Is it exhaustion? Or is it burnout? How to spot the difference
By Bill Gentry
Where are you right now? I don’t mean your physical coordinates in your office or on Hearn Plaza, but your mental ones. Consider your current capacity: the weight of your stress, the energy you have left for others, and the level of exhaustion you’re carrying today.
All of these things center on burnout, a state that extends beyond simple fatigue or the need for a long weekend. It’s the crushing weight of a workload that seems to expand, coupled with a gnawing sense of detachment. Dr. Christina Maslach, a renowned researcher of burnout, defines the condition in an American Psychological Association article as a “prolonged response to chronic emotional and interpersonal stressors on the job.” To her, burnout describes what happens when you “used to have passion, used to be on fire, and then it’s gone. The stress of the work eats you alive, burns you up.”
According to Maslach, there are six areas of life that contribute to burnout:
- Work overload
- Lack of control
- Insufficient rewards
- Breakdown of community
- Absence of fairness
- Value conflicts
When our jobs and these six areas fall out of sync, burnout takes hold. It isn’t a personal failing; it’s a sign of a deeper misalignment. The cost is a sense of profound disconnection, not just from your daily tasks but from your core purpose.
The data reflect this reality within our own higher education landscape. According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, a majority of faculty and staff report a significant workload increase over the last five years. It’s a trend that confirms this simple headline: “Higher Ed Is Exhausted.”
We faculty and staff at Wake Forest University have a reputation for pouring our hearts and souls into everything we do. We focus our efforts on helping our students accomplish great things and on pushing work projects through to the finish. For us, the Pro Humanitate mission that initially drew us to the University may begin to fade.
While these challenges are real, there are ways to begin restoring the connection between our work and ourselves:
- Take 10 minutes to listen to these nano-tips on reducing burnout.
- Dig deeper with courses designed to help you spot burnout symptoms, take proactive action, and combat stress through mindfulness.
- Exercise more control over your stress levels with this 22-minute course, which offers on-demand breathing techniques and practical, real-time strategies for finding calm.
- Leverage your influence as a manager to prevent team burnout through this specialized course, featuring an AI-driven role-play tool to help you practice and refine your leadership approach.
Many of us have felt the sense of burnout, and it’s okay to acknowledge when the weight feels heavy. Recognizing this quiet exhaustion is the first step toward taking better care of ourselves and each other. By understanding the signs, we can begin to shift the tide, protect our well-being, and rediscover the spark that makes our work at WFU so meaningful.
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