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O P I N I O N
Burnout is not the vibe
Leaders must engage in burnout prevention strategies that alleviate overburdened employees, reduce the number of meetings, encourage PTO, and promote flexible hours.
2 020 presented significant challenges for us all, but I hardly expected working remotely to be an obstacle. After all, as a marketer in the AEC industry, the majority of my work has always been done from my laptop, and my position had long called for collaboration with teams in other offices across multiple states. In many respects, COVID-19 presented minimal changes to my job.
Mercedez Thompson
Yet, as stay-at-home restrictions persisted, my working hours expanded. It was summer before I realized my regular office hours had somehow extended an hour. It was fall before my spouse pointed out that I was checking my email after dinner. Like many things, the issue proved easier to confront in others. When a colleague expressed guilt at signing offline on time, I reassured her that separation between her work and home life was healthy. When she mentioned a new pressure to work later now that her team was remote, I declared her continued productivity dependent on establishing a firm work-life balance. My contradictions became too obvious to ignore in early 2021 when I found myself flipping through
recent timecards. I noticed that I prided myself on the many weeks where I clocked 50 or more hours. Unthinkingly, I had begun to romanticize overwork, equating it to professional success and worth. Keeping standard hours meant I wasn’t making the personal sacrifices necessary to achieve success. It mattered little that my work was done and done well. Understandably, this added stress took its toll. I found myself more irritable at work. I noticed that I wasn’t as creative. Achievements that once would have filled me with a sense of accomplishment felt negligible. Recognizing the dangers of burnout all too late, I posted a sign on my office door: NO ENTRY 7 P.M. TO 7 A.M.
See MERCEDEZ THOMPSON, page 4
THE ZWEIG LETTER APRIL 26, 2021, ISSUE 1389
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