What burnout actually is vs what your lazy HR guru tells you it is
If you are a gazelle running for your life, or that tiger sprinting for your meal, your body’s physiological response mechanisms are adapted for dealing with such short-term physical emergencies.
For the vast majority of animals in this world, stress is about a short-term crisis, after which it’s either over with or you’re your dead.
When we sit around and worry about stressful things, we turn on the same physiological responses—but they are a disaster when provoked chronically.
A large body of evidence suggests that burnout emerges, predominantly, out of the fact that we so often activate a physiological system that has evolved for responding to small, acute physical emergencies, but we turn it on for months on end, worrying about OKR’s, working from home, and promotions.
To treat burnout, the individual must stop activating the stress response, and take their foot off of the damn gas pedal.
You don’t manage away burnout. (although good management can aid in preventing it)
You don’t sign your team up for a one week “Josh something HR Guru” resiliency workshop.
Why?
Because that stress response is individual to all of us.
Our level of resiliency is ingrained into our physiology. (within reason)
To treat and end burnout, you must find the individual “signal” for both the indicator and the fix.
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