Burnout is Killing Your Success – Here’s How to FIX IT!

"The elite performers in the world don’t avoid stress; they just manage it and recover better than others"

Burnout is a term that you're probably familiar with, but it may look a little different than what you imagine. Burnout won't always show up as absolute exhaustion as most people think, especially if you're the type to grind until the work is done and struggle to take breaks. There are probably a lot of less obvious cues that you're missing.

So what does burnout actually look like? Burnout might show up as brain fog, lack of focus and productivity, irritability and frustration, an inability to be present, or difficulty handling your emotions. This is not an exhaustive list, but you should start to see a trend in the examples I gave. The symptoms you experience will actually depend on which stage of burnout you're in, which I'll discuss later.

One characteristic I personally notice when I'm burned out is the feeling that I'm living the same stressful day over and over again without making any progress, even if, in reality, I'm getting the work done that I'm supposed to do. But over time, you will actually start to see a decrease in output, especially if you notice that tasks are taking longer than usual without an obvious reason. This is a sure sign that something needs to change.

The real sinister thing about burnout is how subtly it manifests in your life and performance. It may take weeks to even notice something is off. A 1% decrease in performance today might not seem like a big deal, but imagine that stress and fatigue compounding day after day for a month, now we’re looking at a 30% drop in productivity.

Our bodies and minds are resilient at keeping things moving forward, even when the wheels are falling off. They are perfectly fine with sacrificing "great" for "good enough." The problem is, if you're an entrepreneur or have a high-stress, high-performance job, you know that just getting by isn't going to cut it in the long term.

So let’s take a deeper dive into what burnout is, what to do if you're feeling burnt out, and how to set up your life to prevent burnout from happening again.

We live in complex environments where our optimal physiological state constantly shifts. At one moment, we need to be in a restful state, before bed let's say, and the next - BANG! A loud noise might trigger our fight-or-flight response, preparing us for action. Our bodies are designed to switch between states to meet the needs of the moment. However, if we overuse this ability to ramp up for action, like in the case of burnout, where we're chronically stressed without adequate recovery time, this system can start to work against us.

You're likely familiar with the hormone cortisol, often called the stress hormone. Cortisol is responsible for creating alertness and readiness for action in our bodies. In short bursts, like when we need to react to danger, it's useful.

Ideally, after the crisis passes, cortisol levels drop back to baseline, and our body recovers. But modern life has created an environment of chronic stress, leading to a constant, low-grade drip of cortisol all day long. Without adequate time to rest and recover, this can lead to burnout and a host of other health issues including disrupting neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine, increasing inflammation, and weakening the immune system.

Burnout typically happens in two stages:

Early-stage burnout (High Cortisol) – Chronic stress leads to elevated cortisol levels, keeping the body in a prolonged fight-or-flight state. Symptoms include anxiety, irritability, difficulty sleeping, restlessness, and feeling wired but tired, where you know you're exhausted, but your mind won’t shut off.

Late-stage burnout (Low Cortisol) – Over time, the body burns out and can no longer mount an adequate stress response. This results in fatigue, lack of motivation, brain fog, and even depression-like symptoms.

So, if you’re experiencing burnout, what can you do to recover?

We’re going to stop digging a deeper hole. This is a time where we need to learn to say no and set boundaries without feeling guilty. If you’re feeling burnt out, you have to start advocating for yourself. It’s not necessarily about working less, but about prioritizing some time so that you can start to recover.

So, what does this recovery look like? This brings us to step two: we’re going to break the cycle.

This is where we use tools to reset the nervous system back to baseline. The goal here is to create a handful of moments throughout the day where we can gain some clarity and bring our attention back into our bodies in the present moment. From my experience, the most reliable way to affect the mind is through the body. What we’re trying to do here is shift our bodies from the sympathetic state, our fight-or-flight response, into the parasympathetic state, which is our rest, digest, and recover mode.

• Breathing – Try box breathing, 4-7-8 breathing, physiological sighs, or a simple full inhale through the nose, followed by a relaxed, long exhale through pursed lips to calm the nervous system. Experiment and see which methods works best for you.
• Massage therapy or self-trigger point release – Physical relaxation sends signals to the brain to reduce stress. I will have some more content on self trigger point release in the future.
• Walking (Rhythmic movement) – Especially outside, as natural light and a panoramic visual field help relax the nervous system.
• Grounding – this one might sound a little silly, but if you're in a place where weather permits, get outside in the sunlight with bare feet on the ground. Grounding has been shown in multiple studies to help with relaxation, and even improve tissue and wound healing.
• Reducing screen time – Netflix binging and doomscrolling won’t help, avoid excess screen exposure, especially at night.

• Increase electrolytes – When we are in this stressful state, our bodies actually excrete more minerals, and this can contribute to muscle tension, brain fog, and poor nervous system regulation, making it harder to recover from stress. Add a pinch of salt to water first thing in the morning and before bed, or if you prefer a more flavourful experience, use electrolyte supplements.
• Prioritize protein and healthy fats – Omega-3s for brain health, and saturated fats for cholesterol and hormone balance. Cholesterol tends to get a bad rep, but it's crucially important for bodily functions including the formation of dopamine, serotonin and vit D, all of which are critical for mood regulation.
• Avoid inflammatory foods – Avoid processed sugars, grains (breads, pastas, pastries, cereals and other grain filled, sugary packages snacks) and industrial seed oils (canola, vegetable, safflower, etc). I also recommend limiting alcohol and cannabis use during this time, as these products can have negative effects on our ability to recover, especially when it comes to sleep quality. Furthermore, if we’re trying to solve a problem, we want to avoid things that obscure our ability to actually see where the problem is coming from. Oftentimes, we can tend to use these products to avoid looking at the problem we are trying to solve.

I also recommend limiting alcohol and cannabis use during this time, as these products can have negative effects on our ability to recover, especially when it comes to sleep quality. Furthermore, if we’re trying to solve a problem, we want to avoid things that obscure our ability to actually see where the problem is coming from. Oftentimes, we can tend to use these products to avoid looking at the problem we are trying to solve.

• Reduce blue light at night – You're probably familiar with the hormone melatonin. The way melatonin is regulated in the body is that when our eyes receive blue light, think of the whiteness of a LED light as opposed to the warm tone of a lamp, this signals our body not to release melatonin. When we stop getting that bright light in our eyes, melatonin can be released, which is important for getting our bodies ready for sleep. Avoiding screens at night has a great return on investment because it also allows us to avoid stressful stimuli, like paying attention to news and politics right before we’re trying to go to sleep.
• Eat earlier – Having the last meal of your day at least 2 hours before you go to bed is a great way to allow your body to get into sleep properly, as it gives your body time to digest while you're awake. This allows your body to use all of its resources for recovery while you’re sleeping.
• Hot showers or Epsom salt baths – Helps regulate temperature and relax the nervous system before sleep.
• Try NSDR (Non-Sleep Deep Rest) or Yoga Nidra – Guided body scan meditations that help shut down overactive thoughts. Other meditative practices can works great as well.

“There’s no such thing as being overworked, only under-rested.”

• Chris Williamson

For high performers, the goal isn’t to work less, it’s to handle the workload better.

One way we can do this is to start reorganizing how we use our time during the day. We can start chunking our day into work sprints and recovery windows. There’s been a lot of research done on productivity, and what’s been found is that most of us have a window of about 3 to 4 hours where we can actually optimally focus on the work we’re doing. Obviously, this number is going to vary from person to person.

Now, I’m not saying you should only work for 4 hours a day, but what I’m saying is we should be cognizant of how we’re optimizing our time so that we’re getting the most productivity when we need it. This might look like taking one window of time where you only do your most mentally taxing tasks throughout the day and saving something like administrative emails for a time later in the day when, if you’re tired, it’s not that big of a deal.

I can give you an example: I recently shifted my own schedule and have had great results with it. I used to wake up between 6:00 and 6:30, with the idea that I’d get as much work as I could done before I had to leave to go do my massage treatments. So, I might work for a bit, then get hungry, go eat something, then come back and do a little more work and eat again. Over this 4 to 6-hour period, I was very disorganized and didn’t get much done.

What I did was create a 2-hour window from 8:30 to 10:30 where I work as if I’m showing up for a job. What’s interesting is that I’ve been getting more done in this 2-hour window than I was over a 5-hour period beforehand. So now, not only am I getting more done, but I’m doing it in less time. I now have that extra time to do things that help me recover, like taking the dog out for a walk, enjoying time with my wife and kid, meditating, exercising, and anything else I might do to relax before I have to go back into work later.

Another important thing to note here is that I specifically place this time at the time of day when I’m most focused and most alert. If you start paying attention to this in your own life, you’ll start to notice that there will be one or two times a day when you’re really engaged with what you’re doing, and other times when you notice you’re sleepy or might feel like a nap wouldn’t sound like a bad idea. So, if we start optimizing our work times for when we’re most alert, we can double down on the productivity that we get out of that scheduling.

• Prioritize cognitively demanding tasks to a specific 3-4 hours period during your individual 'peak alertness' window.
• Schedule less demanding activities outside of this window.
• Leave designated times for rest and recovery activities. If you don't schedule them, they won't magically appear.

I think the most important thing we can do for ourselves overall is focusing on our physical health. If you take nothing else from this video, please understand the importance of this. There's virtually no aspect of our health that doesn't improve by performing quality physical activity, and in the absence of physical activity, virtually everything gets worse. What's amazing about this is that it’s low-cost, and you can get a huge return on investment from just 5 to 10 minutes of hard work.

So, we want to be getting most of our movement throughout the week from low-intensity rhythmic movement like walking or hiking, and ideally, two to three full-body exercise sessions per week. These sessions don’t need to be very long either; they just need to involve functional movements that engage the whole body. I won’t go into more detail in this video about exercise and movement, as I will have other videos (posts) specifically focusing on that. But just understand that there’s nothing else you can do that has as much bang for your buck as focusing on quality physical activity.

• Daily low-intensity movement (walking, hiking)
• 2-3 full-body strength training sessions per week
• Movement reduces stress, improves brain function, and prevents nearly every modern health issue.

This may sound a little corny, but the last thing that will help stop burnout from creeping up on us is prioritizing our friends and family. We are social beings, and we shouldn’t underestimate how important it is to spend quality time with people who care about us and people that we care about.

Oftentimes, when life is overwhelming, we can start to feel lonely and isolated in our misery. So, take the time to plan a date night, plan a family dinner, or arrange a get-together with friends you haven’t seen in a while. This can go a long way in helping you live with vitality and energy, and in fostering the general feeling that you’re excited about taking on the challenges of life.

So, to wrap everything up here: burnout is not just about being tired; it’s about having a system that’s overloaded because it’s under-recovered. The elite performers in the world don’t avoid stress; they just manage it and recover better than others, using many of the tools that I mentioned in this video.

So, understand that recovery is not optional when it comes to long-term success. It will take time to figure out what the best routine is for you, but if you prioritize physical activity, create a habit of healthy nutrition and daily recovery practices, and spend quality time with people who give you energy, you will get to a place where life feels exciting once again.