How To Avoid The 7 Causes Of Job Burnout

Avoid these 7 causes of job burnout, and enjoy success on your terms.

- David Ferry

Steve Blank’s oh-shit moment came during a Friday afternoon sales meeting. He’d been dividing his time between two Silicon Valley tech jobs, one for a company outside Palo Alto serving the defence and intelligence communities, and the other for a microprocessor producer called Zilog. He was good at his work – necessary, even. He put in six or seven 16-hour days a week, and accepted the crazy schedule.

At the Friday meeting, “about three-quarters of the way through my work week,” as Blank puts it, a colleague reminded him about upcoming classes he needed to teach. “The devil is in the details,” the colleague advised. Blank nodded, and went for the obvious defence contractor joke: “I’ve got it under control, as long as the devil coming at me isn’t an SS-18.” (He was referring to a Russian ICBM dubbed “Satan”). Expecting at least a chuckle or two, Blank saw only uncomprehending stares. Weird, he thought. Then it hit him: these weren’t his defence contractor co-workers. He wasn’t even at his defence gig. He was at Zilog; and to his growing horror, he realised that he had no memory of driving across town to get there, no recollection of greeting his colleagues, no idea how he’d got through most of the afternoon without even knowing where he was. Blank later left the meeting and sat in his office looking befuddled.

“Take it easy this weekend,” the VP of sales told him. “You look a little burned out.”