Burn out, Exhaustion, and Crunch

Searching for the deeper purpose within

“My work is my passion, and I am so lucky to be doing this for a living. So why do I feel exhausted just thinking about it?”

One of the most common concerns I hear from my clients is about feeling burnt out. Many of them work in the tech sector or the entertainment industry. These are talented young professionals who are experts of expressing their creativity through media and digital technology. They are very good at what they do, and most importantly, they love what they do. However, after a few years of grueling crunch schedules and endless cycles of content creation, many of them feel exhausted and confused.

I heard this story many times before. When they first entered the industry, they felt a great sense of pride to pull off a 80-hour-work week and deliver the project ahead of schedule. But very quickly, the enthusiasm started to wean as the crunch became the new normal. Management started to plan launch schedules around their exceptional productivity. Long work hours became the norm, and they found it harder to spend time doing anything that is not directly tied to their career. Professional life started to push into their personal life, and their social circle rapidly became almost indistinguishable from their work circle.

It was convenient at first. A lunch or office birthday celebration was as good a place to discuss the next livestream idea as the weekly team meeting. The project manager and collaboration guest are both here anyway. Before they knew it, the post-work social events had become extended work meetings where discussions about workflow and project timeline was a regular occurance. For many, it became all-encompassing and all-consuming.

Locked into this rhythm, these young professionals find it harder to meet people outside of their work life. Most of their friends are now co-workers who they often collaborate with. Given the competitive nature of the field, they are also often competing for the same status and recognition within the industry. Some like to boast of their ability to tolerate – and thrive — under this high-stress environment, hoping to set themselves apart from the others. Many folks feel they have no choice but to continue to churn away in this pattern. Many of them inevitably feel burnt out and disconnected from their work that they used to love.

As a physician, the demand for long work-hours is also a familiar one. Physicians, depending on the speciality, undergo 3 to 7 years of residency and fellowship training after medical school. In the past, there were no limits on their work-hours, and many resident doctors frequently are required to work over 100 hours a week. It was not until 2003, when the Accreditation Council of Graduate Medical Education limited the work-week to 80 hours. Even after the change in the rules, the programs are still allowed to schedule some resident doctors up to 28 hours in a single shift.

Similar to the culture in the gaming and media industry, working long hours is still viewed as a virtue in medicine. When the changes were first proposed, some senior doctors who were trained in the era with 100 hours work-week argued that the change would make the new doctors last competent. Even after the rules were changed, it is not uncommon for resident doctors eager for validation and approval from the old guard to brag about working more hours than “allowed”. Many doctors carry the same mindset and behaviors minted during their residency training. In this culture of productivity and unrealistic expectation, many doctors experience a high degree of burn out while simultaneously ashamed by perceived personal failure to contain it.

The term “burnout” is not a new topic. First coined by Dr. Herbert Freudenberger Ph.D. to describe the impact of professional and occupational stress on one’s physical and mental wellness. In the beginning, it was mainly used to describe the exhaustion of folks in the caring profession, such as physicians. However, it is now a phenomenon pervasive in numerous industries. Symptoms of burnout can include headaches, fatigue, GI issues, changes in appetite, sleep difficulties, or frequent illnesses. One might feel helpless, distracted, isolated, pervasive self-doubts, loss of motivation, or decreased satisfaction in their work and life. One might also start to have more frequent outbursts, neglect self-care activities, turn to habit forming behaviors or substances, or become increasingly withdrawn from others.

There may be multiple factors that contribute to burnout. These can include a high pressure or dysfunctional work environment, overly demanding job expectations, too many responsibilities, having little control over one’s work, lack of recognition and appreciation for the work done, working too much for too long, lack of social support at work, and many more. Although these factors are omnipresent in many industries, a lot of times they are accepted as facts rather than conditions that need urgent modification and improvement.

Responsibilities for self-care and burnout prevention are often shifted from the company or industry to individuals. In this vacuum and with rising awareness of burnout, the wellness industry has grown exponentially. It is true that meditation, yoga, exercise, and nutrition are all excellent habits that will improve one’s physical and mental wellbeing. However, it does not address the larger issue pervasive in competitive media and gaming industries. When we ask the question, “how do we make time for more meditation and yoga?”, we miss the more important question: “how do we shape the work environment so people can keep doing what they love without feeling fatigued, exhausted, and depleted?”

It is true that many game studios and media companies are taking important steps to address these larger issues. However, changes can be slow, and the effects can be even slower as the industry adjusts to the shift. Although we cannot change the system overnight, we can adjust how we adapt to and function within it. In psychotherapy, I find it often helpful for my clients to not only name the challenges they are experiencing, but also acknowledge that circumstances may be beyond their control. Shadows of our past often show up over and over again, and at times amplified by the burnout we encounter in our professional life.

Helping my clients to regain their confidence and rediscover their sense of purpose has been one of the most rewarding experiences I had as a psychiatrist. Some of them decided to change careers – often into an adjacent or related creative industry. Most of them returned to their post with a renewed sense of passion and determination. Psychotherapy can be transformative in this regard, and I am always honored to have the opportunity to help my clients live a fuller, more embodied life.