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5 min.What burnout is?
Burnout is a term used to refer to the feeling of being “psychologically burned out”, especially in the workplace. Whatever how many hours you sleep, that feeling of tiredness and stress persists, or if you hate what you used to enjoy doing so much, you are probably under the effects of burnout, but you don’t know it yet.
How does burnout happen?
People who work in creative areas are passionate about the projects we embark on and we give our all in order to the project does not go unnoticed to the target audience. It is very common that we spend hours almost without realizing it, but psychologically we are gradually saturating the mind and will reach a state of mental block that we must avoid, not to ensure that the project comes out with maximum guarantees, but for something much more important, for our physical and mental health.
We really need to rest and relax, there is no point in leaving the office if we are answering emails at 22.00 at night.
Nowadays, with new technologies and practically all the information at our fingertips, we have the perception that we can achieve anything we set our minds to, that we have no limits and to a certain extent this freedom is real. Never before in history had so much information instantly, allowing us to achieve any goal they set, but we have a limit that many seem to prefer to ignore it, we are not machines.
Many times we try to achieve our goals too soon. We have everything we need to achieve them and the only impediment is the time we need to achieve them, so we sacrifice a lot of time in our lives to achieve the goal we have set for ourselves.
How to prevent burnout
We need to disconnect, but not with the objective of recharging batteries and then continuing to maintain the level of performance, that way what we are doing is postponing burnout. We really need to rest and relax. There is no point in leaving the office if we are answering emails at 22.00 at night or we are on vacation with the laptop in the trunk.
Fortunately, companies are becoming increasingly aware of burnout among their employees. They have put the issue on the table and are beginning to take steps to prevent it.
To achieve this, tools such as Mentiness are very useful to help create a culture of well-being, increase engagement and take care of the mental health of employees.
Burnout in graphic design and digital art
Advertising
It is very common to see job offers, especially from advertising agencies, in which one of the requirements they ask the candidate is the ability to work under pressure, I think they should be a little more explicit and specify what is the pressure to which they will be subjected.
I don’t know of any graphic designer in this profession who doesn’t give their all on every project. In fact, we like new challenges and every now and then we want to start a new one that challenges us.
When I read that requirement on the job posting “Ability to work under pressure” I usually close the tab and move on to the next one. If by working under pressure they mean working 12 hours a day, with 4-5 projects at a time 365 days a year… I think my physical and mental health is not compensated.
Videogame development
Burnout is more common in the video game industry. Unfortunately we are getting used to read news about it from time to time from different studios. Due to demands on the timeline the teams in charge of developing video games are subjected to heavy working hours over a long period of time.
Sadly we are normalizing this kind of abuse in the industry and if you want to get involved in video game development (especially triple A games) you will have to sacrifice many other areas of life…. Is it worth it?
Even if we like what we do, we cannot expect to master new techniques or tools in a short period of time, or to reach the knowledge and skills of a person with more than 25 years in their professional career, there will come a day when we cannot keep up. It will eventually have repercussions on your physical and mental health, leading to burnout.
Burnout in Millennials
Perhaps the Millenials are more likely to suffer from burnout than people from other generations, due to the lifestyle they have had to live.
They are more solitary people, value personal success more and were born in the technological era where social networks are a very important part, coming to have more value than the relationships they may have in reality (in fact the term “reality” in this context, may come to have a different meaning for other generations).
The freedom we were talking about before, in relation to the possibilities of reaching their alter ego thanks to the amount of information at their disposal, can become at the same time a very heavy burden, a chain that ends in burnout.
In short
This article is not intended to cut anyone’s wings in their professional career. If you like what you do, go for it without hesitation, but it is good to stop from time to time and assess whether it is really worth the extra effort we need to achieve the goal we have set ourselves to the detriment of other experiences that we may not yet know, but we value more.
To know the answer I recommend Simon Sinek’s book and find your why in the world, find what really moves you inside and gives meaning to your day to day life.
Also, if you want to know more about burnout and the tired society we are heading towards, I recommend the book “The Tired Society” by Byung-Chul Han.
Categoría/s: Graphic design Opinion
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