For young companies that demand so much of their employees, hard work can spiral into burnout. Learning to prevent it—for yourself and your employees—is essential to your success as a business owner. Here are three steps to get started:

Step 1. Watch for signs of resentment.

"Burnout is about resentment," Mayer told the audience at 92Y. "[Preventing it is] about knowing yourself well enough to know what it is you're giving up that makes you resentful."

Resentment is often part of burnout, but not always and often not until the late stages. A stronger correlation, and an earlier symptom, are feelings of helplessness and lack of control.

So if you're not resentful you'll never burnout?

Doesn't pass the sniff test.

Also, her attachment of resentment to burnout seems to imply that to her, burnout is a moral failing of the poor soul who's burning out, kind of akin to the ancient and discredited equivalence of PTSD/Shell Shock with cowardice.

Jason, in Marissa's quote about burnout she compares herself with Churchill and Einstein:

"I don't really believe in burnout. A lot of people work really hard for decades and decades, like Winston Churchill and Einstein... Burnout is about resentment. It's about knowing what matters to you so much that if you don't get it that you're resentful."

She believes in hard work and no excuses. I think that's the essence of where she's coming from.

Which is interesting in the context of all the advice people have been giving Marissa Mayer.

And Patton famously didn't believe in battle fatigue, except now science tells us otherwise. Burnout is NOT a function of long hours or hard work, it is a function of situational powerlessness.

Looking for signs of resentment might be a good yardstick for a manager metric. However resentment, ime, is a lagging symptom of burnout and the psychic damage is already present by the time resentment becomes noticeable.

This has been a great thread for insight. I've also heard that video game play has been a sign of burnout. I must be burned out as I've been playing for 30 years!

hmm.... It took me until now to finally realize that she is mostly talking about _herself_ more than her mgmt approach... *sigh*

I don't think there's any difference between herself and her management approach.

And Greg, may you play video games for another 30 years!