Burnout – Prevention is always better than cure

Do you have any tips on dealing with burnout, especially when you have a high workload and feel like you can’t afford to not be productive?

As part of our wellbeing blog series, here’s another response to a great question posed during our wellbeing panel at the Law Society of Scotland’s annual conference in October 2022. Nicola Rylatt– a member of the Lawscot Wellbeing Steering Group and a Solicitor at Glasgow City Council – considers how early intervention can be crucial to managing and avoiding burnout.

“If you don’t make time for your wellness, you’ll be forced to make time for your illness.”

You may well have seen that quote from wellness coach Joyce Sunada before, and perhaps even shared it on social media yourself over the years. It’s always struck me as a cleverly obvious statement. We know it’s true, so why do so many of us fail to heed its message?

Let’s think of it this way – you are out walking or jogging and you notice a niggling pain in your knee. You don’t think much of it initially and put it down to just having a bit of an off day. Over the course of the next month however, the pain is becoming harder to ignore so you take yourself off to the doctor, who tells you that you need to rest up for at least a few weeks in order to avoid long-term problems. On the advice of your doctor therefore, you take the required time to recover.

Now try thinking about your mental health and wellbeing in the same way. It’s an obvious analogy but so much harder to apply in our everyday lives.

Why is this?

Well, it’s no secret that the legal profession is tough, competitive and stressful, not to mention synonymous with working long hours. Trying to maintain a work-life balance can be a challenge, particularly when many lawyers don’t have a lot of downtime and often work through holidays due to intense workloads and court diaries for example. Many lawyers can feel pressure, whether that be externally from firm management or their own internal pressure, to ensure they are always available to clients or colleagues and superiors. They feel that being always available shows their value and commitment to their role. With fee targets, client and staff meetings, court appearances as well as the admin side of our jobs, it’s a wonder we haven’t all set up camp in our offices. Permanently running on this hamster wheel – taking on more work than you have the capacity to manage and not taking the time to rest – can inevitably cause our mental health difficulties.

Burnout has been brought into the public consciousness recently by the resignation of Jacinda Ardern, the 42-year-old Prime Minister of New Zealand, who on 19 January declared she no longer had enough “in the tank” to do her job. The media quickly identified this as burnout and there seems to be a hope that such a public figure openly discussing it will affect change by making the topic more relatable and reducing stigma around discussing mental unwellness.

Burnout can result in physical and mental exhaustion, anxiety, depression, actual physical pain, disrupted sleep and physical illness. It occurs when your mind and body can take no more and is begging for a break. If that break isn’t taken, burnout can cause heart disease, serious depression and a myriad of other physical and mental conditions.

So how can we prevent burnout getting to this stage? The answer is quite simple – we have to slow down a bit and take care of our mental health and wellbeing.

I know there will be many reading this who will think that this is not possible – employees and employers alike – however, something has to change.

We have to be aware of the unhealthy working practices many of us are engaged in that risk causing a decline in our mental health. Employers also have a duty of care to protect the wellbeing of their staff. They cannot do this however without knowing about the difficulties their employees are facing, so it is vitally important that firms and workplaces are creating safe and pro-mental health environments that allow for these types of discussions to take place.

Employers can ensure they have mental health first aiders, who are trained to look out for signs of burnout in the workplace. They can conduct stress risk assessments to identify any areas of concerns and implement a wellbeing plan for employees. Making sure that your employees and colleagues know that they are appreciated and valued can also help with the core causes of burnout.

If you are finding your workload overwhelming, speak to your colleagues or line managers, discuss your concerns and ask for additional support to manage your workload.

Ensure that you are making time for you. Do things that you enjoy to enable your mind and body to relax the way it really needs to.

Talk, talk, talk – opening up to friends or colleagues can also lift some weight from your shoulders and may encourage others to do the same.