- If you're the kind of student who deals with
a demanding, ambitious schedule, then it's possible
you've experienced feelings of burnout.
Especially if you're watching a video called
"How to deal with student burnout."
But, what exactly, is burnout?
Yes it's a series of near perfect arcade racing games
that sucked up large amounts of my time as a teenager,
but it's also a debilitating state you
don't want to find yourself in.
If you're looking for a definition, David Ballard of
the American Psychological Association defined job burnout
as "An extended period of time where someone experiences
"exhaustion and a lack of interest in things,
"resulting in a decline in their job performance."
Replace job with student,
and that definition doesn't lose it's accuracy.
But, here's a more practical definition,
everything makes you tired, you don't care about anything,
and everything sucks.
Burnout is characterized by near constant exhaustion,
a lack of motivation in everything,
frustration, cynicism, and a lot of
other different symptoms.
It's something that can happen when you're dealing with
large amounts of stress for a long period of time,
which is something that's, sadly,
all too common for students.
Here's the kicker though.
Burnout is a state of being that takes a while to get to.
It doesn't happen overnight.
And the good thing about this, is that you can
recognize the signs that are indicative of burnout,
and take steps to prevent actual burnout
before it actually happens.
The first step in being able to prevent burnout
is to figure out, what exactly causes it.
Now a 2006 study at the University of Southern Maine
surveyed 354 students to figure out
what the cause of student burnout is.
A small percentage reported mental or physical issues
to be a cause, and a few others reported
that problems with professors were causing their burnout.
About 13 percent felt that it was
caused by a lack of personal motivation,
either a lack of interest in their major,
or as they describe in the paper, an overactive social life.
A full quarter of the students surveyed reported
outside issues to be the main cause, either family
or financial issues, or time management problems
mainly caused by things like part-time jobs.
However, by far the largest cause reported
was assignment overload.
A full 49 percent of the students who actually
reported feelings of burnout, cited an overbearing,
overtaxing course load as the main cause of the problem.
So, now that we know some of the common causes
of student burnout, we can actually tackle the issue
of preventing it or fixing it if you're already feeling it.
Now, the most important thing to note here,
is that it's essential to recognize
the early signs of burnout if you can,
and prevent actual burnout before it happens.
You're gonna be much better equipped to tackle
these problems if you're not hampered
by constant exhaustion,
the depressive state that burnout brings.
So if you feel like you're on the road to burnout,
or you're experiencing some of the symptoms
I mentioned before, take that seriously
and take steps to prevent what they lead to.
That being said, even if you feel
like you're past that point and you're completely
burnt out right now, hopefully some of these tips that
I'm going to round out the video with, can help you out.
My first and foremost tip is, learn from that 49 percent.
Don't bite off more than you can chew with your course load.
A more general way you could put this, is,
think very carefully before committing yourself
to over stretching for long periods of time.
Be willing to challenge yourself, but realize
that you do have limitations, just like the rest of us.
And if you go beyond those limitations for too long,
there are consequences.
Now if you've had a look at my free book
on earning better grades, you'll realize
this is a rewording of the very first tip
in the first chapter of the book, which is,
don't overload the system.
And, speaking of the system, my second tip is
to make sure that your system, your brain,
and by extension your body, are in working order.
A lack of sleep, good nutrition or exercise
can put you in a non-optimal state.
And when you're in a state like that
you're less able to deal with the challenges
of your schedule, and also, things that can cause burnout.
A third tip is to make sure that you're organized.
I've found in my life that if I feel unorganized,
if my task-management systems are full of
tasks that I don't need to do anymore,
and everything just seems messy,
it causes a lot of undue stress which
can lead to feelings of burnout.
So if you're feeling like this, maybe take a day,
or a weekend to clear out your task-management systems,
get all that entropy out of there, clean your room,
and make sure that, going forward, you feel like
your life is organized.
Another tip, and I think this is a really important one,
is to make sure you're taking breaks.
Get away from your school or work life on a regular basis
and give yourself some time to relax.
Now, as I've talked about in a previous video,
when you're taking breaks, you wanna make sure
you're having high-density fun.
Don't just go on Reddit or Facebook
and give yourself, like, ten minutes away from your work,
actually schedule some time to completely separate yourself
from your work life, and find something else you enjoy.
You also wanna make sure that your work or school
can't seep into that break time, that it's sacred.
As an entrepreneur, I've found that, in particular,
my email is something that can seep into my break time.
So I make sure that my phone has no notifications on it,
and I make sure I only check email at
certain times of the day.
That way my breaks are actually relaxing.
Now, small breaks should be a
regular occurrence in your schedule.
There should be little ones each day,
and then you should give yourself some time
each week to really unwind.
However, sometimes, that alone, isn't enough
and you might need a longer break.
Part of the reason I took my three week vacation to Japan,
is because I was starting to feel
some of the early signs of burnout.
Making a video and four different podcast episodes
each week was really starting to be taxing,
and I just needed some time to unwind and not have to work.
Now that I've had that break, my mind is reset,
I'm energized again, and I'm ready to jump back
into making videos and podcasts.
Now, related to taking breaks,
I find that it's useful to have a hobby
or pursuit where you can feel a sense of
progress when you do it.
For me, at least, I find that taking breaks
that only consist of consumption of media,
like movies or video games, which is,
honestly what a lot of people do, is not enough.
So, instead, I think it's good to take
at least some of those break times
to do something that has some progression to it.
My next and final tip is to simply ask for help.
You don't have to do this alone.
And if you're in college, there's probably somebody
on your campus whose job it is
to help you deal with stress related issues.
Even if there isn't, or maybe you don't want to,
talking to friends or family about
what's causing your stress can really help you relieve it.
So, that's it for this video.
Hopefully these tips will help you
deal with some of the feelings of burnout
that you may be feeling, and we will be dealing
with more stress related topics
in the future, on this channel.
In the meantime, if you've got other tips
for dealing with burnout,
that I didn't mention in this video,
feel free to leave them down in the comments.
And I will see you next week.
(upbeat electronic music)
- [Thomas Frank Voiceover] Hey guys, thanks so much
for watching my video on dealing with burnout.
Now, if you wanna get new videos every single week
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If you want, you can also get a free copy of my book
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And if you want to find links and other resources
that I used to research this video,
you'll find them at the companion blog post
that you can get to by clicking the orange logo right there.
If you missed my last video, it was the conculsion
to my accelerated Japanese learning challenge,
and you can click the thumbnail to watch it.
And if you would like to connect to ask questions
or have ideas for new videos, you can find me on Twitter
@TomFrankly, or leave a comment below.
Thanks.