Burnout is a common problem in the workplace, especially when it feels like you have too much to do and not enough time to do it. When you’re overworked and frazzled, quality control tends to suffer, which makes burnout a devastating hindrance in Quality Assurance. Tools that can help you save time and energy will ease the burden on you, giving you the time you need to slow down and help produce the highest quality application you can. So how can test automation tools help?

How Can Test Automation Help?

Compared to manual testing where you would have to run your entire test suite by hand, then rinse and repeat with the same set of tests ad infinitum, automated testing runs those same test suites for you as long as you set a schedule. Once you’ve written your tests, all you need to worry about is taking care of any reported bugs and handling the test results, plus breaking everything you can in your app with some truly creative exploratory testing. 

How Virtuoso Can Help Even More

The trick with automated testing is that it requires quite a bit of code to write the tests, so codeless testing can save you a lot of time both on the authoring side of things and the learning curve. Unless you want to get into the lower layers of a test, you can write your tests codelessly. 

And Virtuoso uses Natural Language Programming so you can write scripted test steps instead of relying on the Record and Replay type of codeless. This way, programmers can focus on more stimulating tasks that are not coding test steps, and QAs don’t need to have such demanding job requirements. When you do the type of task that you’re most interested in, you’re less likely to burn out. 

Our self-healing tests take even more off your plate by keeping your tests robust and preventing them from breaking from something as simple as dynamic data. This contributes to fewer things on your plate, giving you a little more time to breathe and focus on the important part of testing: the quality. Give our two-week free trial a spin and see how you can start authoring functional tests in your first 15 minutes.

Four Tips to Avoid Burnout

Here are some more tips to help you take care of yourself and your mental health:

1. With how common remote working has become, it can be hard to stay within your working hours, especially if you have a lot to do. Setting hard working hours can help you separate your work life and home life, even if they happen in the same place. 
2. Take some time for yourself and some self-care, whether that’s a video game, baking some cookies, or a full-blown spa day complete with face masks, a bubble bath, and a glass of wine (personally, I like all three broken up by naps). 
3. Even if you’re an introvert (like myself), spending time with friends or family is so important. A few hours where you have a good distraction, whether that’s as simple as talking or watching a movie or playing board games. 
4. Say no. This can be a really hard one, but if you have a full workload and you’re asked to take on more, say no and tell your boss that you’re at full capacity. I understand that not everyone has a manager that you can talk to like that, but your health should be the most important priority at the end of the day. 

Taking care of yourself can be difficult, but burnout will affect every part of your life if you let it get too far. Instead of taking a break when you’re at 10%, take a break when you’re at 60% to keep you from getting that low.