Burnout is not a holiday problem

When someone tells me they're burnt out and their plan is a long holiday, I ask what will be different in the inbox they come back to. Usually nothing, except volume.

Tiredness responds to rest. Burnout is closer to a mismatch between what you're spending yourself on and what you get back — recognition, autonomy, meaning, money, any of them. Rest doesn't touch a mismatch. It just delays the moment you notice it again.

The coaching work is unglamorous. We audit where the hours go, we find the commitments you inherited rather than chose, and we run experiments in giving some of them back. Most people can recover a day a week within a month without anything dramatic happening.

The dramatic version — quitting — sometimes is the answer. But it's a much better decision made from a recovered position than from the bottom.