Penelope Trunk The Brazen Careerist

Job burnout is as much about your dreams as it is about your work, because burnout is the gap between your expectations and your ability to meet them.

So burnout isn't about how many hours you work (contrary to a New York Times column by Lisa Belkin from last year). It's about whether the hours you work bring you the desired results.

It's the Work, Not the Hours

For example, if you have very flexible hours and can go on an early date, go back to work after dinner, and still get eight hours of sleep, then a 100-hour workweek might be fine for you.

In fact, in her book "Career Burnout: Causes and Cures," Ben-Gurion University professor Ayala Pines found that serial entrepreneurs, known for working very long hours, were the workers least prone to burnout. (Those most prone are pediatric nurses in burn units, she discovered.)

According to Christina Maslach, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, burnout doesn't come from overwork, but from an inability to get what you need from work. She should know -- she created the widely used Maslach Burnout Inventory to test one's level of burnout.

Pay Attention to the Signs

In a great New York magazine story about burnout published in 2006, which I've drawn from throughout this article, Jennifer Senior described the six areas of burnout to watch out for:

1. Working too much.

2. Working in an unjust environment.

3. Working with little social support.

4. Working with little agency or control.

5. Working in the service of values we loathe.

6. Working for insufficient reward, whether the currency is money, prestige, or positive feedback.

The effect of burnout is depersonalization, claims Columbia University psychology professor (and burnout sufferer) Barry Farber. In Senior's article, he says that it's not that people are uncaring, but "their level of caring cannot be sustained in the absence of results."

Senior describes it more poetically: "People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphors of emptiness -- they're a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge." This is no small thing, and we should all be alert to it.

Get Real

What can you do? Align your expectations with reality. Senior reports a body of research that shows younger people burn out faster because of their unrealistic expectations, and older people have more perspective based on their experience. But this is hard to control, because if you don't have experience, what can you do except build it up over time?

Fortunately, there's a portion you can control no matter how old you are, because like almost everything else about happiness, it comes down to your connections with other people. Maslach found that married people burn out less often than unmarried ones because a spouse provides another means for fulfillment besides a job. And Pines found that people are more prone to burnout in societies that value the individual above family or community.

So make sure you're reaching your goals and maintaining close friendships. You'll be less likely to burn out.

Remembrance of Jobs Past

The bottom line is that you are, to some extent, dependent on your job to keep you from burning out. For example, we subscribe to many myths about workplace stress, but it's really whether or not we like our work that determines whether or not it's stressful.

If you don't have a good job, think about the last time that you did, and try to put those elements back into place. In fact, promotions frequently lead to burnout, because people are promoted from doing something they're great at into a role they have no proven talent for. Researchers have found that in many cases, being promoted is rated as more stressful than divorce -- by people who have endured both, of course.

So get good at your job, and expect to progress. But when you do, make it a high priority to put into place the features of a good job mentioned above -- the kind that keep people from burning out.