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Key points
- If you keep going back to the things causing burnout, then you’ll keep burning out.
- Using a break as an opportunity to reflect is key to developing strategies to help you recover from burnout.
- Reflection is how you switch from a reactive mindset to a proactive one.
The most common advice to deal with burnout boils down to “take a break,” but no matter how helpful taking a break might be, the benefits are short-lived. This type of advice overlooks a critical aspect of burnout: If you keep going back to the things causing burnout, then you’ll keep burning out.
This is why taking a vacation feels good in the moment but does little to actually help you recover from burnout. As soon as your vacation is over, you return to the exact same environment as the exact same person, which led to your burnout in the first place.
What if you could use a break to actually recover from burnout and return to work better than when you left? You can. Here’s how…
An Opportunity to Reflect
We’re much better at problem-solving when we’re calm and in a proactive mindset than when we’re in a high-stress emotional state and reactive mindset. This is why developing strategies to move from a reactive mindset to a proactive one is critical for effective problem-solving.
Using a break as an opportunity to reflect is key to developing insights and strategies to help you recover from burnout by not only identifying the sources of burnout, but also what changes you can make to prevent or minimize burnout from happening again in the future.
Because reflection is how you switch from a reactive mindset to a proactive one.
Bill Gates is famous for his “think weeks,” where he takes a break from his day-to-day routine and goes to a private cabin for a week or two to read, contemplate, and strategize his next steps. He understands the power of taking a break from his normal routine, where it’s easy to get trapped in “reactive mode,” and instead cultivate stillness so he can develop deep insights into sources of stress and inefficiency as well as how to move forward and return better than when he left.
Taking a break from the things that cause stress and lead to burnout gives you the opportunity to cultivate stillness and calm. When we cultivate stillness, we open ourselves up to develop deep insights into our situation, allowing us to switch from a reactive mindset to a proactive one.
Here are six questions to ask when you take a break, so you can gain clarity on how to return to work better than you left.
Questions to Reflect
Of the sources of stress and burnout that are within your control to change, consider these questions:
- If I could redesign my workflow or routine from scratch, what would it look like?
- What are the few most important things I need to do, and how can I prioritize them instead of getting distracted by busy work that causes me to feel constantly overwhelmed?
- How can I set, communicate, and maintain healthy boundaries to preserve my mental health and fully show up in my work and responsibilities?
- What are the bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and points of friction that bog down my productivity and increase my symptoms of burnout, and how can I reasonably remove or restructure them?
- What are the activities that recharge me that I’ve been neglecting, and how can I build them back into my routine?
- What specific changes can I commit to making so that when I return to work, I will be less stressed, less likely to burn out, and better able to enjoy the work I do more?
Once you’ve clarified these, you’ll have developed a concrete strategy to use when you return to work after your break.
A Habit for Life
Taking a break allows us to mentally distance ourselves from the things causing our burnout. But you don’t have to wait to take a two-week vacation to reap the benefits of a break and reflection practice.
A break can take any form that works for you:
- 10 minutes in the morning.
- An hour on Sunday.
- A full day once a month.
But it’s what you do during that break that matters:
- 10 minutes in the morning to journal and reflect on the day.
- An hour on Sunday to reflect on your past week and set intentions for the next.
- A full day once a month to deeply contemplate what’s been working and what needs to change.
By creating the mental space to deeply contemplate and reflect on the sources of our burnout, what we want to be different, and what changes we’re willing to commit to making, we set ourselves up to successfully return to work better than when we left.
This is how we can make the most out of a break to recover from burnout.
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