6 Symptoms of rustout

An optimum level of pressure allows you to perform to your best. It arouses your body and mind, allowing you to take on any upcoming challenges. When you no longer feel like you can cope with the pressure, you become stressed. If left unchecked, the stress will eventually lead to burnout.  Too little pressure, on the other hand, and you begin the journey to rustout. The symptoms of rustout get progressively worse and can include serious health issues such as depression.

Symptoms of rustout

The symptoms of rustout are like a journey, getting progressively worse as the problem persists. The following steps are an example of how that journey might look:

1. Underload

The main sources of rustout are insufficient quantity, quality or variety of work. Where one or more of these situations exist, your knowledge and skills are being underemployed and your opportunities for personal growth are minimal.

 2. Frustration

When your knowledge and skills are underemployed and your opportunities for personal growth are restricted, you begin to feel frustrated. You feel as though you are stuck in a rut and going nowhere.

 3. Bored

You are not being challenged. You are not being employed to your full potential. Your work is too easy. Boredom quickly sets in.

 4. Apathy

Work becomes a means to an end. The key objective is to survive the week’s work and collect your pay. In terms of your own performance, you do just enough to get by. In terms of the company’s performance, you don’t really care. If you are there a long time, you may even see the company’s failure as an opportunity for a large redundancy payment.

 5. Depression

You no longer care how you, or the company, perform. You feel that you offer no value and this affects your whole life. Your self-esteem and self-worth are decimated to the point where you become depressed.

 6. Total rustout

At this point you do not care, you have no motivation whatsoever to try and improve your circumstances, and you feel as though you have little or nothing of value to contribute. Depending on circumstances in other areas of your life; you may or may not experience depression. The best you can manage is presenteeism and in some cases you cannot even manage that much.

Rustout is a common form or stress. If you are struggling with stress, check out Stress Free Living.

Like many people, you probably joke about wanting an easy job but a job which is too easy, is no laughing matter. Rustout is a serious issue with serious consequences. The symptoms of rustout are experienced by both the underemployed and the unemployed. As a human being, you need challenge and pressure to grow and to fulfil your potential. Without the challenge and pressure, the symptoms of rustout kick in. The longer the problem persists, the more severe the symptoms of rustout become. By familiarising yourself with the symptoms of rustout, you enable yourself to make an early intervention thus preventing unnecessary suffering.