Burnt Out in Your Finance Job? 4 Ways to Reignite Your Motivation 

Let’s start with the facts: the finance industry has a problem with burnout and anyone who’s worked in it can tell you as much. It’s fast paced, full time work that has a nasty way of creeping into your personal hours if you’re not careful. It requires focus and dedication along with the skills to judge risks and rewards. And even when you do everything perfectly, finance always comes with a measure of luck involved.

All told it’s a recipe for stress and where you find stress, you’ll inevitably find people feeling burnout at work. But it doesn’t have to be this way, not if you take the right precautions and learn how to build a career that works for you. With the right approach, you’ll be able to reignite your passion for finance and beat burnout once and for all.

Don’t believe us? Well why not try our four handy tips?

1. Put Purpose First

Passion doesn’t happen in a vacuum. When people start their finance careers, they often believe that they can find drive purely in their work ethic. Many think that a good salary alone is enough to push them through the long grueling days, not to mention the occasional phone call just as they’re getting into bed.

That mindset doesn’t last.

When burnout hits, your sense of purpose is usually the first casualty. As ambitious and high-achieving as you are, sooner or later your targets become just another number while hitting them takes more and more work.

If that’s the position you’re in, then it’s time to take a step back and ask yourself why it was that you loved this job in the first place. Was it the problem-solving? The satisfaction of a job well done? Or was it using your knowledge to help grow companies you believed had a future?

Whatever it was, that’s what you’re looking to get back. For some, that means reconnecting with their roots and changing the way they approach projects while for others that can mean changing jobs altogether. What’s important is that you find a place where you feel that your work has real value again.

2. You Define Your Productivity

Many burnt out finance professionals equate productivity with long hours and visible effort. That said, true productivity is about outcomes, not the time it takes to achieve them.

Start by questioning the assumptions you’ve absorbed from your workplace culture. Do you really need to be online until midnight to prove your commitment? Are those extra reports adding value, or just fuelling your exhaustion?

Try measuring the impact of each task. If a task is only there for show, then cut it out. Don’t waste your energy trying to prove how much you’re working. Use it effectively to make the important differences.

It’s also important to place real and meaningful boundaries around your time. If you’re not in office hours then don’t answer the phone. If someone asks you for a favour on a weekend then, hard as it might be, learn to say no.

In finance, it can feel like everything has to be done right away but usually that’s just your inner perfectionist talking. Boundaries matter and if your job can’t respect them, then it’s not respecting you. And if you’re job isn’t respecting you, then it’s no wonder that you’re feeling burnt out at work.

3. Make Professional Friends

It can be easy to think of networking as a purely professional exercise – something people do to further their careers. That can be true but it doesn’t have to be. In fact, often the most effective networking comes from making real friendships with your work colleagues.

Not only can this help you build further industry connections and gain professional advantages but it can also do wonders for your motivation. It brings a sense of shared purpose, that you’re working towards the same goal. When you do put that extra work in – as you inevitably will from time to time – you’re not just doing it for some nameless, faceless company, but for the people you care about.

4. Make A Change in Your Career

Sometimes the problem isn’t just the long hours or even the lack of purpose. Sometimes the cause of burnout is the exhaustion that comes with constant repetition.

Human brains like solving problems. It gives us a sense of pride, achievement, and progress. That said, you can only solve the same problem so many times before it stops feeling fun and starts feeling exhausting. You feel like you’re not really discovering something new but applying the same knowledge over and over again. It’s repetitive and dull.

This problem is called overspecialisation and it’s what often happens when people become really, really good at one specific task.

Several famous examples of this come from the world of chess in which there have historically been a number of players who grew so good at the game that they could not find opponents worth playing. From the 17th century’s Gioachino Greco to the late great Bobby Fisher many of history’s greatest players have ultimately stepped away from the game to pursue other interests.

And what’s true for chess is also true for finance. Whether you’re digging deep into forecasting, compliance, or client reporting, sooner or later mastery can get the better of you and it’s time to move on to something new.

Of course, that doesn’t always mean stepping away altogether. The wonderful thing about finance is that it’s often all about application. You may feel you’ve solved your niche but there are plenty of other worlds to conquer.