By Stephen Scherer, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
Working in academia can be extremely rewarding. Unfortunately over time, we can become susceptible to burn out due to the constant demands to be productive on top of a full teaching schedule. It can be difficult to maintain a healthy life balance and identify when we’re starting to burn out. This series of posts, entitled “Scholarly Self-Care” is directed toward navigating the challenges posed in academia, learning to identify our signs of burn-out, figure out how to balance writing with taking care of ourselves professionally, and recover or prevent burn-out in the future.
When was the last time you woke up and felt excitement for the work day ahead? Waking up and feeling a sense of dread, mental exhaustion, or panic are sure signs of burn-out. This can happen when we don’t have balance in the work day and feel drained more than fulfilled. Meeting departmental expectations for producing written product, in addition to teaching classes can be extremely stressful, especially once we have already entered into burn out and experience low motivation, mental cloudiness, feeling overwhelmed, or on edge with others. It would be amazing if we could increase our productivity, mental stamina, and motivation, and reduce mental fatigue, decrease stress, and feeling overwhelmed whenever we would like. Unfortunately working harder doesn’t necessarily mean we are more productive, but working smarter or more intentionally does. How can we be more productive without working harder? It starts with planning and the first step is figuring out where we are in terms of burnout and what’s on our personal and professional plates.
Next week we are going to dive into figuring out what contributes to burn out, how to manage those things differently, and begin the journey out of exhaustion and into leading a more successful, balanced, and fulfilling career.
Scholarly Action Step: Grab a piece of paper and draw out what you actually have on your plate, make different sections on your plate that represents how much space each responsibility you have takes up. We can use this next week to better understand where our time is being spent and how this impacts us.
*The information in this blog post is intended for general informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Please consult with a qualified mental health professional before making any changes to your lifestyle to make sure they are right for you.
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