The Campbell Academy Blog (65)

Help with burnout

We live in a world where information is endless, and it is fired at us at light speed every day of our lives.

Expectations of what we can achieve in a single day are much greater than they ever were, and we have more people connected to us who have more expectations of us, and society dictates that we should be a certain way depending upon the tribe we are in or wish to be in.

All of these are contributing factors to the modern disease known as burnout, where much has been written about what is wrong with people and the problems that they're encountering in dealing with this phenomenon.

For example, a recent paper published in the United States suggests that 50% of healthcare physicians suffer from significant burnout as measured by a standard accepted burnout scale.

And so, what do we do with this?

How do we deal with this?

Is there anything greater to deal with in our work and life that we can control, that we are part of, that we are influencing?

When I reach the situations myself (and I reach these situations more often than I would like to admit) where things are overwhelming and I don't know what to do, and I don't know where to turn, I always strip things back to the simplest possible situation.

I work from simplicity, never from complexity, and I always use catastrophization as a tool.

What's the worst thing that could happen? "OK, I can deal with that, so I can deal with anything else".

And so, I've developed a little chart, a little model, a little diagram to stick on my wall.

It will help me a lot because I'm going to look at it when I feel those feelings rising, and maybe it'll be helpful for you too.