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CNN Live Saturday
Overcoming Job Burnout
Aired September 08, 2001 - 12:11 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONNA KELLEY, CNN ANCHOR: Here's a problem that a lot of Americans, maybe even you, know all too much about: job burnout. It can affect any person in any profession at any level. There's a new book called "Overcoming Job Burnout," and it offers some help. The author is psychologist Beverly Potter. And she's with us from San Francisco.
Hi, Dr. Potter.
BEVERLY POTTER, AUTHOR, "OVERCOMING JOB BURNOUT": Hi, how are you today?
KELLEY: Good, thanks. Hope you're the same. Glad to have you join us. And I know that you've gone through a couple common signs of burnout. And we want put those up and we'll start right now. And we'll go through them real quickly and then detail a couple of them.
But you talk about negative emotions.
POTTER: Yes.
KELLEY: These are common signs of burnout. Negative emotions, interpersonal problems, health problems, below par performance, substance abuse and feelings of meaninglessness. A couple of those things I think that people get the drill on, but let's go a little more in detail like negative emotions. What do you watch for there?
POTTER: Well, first it starts off with an anger and frustration. But eventually, it turns into basically job depression. Dragging yourself around, you hate going to work.
KELLEY: Now some this is normal, isn't it? I mean can you get tired and can you think oh, I don't want to go today, but how do you tell when you've crossed the line?
POTTER: When it starts becoming almost every day. When you start dreading going to work. On the weekends, you can't even enjoy your weekend.
KELLEY: How about interpersonal problems? How does that affect people?
POTTER: Well, it gets harder and harder to get along with other people. You become snappy. You become withdrawn. You don't get along with people. You take your problems home with you.
KELLEY: And then the feelings of meaninglessness. What happens there? Somebody just gets bored?
POTTER: Well, it's not just bored. It's this feeling of why have bother. And it's most noticeable in the person who used to be the gung-ho, raring to go person. The high achiever suddenly has this, "Why bother, what's the point of this?"
KELLEY: OK, so if you have some of those signs and symptoms and you think maybe -- are there degrees of the job burnout? Can you start into it and get worse?
POTTER: That's exactly right. It's not an all or nothing process, but it's a continuum, building a little bit day by day. Basically, what causes job burnout is feelings of powerlessness. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Like no matter what do, I can't have an affect.
KELLEY: OK, so what do we do about it then? If you've looked for the signs now and then you decide, "Well, I have this to some degree or maybe pretty severe," then where did you start to turn it around?
POTTER: Well the first thing is, you have to figure out exactly what the problem is. And the best way to go about doing that is to identify that kind of negative feeling that you get. And when it happens at work, stop and say to yourself, "What just happened? What caused that feeling to come on?"
And it's a good idea if you write this down. Now if do this for several days, then you can read over your data. It's a scientific approach to analyzing your problem. You can read over your data and look for patterns. And those patterns tell you where to attack the problem.
KELLEY: Yes, we might think maybe couple of weeks on a lovely island would help this. What would you suggest?
POTTER: Well, a couple of weeks on the island would be nice, but the problem with that is, it doesn't do anything about the conditions at the job. What we really need to do is to start looking for ways to increase our sense of control.
So once we've figured out what is the problem, for example, if the problem has to do with a supervisor, who is very vague, so that we are constantly doing the wrong thing, then maybe we should have a talk with the supervisor and ask for more clear directives, for example.
KELLEY: So not just the time away and time off. You need to learn to deal with, after you identify, you need to learn to deal with the problem then?
POTTER: That's right. Time away makes us maybe relax a little bit, build our resources to go back, but we really need to change the conditions on the job. And the key is always looking for ways to increase your sense of control.
KELLEY: And it's how you handle it, isn't Dr. Potter? It's -- even though you don't have control over what somebody else might do or the situation all the time, it's how you react to it?
POTTER: That's exactly right. You have two people together. And one person develops a no-can do attitude and the other person has an I can do attitude. There's always something that you can do. And that's what you need to look for.
KELLEY: And it can happen to executives. There's a lot of executive burnout. What about age and stress level and whether your position makes a difference?
POTTER: Well, all of these things matter some times, but anybody can fall into the problem of burnout. It really has to do with feeling helpless. It doesn't have to do with whether or not the job is fun, or whether other people think it's not so much fun. It has to do with whether or not you think that you can have an impact and do something and have a result.
KELLEY: It is seems to me though that you're kind of in favor of recharging the batteries, too though. I was reading, you said, "Don't close the house on Saturday. Go on a little mini vacation." So do you believe in mini vacations or longer vacations or even a sabbatical?
POTTER: Well, a mini vacation is a really good idea because, what's the point in waiting six months and then trying to cram all of your vacation into two weeks so you're so stressed out, you can't wait to get back to work to relax. A mini vacation, you know like in San Francisco, where I am for example, people come here from all over the world to enjoy themselves. When I can just come across the Bay, and check into a hotel, and go out to dinner, have a theater and pretend I'm on vacation and go home tomorrow.
KELLEY: Lovely idea. Dr. Beverly Potter, author of "Overcoming Job Burnout." Nice to have you join us. Thank you.
POTTER: OK.
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