In this brutally ruthless world that we live in, the burning desire among the young to excel and reach the top are increasingly giving way to job burnout. Whilst there are several types of burnout, namely education burnout, familial burnout, social burnout, emotional burnout, moral burnout, the vested slave masters tend to recognise only one, i.e. job burnout.

Nevertheless a burnout is a burnout and the only one who knows about it is you and, fortunately, the remedy lies with you, thus there’s no need to seek here and there. You know how to do it, you’ve done it over and over again, you’ve always been good at it but now you just do not ‘feel’ like doing it and ask: “Do I really have to do it ?” and “why?”; you are on the edge, the straight path to a “Job Burnout”.

The feelings associated with a job burnout begin with fogginess in the mind and difficulty in developing a sharp and clear focus on what you have to do. Whilst something tells you it is simple and easy, as you progress, it seems to blur out somewhere. It’s almost as though the left eye can focus sharply but with the right eye the focus fades into a blur.

The subsequent feeling that emerges, like a small dark cloud on a bright sky, is the feeling of tiredness. An unpleasant, muffled voice from inside tells you that you do not have the energy to do it and slowly, you begin to lose your three-dimensional vision and things appear flat and meaningless.

This repulsive frame of mind takes you to a state of anxiety which is manifested by the way you have to drag yourself to work. Thereafter, without caring about the future, career or pay cuts, you opt to be absent from work for the most trivial reason. For anyone who finds traces of such symptoms, there is a silver lining and the ray of hope emits joyous light.

When a creative director of an Ad agency was narrating symptoms of job burnout, the accountant of a flour mill looked up in sheer disbelief and that is sufficient evidence that what is important is not what you do but what you are going through.

Fascinating, exciting and even glamorous, jobs can also be a cause of stress and we may often wonder whether a movie star could ever end up with a job burnout.

Job burnout is not stress, although stress may lead to it. Stress is a temporary pressure, over an issue for which a solution is sought. Till the issue remains unsettled, other allied issues add to the burden. As soon as the thorn of stress is removed, normalcy re-appears.

Habitually, the traditional solution is to change the organisation and move to a similar job in another establishment; but statistics reveal that this does not help. A better way out is to pursue a career change and move from one discipline to a totally unexplored field of work. I am certainly not suggesting that the accountant be made head of the creative department at the Ad agency, or even visa versa but what I advocate is a lateral move which would also make it obligatory to undertake some courses. The inter-departmental transfers between marketing, finance, HR, production and administration are a very healthy option to healing job burnout. The challenge to learn, both the theory as well as the practical aspects, provides renewed motivation to the executive on fire. Management slots like quality manager and project manager are excellent variations to serve the burnout issue.

An admirable remedy for job burnout at the CEO level is to undertake ‘BOT’. The Build - Operate - Transfer phenomenon is so provocative that the burnout due to the sheer drudgery of routine is transformed into the swing of buoyancy.

Preventing yourself from getting into it, or stepping out of the furnace, are both straightforward. First recognise the symptoms and accept that you are getting there or are in it already. Then, find a mentor and seek guidance; next redefine your personal objectives with a plan to do something remarkably respectable that would stimulate high self-esteem. Pace out the work, taking each part as a module and regard your work as a resource and fuel to power the personal objective you have set yourself.

A rewarding personal plan is to tutor a poor child who cannot afford education and as the child develops your ego blossoms positively.