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Posting by: Margaret Wilson
Date: September 17, 2009
If you’re feeling burned out in the family business, you’re not alone. Even the most successful people experience it from time to time. It can happen when you’re feeling overwhelmed by business or as the result of prolonged tension in a relationship. Whatever the cause, burnout doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s tough to fight off when you’re right in the middle of it. So it’s important to recognize three sources that can lead to burnout – boundaries, balance and boredom – before they threaten your health, work, relationships and the family business.
It’s obvious that we’re all dealing with a fair amount of stress these days. Ten years ago, 10-hour workdays were commonplace. Today, many people work 12 to 14 hour days, sometimes six days a week. Add to this the time we spend in commuting. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, nearly 10 million people now drive more than an hour to work, up 50 percent from 1990. And then there’s technology stress. We can accomplish much more in a workday, but technology also can cause us to take on more than we should. PDA beeps and cell phone rings keep us in a constant state of high alert.
Now add the additional challenge of balancing business and family and it’s easy to see why members in a family business are especially susceptible to burnout.
When you work in a non-family business, your coworkers probably don’t know you as well as your family members do. When the workday is done, you go home to your family and focus on that part of your life. But when you’re part of a family business, it’s not so easy to maintain the boundaries between work time and personal time. It takes agreement and commitment to keep them separate and distinct, but it can greatly reduce your stress.
Another classic path to burnout is having unrealistic expectations in the relentless pursuit of your goals. It’s a blessing when you love your business so much that you’re willing to work long hours over an extended period of time. It’s a curse when you don’t realize that you’ve moved past the healthy balance point.
When you’re feeling driven by work, it’s also easy to put off physical needs so that you can “get this one thing done.” Unfortunately, that “one thing” turns into the “next thing” and the next and the next. But there’s a big difference between having energy and working off adrenaline. So as simple as it sounds, when you’re tired, rest. When you’re hungry, eat. It’s a simple but effective way to break a cycle that can lead to burnout.
On the other hand, sometimes the cause of burnout isn’t having too many challenges, it’s not feeling challenged at all. We all get bored with our work at times and it happens to even the brightest, most ambitious of us. Left unattended though, boredom can lead to burnout. So keep your business life interesting. Widen your circle of contacts. Get out and about. See what’s going on out in the field or down on the shop floor. Visit with a customer or one of your employees. Shake up your routine. While there’s no instant cure, any action is better than sitting around bored or in a bad mood.
If you’re interested in passing on the company you’ve built to the next generation, you’ve got to be in it for the long haul. So is it really better to burn out than rust out? When it comes to your family business, we don’t think so.
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