What is burnout? Why does it happen? How do we spot it early so that we can minimize the impact on us?
Welcome to Part 1 of the Guide where we’re breaking down burnout!
If you’re new to the Guide, start here! The Busy Season Survival Guide is a cumulation of a decade of lessons I’ve learned about managing busy season burnout while trying to stay connected to creativity. This Guide is meant to support you in staying resilient and creative, even with a demanding day job!
If you can understand your own brand of burnout, then you can stay in the driver’s seat as you navigate your busiest seasons. In this post I encourage you to get a sense for what usually triggers it (or rather, the “path” to it), what it looks like for you, and how difficult or easy it is for you to spot.
The better you understand your particular brand of burnout, the more effective you’ll be at minimizing and managing it!
First we’ll cover what burnout is, and I think that’s easiest to do in contrast with stress, which I’m sure we’re all well familiar with.
What’s the Difference Between Stress and Burnout?
Burnout is what happens beyond a sustained period of stress without a chance for recovery built in.
When you’re stressed, it’s an energetic state. You might feel anxious or overwhelmed, but you’re expending energy trying to manage the circumstances at hand and accomplish what you need to with the limited resources you have.
Burnout is a depleted state. You don’t have the energy left to tackle your day-to-day demands anymore, let alone ongoing stressors. Your mental, physical, and emotional stores have been tapped out.
It’s easier to identify the source of stress than the source of burnout.
Stress is acute – we can sense that “this situation is stressing me out”. In contrast, burnout builds over time and has several contributing factors rather than a singular trigger. It’s more of a systemic issue.
Stress and burnout are distinguished by the speed of recovery.
If you could remove the source of stress, you’d probably feel better fairly quickly. Say you were working really hard for two weeks to meet a deadline – once the deadline has passed, you might need a day or two of recovery, and then you’re feeling pretty good.
With burnout, it takes time to recover and replenish your stores of energy to feel good again. You could take a two-week vacation after a long period of intense work and still feel drained and sort-of crummy by the end – that’s the smoulder of burnout.
Early Warning Signs of Burnout
Any notable shift from an energized (but stressed) state to one that is lackluster and detached could signal that you’re starting to burn out.
You may start to feel:
- Tired all the time (yet you have trouble sleeping)
- Irritable and restless (but with nowhere to go)
- Frustrated that nothing seems to light you up
- Like you need an escape plan
- More easily overwhelmed
- A lack of ability to focus, like brain fog
- Dread on Sunday nights and/or heading into work
- Like withdrawing from others
- Inefficient, or lacking attention to detail
As burnout progresses, these symptoms grow in intensity and have a greater impact on you. Personally, when I’m really “in it” I also start to get frequent headaches and body aches, and my immune system notably suffers.
It sounds like it could be anything though, doesn’t it?
[Disclaimer: see a medical professional if you are concerned about symptoms. I am not one!]
It takes a bit of self-awareness to be able to spot the signs. It’s helpful to establish a healthy baseline for yourself when you’re in relative balance. This makes it easier to notice changes sooner! Otherwise, the symptoms can creep up on you, and that can be really concerning out of context.
If you are seeing these signs, there’s a silver lining:
If you know it’s burnout, you know what’s causing you to feel this way – and there are things you can do to work through it, recover from it, and minimize it going forward!
Before we get there, let’s try to understand our own personal brand of burnout and what contributes to it.
Why We Burn Out in the First Place
Burnout is often the result of prolonged stress without a chance for recovery, so we need to understand where all of that stress is coming from.
It’s probably going to be a combination of:
External factors (In the workplace, you may have tight deadlines, demanding overtime requirements, an understaffing issue, a high degree of responsibility, or a “toxic” workplace with poor management and lack of support to name a few.)
Internal factors (You yourself may be more sensitive to stress, you might have perfectionist tendencies, you may feel uncomfortable in setting healthy boundaries, or you could lack confidence and struggle with your sense of self-worth as examples.)
Extreme imbalance (The combination of internal and external factors may push you to set aside the actions, activities, or mindsets that keep you feeling balanced. That might include socialization, meaningful personal projects, exercise, healthy diet, and an appropriate amount of rest.)
Combine these factors to come up with your own personal burnout recipe.
If I tend towards perfectionism (an internal factor), and I have tight deadlines and a high degree of responsibility at work (external factors), then I will be driven to start pouring all of my time and energy into my work and in turn I’ll give up my social life, creative practice, and exercise routine to do so (extreme imbalance).
If I keep this up for too long without a break, I know I’ll burn out.
We can’t always avoid these things, but we don’t necessarily have to. We just have to be aware of their impact on us so that we can manage them effectively, by:
- Anticipating when the recipe is brewing and pacing ourselves
- Reducing or rebalancing one or more of the ingredients
- Knowingly stepping into the fire but planning and scheduling for a rest period after
Keep your major ingredients with you as you go through the Guide. They’ll help you focus your efforts in a way that is effective for you as you navigate your busy season!
If you’re already in the midst of a busy season, I’ve got you in Part 3. If you’re burnt out as it is, Part 5. But if you know you’ve got your own busy season coming up soon, get ready by heading over to Part 2: Practical Preparation.
You’ve got this!
