Being burnt out sucks. You feel completely exhausted, anxious, and at a loss for motivation. Fortunately, there is a way to recover from burnout and get your spark back.
To heal from burnout, you don’t need to quit your job and move to Tulum for a year (though that can help). In many cases, it’s possible to recover from burnout while working, though you will need to make some changes in your life.
In this post, I will help you get back on track.
What is Burnout?
Burnout is a state of being where you feel mentally depleted, emotionally empty, and physically exhausted. And it’s common; over half of workers report feeling burnt out.
One way I like to think about it is that everyone has a certain capacity, which refers to how much you can handle. Have you ever seen the image of Atlas holding up the world? Well, you are Atlas.
Your capacity is how much weight you can hold as Atlas. The things that you are “holding” are a combination of the amount of work, stress, and social obligations in your life.
There are things you can do to increase your capacity—like good sleep hygiene, eat a healthy diet, and exercise. Similarly, a healthy work culture and generous compensation can give you extra strength.
But burnout is when the weight of the mass you are holding becomes heavier than your strength.
Sometimes, we get burnt out because life is asking a lot from us. There are bills to pay and kids to take care of. And maybe just staying afloat is taking everything we’ve got.
In other cases, we may get burnt out when we take on too much work or say yes to too many social plans without prioritizing self-care.
In either case, when you are burnt out, work can become extremely difficult. Tasks that used to feel exciting and engaging now feel painful. It’s not just that you have no motivation to do your job; it’s that your body and spirit are screaming for rest.
Often, the way people cope with burning out is by using screens, food, and alcohol to numb themself from their feelings. This can “work” for some amount of time, but if you ignore your body’s signals to slow down for too long, you may eventually crash even harder.
How to Recognize Burnout (Signs and Symptoms)
Sometimes, we might be burning out, but we haven’t noticed it yet. As soon as you can identify that you are amidst a burnout, the sooner you can do something about it.
Here are some classic symptoms of burnout. Do you relate to any?
Mental symptoms of burnout
Your brain feels foggy
You are procrastinating like nobody’s business
You feel like you’re dropping balls and forgetting to turn things in
It’s really hard to keep focus at work
You experience a constant lack of productivity at work
Behavioral symptoms of burnout
You’re often making simple mistakes at work
After work, all you have the energy to do is numb yourself with media, food, or alcohol
You haven’t taken a proper vacation (where you are unplugged from work for several days) since who knows when
You’re falling behind on non-work tasks (like dishes, email, and chores)
You sleep until the last possible minute each morning
Physical symptoms of burnout
According to research, here are some common physical ailments that result from burnout:
You feel utterly exhausted all the time
You’re struggling with sleep (getting to sleep, low sleep quality, insufficient sleep, or waking up)
You are getting stomach aches and/or gastrointestinal issues
Your back is hurting
You have headaches
Emotional symptoms of burnout
You feel more irritable, emotionally sensitive, and overreactive than normal
It’s a struggle to get yourself to start working each day
You’ve lost your spark
Tasks that used to feel exciting now require a lot of willpower
You don’t have the energy to do a great job at work
You feel emotional exhaustion, like you have nothing left to give to others
Feeling overwhelmed
Just the sight of your work laptop is starting to become a trigger for dread or anxiety
If you relate to any of the above signs, you might be at risk of burnout, or even amidst one.
But don’t worry. It’s possible find balance and restore your mental health. Just read through the tips below.
10 Tips on How to Recover From Burnout While Working
Many people reach a point where they just can’t do it anymore. They need to take a sabbatical and completely reset.
To be honest, if your only goal were to recover from feelings of burnout, that would probably be the best solution. But for many of us, it’s not feasible (or desirable) to up and quit.
So the tips below are ways that you can heal from your burnout without turning your life upside down. But make no mistake, if you are burnt out and you don’t want to burn out again, you’ll have to make some changes in how you do things.
Take a vacation
If you have PTO to spare, take a vacation to reset.
When you take time off your job, you can center yourself and get some charge back in your battery.
And if you take a vacation, it’s essential to unplug. No work projects. No email. No LinkedIn. Just give it all a rest for a few days.
This is easier said than done. 70% of physicians work during their vacations. But here’s the thing—if you are working while you’re on vacation, then you’re not actually on vacation.
You need to fully flip the off-switch.
While vacationing is vital, don’t think that taking time away from your job will fix everything. 42% of Americans dread coming back to work after time off.
Use your vacation as a time to recharge and get clarity. But once you get back, if you don’t want to burn out again, you’ll have to make some changes to your work and personal life.
Action step: Plan a week of PTO sometime in the next month or two. If that doesn’t feel possible, can you spare a long weekend?
Make time for exercise
Studies suggest that regular exercise is one of the best antidotes to burnout.
The above study found that cardio exercise (anything that gets you breathing fast and your heart beating) helps with:
Greater well-being
Lower physiological symptoms of stress
Perceiving your life to be less stressful
More emotional energy
Strength training (like lifting weights) is helpful with:
Greater well-being
Perceiving your life to be less stressful
Greater feelings of accomplishment
Not to mention, regular exercise is shown to help alleviate depression.
If exercise isn’t a regular part of your life, introducing this habit could be a game changer.
And don’t worry; you don’t need to turn into Serena Williams overnight. Just going for a walk a few times a week can make a difference.
Action Step: If you don’t regularly exercise, can you make room in your life for three 30 minute walks a week? If that sounds boring, plug in your earbuds and listen to a podcast or some music.
If you already do exercise, could you hit the gym just one more day per week?
Get into nature
Most Americans spend over 10 hours per day on screens and about 23 hours inside.
Our human ancestors spent zero hours per day on screens and 24 hours per day in nature. I’m not saying we have to live like Neanderthals, but it’s worth thinking about just how distant we’ve gotten from the natural world.
There are countless studies that suggest that spending time in nature boosts your mood, makes you feel happier, and gives your more feelings of purpose. It also improves your memory, focus, and attention.
When it comes to nature, the more remote the better. Though spending time in city parks and even next to trees has still been shown to help.
Studies also suggest that the benefits of nature seem to markedly uptick once you spend 120 minutes per week in green spaces (whether all at once or bits here and there).
Action step: Try taking your lunch break in green spaces this week.
Take breaks
It can be helpful to think of your ability to focus at work like a muscle. If you never take breaks and only work the muscle, it’ll get more and more tired and eventually tear.
To keep your focus muscle healthy, you have to rest it.
A good break will recharge you, so that when you return to your desk you’re focus is in full force again.
If you aren’t taking enough breaks, it’s like you are using a muscle over and over and over again. Never letting it recover. And as a result, it’s likely hurting your focus, draining your attention span, and eroding your capacity.
But how long should you break for?
Well, a group of researchers wondered the same thing. They studied a massive amount of data to analyze what type of breaks top performers took. They looked at the top 10% most productive workers. And here’s what they found:
The most productive workers work with 100% focus for 52 minutes and then rest 100% for 17 minutes.
When they’re working, they aren’t looking at Instagram here and there, or sending a text every few minutes. And when they are on break, they aren’t checking work email or scanning Notion.
They work full-out, then rest full-out.
Because here’s the thing—your mind can’t focus for 8 hours straight, and your body doesn’t want to hunch over a screen all day either.
So when you break, let your mind wander off work and put your body in different positions.
52/17 might not be the magic ratio for you. A lot of people like 25/5. And more recent studies are hinting at a ratio of 82/17.
But whatever numbers you choose, breaking is crucial.
If you’re not sure what to do on your breaks, you could:
Go for a walk
Do deep breathing
Drink some tea and stare out the window
Doodle
Chat with coworkers
Action step: For your next work day pick an amount of time to work and an amount of time to break, and stick to it throughout the day! If you’re not sure what to go with, try 52 minutes on and 17 minutes off.
Say “no” more often
If you have porous boundaries, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ll burn out at some point.
Remember our Atlas metaphor from earlier? Well, when you say “yes” to every ask that comes your way, you are letting the world decide how much you can handle instead of deciding for yourself.
If you struggle to say no, then you can easily wind up in a situation where you’ve agreed to take on an extra assignment (that you don’t have the bandwidth for), you promised you’d help your friend move this weekend (when that’s the last thing you want to do), and you consistently let your friends emotionally dump on you (when you have zero capacity to hold space for them).
Does any of this sound familiar?
Well, if you struggle with boundaries, know you’re not alone. It’s a challenge almost all of us have to learn at some point.
But here’s the good news. You are allowed to say “no” to anyone at any time.
Let me repeat that. You are allowed to say “no” to anyone at any time.
You can say no to your partner. To your mom. To your friends. To your coworkers. Even to your boss.
If someone asks you to do something, and you don’t have the bandwidth, capacity, or desire, you are allowed to say no.
It can be hard. And it might take practice. But it’s possible.
And when you say “no” to what you don’t want, you are carving out space in your life for what you do want. You can make space for alone time and for what gives you joy and nourishment.
That said, one place it is harder to say no is when your boss asks you to do something (or gives you an assignment and expects you to do it).
In these cases, it might be tough to say “no” outright. But you can have a conversation with them where you share your bandwidth and collaborate on what work you can take on.
Action Step: For the next week, don’t say “yes” to any request right away. If someone asks to do something say, “let me get back to you.”
Then, genuinely take stock. Do you have the energy (and desire) to take on this commitment? When you imagine saying “yes,” does it feel good, or does it feel stressful?
If you choose to say “no” to a request, here’s something you can text back: “I wish I could, but I just don’t have the capacity right now. I’ll get back to you once I have more bandwidth :-)”
Obviously, at work, it’s trickier to say no to assignments. But if your workload is heavier than you can manage, it’s worth having a conversation with your manager and getting very honest about how much you can handle.
Identify what you need to add (and subtract) from your life
When Sunday night rolls around, and you’ve made it through the week, you are left with a certain level of energy. You might be brimming with life, or lying face down on the sofa. One crude way to calculate why you wound up with the energy levels you did is to look at how you spent your time.
There are 168 hours in a week. If you get 8 hours of sleep per night, then you have 112 waking hours a week.
Of your 112 hours, how much time did you spend on activities that gave you energy?
How much time did you spend on activities that sapped your energy?
Maybe that hour playing guitar gave you energy.
And maybe lunch with your politically outspoken coworker sapped your energy.
It might even be the case that certain work assignments were energizing while others were draining. Could you ask your manager for more of the former and less of the ladder?
Once you look at your energy positives and negatives, then your job is to spend as many hours a week as you can doing activities that give you energy, and spend as few hours a week as you can doing activities that sap your energy.
Action Step: What activities from the past week gave you energy? What sapped your energy? Write a quick list off the top of your head, maybe consult your calendar from the past week.
How can you do more of the first and less of the second?
Don't be afraid to ask for what you need at work
If you are struggling with job burnout, you might have to make some changes at work. Your current way of doing things might not be sustainable.
If you were being totally honest, what changes would you ask from your manager at work?
Here are a few possibilities to spark your imagination:
Extend the deadline of a project
Take an item off your workload (at least for a bit)
More guidance and direction
Support from another colleague on a project
More flexible work hours
The ability to work remotely (at least part of the time)
You don’t have to ask for everything all at once. But the reality is, if you are struggling to stay afloat, it might be time for a candid conversation with your manager.
Action Step: Set up a 1-on-1 with your manager, and let them know where you’re at.
If no changes are possible, it could be worth considering looking for other work.
Turn off notifications
Guess how long most work emails sit in a person’s inbox before they get opened?
70% of work emails get opened within 6 seconds! And 85% get opened within 2 minutes. Wow!
Imagine a worker trying to get a project done, and breaking every few minutes to respond to an email. Compare that to a worker who works for an hour straight without checking email, completely homing in on their task.
Notifications (and this includes phone notifications for WhatsApp, Twitter, or Apple News) fragment your attention, scatter your focus, overstimulate your mind.
Not to mention, if you receive work notifications after hours, then you’re effectively always working.
Have you heard the term “telepressure?”
It refers to the urge and preoccupation to respond as quickly as possible to work messages. And studies show that it’s linked with feelings of burnout.
As you might have guessed, telepressure and notifications are a toxic combo.
But there’s good news.
Other studies indicate that when people turn off notifications, they perform better, feel less strained, and reduce their feelings of telepressure.
If you feel burnt out, it can help to turn off notifications to help you focus on whatever you’re doing at the moment, and to give you a break from the rest of the world screaming for your attention.
Action Step: For a single week, try turning off all of your notifications. See what happens!
Learn why you burnt out
Knowledge is power.
If you understand what exactly caused you to burn out, then you might be able to shift your circumstances or to step off the road to burnout earlier next time.
Of people who have burnt out, almost half cited “overwork” as a key contributor.
That might not be the case for you. It’s going to be different for each person, but here are some common contributors to burnout:
Working too many hours
Overwhelmingly large workload
Chronic stress
Not taking breaks
Staying plugged into work on nights and weekends
Feeling underpaid
Feeling underappreciated for your work
Feeling unsupported by your company’s leadership
Your job is painfully boring
There is no growth or learning at your job
Lack of control and autonomy at work
Feeling inept or ineffective at your job
You don’t align at all with your company’s values
You feel unfairly treated at work
Your workplace is toxic
Lack of community, friends, or social support
In addition to all those causes, people with lower self-esteem are more likely to experience burnout.
Action step: Write out what you think the top causes of your burnout were.
Seek out professional support
Oftentimes, the best thing we can do is seek support.
It can be extremely helpful to hire a professional to listen to your challenges, help you clarify your needs, and empower you to make changes in your life.
Therapists and life coaches can both be great resources. However, if it’s a work-related burnout, you might be well served to seek out a career coach.
Career coaches can hold space for your difficulties and can also help you with the practicalities of creating a more fulfilling and balanced career for yourself–whether at your current company or another one.
If you are interested in working with a career coach, I’d recommend checking out the International Association of Career Coaches.
How Long Does it Take to Recover From Burnout?
It depends.
If you feel mildly burnt out, a week or two of vacation might be enough to reset.
Many cases of more moderate burnout can take a few months to recover from.
And if you are at a 10/10 level of severe burnout, it could take years to fully re-stabilize.
To fully recover from a burnout experience, it helps tremendously to take space from your work (or life). But the tricky thing is, if you take a vacation or sabbatical, and then enter right back into the same circumstances that you left, then you are on a track to burn out once again.
That means that you need to craft a lifestyle and habits that are sustainable. You need to build a burnout-proof life.
This can require some soul-searching, perhaps a new job, and a stronger prioritization of self-care and mental health than you may have ever experienced before.
Takeaways on How to Recover from Burnout
If you are burnt out, I feel for you. You can get through this!
Just remember the following tips:
Take a vacation
Make time for exercise
Get into nature
Take breaks
Say "no" more often
Identify what gives you energy and what saps your energy
Ask for changes at work
Turn off notifications
Learn what exactly caused you to burn out
Seek professional support
As another reminder, if you’d like support in dealing with your burnout or in creating a career that feels more balanced, fulfilling, or joyful, consider working with a career coach from the International Association of Career Coaches.
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