced burnout, and about 25% of them blame the virus alone for these emotional changes.
One major cause of COVID-19 burnout is that many people started working from home for the first time. They weren't used to managing their workloads with such blurred boundaries between work time and personal time. On top of that, they still had to juggle vastly different family responsibilities, often working with children causing distractions nearby.
Signs and Symptoms: Exhaustion
One major sign of burnout is emotional and physical exhaustion. This happens because you're feeling so drained by work that it leaves you feeling completely worn out. Your normal energy runs out as a result of job-related stress. That type of stress is particularly high right now, as it seems to actually be coming at us from many angles.
Living through a pandemic has been a stressful experience all by itself. Working from home when you've never done it before, which could include learning a new way of working, only compounds the feelings of stress. Exhaustion related to burnout can easily occur under these circumstances.
Signs and Symptoms: Dwindling Enthusiasm
Feeling lethargic or unenthusiastic about work is another clear sign of burnout. Unfortunately, working from home can aggravate this issue. Without a set work schedule — and in the absence of the need to shower in the morning and put on work clothes — it's become a challenge to stay dedicated to what we need to accomplish.
Plus, without the camaraderie of a shared workspace, feeling pumped to do your job feels much harder. This is especially true if you were already finding this aspect challenging before the pandemic. The less enthusiastic you are about your work, the less productive you tend to be.
Signs and Symptoms: Negativity Toward Your Job
Outright negativity toward your job means it’s very possible you are burned out, especially if you previously enjoyed your job. Perhaps this is caused by the lack of direction you feel in managing your work responsibilities and time to coordinate all the home responsibilities that feel like they've piled up all at once. It'd be understandable to feel resentful toward your job in this case.
This is especially true if your company hasn't done much to ease the transition or if it's planning to continue some form of working at home for the long haul even as restrictions begin lifting. Without assistance and guidance from those above you, work-from-home burnout can become an issue very quickly. These negative feelings tend to pile up too, ultimately leading to additional stress and frustration.
Signs and Symptoms: Decreased Job Performance
Burnout can easily lead to faltering productivity, both in your work and in your personal life. Compounding factors like exhaustion, frustration and lack of clear direction will generally make your productivity decline. Plus, there have been plenty of other situations to worry about than those at our jobs, and vagueness about what'll happen in all aspects of our lives in the wake of reopening can heighten our overall stress levels.
Plus, without clear communication from leaders at work, which has often been the case with companies during this pandemic — it’s been new for them, too! — staying focused can be a real challenge. Even if you do have plenty of time scheduled for work, if you're not getting as much done as you think you could or should, burnout might be the reason.
Signs and Symptoms: Feeling Depressed
Depressed feelings, like extreme sadness or a lack of hope, are understandable even as we move towards reopening. After all, we’ve never seen anything like this before, and it's impossible to know what to expect even when we have a slight sense of optimism. The pandemic has been unprecedented, lonely, scary and stressful for pretty much everyone, and those feelings aren't going to vanish overnight. However, if your depression seems to be largely related to work or worse than seems reasonable, it could be a sign that you’re experiencing burnout.
Many of us have dealt with extra pressure due to things like losing the boundaries between work and personal space, losing loved ones, losing sleep and even losing our sense of self. It can easily become too much and lead a person to feel sad in an all-encompassing way.
Signs and Symptoms: Feelings of Restlessness
COVID-19 caused mental distress among Americans to grow to three times 2018 levels, and restlessness from a sense of isolation is just one of the many results. Spending so much time at home has been hard enough, and adding the worry about the dangers of social interaction makes it even harder. We've almost been conditioned to avoid interactions at this point, and that means, in a way, we're needing to re-learn social skills as reopening takes place. All the energy we once put into socializing, including work-related socializing, doesn’t just disappear, but we may not be sure how to harness it now.
Restlessness can also be specifically related to job burnout, serving as a sign that you’re taking on too much. This could be too much work all by itself or too much work on top of any new burdens related to the pandemic. Either way, these emotions might've made you feel like you just can't relax.
Signs and Symptoms: Increased Anxiety
Anxiety already happens for many reasons, and the pandemic exponentially increased anxiety for many people. One big factor has been our constant need to adapt to changing circumstances that have been largely out of our control — and dangerous. Few people like to be forced to do anything. Factor in a dislike of change and upheaval along with the major health risk that's been present for more than a year, and it's easy to see how the pandemic led to anxiety and burnout.
The idea that you should be just as productive as you were before the pandemic isn’t realistic for most people, but the expectation may still be there. As a result, the pandemic also left us worried about job security, bills and taking care of our families. It's more than easy to understand how anxiety became so prominent during this time.Â
Signs and Symptoms: Sleeping Too Much or Too Little
Insomnia, troubled sleep and excessive sleeping are all signs that your stress levels are high, which could mean you've burned out due to stress. The anxieties we're all experiencing during this period of limbo between lockdowns and reopening tend to affect our sleep patterns, which can affect our overall health as a result.
Missing out on the right amount of quality sleep means your waking hours are often filled with exhaustion, foggy-headedness and irritability. Sleeping too much tends to cause sluggishness and leave you feeling depressed. Either way, the days are less pleasant and productive without the proper amount of sleep, and this can lead to larger problems down the road. But fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do about this — and other — mental health effects of the pandemic.
Solutions to Burnout as We Navigate Reopening
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to ease the pain caused by pandemic-related burnout. Keeping yourself mentally healthy is not only good for your morale, but it could also help keep your immune system in top shape.
It’s also nice that many of these burnout solutions work well as general stress-reducing tactics you can utilize well into the future — it certainly never hurts to be armed with tools to boost your mental health any time.
Be Honest About Your Ability to Be Productive
It's unrealistic to think you will be as productive working from home during this pandemic as you would be in the office. This needs to be addressed with your superiors. Whether you need to request reduced productivity due to increased family demands or simply due to pandemic-related stress in general, be honest about what you can and cannot get done in terms of work.
You can reduce feelings of being overwhelmed when you're honest, first with yourself and then with your boss. Recognizing what you can realistically get done in a day or a week helps with managing expectations. As a result, realistic expectations lead to decreased stress.
Create a Separate Workspace
Are you set to continue working from home even during the next few months of reopening — or for the foreseeable future? While turning a room into a home office still may not be realistic, getting a desk and creating an enclosed space where you can work can help you create healthy boundaries between work life, home life, productivity and relaxation.
These boundaries are necessary for maintaining your mental well-being. A space that you use solely for productivity also helps you minimize distractions. Telling family members that this area is off-limits to them while you're working gives you a better chance of staying focused while you work.
Set Boundaries for Work Hours
It’s still important to "leave work" each day, even if your home is now your workspace. Doing so requires creating a schedule of work hours that you actually follow. Setting this boundary will allow you to unplug from your job and provide some mental space for relaxation.
In turn, you can recharge to be on top of your game and at your most productive when you return to work the next day. It might not be long before you notice some of your burnout symptoms disappearing as you maintain a clear work schedule for yourself.
Name Your Ailments
If you recognize your issues, they can become easier to manage, and that can provide some relief from burnout symptoms. You can do this by naming your emotions when you experience them. Labeling them helps move the problem from something vague to something very specific that you can address.
If you're feeling restless, acknowledge the restlessness so you can figure out how to get rid of it. If you're feeling exhausted, call it what is, and the solution will be easier to find. If you don’t recognize the problem, then it can become much more difficult to figure out how to solve it.
Ask for Help When You Need It
Pandemic or not, when you're struggling with anything, including burnout, asking for help can be one of the more beneficial ways to relieve some of your emotional challenges. The trick is to ask the right people based on your needs. If you need help with chores around the house and a family member is capable of helping, ask them directly to assist you.
If you need help with something job-related, talk to your boss or co-workers. Most people are happy to help when they know someone is struggling. It may not be easy to ask for help, but it’s definitely better in the long run than dealing with the negative consequences of going through it alone.
Meditate
Meditation works to free your mind of the constant swirling thoughts that most people are having during this very strange and stressful time. It has great potential to help with anxiety so you can get back to being your better self.
For basic meditation, all you have to do is sit down, close your eyes, breathe in and out deeply, and only think about your breathing and nothing else. You can do this for as long as you want, keeping in mind that the best results come from meditating for at least a couple of minutes.
Commit to Some Form of Exercise
Getting moving is good for both your body and your mind, and it can really help limit burnout and anxiety. Cardio exercise that gets your heart pumping prompts your brain to release mood-lifting endorphins. Moderate- to fast-paced cardio also works as a stress reliever, as it forces you to think more about your body and less about what's running through your mind.
Yoga and other forms of light exercise, such as stretching, can have positive results for relieving burnout as well. Even if you can only commit to 15 minutes a day, that'll start the journey to getting your mind back to feeling healthy again.
Prioritize Rest
If you're tired, it means your body and mind need to rest, and you better not ignore it. When you’re well rested, you are more productive. When you think about it that way, getting the appropriate amount of sleep actually ends up giving you more time, not less.
Another thing to consider is that burnout stems from stress, and stress is magnified when you’re tired. Allowing yourself to sleep when your body needs it will leave you in a better position to manage your emotions when you wake up.
Be Flexible
Most of the time, there are many ways to do the same thing and many solutions to the same problem. Remaining flexible makes it easier to accept that certain things are out of your control. As long as you recognize that you can figure out how to deal with it, you can limit burnout to a meaningful degree.
If you're too set in your ways, you set yourself up for anxiety when you aren't able to accomplish things as planned. Especially during this pandemic, it's been hard to know what is coming. Stay flexible, and you could potentially save yourself the anxiety of worrying about how you'll handle deviations in your plans.
Talk About Your Feelings with Someone
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a toll on the mental health of most people across the globe. Whether you're lonely from the isolation or fearful about the long-term repercussions of a faltering economy, it’s all a lot to deal with emotionally right now.
This is the time to lean on family, friends and mental health professionals for emotional support. Talk to them about your feelings. This digital age comes fully equipped with a plethora of electronic options for reaching out to each other for the support we need, and if you've been vaccinated, it may be time to start enjoying face-to-face moments with other vaccinated loved ones whose physical presence you've been missing.
Do Something That's Emotionally Uplifting
Burnout often leaves people feeling depressed and unmotivated. To counter these feelings, you could start a hobby that leaves you feeling the opposite: cheerful and energized. It's important to have not only relaxing but also uplifting activities in your rotation of things to do.
Some examples of the kinds of hobbies you can add to your life are gardening (even indoor gardening), reading, learning a new skill, journaling and kicking your cooking skills up a few notches.
Keep Track of What Stresses You Out the Most
Knowing what stresses you out the most can make it easier to manage those situations or, even better, avoid them altogether. Recognizing them as big-time stressors means you'll be able to take proactive steps as they're happening to get out of that situation before it magnifies.
For example, if you know that your partner needs to be reminded to do the laundry so you don’t have to add it to your own endless list of things to do, take the time to provide that reminder. That way, you can avoid the conflict and some of the related stress.
Above All Else — Go Easy on Yourself
The coronavirus pandemic has created unprecedented levels of stress and pressure on many people worldwide. It's normal for your productivity to decrease. It's normal for you to feel anxiety and worry about the future. Don't punish yourself for these responses. Accept them, and figure out the steps you can take to relieve them.
Don't push yourself too hard or even as hard as you did before the pandemic began. A pandemic is a lot to handle, and even as things reopen your biggest priority should be taking care of yourself, not being hard on yourself. Productivity isn’t the only measure of success — happiness is critical too.
