When the lockdown started, cooking was something people would look forward to. Many people tried making new dishes, many learned how to cook for the first time ever. But now since a lot of time has passed, cooking is nothing but a chore. The person who cooks in the house has to take care of everything from sanitizing the food cartons to the likes and dislikes of the people who are going to eat. Hence facing a cooking burnout is quite natural.
Cary Cherniss, an organizational and community psychologist, defined the word burnout as “Burnout is a feeling of severe physical and/or emotional exhaustion, resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.” Burnout usually is associated with work but living in lockdown and doing the same chores everyday can be a reason as well.
“In addition to feelings of depletion, we begin to experience negative feelings toward activities that we previously enjoyed,” Cherniss said. “We also become detached from the work. We lose interest in doing it and find it increasingly difficult to motivate ourselves. So, in the case of cooking, doing even a limited amount of it would leave us feeling exhausted, and we would increasingly dislike it. We would avoid doing it as much as possible, and when we had to do it, we would put in the minimal amount of effort and feel resentful about having to do it.”
There are many solutions to overcome a burnout. One can be change the style or the way of your cooking or add something new to your menu every now and then. For example, eat just fruits and smoothies for one meal, once in a week. This way you won’t have to cook or prepare a lot of things and you will save a lot of time. Other can be ask people in the house to cook with you. Play some music and dance along with your family while cooking, this can release a lot of stress and cooking will also be done.
