Burnout can affect everyone across all walks of life.
It’s a complicated issue that we often associate with overworking, mainly impacting those in super stressful and demanding corporate jobs.
But it’s not a problem reserved for a select few . It can happen to any one of us and it doesn’t always stem from working too much.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) actually defines burnout as ‘feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion; increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job; and reduced professional efficacy’.
More than just simply being a bit tired, WHO’s definition of burnout includes a feeling of apathy – that what you’re doing is meaningless. It’s not caused by the hours you work. Instead it stems from the way you feel.
We often think of burnout as a blocker to our productivity, something that we have to overcome or power through. “If I wasn’t so burned out I’d be able to do it”. But, with this new definition, we might start thinking of burnout as an emotional obstacle that can be avoided.
If we can make sure we’re feeling positive, we can continue working productively without burnout bringing us to a crashing halt.
To put it simply, burnout is an emotional sign that your current approach to work is unsustainable.
So, what can we do about it?
In this article, we’ll cover what burnout can look like, its different causes, and some techniques to help you combat it.
Hopefully you’ll come away from this piece having a full arsenal of weapons at your disposal to burnout. Because it is treatable. But more importantly, it’s preventable too.
How to Recognise Burnout
Below is a list of signs and symptoms that may help you recognise burnout:
- Feeling a sense of apathy or that your work is meaningless
- Experiencing emotional overwhelm
- Feeling drained of energy
- Being pulled in too many directions at once
- Struggling to get through the workday
- Wanting to ‘zonk’ out on the sofa after work
- Feeling unequipped to handle each day
- Feeling guilt and pressure to work all day every day
Recognising when we might be starting to feel depleted is a crucial step towards preventing full-scale burnout. It’s especially important to be mindful of burnout when we’re involved in long, demanding projects, such as building a business or running a side hustle. Keep an eye on your physical and emotional well-being and don’t hesitate to reach out for help if you realise you are struggling.
Remember, burnout isn’t just about being tired. As you can see from the list above, there’s a lot more to it than that.
If these symptoms sound a bit too familiar, then it might be time to look for some solutions. But before you can do that, we need to get to the root cause of the problem.
The Three Types Of Burnout
One of the ways we can begin to investigate the causes of burnout is by looking at the three different types of burnout, which I identified in my book Feel-Good Productivity:
- Overexertion burnout
- Depletion burnout
- Misalignment burnout
Understanding what’s actually causing your burnout is the first step to finding a solution.
1. Overexertion burnout
As the name suggests, burnout may stem from overexerting ourselves: taking on too much responsibility and failing to take the necessary breaks.
You might be consistently agreeing to do additional work.
You might be under constant pressure to meet unrealistic deadlines.
Perhaps you’re constantly trapped in a string of painful back-to-back meetings.
The relentless pace of work can leave us feeling overwhelmed and emotionally drained. During the Covid pandemic, we saw a dramatic rise in meeting-driven overexertion burnout, which became commonly known as Zoom fatigue. By spending hours on end engaging with our colleagues, our work and our ideas, our brains start to overload and need time to cool down.
When we take on too much, we can begin to feel panicked and overwhelmed. It’s easier to switch off and try ang grind through each day. This can leave us feeling even worse.
2. Depletion burnout
Depletion burnout is almost the opposite of overexertion burnout.
Where overexertion burnout is caused by doing too much, depletion burnout is caused by failing to recharge. Even if our workload is manageable, our pace of life is sustainable and our workdays are enjoyable, depletion burnout might still occur if we aren’t letting ourselves get our well-deserved rest.
Doomscrolling on social media, constantly checking our emails and messages or binge-watching reality TV are all ways in which we might be robbing ourselves of some well-needed downtime. By overstimulating our minds instead of letting our brains naturally recharge, our energy levels are left depleted and we’re left feeling exhausted.
3. Misalignment burnout
The third type of burnout happens when we’re working towards something that doesn’t feel aligned with our internal values. Our goals don’t match up with our sense of self.
A common example of this is when someone works long hours in a high-paying job and they find the work deeply unfulfilling. Perhaps they disagree with the company’s mission, or they’re just not passionate about it. This can even be the case when you have more regular hours – a 9-5 can be really painful if you find the work meaningless.
Often, misalignment burnout occurs when our actions are driven by extrinsic factors that contradict our own personal intrinsic motivators. You might be working long hours for a promotion, but what you really care about is pursuing your creative hobbies.
The mismatch is caused by a lack of authenticity. We’re not really being true to ourselves. This leaves us feeling unfulfilled and demotivated.
How to Recover From Burnout
Once we have identified which type of burnout we might be feeling, we can use the following three principles to help us recover:
- Conserve – for when we are overexerted
- Recharge – for when we are depleted
- Align – for when we are misaligned
I call this the CRAB framework. If you Conserve, Recharge, and Align, you can Beat burnout.
These three principles not only help us recover from our low emotional state, but they also introduce techniques that can help prevent burnout from happening again.
We can start to build sustainable work habits to make sure we are implementing a long-term solution.
Principle 1: Conserve
To combat overexertion burnout the key is to conserve our energy as much as possible, whilst still getting things done.
This involves recognising the limits of our time and energy. You should implement strategies to make sure you aren’t working yourself past the point of burnout.
To help conserve your energy, I have three strategies for you to try:
1. Do less
Our first strategy requires a bit of a mindset shift. Instead of constantly trying to do more, focus on doing fewer things but doing them well.
You may have heard of the term “Opportunity Cost”. This refers to the idea that everything we say ‘yes’ to is in fact a ‘no’ to something else. With this in mind, we want to start saying ‘no’ more often, to be able to prioritise our most important work.
Many of us will find this uncomfortable at first. So, we can borrow the “Hell Yeah or No” framework from Derek Sivers. He suggests that unless a project or opportunity gives us that “Hell Yeah!” feeling, our default answer should be ‘no’.
By implementing the “Hell Yeah or No” framework, we can reduce the amount of work on our plate and focus on doing what’s in front of us, to a higher quality. Plus, we’ll hopefully be focusing on things that we genuinely enjoy.
2. Improve Your Environment
Both our physical and digital workspaces can significantly impact our energy levels. A busy desk can make us feel overwhelmed. We can reduce the negative impact of a busy environment by quickly removing distractions before we begin to work.
First, spend a few moments tidying away any clutter on your desk. Make sure the items you need are easily accessible.
Next, create a distraction-free workspace by minimising notifications on your laptop and phone. Close any social media tabs in your browser and using app-blocking timers (such as Opal) to remove any temptation of switching tasks.
Finally, add a joyful feel to your environment by playing some relaxing background music. Or add a few house plants to make you feel relaxed and ready to work.
3. Take Breaks
Taking regular breaks is a great way to conserve your energy throughout the workday.
By default, most of us will use breaks as a sort of reward that we get to have at the end of each task. But instead, we want to shift our mindset to start treating breaks like a non-negotiable. They are not something that we need to earn. They are something that needs to be prioritised.
When scheduling your breaks, experiment with different lengths and activities. Find what works best for you. It could be a 10-minute walk around the park, a few minutes of meditation or just simply standing up, stepping away from your desk and grabbing a quick drink.
Principle 2: Recharge
To combat depletion burnout, the key is to prioritise recharging our energy once we’ve used it during our work. We want to engage in activities that leave us feeling rejuvenated and refuelled, rather than more drained and sluggish.
So, I have another three strategies for you to try out, to help you recharge your energy:
1. Get Creative
Fully immersing ourselves in a creative task can be a great way to forget our worries and recharge our energy.
Creativity helps us relax, destress and tap into a different part of our brain than the one we commonly use at work.
In fact, there are four different ways that creative activities make us feel good. We can remember them using the acronym CALM.
Competence – the creative process helps us learn and grow as we practise a new hobby or skill. This boosts our sense of competence and makes us feel accomplished, which is super energising.
Autonomy – the self-expression that comes with most creative activities helps boost our sense of control and ownership over our lives. This can help reduce the overwhelming impact of external stressors.
Liberty – because creative tasks are so immersive, they offer a break from the demands of work. This detachment provides mental freedom and a sense of liberation.
Mellowness – when we engage in hobbies out of pure enjoyment, we can escape the stresses of work and find ourselves in a relaxed, soothing space. By keeping the activity low-stakes, we can benefit from adopting a relaxing, no-pressure mindset.
Try and pick a creative hobby that hits some, or all, of this criteria.
2. Return to Nature
Nature can reduce our stress and recharges our energy levels.
Even brief encounters with nature can have significant benefits. Just 7 minutes of a soothing nature-scape can help you feel rejuvenated. Incorporating a daily walk in a green space is a great way to benefit from the wonderful effects of nature, helping you clear your head, reduce stress and improve your focus.
But it’s not always possible to take a pause away from our busy schedule. Or we might be trapped indoors with no nature in sight. So, in times like these, we might want to consider bringing nature indoors. Simply having a picture of a natural landscape nearby is enough to benefit from the recharging effects of nature.
Adjusting our environment to include indoor plants, scenic paintings or even a natural desktop wallpaper is a great way to give our energy a boost and prevent us from feeling depleted.
3. Self-Care
Getting creative and returning to nature are two great ways to recharge our energy. But what about the times when you’re feeling completely zapped?
Sometimes, the most productive use of your time is to completely switch off your brain and engage in something called Mindless Recharging.
Mindless Recharging often includes the activities you’ll find yourself doing when you’re not thinking too hard about relaxing and recharging.
This could be flopping onto the sofa to binge-watch some TV, or scrolling social media apps on your phone. In moderation, Mindless Recharging might be exactly what you need.
Allowing yourself some “unproductive downtime” might be the pause needed to reset and avoid burnout. To help encourage a little bit of Mindless Recharging, try and implement the Reitoff Principle.
Embracing the Reitoff Principle means granting ourselves permission to ‘write off’ the rest of a day when we’re feeling completely depleted. Rather than trying to power through when I feel exhausted, I let myself rest. Writing off an afternoon, an evening, or even a whole day is totally okay. It lets you recharge without guilt. This is time just for relaxation.
It’s recognising that sometimes the most productive thing we can do is to do nothing at all.
Principle 3: Align
To combat misalignment burnout, we need to find a way to make our work sit more in line with our inner sense of self. This helps us not only stay productive but also build a meaningful and fulfilling life.
This can be tricky though. Some of us are stuck in jobs we hate. Or we simply don’t what what it is that truly motivates and inspires us. But, it’s not impossible to feel more in sync with the work you’re doing.
In order to increase your sense of alignment, I have a final set of three strategies below for you to try.
1. Journalling
Identifying your internal set of values is an important step when it comes to increasing your sense of alignment. We can achieve this through self-reflection.
We need to ask ourselves:
- What do we value in life?
- What are our core values?
- What do we want to prioritise?
Journalling helps us answer some of these difficult alignment questions. Repeatedly reflecting on the answers then gives us clarity on who we are and what we believe in.
Once we have a better understanding of ourselves, journalling can then help us pinpoint any areas of our lives where our actions are misaligned with our values. Then, when you find these areas of misalignment, you can explore your feelings, understand their root causes and brainstorm solutions.
2. Goal Setting
Once we have a clear outline of our values, we can start to align our everyday actions towards them.
We all make decisions every day that move us either closer to or further away from our values, e.g:
- People who value freedom and travel, yet stay in a controlling office job, or
- People who value close relationships, yet spend all of their time grinding hard on their business while neglecting their time with friends and family.
Often, we don’t even realise we’re making these decisions. This is why setting short-term, value-based goals can help combat this subconscious drift.
Each day, you might like to choose three value-based alignment quests to help move your actions slightly closer to who you want to be.
For example:
- At work, you might decide to go out of your way to make a coworker smile
- For your health, you might decide to take a 15-minute walk at lunch
- In your relationships, you might decide to see if you can find cinema tickets to the film that your friend was really excited to go and see.
By choosing one quest for work, one for health and one for relationships, we can set three easy-to-achieve goals to help us start living according to our values.
Achieving our daily alignment quests helps us subtly move ourselves back towards the most important things in our lives.
3. Authenticity Experiments
Acting authentically means making decisions based on what we believe to be correct. This could be based on our gut feeling, internal values or personal opinion. It is to act in accordance with what we think is best, rather than doing what we think other people want us to do.
Studies have found a positive relationship between living authentically day-to-day and overall wellbeing. The results showed that when people make authentic decisions, they’re happier. They’re also more engaged in the task at hand. We can use these findings to help experiment with the decisions we’re making in our everyday lives.
First, start by thinking of an area of life where you feel particularly unfulfilled.
Next, come up with a hypothesis; if you change just one thing, what effect do you think it will have?
The key here is to make just one isolated change and keep everything else the same. One example could be that you don’t feel energised in the morning, so you create a hypothesis that having your morning coffee in the sunlight might give you a more joyful start to each day.
With your hypothesis stated, step three is to execute it. Make the proposed change and monitor the impact it has on your engagement, happiness and wellbeing.
Does the new decision feel more or less authentic?
Repeat this process and keep a log of all your findings. Experimenting in this way is a great way for you to explore your authenticity by making small changes without doing something drastic, like leaving your job.
Beating Burnout – for good
Burnout can be a complicated issue. It’s more than simply working too many hours. As a sign of emotional, physical or mental exhaustion, burnout is a signal that our current approach to work is unsustainable.
By recognising the three types of burnout – Overexertion, Depletion, and Misalignment – we can take preventative steps to avoid hitting our emotional limits and burning ourselves out.
If we do reach the point of burnout, implementing strategies such as conserving energy, recharging effectively, and aligning our work with our values can help us recover and, more importantly, prevent it from recurring.
For more tools and tips on how to work sustainably, you may like to check out this article here. Or, if you’re looking to level up your productivity while staying healthy and happy along the way, the check out Spark 2025. It’s an online summit I’ll be running between then 4th-5th January 2025, designed to help you build your own sustainable productivity systems. You can reserve your free spot here.
