Traits and Attitudes That Increase Burnout Risk

While many burnout risk factors have to do with job structure and lifestyle factors, certain personality characteristics can exacerbate your experience of stress, making you more susceptible to burnout.

While much of personality is inborn, it’s important to be aware of how your personal makeup and tendencies can contribute to your stress response, so you can adjust what you can. The following personal characteristics can affect your stress level and put you at an increased risk for burnout.

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Perfectionist Tendencies

Striving to do your best is a sign of a hard worker and can be a positive trait that leads to excellence. However, perfectionism can cause excessive stress and sometimes be crippling.

Perfectionists sometimes won’t even try to accomplish a task because they’re too terrified of "failure"—which can be defined as anything less than perfect!

If you’re a perfectionist, you should practice forgiving yourself for being human, and congratulate yourself for being great (even when you’re human).

Pessimism

Pessimists tend to see the world as more threatening than optimists. They worry more about things going wrong, expect more bad things to happen than good, believe in themselves less, and have other key differences compared to optimists.

Pessimists cause themselves unnecessary stress in many everyday situations, which can make them more vulnerable to burnout. Fortunately, optimism can be learned to a certain extent.

Excitability

Some people are just naturally more excitable than others. They have a stronger and more easily triggered stress response. These differences can be observed in very young babies and tend to be stable over a person’s lifetime.

There’s not much you can do to change your body’s chemistry, but you can practice tension relieving strategies that can help you calm down when you do get stressed.

You can also practice positive self-talk strategies, which will help you perceive situations as less threatening.

"Type A" Personality

You’ve probably heard of a "Type A" personality, but did you know that people with the personality type may be more at risk for cardiac disease and other health issues?

Being a "Type A" personality (or even just working closely with someone who is) can cause chronic stress, which increases your risk for burnout.

If you find yourself being impatient with people and life’s minor hassles and having trouble keeping from lashing out at people, you might be a "Type A" personality.

Poor Fit for the Job

Are you detail-oriented or do you look at the overall big picture? Do you tend toward extroversion or are you more comfortable away from lots of people? Do you like structure or prefer flexibility?

If your life’s work requires skills that fit your strengths, you're more likely to feel happy with what you do. However, if your personality doesn’t mesh with your job description, you will feel stressed much of the time and be more likely to burn out.

Not sure if you and your lifestyle are a good match? There are several online tests that you can use to reveal your inborn strengths and weaknesses, understand how your personality characteristics differ from those of your friends and colleagues; and see how well your preferences and talents match up with your job.

Lack of Belief in What You Do

Some jobs are poorly compensated, but supply great rewards in terms of making a difference in the lives of others and making the world a better place. For those who believe in what they’re doing, stress is less of a factor; however, if you don’t believe in your life’s work, it’s harder to put up with the difficulties that come with it.

Whether you’ve become disillusioned with your job, you went into your field for the wrong reasons, your values conflict with those of a company you work for, or you never really believed in what you were doing in the first place, if your life’s work conflicts with your values, the cognitive dissonance created by doing something you don’t believe in day after day can take a toll and lead to an increased risk for burnout.