9 Questions to Help You Figure Out Why You’re Burned Out

The World Health Organization characterizes burnout as comprising three key dimensions: sustained feelings of exhaustion, feelings of personal inefficacy, and increased mental distance from one’s job. In this article, the author outlines nine questions to ask yourself under each of these three categories to help you diagnose what’s causing your burnout. It’s likely a combination of factors, requiring a number of changes over time to fully address it, and not something a one-off vacation can reverse right away. Nonetheless, the answers to these questions serve as a starting point and can inform steps you can take to address your burnout and possibly prevent it from happening again in the future.