Does the only thing that bother you is how to stand eight working hours? Is favourite work no longer pleasant? Probably, this is so called “burnout syndrome”. In this post on how to get rid of chronic fatigue at work our specialists share their best tips on how to fight the overwork and learn to have a real rest, physical as well as emotional.

The result is obvious

Naturally, constant jobs involving all hands at work, boss, who demands to do something impossible, and eternal overloads are the causative agents of stress. Add to this list constant quarrels with the colleagues, absence of prospects, presence of difficult clients and you will get a recipe for burnout at work. Negative is being accumulated and you can not throw it out.

Everyone knows what “workplace burnout” means, and almost everyone can be “burnt at work”. Not to let this happen, you need to recognize this syndrome at an early stage. There are several common symptoms of overwork. If it is difficult for you to focus on something longer than 5 minutes, to wake up in the morning, your reflection in the mirror makes you upset, and your work productivity has decreased, then probably you are overworked. How to cope with overwork read in our post on what to do if you are overtasked.

Prevention

To avoid overfatigue you need to learn how to distribute the working time properly. At first you should implement the most important tasks, and only after them start fulfilling others less important duties. Never forget about the lunch break. You body needs food for productive work. Besides, even during a 30 minutes break you can distract from work and relax a bit.

Make your work place as much comfortable as possible. You may bring souvenirs, flowers, and of course photos of your children, friends, relatives. So having decorated your desktop with a funny frame with a photo of someone, whom you care about, you can improve your mood.

Do not waste your weekends. Use them to the maximum: relax with your friends, have a good time, entertain, go shopping. In a word, do anything possible that will let you really relax and have a rest.

Looking for medicine

If you have worked to much, and now you feel that you are really overworked, then start active self-treatment. The best medicine in this case is vacation. Any option will do, the most important condition is that it should last longer than a week. And do not be afraid to tell your employer that you need to take a leave, that you need rest. Experts claim that if your boss appreciates you, he will understand you and will go to concessions.

In most cases overwork happens in the process of work on one and the same project. Probably, it is time to start working on something else. If you deal with sales, try to take part in marketing or in the process of a new product line developing. Try to find a hobby except of work and outside it: start attending driving school, go in for sports, take dances classes and so on.

You need to chill out and release all the negative you have. Go to the box or start snowboarding. Fighting the burnout syndrome any means to an end. Even if you go painting the fence at night, it will also be useful for you. Diana Stepura, a coach in socio-psychological center “Consciousness”, says that her own method of overwork fighting is beauty salons. And also do not forget about friends and family members, who will always help you in an hour of need.

Risk group

The following groups are most exposed to burnout at work syndrome:

• those people, who due to their work have to communicate a lot with other people – clients, partners and so on;

• people, who are constantly torn between work and family (top managers, company leaders and so on);

• those, whose activity is not stable and connected with the projects developing and makes people adapt to a floating schedule all the time;

• creative workers, whose potential is exhausted time to time;

• housewives, who are occupied with the same work day after day.

How to stop thinking about work in your free time and learn to relax

When you have problems at work, even at home it is hard to stop thinking about it. This is the reason for bad mood, and because of this it is difficult to pay enough attention to your close ones, it may become the reason for insomnia.

Peter Shallard, psychologist and consultant on productivity and organization of work believes that if you do not know how to forget about the problems at work on time, it will not lead to something good, problems will be only multiplied. Our resume service publishes his 4 tips that will help you to learn how to relax and will save you from emotional and professional burnout.

For a start decide whether you are ready to solve problems or just think about them

You should always try to spend your time with use. Thinking is good, but constant thinking without any result is a waste of time. If you come home after work with mind filled with thoughts, and you need 30 minutes or an hour to think everything over and make decisions, and after that you can relax, this is very good. But if your thinking leads to nowhere and the only result you get is a headache, then you need to do something about it. It is forbidden to be in such a state all the time.

Get a hobby

Immerse into something that will distract your mind from useless thoughts. It can even help to find solution of a problem, about which you have not thought earlier. Being focused on the problem all the time, sometimes we start thinking too narrowly, parse the problem to pieces, and absolutely forget about the search of solution. But having relaxed your mind, it may be figured out that the decision was under the nose, you just could not see it.

Shallard calls it “divergent thinking” and claims that one of his clients, whose work was full of stress, used it successfully. He started to attend swimming pool and paid more attention to his shape and the results of training, thinking about them all the time. Being distracted in such a way, he found solutions to the problems quicker and much more effective, and also he got rid of constant stress.

Shallard says this is the reason why people build small ships inside the glass bottles. When you can occupy your brain with intuitive and creative tasks, it helps to relax, what leads to solution of other problem tasks.

Change your emotional state

Thoughts are directly connected with your emotional state. So if you leave your work angry, depressed or exhausted, then you will spend the evening in the same state, if you do nothing to change your mood.

You may buy antidepressants, but in the long term this is not a good option. Shallard recommends to do physical exercise, eat healthy food, listen to good music or do something else, what you like and what can improve your mood. Gloomy thoughts on the couch definitely will not help, they neither solve your problem, nor improve your mood.

With other mood your problem can just disappear, even if temporarily, but it will give you a good break. At the same time your occupied psychological resources will become free, because these resources were not available in a stress state, and now they can help you to find way out from difficult situations.

Do not speak about problems

Some people are used to discuss working issues at home. Maybe you should establish some rules on this issue. It is normal to discuss your work day during the dinner, but it is bad if you sink into the abyss of problems and troubles again. You will just get back in the same whirlpool of bad mood that you have had during the day time.

Our professional resume help service hopes that this post on overwork will help you to learn how to really relax and keep emotional balance at your work.