What I Learned When I Experienced Burnout & Didn’t Even Know: How to Spot & Overcome Overwork

I knew I was experiencing burnout only after a two-week break from work.

For the first time since I started working full-time in 2015, I took my first break from work in December 2021 that was longer than a week. Applying for time off felt indulgent. 

Do I deserve this?”

What if my team needs me?”

Am I being irresponsible for ditching work while there are others who are not on leave?”

These were just some of the many doubts I had of myself. The feeling that I was being selfish. 

A part of me knew that I deserved the break after months-long, nay, a year’s worth of non-stop grind. And yet, I felt like I was bailing. Especially when I knew members of my team were working when I’d be off gallivanting wherever I was going to be during my time off.

I returned to work this 2022 on January 3, the first working day for most employees with a sedentary desk job, after a consecutive two-week break.

Being back at work felt both familiar and foreign at the same time. For the first time since I started this job 1.5 years ago, I truly felt well-rested after the time off.

That’s when I knew.

Burnout Lesson #1: Be intentional and strategic about drawing boundaries between work and personal

This did not come easy. There was the Microsoft Outlook mobile app I had to be adamant to not tap to open out of habit – god forbid if I did so accidentally; I’d exit the app before it even had the time to load. 

There were, of course, Microsoft Teams messages in various group chats that had the label IMPORTANT! attached to them. But were they truly important?

I had to actively remind myself that everything was under control and this was all manageable by the team, even in my absence. That they know to reach out through other channels if it were truly urgent.

Can you imagine? Even when I’d already communicated to the team that if they needed to ever reach me, urgently, I was one Telegram message away…

Even when there were already systems in place to ensure that work would go on and team members had the resources to work without me around…

A part of me still had to be firm and actively remind myself to not carve a slice of my mind for work.

So why was switching off so hard?

Burnout Lesson #2: Respect your own ground rules

I preach a lot to the team about finding a healthy balance between work and everything else they have going on in their lives.

Admittedly, cultivating that habit or forcing yourself to just switch off at a cut-off point takes discipline, especially if you’re already feeling committed to your work and it doesn’t sit right with you that a message or email goes unanswered.

Our always-on working world – one where messages are checked and quickly responded to first thing in the morning (I know some of you are doing it in bed!) – makes it hard for us to respect our own ground rules when we first decide to switch off from work.

After all, when you believe yourself to be committed to your work, following through with the actions associated with your commitment to work – in this case, checking work messages first thing in the morning – comes naturally.

By mid-2021, I started realizing how much more important it was that my team doesn’t see me as an overworked employee. As more and more members of my team started overworking, despite me reiterating the importance of switching off, I realized my responsibility to also lead by example.

Burnout Lesson #3: Define & prioritize impactful work

Signs of overwork are not always as obvious. The clearest pictures of burnout are often cases of debilitating anxiety, Sunday scaries, or feelings of stress. 

But how about something as simple as feeling like you cannot get away from work, even though your manager’s clearly not hounding you for deliverables and/or no one’s breathing down your neck about tasks and responsibilities?

In the last three months of 2021, I often felt like it was difficult to disconnect from work. While it is true that there were always tasks to complete, projects to manage, ad-hoc commitments that absolutely needed attention…

…now that I’ve had the privilege of stepping away for 10 days before the start of 2022, I’ve gained some perspective surrounding how I defined & prioritized impactful work.

I learned how to:

Bonus Tips for Managers: Encourage accountability

Tip #1: Lead by example

One of the best things my manager ever did for me was to always communicate with transparency. This included work-related movements, as well as feelings, scenarios, and worries that may be personal to her but could potentially affect her actions at work.

She practiced accountability, and with that, demonstrated that I could do the same. Her providing the necessary context gave me the clarity I needed to work well alongside her at all times. 

In turn, I was also comfortable in sharing my signs and circumstances of burnout when it was happening;.

Tip #2: Just ask

The most obvious things are often right, but not always our go-to.

Want to spot burnout among the team? Instead of looking for clues, just ask.

Working long hours, replying emails at odd hours at night, or sending work messages during the weekends may be dead giveaways, but without really asking, you won’t know whether that’s just a preference or a true sign of burnout.

Give them the opportunity to speak up and to carry the conversation.