Darn, Bob's good! My definition of burnout vs. demotivation was popping into my mind as I was reading along, and we had the very same factors in mind. Burnout is generally an internal physical and psychological state provoked by an accumulation of factors; demotivation is externally derived and primarily imposed upon the worker by the working environment -- managers, co-workers, company culture -- and a consequence from which the worker often has little control.

The suggestions are right on, as usual.

Hey Bob,

This is how I beat the IT blues, I switch my personal life from Windows to OSX. Too bad it didn't happen while I was still in IT. I would have stayed.

MS bashing is very a la mode but there are many reasons why. I started like most IT consultants, fresh, invigorated and ready to tackle challenging project. 7 Years after realizing I was doing more troubleshooting, tweaking obvious things for clients, upgrading, making clients spend more money for products that never live to their hype and sorting out vulnerabilities, I realized Windows was a waste of life and I was only making Bill richer.

Had I had my PowerBook, I could have gone into any networks and troubleshoot easily without hassle, something I rarely achieved with Windows. Sure there was Linux, but back then on a laptop, that was hell.

So want to rekindle that IT passion? Get a Mac for your personal guilty pleasure. It sure has rekindled my taste for IT.

Another possibility is to ask himself when he last took a vacation?

Most of us need a few days off from time to time.

Actually, whether you're stressed & demotivated OR burned out, talking to a professional could be useful. Talking to a trusted mentor/colleague can sometimes help you refocus too. The other thing that can help is taking a bit of time off to figure out what's going on. Not necessarily the distraction of a vacation, so much as some focused time to get in touch with what you really think/feel/want. This can be as little or as long as needed, but enough to get out of the regular work routine, which in my experience seems to be about 2 weeks.

I burned out last year & took a 2 week leave of absence to sort myself out. What helped me get back was getting to a point where I could set clear boundaries around what I was willing to do to succeed (i.e. NOT perpetual 80 hour weeks!), what I was really interested in doing, and where my work fit into the rest of my life. I came back to my old job, but with a vastly different mindset.

If it's burnout, it's a tough road, but in the end it can be a blessing.

Bob, your answer is right on. And the demotivation can easily *lead* to the burnout phase too. Sometimes one has to take a little time off - the building won't fall down if you aren't there for a couple weeks. Stepping back like that can give one ideas for where to head next in one's career. Opportunities arise but you have to have your head above water to see them.
And to "Nick" - whoever said the writer was a support guy for Windows? He could be a mainframe support person for all we know. Been there, done that.

Bob.... your definition of burnout vs demotivation is so bank on. I recently went through the transformation from IT Director of 22 great staff team members - to SLMgr managing 4 'three letter' outsourced staff and dealing with a SLA with this outsourcer that makes me feel like I am letting our 3000 clients down in terms of support delivery (compared to what our team use to provide)- feels liek I am always running my workload tasks in water - slow and delayed!

I found the book "The Joy of Burnout" by Dr. Dana Glouberman to be a very good resource. One definition of burnout she gives is "...burnout is the state of mind, body and spirit reached by those of us who have come to the end of a particular road but haven't acknowledged this."