One out of every five employees in India is overworked and stressed out, and more than 50 percent claim to be experiencing some degree of work-related depression, reveals a 2019 survey by an HR tech start-up named Hush. According to Anju Jain, a psychologist, business leader and author of the recently published book Burn Out – Beat Fatigue To Thrive In An Overworked World (Penguin Random House), what compounds this problem even further is the fact that burnout has become "the new normal: an acceptable by-product of hard work and success." This, despite the fact that the implications of burnout are grave, with coronary heart disease, gastrointestinal issues, high cholesterol and even death under the age of 45 being linked to it.

Adds success coach Sushma IR, "Factors such as upbringing, and cultural and societal conditioning all play a pivotal role in employees staying late at work, never being able to say no, working on weekends and having an extremely high response rate to emails and messages at any time of the day or night. When most employees follow such a pattern, there is a lot of pressure on others to live up to the same standards." The first step towards breaking free of this vicious cycle, therefore, is to be accountable for the situation. If you are going to blame your manager for setting stringent expectations or your co-workers for meeting those expectations, or your family for pressurising you to work, you are always going to feel like a victim. When you take accountability for your situation and believe that you can always make a choice, it puts you in an empowered state, she adds.
Jain along with other experts, share strategies to protect yourself from burning out.