Burnout isn’t just about being tired

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A few years ago, during Covid, I was promoted at work. We were in lock down, so I was working from home, and suddenly I was facing more responsibility, managing a larger team of people and heading up a project that was one of the biggest I’d looked after to date, with a lot of visibility for the board-of-directors (people I’d never met and previously managed to avoid the scrutiny of). The support network of my team wasn’t around and only available remotely so the training for the role was low. I was being pulled into conversations and decision making processes that internally, I felt like I had no business being a part of. 

Beyond that, my burgeoning stand-up comedy career that had just been starting to gain traction had been taken away overnight. The paid gigs and opportunities and in-roads I had made dried up, and though I tried some online gigs, I hated them.

Around this time, my wife and I started to seriously consider starting our family, so I knew I had an important decision to make around stand-up if and when the world returned to normal. There are plenty of stand-ups who make it work with young children, but I had been a workaholic, finishing my normal job at 5pm and then getting straight in the car to drive all over the country, in time to be on stage that evening, five or six times a week. My wife and friends said maybe I could cut back, do a bit less? But I didn’t want to half-arse comedy and I definitely didn’t want to half-arse being a dad. I felt as though I had to make a choice.

And then the looming shadow over it all was Covid. I had an easy time of it compared to others, and I’m grateful, but everyone felt the mental pressure of lock-downs, the fear that elderly relatives might catch the virus, not being able to see friends or family. My (now) wife and I had to postpone our wedding multiple times and were finally starting to admit to ourselves that we might not get the wedding we wanted. In the end we did, and because it happened so soon after the restrictions were fully lifted, it was a hell of a party!

This is my long winded way of saying, at the time, I was feeling overwhelmed and a little bit directionless and lost. I was struggling without my close support network of friends and family and having to navigate huge life changes and decisions. I was struggling to find the passion for things I’d once enjoyed, and struggling to enjoy the opportunities that were coming my way. I was trying to stay positive but after some time and a few false starts with lockdown lifting, I was struggling to see any return to normal. 

This was burnout for me. It’s an extreme example, but it’s also one of the more extreme times I’ve felt that way. It’s more than just being tired, or stressed. It’s that feeling of pressure that is with you from the moment you wake up. It’s a feeling of heightened panic or stress responses, even when you can’t identify what is causing you to feel stressed. It’s a sense of detachment from the things that are happening around you.

I remembered feeling irritated with myself. I’d always thought I was a creative person, and remember at the start of the pandemic when everyone talked about what an opportunity it was going to be for creative people? But I wasn’t writing that book or mastering an instrument, or even taking the down-time to work on writing jokes or trying to build something on social media. I felt like I was letting myself down.

Burnout isn’t weakness. It is a signal from your mind and body that tells you, you can’t keep going on like this. Something needs to change. At its worst, it can strip you of your motivation to do anything, but I’d implore you to try and turn to your journal in these moments.

Not to fix everything. But to breathe. To reconnect. To listen.

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Why burnout makes journaling feel hard, but necessary

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Burnout makes everything seem difficult. Even things you previously enjoyed. It can certainly make it hard to muster the energy needed for writing, but it is precisely when journaling is most needed.

Journaling gives you the space you need to process what is going on internally before it has ramifications externally, and that is important to address when you are approaching burnout or when you are going through a tough patch of experiencing it. It helps you process your thoughts and feelings, consider new possibilities, and reaffirm or even reconsider your goals and values. What got you to burnout and what needs to change? Journaling can help you discover the answers.

And remember, when you don’t feel like writing, journaling doesn’t have to be pages and pages of well-thought out, award-worthy literature. Bullet points, one sentence a day, responding to a prompt. The important thing is that you’re making the time to slow down, be honest with yourself and give your mind time to decompress.

“When you don’t know what else to do, write.” – Julia Cameron

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Make it easy: Journaling ideas for burnt out days

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If you’re struggling and finding the thought of picking up your pen and writing to be too much, then there are some simple, low-effort ways you can journal that will still be beneficial without asking too much of you. Try one or all of these and you may find that writing a lot more becomes easier once you’ve started, or you may find you just want to do the minimum required, and that’s fine too.

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One-sentence journaling

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Exactly what it sounds like, one sentence journaling is simply completing one sentence per day as your journal entry. It’s a quick, pain free way of tracking a particular thought process or feeling on that day, and then quickly being able to identify patterns in your thoughts and feelings over time. It may not seem like much, but when you go back and review, you’ll be able to uncover some powerful insights from the trends that emerge. Try completing sentences such as:

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• “Today I feel…”
  
• “Right now, I need…”
  
• “The one thing weighing on me is…”
  

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Energy tracker

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Energy trackers can be a great thing to include in your regular journaling habit. They quickly show you, at a glance, how energetic you were feeling at a given time, and if you notice extended periods of high or low energy, you can revisit your entries to see what was going on at that time which led to that. Were you sleeping less? Changing your diet? Not getting to the gym as often? Etc.

They are also a great, low-effort way to track your overall physical and mental state when you’re feeling burnt out or low energy. Every day, you simply rate your energy levels on a scale of 1-10 and then write a bullet point or two about what improved your energy levels or what decreased your energy levels. For example;

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Energy: 4/10
What helped: playing with kids, short walk
What drained me: on phone immediately after waking up, work meetings

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Although it doesn’t take much, this can be an extremely useful tool for helping you recognise where you need to set boundaries and what you need to do to build and preserve your energy levels.

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The 3-minute mind dump

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Can’t face an indefinite period of sitting alone with your thoughts right now? With a 3 minute mind dump, you’re taking away that pressure by simply setting a timer. Now, you don’t have to keep writing to some undefined finishing point, you just write for three minutes. You also don’t have to write on any specific subject – you’re just aiming to write whatever comes to mind. Try not to self-edit or worry about what’s worthy of writing down. The idea of this technique is simply to help you relieve the pressure of thoughts in your mind by letting them flow onto the page.

Once you get into the flow of these and start doing them regularly, you’ll be surprised at the insights that come out of honest, unguarded free-writing.

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Micro-gratitude

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Gratitude journaling is a really powerful tool for boosting your happiness and self-confidence, both of which can be severely lacking when you’re suffering burnout. With a micro-gratitude journal, you’re not looking to explore the feelings of gratitude too deeply, you’re simply looking for 1-3 small things that you’re grateful for each day. It doesn’t matter how small or insignificant these may feel, what matters is that you’re looking for them. Some examples might include:

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• A hot shower
  
• A moment of silence
  
• A good coffee
  

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Whilst a micro-gratitude journal won’t necessarily fix burnout, it does train your mind to look for moments of positivity and ‘good stuff’ which can be a really powerful framing device when things seem a bit bleak or hopeless. 

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Journaling prompts to reflect and recover

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Below are some journaling prompts to help you uncover the root of your burnout and start considering actions to feel more energetic and empowered. Use your journal to consider the prompt and then reflect on your responses. Try to be as open and honest with yourself as possible. 

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• What am I most exhausted by right now?
  
• What am I doing out of obligation instead of choice?
  
• Where in my life do I feel stretched too thin?
  
• What would a small, realistic break look like for me this week?
  
• What have I been needing — but not giving myself?
  

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Helpful Resource: Mayo Clinic – Burnout: How to Spot It and Take Action

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What you might discover on the page

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However you are able to face journaling when you feel like you don’t have the energy, whether it’s through guided prompts or simplifying the habit to one sentence or a few bullet points, if you’re able to keep showing up and putting in the work, you can still uncover incredible insights. 

What you’re looking to do in these times is try and identify the areas that are draining you or negatively affecting you, and sometimes it’s not until we sit down and put our thoughts on paper that these things become more obvious. Journaling even for just a short period a day might reveal that you’ve been ignoring your own needs and putting other needs ahead of your own too much, that you’ve said yes too often and overcommitted yourself to pleasing other people, and that even though you feel like you’ve been present, you’ve actually been on autopilot for weeks.

Once you’ve identified what is happening and what is causing it, you can start to think about improving your situation, and this is the power that journaling gives you in tough times. Space to think and develop clarity.

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Use your journal as a recovery tool

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Once you’ve gone through the process of identifying that you are burnt out, and found the root causes of this, journaling can be an excellent tool to aid in recovery. As you start to feel like you can give more energy to the journal, start to ask yourself these questions:

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• What gives me energy?
  
• What drains me?
  
• What are the habits that help me reset?
  
• What boundaries do I need to protect my peace?
  
• What can I remove or say no to this month?
  

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Keep regularly reviewing these reflections, once a week or so, and consider, what are they trying to tell you? Where do you need to focus your attention and where do you need to create boundaries? In this way, you can start to develop a meaningful action plan to help get you back to your best self.

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Start small

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Burnout is hard. It can have you feeling flat and numb, overwhelmed and disconnected. At the time, it can feel like journaling is the last thing you want to do, but it is in times like this that the benefits of journaling can be exceptional, so start small and don’t ask too much of yourself. One word, one sentence, one page a day can be enough to help free up some capacity in your mind, help you see positivity again and get you back to being an active participant in your life.

Remember as well that you don’t need to solve everything in a day, you just need to take a first step, to give yourself time to pause and hear what you need again.

In journaling, there should be no judgement or pressure or expectation. It is about reflection, and clarity and honesty, and sometimes that’s what you need in order to rediscover yourself.