The cure to burnout is balance
As I write this, I am in the middle of a month-long pause from my business. Since I started Change Consulting more than 16 years ago, I have rarely taken any break longer than a few days. The last time I took a month off was seven years ago when my daughter was born. (I spent the 30 days recovering from a cesarean, and figuring out how to care for this precious being that had just came into our lives. Needless to say, not much rest happened.)
Since then, I have worked through almost every “vacation.” During the pandemic, I instituted a new policy that gave our team a quarterly break—a practice we continue today. And yet, I myself work through those breaks. A majority of my time over the past 16 years has flowed to work - to serving clients, running PR and communications campaigns, building a company, building and taking care of a team. My other primary focus is my family and raising my kid. Missing from this equation has been time for my own self-care and for any personal passions or hobbies. As a result, over the past year, I found myself experiencing more than exhaustion—I found myself in the midst of real burnout.
But here is what I am learning about burnout: it’s not just being physically or mentally tired, and the cure is not just sleep or rest. I believe burnout happens when we are so singularly focused on one particular pursuit that we become one-dimensional beings. Burnout doesn't arrive suddenly. It creeps in quietly, disguised as dedication to a cause, an institution or some area of purpose. This narrowing of existence—whether toward career ambition, academic excellence, parental perfection, or even passionate activism—feels virtuous, even necessary. But beneath this concentrated effort lies a imbalance that inevitably collapses under its own weight.
We live in a culture that celebrates specialists and rewards singular focus. The 80-hour workweek, the athlete who sacrifices everything, the entrepreneur who sleeps under their desk—these become our modern heroes. And, rightly so. And yet, one dimensionality often becomes a slow-motion surrender of the full spectrum of human experience.
The transformation happens gradually. What begins as purposeful dedication imperceptibly shifts as other dimensions of life—physical health, relationships, creativity, rest, play, spirituality—are relegated to "someday” or a very small slice of our lives. We tell ourselves this imbalance is temporary, a necessary sacrifice for success. Yet "someday" rarely arrives before burnout does.
The cruel paradox is that this narrowing often undermines the very thing we're pursuing. One-dimensionality doesn't just harm us—it hollows out our contribution and blunts our impact. We become too exhausted to make sound decisions. We lose access to the varied experiences that once fueled our creativity. We become depleted of the very empathy that made us effective as leaders, or simply as humans.
Our bodies signal the warning long before our minds acknowledge it. For me, I had trouble sleeping through the night. Getting out of bed in the morning was getting harder and harder. I began losing my curiosity and started getting cynical. Optimism became a rarity, and anxiety became ever present. What I realized was that these were messages from a neglected self. When we reduce ourselves to a function—worker, parent, achiever—we forget that humans are inherently integrated beings. No single dimension can thrive indefinitely without the support of the others. Burnout isn't simply exhaustion from doing too much; it's the emptiness that comes from becoming too little of who we fully are.
When I began this month-long pause, I thought I would spend most of my time sleeping. And that was true up to a point. For the first few days, I either slept or sat on my couch, binging on mindless shows while my daughter was at school. But after those few days, I wanted to do more. I took day trips to nearby coastal towns--Northern California has so many!–-to go sit by the water. I journaled, reflecting on the past 16 years, honoring and celebrating what I accomplished, and grieving what I lost in the process. I practiced my newly improved cooking skills and read books by great chefs. I rode my bike with my kid. I gardened. I read poetry, and wrote some bad poetry too. I went on a hunt for the best bakeries in Oakland. All of this served no value to anyone but me. And in the process, I have started feeling something I have not felt in quite some time–genuine joy, authentic delight.
Now, I am not naive enough to believe that 30 days are enough to fully recover from burnout. And at first, I felt guilty about taking this pause in the midst of an economic freefall and a political polycrisis. But what I do believe now is that, yes, rest truly is resistance–and recovery from burnout requires wholeness–-the restoration of our full-spectrum existence. It requires us to be militant about protecting and reclaiming the parts of ourselves and our interests that offer no value to anyone else. It requires us to stop believing that we only matter when we are producing for others–-or when we are earning money or are doing something that can be used for content on the gram or on TikTok. We can create just for the sake of creativity. We can rest just for the sake of rest. We can enjoy hobbies just because they bring enjoyment. This isn't selfish—it's survival and sustainability.
Holding on to our multidimensional nature and getting back to wholeness is not just the cure for burnout—it's the prevention.