Dancing With The Tsars

And in this corner, we have our celebrity Tsar:  Peter The Great.  For his first selection, Peter will choose a very aggressive break-dance/hip-hop hybrid to Disney's "Get Your Head In The Game."

Seriously, of all of Russia's rulers, Peter the Great always interests me.  He certainly understood the concept of Carpe Factum, and he's credited with creating some amazing infrastructure for the Eastern power:  great cities and buildings, water passages, military might, not to mention dumping both an undesirable wife and a threatening female rival into convents to get rid of them.

But at what cost did all of his accomplishments come?  Let's just say he "churned through" quite a few little Russian worker bees to get things done.  I've known a few people like that in the corporate world.  They require their people to "step up to the plate" ... in my opinion, personal heroics and project performance do not go hand-in-hand.  My first project recovery involved saving two programmers for the six straight months of 70-80 hour work weeks.  Our biggest constraint when we recreated the project plan was that NOBODY work more than 45 hours per week.  And we held the team to that.  And we completed on time.

Burnout is a serious issue in today's work force.  The PsyBlog posted some interesting findings on burnout at work, especially symptoms and indicators.  I found it interesting that "influence at work" and "job demands" were actually NOT predictors of burnout.  If that's the case and this study is valid (we'll make that assumption since they cite their source), then is it safe to assume that burnout is actually a personal decision of the one who is burning out?  YIKES!

One of the things I pride myself on is knowing when to determine that enough is enough.  The fall tends to be a busier time for me, but I've also learned how to say "no" to maintain a balance.  And people generally respect that.

So, are you suffering burnout?  Are you taking charge of those feelings?  What have been your best burnout mitigation strategies?

Or can you dance through on your good looks?