Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and Acadia University identified six key factors that can lead to burnout. These factors, along with examples of how we may experience them during our busy work and study seasons, are: 

• Workload: feeling behind on work projects or in study material. 
• Lack of control: being assigned new work projects or the many uncertainties of actuarial exams. 
• Reward: feeling unsure whether a promotion, raise, bonus or credential is worth the effort required. 
• Community: being around unsupportive people at work or home or both. 
• Fairness: feeling like you have more work than others on your team or retaking an exam after getting a 5. 
• Conflict of values: feeling like work or studying is interfering with family time or other interests. 

So, is burnout unavoidable in our profession? Not necessarily. Here are some questions we can ask ourselves if we feel close to burnout, and some potential ways to recover from burnout if it happens. 

Do you have a realistic daily schedule or study schedule? 

On especially busy days, we must be realistic about what we can reasonably accomplish. Write down every task and estimate the time each thing will take — including time for quick breaks, eating and sleeping. If our total time estimate is around 22-24 hours, we likely won’t be able to do it all, and we’ll end up feeling more stressed the next day as we try to catch up and get through new tasks. What items or meetings can move to another day? Is there anything that we can cut time on, like choosing an easier dinner option or rescheduling an hour-long meeting to half an hour? 

When making a study schedule, try to leave one day each week for reviewing material you’ve already covered and finishing sections from the past few days that took longer than expected. If you have some extra time on those buffer days, you can always move on to the next day’s material — but it’s difficult to review or catch up if every study day is packed with new topics to learn. 

What areas of life can you make easier and less time-consuming? 

Sometimes projects can’t be paused or delegated to others, and we obviously must learn study material ourselves. However, there are some things we can ask for help with — especially “maintenance” tasks in life. We can consider using meal prep companies, meal delivery services and cleaning services during our busiest seasons. We can also let family and friends know that we’ll be less available for a few weeks or months. Getting a few things off of our plates can help us feel much more in control of our lives during these stressful times. 

Have you identified your purpose for going through busy seasons and exams? 

Staying grounded in why we’re putting ourselves through a busy season or the exam process is very important in trying to prevent burnout because of human nature — we need a good purpose to do difficult things, especially with semi-annual exams or annual busy seasons. Consider taking quick breaks during difficult days to write down your purpose for going through the challenging season you’re in — it could be the same reasons every time, or it could change depending on the day. Some purpose examples could be a feeling of accomplishment or fulfillment, raises or bonuses, additional career opportunities or the chance to make yourself or people you care about proud. It’s crucial for us to stay connected to the reasons we’re going through challenging study months or busy seasons so that we don’t run into burnout because of the sixth factor listed earlier — conflict of values. We must see value in what we’re doing; otherwise, it becomes incredibly difficult to persevere. 

What are your stress coping mechanisms, and are they healthy? 

There are different strategies to deal with the pressure of exams or busy season before it leads to burnout. Some of these coping mechanisms could be reading, playing video games, watching television, exercising, playing sports with friends, or doing some cleaning and reorganizing around the house. All of these are fine in moderation, but it’s important to set boundaries — they can become unhealthy coping mechanisms if, for example, you play video games or read until 3 a.m. and can’t concentrate the next morning. 
Some additional helpful coping mechanisms could be: 

• Scheduling time to exercise a few times a week. It’s good to plan this for the time of day when you don’t focus as well on work or studying — maybe late at night or early in the morning. 
• Find a specific routine that helps you be more productive. For studying, it could be 30 minutes of studying before making coffee or tea in the morning or doing flashcards for 30 minutes right after dinner or before bed. At work, it could be similar — maybe cleaning out your email and going over your schedule for the day before making coffee or tea, then working to get as much work finished as you can between then and lunch. 
• Fact-check what you know to be true. Some examples for studying could be reminding yourself that exams are very challenging for everyone, that this study season has an end date, that you’ve studied this material or that you’ve practiced a lot of problems. 

Who are you talking to? 

While it’s great to talk to relatives, partners and friends about how you’re feeling, it’s also important to consider talking to a mental health professional to work through stress and burnout. Sometimes stress comes from something unrelated to work or exams — like a relationship, financial strain, family health issues or that it’s a time of year (like around the holidays or winter) that can be hard for people. We may not fully acknowledge that other things are causing our stress because we are preoccupied with the more obvious challenges of work or studying. Talking to a professional can help us identify these things and work through them.