Burnout happens when job demands such as workload, time-pressure, and difficult clients are high as well as when job resources including quality leadership, autonomy and decision authority, recognition, and strong relationships are lacking. The field of cybersecurity is particularly difficult, but that doesn’t mean burnout is inevitable, and it doesn’t mean you can’t recover after experiencing burnout. There are some daily practices that you can take to help you avoid burnout while keeping your performance and productivity high.

Recharging Your Batteries

Each day, you have a certain amount of physical, mental, and emotional energy to spend. Everything you do, every decision you make, and every interaction you have uses some of that energy. This energy is limited and works best when recharged periodically throughout the day. 

1.   Track (and Hack) Your Sleep

Sleep is a recovery accelerator. A good night’s sleep makes everything else more manageable, and you gain more traction in the other healthy habits you are trying to promote. Simply put, if you aren’t sleeping well, it’s affecting your performance and your relationships. We don’t see this because we aren’t good judges of our performance when we have sleep debt. 

However, between your cybersecurity job and other personal responsibilities, expecting you to suddenly get a solid eight hours of sleep every night may not be realistic. Start with tracking your sleep, then make adjustments to increase the quality of sleep you’re getting. If you’re only going to get five hours of sleep, try to make them the best five hours you can get. 

Leverage technology tools such as fitness trackers to monitor your sleep time and quality. Then, use that data to hack your sleep; start testing variables and how they impact your sleep. Change your bedtime, limit screens or use blue blocker (Read more...)