“Define the activities you enjoy. Then look for a job that will provide you the opportunity to do those activities. When your job is fun, you’ll never think of it as work.”

This advice was one of “Uncle Tom’s Top Ten Tips”, a list that I prepared for my nephew at graduation this year. You probably noticed that I worked some Activity Based Management into the advice, e.g. activities. I am occasionally asked, “Tom, how do you find the time and energy to travel, lead workshops, consult, write, serve in church leadership and spend time with your family?” My basic response is “I enjoy what I do. I don’t think of it as work. I can always find time, energy and resources to do activities that I love and enjoy.” Sure, I get mentally and physically tired, like everyone does from time to time. But I’ve never reached the point of burnout.

ABM project leaders, champions and experts are very susceptible to burnout. They often operate under a pressure-filled deadline to identify cost improvements, reengineer processes or create ABC product cost models. In many companies, ABM coordinators receive little or no visible support from senior management. As a result, employees fail to show up for ABM meetings, disregard requests for activity data and ignore the findings. And while at times it can be enjoyable to be the center of attention, all too many ABM champions do a poor job of re-producing themselves. By not training others the principles of ABM, project leaders become an informational bottleneck, eventually resulting in the death of ABM, and sometimes the leader.

Are you losing your momentum or enthusiasm, personally and professionally? Here’s a quick quiz from T.D. Jake’s “Maximize the Moment” book that measures burnout.

Answer yes or no to each question.

• Are you often sullen and disgruntled when you are away from work?
• Does your life seem one-dimensional because there is little if any diversity in your lifestyle?
• Do you wake up in the morning feeling tired and drained?
• Are you losing your passion, sense of humor or optimism?
• Do you jump from one goal to another without stopping to appreciate what you have already attained?
• Do you ever find yourself unexpectedly crying or inwardly hopeless?
• Do you define yourself according to what you do rather than who you are?
• Are you lowering your standards and losing enthusiasm in areas where you were once meticulously detailed?
• Do you find yourself wringing your hands and clenching your jaw, overwhelmed by problems that seem difficult to sort through?
• Is your public demeanor devouring your private life?

If you answered “Yes” to seven or more of these questions, you’ve likely reached burnout. If you scored four to six, it’s time to take action and reverse direction.

“The cobbler’s children go without shoes.” This old saying often applies to ABM project leaders, champions of change, team members and consultants. We preach and teach the principles of ABM yet overlook the application of them to ourselves.

Apply the following ABM principles to prevent or eliminate burnout in your personal and professional life:

• Burnout is often caused by not knowing what we want, yet killing ourselves to get it.When you implemented ABM you defined specific goals or objectives, e.g. reduce overhead cost by 10%. Find a quiet place and spend one hour listing what you need, not what you want. Define your own performance measures.
• Management uses ABM to determine if resource consumption is balanced.They will personally classify activities as required or discretionary to determine if time is being wasted on unnecessary activities. You can do the same. I recently heard a time management expert say that most people spend one hour per day “Looking for Misplaced Things”. If true, this equates to six weeks per year of discretionary time. Get organized and use the time for more important required activities.
• Take a blank sheet of paper. Draw a line down the middle. On the left side, list all the activities you enjoy. On the right, list all the activities you detest. These are your own non-value added activities. Target one for elimination. Define actions that you take this week to re-deploy that wasted time to your value-added activities listed on the left.
• Excessive secondary or administrative activities are not fun and cause burnout. Secondary activities are those tasks that you feel should not be a part of your job. It is very difficult to do a good job on an activity that you do not enjoy performing. Primary activities support your company, departmental or personal mission statement. Secondary, as the name implies, are not your primary purpose in life. Therefore, take steps to eliminate, reassign or right-size them.
• Activities form business processes. Yet we often forget to link ourselves to other people doing ABM. Find one or more ABM “friends”. Don’t become an island. You don’t have to deal with burnout by yourself. ABM is now almost fifteen years old. As a result, there are many people worldwide who have years and years of experience and wisdom to share with you.
• Activity and business process information helps senior management allocate the limited resources of the organization to its mission and strategic plan. Resource allocation is one of the four primary reasons why Peter Drucker recommends ABM in his books and teaching. We need to re-evaluate our personal time allocation periodically. If there is not a balance between physical, mental, spiritual and rest activities, burnout can occur. Are you taking care of your physical body? Are you feeding your mind with new ideas from books or seminars? Have you made worship, prayer and Bible reading a part of your weekly schedule? Are you taking time out to prevent burn out?

In his novel “A Tale of Two Cities”, Charles Dickens recognized this striking paradox. He wrote, “It was the best of times and the worst of times.” You might ask, “How can that be possible? How can things be going there very best and also be at there very worst?” No one encounters sustained success without strain and challenge. Stress, left unchecked, will rob you of the feeling of accomplishment. Use Activity Based Management principles to evaluate and improve your personal and professional life. Don’t wait. As motivational speaker Zig Ziglar says, “You act your way into feeling. Not feel your way into acting.” If you are nearing burnout, its time to act.