Reducing workplace burnout: the benefits of exercise

The most interesting part of the study (to me) was this:<p><i>&gt; Cardiovascular exercise was found to increase well-being and decrease psychological distress, perceived stress, and emotional exhaustion. Resistance training was noticeably effective in increasing well-being and personal accomplishment and to reduce perceived stress.</i><p>and<p><i>&gt; Different types of exercise may assist employees in different ways.</i><p>I&#x27;ve always been told that exercise improves feelings of well-being, reduces stress, etc. I&#x27;ve <i>never</i> heard about the different effects that different types of exercise can have on the psyche -- although it makes sense, for example, that improving at resistance training would lead to a sense of accomplishment. If taken to its logical conclusion, this study implies that we should be working out in different ways based on the psychological ailments we may be experiencing. That&#x27;s fascinating to me.

Could this be the case of missing the forest for the trees? Perhaps the burnout is happening due to stagnant wages and inflation which forces people to work longer or take up additional unfulfilling jobs. Exercises perhaps may only be helping in workers handle additional stress but doesn&#x27;t improve their being on the whole.<p>Productivity vs Hourly Wage [0]<p>GDP vs Median household income [1]<p>[0] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.decisionsonevidence.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2011&#x2F;09&#x2F;Great-Prosperity-vs-Great-Recession.jpg" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.decisionsonevidence.com&#x2F;wp-content&#x2F;uploads&#x2F;2011&#x2F;0...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;en&#x2F;e&#x2F;e2&#x2F;US_GDP_per_capita_vs_median_household_income.png" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;upload.wikimedia.org&#x2F;wikipedia&#x2F;en&#x2F;e&#x2F;e2&#x2F;US_GDP_per_ca...</a>

After a few years in the health industry, whenever I see a statement like this one:<p><i>Organisations wishing to proactively reduce burnout can do so by encouraging their employees to access regular exercise programs.</i><p>My brain translates the suggestion into real-world application, which in the US seems to go like this:<p><i>Organisations wishing to proactively increase wellness metrics and reduce their expenditures can do so by instituting highly invasive biometric screening programs and jacking up premiums, while offering no actual time or fiscal incentive to join a gym or exercise independently.</i><p>Quick apology if that sounds terribly cynical, but it seems like the go-to path by businesses. I say this as a person who feels grateful to have a job where I can go home and work out for 20 minutes 3 times during the work week. Also, I know that eating &quot;better&quot; takes time and effort both in the sourcing and production of materials, which may or may not be less expensive to the individual in the short&#x2F;long term.

My own anecdata definitely supports this study&#x27;s conclusion. I <i>wish</i> I&#x27;d been in the habit of regular exercise when I first got into the startup scene.<p>That said, I fear the outcome of their recommendation:<p><i>&gt; Organisations wishing to proactively reduce burnout can do so by encouraging their employees to access regular exercise programs.</i><p>If burnout is prevalent enough among an organisation&#x27;s workforce for &quot;proactively reducing&quot; it to be strategically worthwhile, that suggests it would be much more important to introspect on why they are burning out so many of their employees in the first place. e.g. does your culture explicitly value &quot;hard work&quot;, which can turn into encouraging unpaid overtime? When you celebrate hitting deadlines, do you look back on whether it was thanks to good planning or &quot;crunch mode&quot;? Do people understand the reasons for decisions that affect them?<p>Not that these are easy problems to fix, but I&#x27;d hate to see companies start thinking burnout is something that can be &quot;fixed&quot; with a gym discount and workout incentive schemes.

In a documentary about Studio Ghibli, they show every couple hours where everyone gets up from their desk and does calisthenics, even Miyazaki.<p>I don&#x27;t know if this is common in Japan or just a Studio Ghibli practice, but I was impressed with the idea of it.

I&#x27;m very fortunate to work for a company that values health and wellness to the point where they provide workout facilities for employees and trainers twice a week.<p>I used to never go to a gym, and I&#x27;d be lucky if I could convince myself to do some bicep curls and situps&#x2F;pushups at home in-between rounds of various games I play. I have weak discipline in that area. I&#x27;ve always had a high metabolism to the point where I was &quot;scrawny&quot;, so I would never get fat from not working out, but I definitely felt the drain on my energy, and overall physical fitness and strength.<p>Since starting at this company, while I&#x27;ve lost 15 pounds (not something skinny people typically aim for), I&#x27;ve gained a ton of muscle, and am physically in the best shape I&#x27;ve been in my entire life.<p>The confidence that comes from that is one thing, but the increased energy and how it has helped me focus on work while reducing stress from juggling many balls are side benefits that were completely unexpected, and perhaps the greatest benefits. The fact that it was so noticeable to me was what really blew me away--it was literally night and day.<p>TBH, I likely wouldn&#x27;t do this though if we just had the gym and no trainers--I&#x27;m one of those folks who needs someone giving them instructions in the gym and yelling at them when they are slacking or doing it wrong. I&#x27;d wager that this has driven a significant productivity boost for myself (and likely others here) because of the overall increase in energy. I also end up focusing on tough work problems I&#x27;m trying to solve during my workouts because of the amazing increase in focus I have, and it is amazing to be able to focus with that level of clarity.<p>It also probably helps cut down indirectly on insurance claims which is a nice plus.<p>In this day and age of always being connected, and having 50 million things to juggle at once, it is easy to be overwhelmed. There&#x27;s something about a solid workout that just forces all of these extraneous thoughts from your head and lets you focus on 1-2 things that I personally attribute to helping reduce the risk of burnout.<p>The flip-side of course is ensuring proper work&#x2F;life balance, and I&#x27;d say that is pretty healthy here as well (and was one of the deciding factors in me choosing to work here vs. elsewhere). Companies really need to embrace it and promote it as part of their culture, otherwise it becomes one of those things that they need to try to fit in along with everything else in an unsustainable way.

As a long distance runner I have no doubt there&#x27;s value to exercise. It pays to be healthy. It&#x27;s also hard to stick to an exercise plan year round.<p>This is a small sample size study that only lasted 4 weeks. Anecdotally, longer duration exercise regimes can themselves result in burnout-- it&#x27;s hard to make it a habit.<p>Perhaps the takeaway here is that a short-term exercise regimes can serve to distract you from the work that is burning you out?

Eat healthy food. Exercise. Get enough sleep.<p>You will feel better; both physically and mentally. Positive habit leads to more positive habit. Pay attention to how <i>you</i> feel. You don&#x27;t need scientific studies to prove these things are &quot;good&quot; for you.

the best thing i&#x27;ve done in the past year is fork over a bunch of money to a personal barbell coach to get my ass up and into the gym on a regular schedule. he also supervises my general cardio routine.<p>i&#x27;m simply unable to do it myself without the external personal and financial accountability. but once the money changes hands, i look at it like a business transaction &#x2F; work and it taps into a different set of motivations in my head.<p>if you&#x27;ve had false starts and other trouble getting on a resistance and cardio program, try hiring a good trainer. if you&#x27;re intrinsically motivated to be fit, count your blessings.

How are you supposed to find time to exercise when you&#x27;re working 10-12 hours a day? I can barely find time to clean my apartment.<p>And if you&#x27;re not (can I have your job?), you&#x27;re probably less likely to be burning out.

I workout at the Golds here in Jupiter, FL every day after work. It started, like many times before, as a, &quot;That&#x27;s it! I&#x27;m getting into shape!&quot;, back in February. I wanted to put on some muscle weight (went from 180lbs in Feb to now 208lbs; my goal is somewhere around here). Then, like very few times before, it became an addiction. The exhilaration of high speed running (I&#x27;ll set the treadmill to 12mph and see how long I can run at that speed - usually no more than 1&#x2F;4 mile), the feeling of accomplishment after weights (I do weights every day, treadmill is just my warmup).<p>My stress and anxiety (had serious anxiety since 2012 - drugs did nothing to help) have been reduced drastically. It&#x27;s very strange because generalized anxiety disorder is more of an epinephrine issue, but when you have it it feels very much mental. It&#x27;s not until you start finding relief from working out that you start to accept that it is truly a physiological issue. All the fears (worrying about loved ones, worrying about having some disease, worrying about job security, etc.) just fade away with each new workout. It just takes a couple months to get to this point.

One tip: if you feel you are close to a burnout, sleep. Sleep a lot.

The sense of well-being from endurance exercise such as running is phony, however. You&#x27;re not solving any problems when you go for a run. (And I don&#x27;t mean technical problems whereby you figure out some software bug while you&#x27;re out covering the miles, which is great!)<p>Well, sure, you&#x27;re temporarily solving the dependent problem of discomfort from the stress caused by problems, which is a problem itself.<p>You have to use the sense of well-being as a motivator to actually confront problems when you come back from the roads or trails, rather than as a &quot;drug&quot; to escape from them.

At this point it would be news if exercise isn&#x27;t beneficial for $CONCERN.<p>So the question is how, do we make it so that people want to get of their ass and exercise? Considering the general state of health in most first world countries (especially given the recent news that half of US adults are either diabetic or pre-diabetic), this may very well be the question in public health.<p>And yet we almost never see any research about this.

So let me get this straight: at a place where they already burn you out, they will eventually force you to work even more by &#x27;working out&#x27; ?<p>Uhhh, no thanks.

If you&#x27;re a person for whom efficiency is highly motivating: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lesswrong.com&#x2F;lw&#x2F;juc&#x2F;optimal_exercise&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lesswrong.com&#x2F;lw&#x2F;juc&#x2F;optimal_exercise&#x2F;</a>

Rad, now let&#x27;s repeat it a few dozen times with a larger sample size, or it&#x27;s an anecdote

It is nice to have NIH give us a good justification for having a surfboard rack in the office :)

I love working out. It is so much fun now I have so much more energy!

Wow, not one mention of yoga. It worked for me.

anything possible to get more work out of us can only be a Good Thing

.... no focus on recommended prescription drugs? Study is obviously flawed.