Where I’ve been - and 6 things we learned about burnout
Where I’ve been - and 6 things we learned about burnout
You haven’t heard from me in a while. The reason is that I have spent the last year writing a book on healthy high performance in an ‘always on world’. It is based on 5 years of research by our team on the question:
Why do some hard-working people burn out, while others keep thriving?
I’ve also spent a lot of time asking: how do we share what we learned in a way that is practical, simple, and solution-focused?
Over the coming weeks and months, I will share the most important things we learned.
To begin, here are six things we learned from people who burned out:
1. Burnout rarely has one cause.
People often say burnout is caused by too much work, poor boundaries, or a bad boss. Sometimes that is true. But most burnout is not caused by a single factor.
Most people who burned out had a cluster of factors happening at the same time. For one person, it was workload, perfectionism, and an unsupportive boss. For another, it was constant travel, poor sleep, and pressure at home. For another, it was a high-achievement mindset and a lack of recovery.
Each factor mattered, but the real problem was the combination. That was one of the clearest patterns we saw: burnout is multi-factorial. That is why it defies simple solutions.
2. Men and women often burn for different reasons.
Both men and women suffered, but the pathways were often different.
Women were more likely to carry a heavier load at home, put others first, and leave too little time to recover for themselves.
Men were more likely to fuse their identity with work. They kept pushing because performance, status, and being useful had become closely tied to who they were.
These are not fixed rules. We saw plenty of variation. But the pattern showed up often enough to pay attention to.
3. Work matters, but so does life.
The World Health Organisation describes burnout as the result of chronic workplace stress.
Hmmm.... too narrow.
Work factors matter - workload, leadership, autonomy and culture. But we also saw that life outside work mattered too: children, ageing parents, finances, health and relationships.
People do not leave the rest of their lives at the office door. They bring the whole load with them. Work matters. But so does the rest of your life.
4. Your boss makes a huge difference.
Your manager has a major impact on your burnout risk. Not just because they influence your workload, although that matters. They also shape the emotional climate around the work.
The most important factor was whether people felt their boss cared about them and had their back.
That one factor changed the experience of pressure. Same workload. Different boss. Very different experience.
5. You can have a healthy neighbourhood in a polluted city.
Even if you work in a toxic culture, you can be saved by your team. The wider company might be chaotic, political, overloaded, or poorly led. But we found numerous examples of teams that thrived even in a polluted company culture.
They had clearer norms. They protected recovery. They talked honestly. They reduced unnecessary friction. They looked out for one another.
They could not fix the whole organisation. But they could improve the environment immediately around them. You may not be able to clean up the whole city, but you can clean up your neighbourhood.
6. Burnout has degrees.
Burnout is not one thing. It is a continuum. This matters because different degrees of burnout need different solutions.
A first degree burn is when you are tired, stretched, and anxious. At this stage, rest and recovery may be enough. You need to sleep, step back, reduce load, and let your system settle.
A second degree burn is when the stress has become chronic. It never goes away, even when you rest. Your ingrained behaviours and mindset are part of the problem. You may be overworking, ruminating, people-pleasing, proving yourself, or ignoring warning signs. At this stage, rest helps, but it is not enough. You need to change the way you are working.
A third degree burn is when your body starts to shut down. You literally can’t keep working. At this stage, a long break will not solve it. You need to examine your identity, values, vision and definition of success. Growth and change are the way out.
The remedy needs to match the degree of burn. Sometimes people need rest. Sometimes they need new habits. Sometimes they need a deeper transformation.
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What’s the long term solution? How should we work in an always-on world?
Understanding what causes burnout matters, but the more useful question is: How do we avoid stress and burnout in the first place?
We studied high performers in high-pressure environments who had unusually low stress (the thrivers). They weren't superhuman, but they had developed specific strategies for what we call healthy high performance.
Those strategies form the core of my new book, which officially launched recently:
Burn Bright: 10 Habits for Sustainable High Performance in an Always-On World.
I hate reading books which are all about the problem, but little about the solution. This book is the opposite. It is 20% diagnosis and 80% solutions.
I’ll be sharing more of these lessons over the coming weeks. If you are ready to dig in now you can order your copy below.
Very best,
Nick
