Burnout

When burnout comes for your joy.

It was October 18th, a day like any other. I was sitting in yet another training session, my laptop open but my mind a million miles away. As I watched the instructor chatting animatedly with other students, a thought hit me like a freight train: Why the hell am I even here? 

I don’t have time for an 18-month course. Do I even still believe this whole coaching thing is worth it?

It's only been five months since I finished that prolonged Operational Management Foundation degree. It was intense, time-consuming, and took a lot of effort, but I made it through. And now, here I am, putting myself through it all over again!

This wasn’t just your mid-week existential crisis. This was the culmination of months – no, years – of grinding myself down in pursuit of... what, exactly? Another certification to add to my CV? Another line on a resume that felt increasingly disconnected from who I actually was? 

I almost closed my laptop and ditched this training program for good for all the dumb choices I'd made.

I’ve got two coaching qualifications. Impressive. Exhausting. But there's that nagging voice in my head, and the greedy part of me persisting: "Is it enough? Should I get more?"

I’m not actually interested in being a coach. I’m interested in the idea of being a coach because it feels like progress. It feels like I’m doing something to escape the soul-crushing monotony of my current job.

But, if I have to ask myself if I want to be a coach, the answer is probably no.

I remember when I thought becoming a manager was the ultimate goal. Now I’m not so sure. I’ve unintentionally signed up for long-term membership to the club of disillusioned middle managers who realised that managing people isn't all it's cracked up to be.

The real question isn't "Do I want to be a manager?" It's "Why did I ever think I wanted to be a manager in the first place?"

When the Hustle Stops Working

You can’t hustle your way out of burnout, as I’ve learned the hard way. I spent years chasing qualifications, achievements, and the elusive sense of "enough." This pattern, as Emily and Amelia Nagoski explain in Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, is exactly how burnout sneaks up on us. It’s not just the work that exhausts us; it’s the unresolved stress we carry, the cycle we don’t complete.

They argue that unless we actively close the loop—whether through rest, movement, or genuine connection—burnout will continue to fester. And that’s exactly what happened to me. I was running on empty, never pausing long enough to recover.

The slow collapse

Let's rewind a bit. Picture 2011, when I convinced myself that if I just worked hard enough, I could climb that corporate ladder all the way to the top. I throw myself into every management course I can find. I'm that person – you know, the one – who's always "investing in themselves." 

Fast forward to 2015, and I've added "coach" to my ever-expanding list of identities. Between 2015 and 2020, I rack up qualifications like they're Dicount cards: personal performance coaching, NLP, NLP Master program, corporate coaching. I'm unstoppable. I'm on fire. I'm... exhausted. 

But hey, that's just the price of success, right? 

Side project as Self-care

By 2023, I've convinced myself that the answer to my corporate boredom is to double down on my side projects. I publish my first Skillshare class. I start a Substack. I'm doing All The Things because that's what successful people do, right? They hustle. They grind. They don't admit that they're one missed deadline away from a complete nervous breakdown. 

Catherine Gray’s The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary helped me see that chasing constant achievement blinds us to the simple joys of life. I had lost sight of the little things that once brought me happiness, consumed by a never-ending treadmill of goals.

When your job decides you’re expendable.

Then came The Meeting. You know the one – where you walk in thinking it's just another day, and walk out questioning every life choice you've ever made. 

Picture this: I'm sitting across from my site manager – a guy I've worked with for five years, someone I considered a friend – and he drops this gem on me: "Your additional responsibility payment is going to stop." 

Oh, but don't worry! They still want me to do all the same work, take on all the same responsibilities. They just don't want to pay me for it anymore. Because apparently, my position "doesn't exist." 

Spoiler alert: The position exists. They just don't want to pay up an extra £200 a month for it. 

Yes, we are not talking about thousands! My work is not worth £200!

As Anne Helen Petersen outlines in Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, this kind of corporate exploitation isn’t unique to me. It’s systemic. The relentless drive to extract maximum productivity while offering minimal reward is a feature, not a bug, of modern workplaces.

When burnout comes for your joy

The part that really twists the knife: This corporate BS didn't just suck the life out of my day job. It came for my side projects too. All those things I used to love – the coaching, the writing, the creating – suddenly felt like just more items on an endless to-do list. 

Burnout, it turns out, isn't content with just ruining your 9-to-5. It wants it all. 

People often think that burnout is only related to work. But the reality is that it can have an impact on other areas of life as well¹. 

You can’t hustle your way out of burnout

So, there I was, October 18th, staring at my laptop screen, wondering how I'd ended up here. I'd done everything "right." I'd worked harder, stayed later, taken on more responsibility. I'd built side hustles and passion projects. And my reward? A soul-deep exhaustion that no amount of self-care could touch. 

Tara Brach’s Radical Acceptance taught me that self-compassion is critical in rebuilding your sense of worth. It’s about letting go of the notion that every misstep or failure defines you and instead focusing on what you’ve already achieved.

What is burnout?

Burnout is a combination of mental and physical exhaustion. Leave untreated, and it can lead to some catastrophic mental and physical effects². Companies need to have a solid plan to help their employees bounce back from burnout³.

After my experience, I was not going to count on them. 

The term burnout was first coined in 1975 by Herbert Freudenberger⁴, and it was defined by three components:

1. emotional exhaustion — “caring too much for too long” ✅

2. depersonalisation — “the depletion of empathy, caring, and compassion” ✅

3. decreased sense of accomplishment — “no matter what you do, it’s not enough” ✅

Looking at the three points above, it looks like I hit the jackpot, just not the right kind…

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The First Step: Admitting You Have a Problem (And That the Problem Isn't You) 

The thing we're all too burned out to admit: The system is broken. No amount of hustle, no number of side projects or certifications or extra hours, can fix a system designed to extract every last drop of productivity from us while offering less and less in return. 

So what's the answer? Well, I wish I could tell you I had it all figured out. But the reality is, I'm still in the trenches, still trying to find my way out of this burnout. 

But here's what I do know: The first step is to stop. Just stop. Stop trying to do it all. Stop believing that if you just work a little harder, hustle a little more, everything will magically fall into place. 

For me, that means simplifying. It means letting go of the idea that my worth is tied to my productivity. It means focusing on one essential goal for 2024: To feel better. Not to achieve more, not to hustle harder. Just to feel incrementally better than I did before.  

Simplifying does not mean I will now lay on the sofa and binge with a pack of crisps and 5% raspberry Smirnoff, yet still get tipsy enough to look at life through the pretty lens. 😂

I lowered my expectations regarding how much I could squeeze into my schedule and simplified it to the one essential focus for 2024. To get better. 

To feel incrementally better than I felt before I started.

• To feel mentally balanced. 

• To feel good and confident about what I’ve accomplished so far. 

• Stop attaching my self-worth to the failed trials. 

This process, of course, is easier said than done. There’s a lot to dig through to get to the absolute bottom of the burnout, and then, there’s a long way to pull yourself back up. 

But it's necessary.

And maybe, just maybe, we can find our way back to the things we love—not because they'll make us more productive or successful, but simply because they bring us joy. 

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Your Burnout Reading List

If you’re struggling with burnout, these books might help:

• Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

• The Unexpected Joy of the Ordinary by Catherine Gray

• Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen

• Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving by Celeste Headlee

• Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach

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As part of the

Sarah Fay

Substack Writers at Work

Friday office party, Sara challenged us to find the readers for our next post and connect. In response, I decided to write about burnout and wanted to find readers who could relate to it. During the discussion,

Emma Goldman-Sherman

shared that she also struggles with burnout, and I hope my post will be relatable to her. Additionally,

Taylor Allbright, PhD

added burnout to her topics for future posts, so I thought she might enjoy reading my post on the topic.

1. Is Burnout Primarily Linked to Work-Situated Factors? A Relative Weight Analytic Study

2. Burnout

3. Addressing employee burnout: Are you solving the right problem?

4. What is burnout?