Contrary to what you might see on the internet, the answer to burnout is incredibly simple.
If you’re burnt out, you won’t find the solution in a cortisol-reducing tea that promises to improve your stress.
Nor will you find it in some bottle of adaptogenic supplements that promises to balance your hormones and bring your body into a greater sense of harmony.
You won’t even find the solution in a specific exercise regimen that’s meant to work with your body and regulate your internal state.
The answer to burnout isn’t more.
It’s less.
Burnout is a condition of mental and physical exhaustion that results from prolonged exposure to stress.
In other words, burnout results from doing too much.
You just can’t solve it by putting more on your plate.
When the problem is burnout, the answer isn’t trying to jam a relaxing bath into your already overbooked schedule while your kids shout at you from the next room about homework problems they don’t understand.
It’s also not skipping lunch to do a 15-minute transcendental meditation session because some internet guru told you it would lead you to enlightenment.
No.
The solution to burnout isn’t more.
It’s less.
You have to do less.
Unfortunately, that message isn’t profitable.
It’s much easier to make money off of burnout by selling bath bombs and ashwagandha and meditation retreats than it is to actually help people figure out how to remove some of the demands from their lives.
Funny thing is…
If you’re really struggling from burnout, then doing less will often result in you achieving more.
If you aren’t constantly running on empty, then you’ll have more to give to the things that actually matter to you – which makes you more successful at those things.
(Even if it doesn’t, you significantly reduce your risk of dying from a blood pressure-induced heart attack at the age of 52 like my grandfather.)
Now I fully understand that some things are harder to control than others.
You probably can’t just go into your job tomorrow and tell your boss that you’re not gonna do your work because you’re tired. If you can, kudos to your workplace culture.
Further, even if getting a new job is the answer, you’ll probably have to go through some form of transition period. It took me years to fully transition from the ski industry into a better position as a trainer.
But there are things you can do immediately.
Like adjust your training.
If you’re struggling with too much in the rest of your life, then one answer is to change your training schedule.
There are hundreds of ways to achieve a goal and you have to find the one that works for you.
So if the rest of your life is taking up too much time, then one answer is to train less.
Which might not be what you want to hear…
But it’s a real option that can start to make an immediate difference.
If you train less, you have more time to get all the other things done – like trying to figure out what the hell is going on in your daughter’s math class – and you’re also able to put more effort into the training that remains on your schedule.
You can’t solve burnout by doing more.
So don’t fall for goofy traps and trendy supplements.
Make adjustments that will actually solve the problem.