What Causes Burnout?

Spoiler: burnout is not your fault.

Burnout is not just a bad day, or week, or even a challenging month. Burnout is an ongoing state of extreme exhaustion, cynicism, reduced capacity and loss of identity.

Understanding why burnout happens is essential for a healthy future of work, and, well, a healthy future of us: burnout is a massive issue for individuals, organizations and societies.

So, why are so many of us reaching this state of utter, wretched emptiness?

Let’s take a look at what causes burnout.

Burnout is caused by chronic workplace stress. In other words:

Chronic = ongoing or relentless

Workplace = related to work

Stress = stress on our psychological, physiological, mental and emotional systems

Stress is not damaging of itself — small doses are great and essential for learning and growth. But when it’s chronic, stress wears us down. In the workplace, this chronic stress can lead to burnout.

So, what causes chronic workplace stress?

There are two factors that make workplace stress chronic: