Burning Out Of Control

More And More Men Are Taking Sick Days Because Of Burnout. Not “Sick” Days, Either. Sick Days. As In, About One In Four Of Us End Up In Hospital. Here’S How Not To Get Fried.

- Ron Geraci

There’s this story psychologists tell that goes like this: You’re on a riverbank. A drowning person comes drifting by, so you jump in and save him. Another comes flailing along. Same thing. Then five more. Ten more. You and dozens of other Good Samaritans are frantically rescuing them. They keep coming. You’re losing your ability and your motivation now. You’re burning out on saving people. Suddenly, somebody starts running upstream. “Where are you going?” you yell. He replies, “To see why all these people are falling in!”

That guy is not burning out.

Unless you go upstream and change the cause of the problem, you’ll just keep doing more and more and seeing fewer and fewer results, until finally you can’t take it anymore. That’s when you – a champion swimmer – drown.

Right next to millions of other men. Nearly half of us say we’re often or always exhausted due to work (up from nearly 39% in 2006), according to the General Social Survey, a health poll that’s been monitoring trends since 1972.