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Writer self-care ,

Writing and burnout: how to get through it.

By Gemma Amor

If you’re here, you’re probably burned out. You should be writing, but your desire to do so has evaporated. I’ve been there. It is exhausting and frustrating in equal parts. The act of writing no longer feels like the transformative, relaxing or impassioned experience it usually is. It has become a chore. Your mind feels fuzzy and unfocussed, engulfed by a thick fog. The thought of returning to your work in progress only to struggle with it makes you tired, rather than excited. In fact, you’d rather do anything other than write.

These are the signs of writing burnout, and it’s fair to say that at some point in a person’s creative career, we all experience it. In these troubled times of pandemic-related anxiety and stress, it is perhaps no surprise that burnout is more prevalent than ever .

The good news is that overcoming creative burnout is entirely possible. In this guide, we examine what writer burnout means, offer tips on how to avoid burnout as a writer, and hopefully, help you rediscover the joy of writing if you’re struggling with it.   

What Is Writer’s Burnout?

Writer’s burnout is a state of exhaustion that makes you unwilling and unable to do what you love best and can lead to you questioning your entire identity as a creative. This is not the same as writer’s block, which is characterised as an inability to write. Writer or creative burnout is more extreme, and manifests as a writer being physically, mentally and emotionally incapable of performing the most basic of tasks or assignments. I spent much of 2020 in that state, missing several key deadlines as a result. Thankfully, my publishers were understanding and patient, but the inability to do what I have always loved to even a basic degree was heart-breaking.

There are many contributors to burnout: stress, fatigue, a pervasive culture of ‘hustle’, and the pressures that come with being self-employed or freelance to name a few. Writers often keep irregular hours, are beholden to tight (sometimes self-imposed) deadlines, and have to contend with a string of other considerations like imposter syndrome, marginalisation, low income, and a highly competitive industry. Writing can also be a lonely business, with a distinct lack of support and opportunities to socialise. Long hours bound to the desk juggling deadlines means you’re left with little time to indulge in healthy, non-work based hobbies, exercise, or other pursuits. All these things combined can sometimes be overwhelming.

Signs Of Writing Burnout

Recognising writer’s burnout can be key to making sure you overcome it in the future. If you’re still unsure, ask yourself the following questions:

• Are you constantly exhausted?
• Are you struggling with motivation?
• Is your mindset increasingly negative, or are you often in a bad mood?
• Are you having a hard time remembering things?
• Do you feel anxious and overwhelmed?
• Has your output slowed down, and the quality of your work suffered? 
• Do you feel rundown and in a general state of poor health?
• Has writing lost all its joy for you?
• Are you using alcohol, drugs or other stimulants as a crutch?
• Do you sleep badly?
• Are you becoming more insular and retreating from the world at large?

If the answer is yes to several or all of these, then my advice is simple: stop for a moment. Get used to the idea that you are going through something serious and start taking care of yourself a little. Admitting to and accepting that you are dealing with burnout is the first step towards improving your situation. 

How To Avoid Burnout As A Writer

‘Prevention is better than cure’ is the foundation of much in modern healthcare, and it applies to writer’s burnout too. There are several things you can do to pre-emptively stave off burnout:

Set Firm Boundaries

Boundaries are a formidable tool in any writer’s toolbox. Having a clear idea of your preferred daily working hours, routine, how you want to be communicated with, the number of deadlines and projects you are comfortable with, and who you want to work with is a great way of making sure you don’t get overwhelmed. Write your boundaries down and stick to them. It will make life much simpler, clearer and easier to navigate. 

Be Actively Nice To Yourself

Be your own cheerleader and shout about your achievements and successes as many times as you feel you need to. Doing so can be an affirmative process that actively makes you feel better about yourself and your abilities, and this can go a long way towards fighting off burnout before it takes too firm a hold on you. 

Keep It Simple And Structured

Decluttering your workspace can help create a calmer mindset. Then do the same with your working day. Divide your day into chunks and figure out how you want to use that time. If writing is too difficult, schedule in some admin, or perhaps do some valuable writer research . Answer a few emails, especially if your inbox is filling up. Grab a notebook and do some gentle planning, or jot down ideas. Keep it simple and try to stick to some sort of structure. You’ll still be working and moving forward, even if you aren’t writing. Most importantly, make sure you factor in lots of breaks. A coffee break, lunch, a walk around the block, podcast time while you do the dishes or maybe even calling a friend for half an hour. Break times are important for creative energy. It can be difficult to remember that when all we see is a looming deadline. 

Look After Yourself

It’s important to look after your physical health and mental wellbeing. A healthier body can mean a healthier mind, and taking care of both is extremely important, especially in today’s world. While it’s certainly beneficial to exercise and get fresh air wherever possible, that isn’t always an option for creatives with mobility issues or other limiting factors, but you can take care of yourself in other ways. Getting enough sleep can make a huge difference. So can carving out time to spend with friends or an inner circle of peers that you trust, like your local writer’s group . Meditation might be beneficial, as is self-soothing: a weighted blanket, a hot bath, time spent with a novel, music, a jigsaw, your kid’s Lego, a freshly cooked, healthy meal, or a special cup of coffee. Simple, small things can make a big difference when you’re burned out. 

Take It Easy On Yourself

‘You shouldn’t write if you can’t write’, Ernest Hemingway once said, and he was absolutely right. One of the worst ways to recover from writing burnout is by ‘writing through’ it.

Slogging ahead whilst battling extreme mental and physical fatigue will only exacerbate the symptoms of burnout. The quickest and best way to tackle your situation is by taking control of your work schedule, as stated above, and, most importantly, allowing yourself to rest. If you can, reassess your deadlines and ask for more time where needed, or, if they are self-imposed deadlines, adjust them to accommodate your current situation. Give yourself some slack when it comes to your own expectations of what you can achieve. If stopping work entirely for a while is not an option for you, then get used to the idea of working at a slower pace until you feel better. Introducing breaks in your working day will also help, especially if they involve time away from a screen, social media, email, and anything else likely to make you feel overwhelmed.

Ways To Recover From Writing Burnout

If you are currently in the grip of burnout, try not to worry too much. That’s easier said than done, I know, but there are ways to facilitate your own recovery. The most important thing you can do is to prioritise yourself. But what does that look like?

Plenty Of Rest And Sleep

At the risk of sounding like your favourite aunt, sleep is important. Getting adequate rest on a regular basis can vastly improve both mood and overall health, reduce stress and clear away that brain fog. Frustratingly, burnout and stress can often impact sleep, and ‘coronasomnia’ is also an emerging issue thanks to disrupted routines and prolonged uncertainty.

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy could help introduce a better bedtime routine and habits. Having a device-free bedroom could also help, with working in bed on your laptop a big no-no. There are also a range of apps that play white noise, soothing music, or read you a bedtime story. Even if you’re not sleeping, being in a quiet, calm bedroom or sleeping space can help put your body to rest and kickstart the restoration process a little.

Explore Other Creative Outlets And Experiences

For many writers, their hobby has suddenly become their career. This can make it difficult to find other ways to relax. Art, music, gaming, cooking, crafting or spending time in nature could help. It’s about finding another outlet to express your creativity that isn’t governed by deadlines, pay rates or client expectations. Getting away from your desk, home or studio for a while is also beneficial, as is trying something completely new like life-drawing, pottery, stamp collecting, pony trekking, you name it – anything that intrigues you and gives you the chance to meet new people and gather a different perspective on life.

Relax And Socialise

Relaxation time allows you to put your needs front and centre for a concerted period. Whether it’s a hot bath, a gentle walk, yoga, meditation or a massage, it’s important to allow your body and mind to relax as much as possible. Downtime also doesn’t have to be all about low lights, baths and herbal tea, however. It can involve hanging out with close friends and letting your hair down during games night, a sports event, a night out at the pub or dancing at a gig. If you’re having fun and socialising, you’re restoring. Just be careful you don’t push it too far and burn the already depleted candle at both ends.

Deal With Mundane Chores

Sometimes I deal with burnout by diving into household chores. When I am incapable of doing much that requires real brainpower, I can cope with menial, practical tasks. I often tee up my favourite true crime podcasts and dive into cleaning, tidying, gardening, or DIY tasks I’ve been putting off. It creates a sense of momentum that helps me feel less hopeless about my situation. Again, if you are someone with mobility issues some of these things might not be accessible, but you could find that dealing with household admin, finances, or general day to day things you have been putting off equally as helpful.

Change Your Writing Location

A change can be as good as a rest, and this is especially true if you work from home. The pandemic made getting out and about extremely difficult, and a lack of variety in setting can compound burnout. I rearranged my office so that my desk was closer to a window and added some plants to my workspace, which helped a little. I also took paperwork I needed to do into the garden during good weather, and once restrictions lifted and it was safe to do so, I took my laptop back to my favourite cafe, which helped enormously. A change of scene can work wonders.

Identify Sources Of Stress

In a similar vein to setting boundaries and structuring your working day, identifying the exact stressors in your life can be enormously helpful. Too many deadlines? Prioritise or cut them down. A particular person bothering you? Limit your interaction with them. Writing project stalling close to deadline? Consider asking a peer to beta-read or give constructive feedback to help kickstart you again. Tackling a series of issues methodically can give you great peace of mind and a better sense of control.

Go On Holiday

Again, this is not always possible for everyone, but if you do have the means, a vacation is a fantastic way to recharge your depleted creative batteries. But when we say vacation, we mean it – leave the laptop at home, ignore your emails and try to disengage completely. A notebook might be good for capturing any ideas you have whilst relaxing on a sun lounger – but keep it brief and simple. No new novel attempts!

From Burnout To Churn Out

Finding yourself in a position of creative burnout is nothing to be ashamed of – it is a natural by-product of many individual factors and stressors working against you. There are measures you can take to make sure it doesn’t happen again: implementing more structure, setting firmer boundaries and being kind to your body and mind key among them. For those in the thick of writer burnout, you can navigate your way out by identifying the symptoms, making a real effort to rest and be good to yourself, and slowing down your expectations when it comes to output for a while.

You aren’t alone in feeling this way, and in this line of work you’ll probably encounter writer’s burnout more than once, but hopefully, by following these tips you’ll soon be going from burnout to ‘churn out’ in no time. 

About the author

Gemma Amor is a Bram Stoker Award nominated author, illustrator and podcaster, best known for her true-crime inspired novella Dear Laura , and her work with the multi-million download horror anthology show The NoSleep Podcast . Her other books include Cruel Works of Nature, Dear Laura, White Pines, Girl on Fire, These Wounds We Make , and Six Rooms. She is also co-creator, writer and voice actor for horror-comedy podcast Calling Darkness, starring Kate Siegel, and writes for video games. She is currently working on her first screenplay. See Gemma's website , Twitter , or Amazon author page for more.

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Writer’s Burnout: 6 Helpful Ways Any Writer Can Use to Overcome Burnout

by J. D. Edwin | 0 comments

Have you ever started writing a book with a burst of energy and enthusiasm? For a time, your fingers were flying off the keyboards, and then somewhere in the manuscript…they stopped. Have you ever become a victim to writer's burnout?

At some point in the writing process, every writer feels exhausted.

It's hard work writing a book, let alone working full time, caring for children or pets, and any other additional responsibilities you have in daily life.

Nothing is more frustrating than when, for one moment, you felt fully immersed in your story. The next day you're tempted to give up on it altogether. You're tired. You need a rest.

First, this is normal. Second, you can overcome it!

In this article, I share my personal experience with writer's burnout. I also suggest six helpful ways to overcome burnout so you can get back to writing—and not regret the time you spend with your story.

Writer's Burnout Strikes Again

Last year, about fifteen months ago, I made a promise to myself:

I was going to start treating writing like a job and take it seriously.

I set no expectations or goals, only that I was going to start working on some aspect of my author career for a set number of hours each week and see where it takes me.

At the time I was working a fairly laid back job and desperately looking for something to focus on so I didn’t lose myself in the chaos of the pandemic and homeschooling my children. Ten hours a week, I told myself.

As it turned out, when you treat something like a job, things happen.

Soon I was writing bi-weekly articles and blog posts, working on multiple new books, sending countless inquiries, and signing a publishing contract. I committed to publishing a trilogy with six months in between each book, gave talks to other writers, and networked in any way I could during pandemic conditions.

In November, I also changed to a much more demanding job where I functioned as a one-person team. I worked my day job full time, my writing job on nights and weekends, and kept two children alive somewhere in between. I worked every evening, every weekend, every holiday, every chance I had. I worked on my birthday. I worked while visiting my in-laws.

I even sought out chances to network and promote my book while away on my friend’s bachelorette weekend.

Have you found yourself in similar situations?

I launched a book while writing another book, then immediately got to working on launching another—while writing yet another.

I forgot my birthday and my anniversary because I was, you guessed it, writing.

I don’t know how many hours I work right now as an author. I lost track a long time ago. I was getting great at my writing progress and thrilled that my writing career was finally going somewhere. I thought I could keep going forever.

And then, to no one’s surprise, I burned out.

Has this happened to you?

Looking back on it, everyone saw it coming but me.

My friends and family all told me at different times that I was doing too much and needed to slow down. “You can’t keep up this pace forever,” they'd say. I refused to believe them.

How could I get tired of doing something I loved ?

I’d kept it up for over a year. Surely I could keep going.

But one day I sat in front of my computer and realized my mind was blank.

I couldn’t write. Inspiration had left me. I wanted to sleep all the time and had a difficult time concentrating on anything during the day. I had no patience for work or writing and no interest in things I used to like, and I even found myself annoyed at the people around me because I was physically and mentally tense.

Can you relate?

Most importantly, I found I didn’t enjoy the writing process anymore. Even typing a few words became a challenge.

It took about two months before I slowly began to come out of my writing burnout.

It was something I never thought would happen to me—writer’s burnout. The process wasn’t, and still isn’t, easy. But I’ve learned a few things about myself, most of which were very humbling.

Today I want to share with you six realizations that helped me overcome the low moments in my writer's burnout. This way, hopefully if you find yourself in the same position, you’ll be less stubborn than me.

You'll know what you need to do in order to successfully conquer a writer's burnout.

6 Helpful Ways to Overcome Writer's Burnout

1. admit you are burned out.

This sounds easy but is actually incredibly difficult.

No one likes to admit they’re at their limit. I certainly didn’t.

In fact, I still struggle with feeling like a failure for burning out at all. How can I be such a hypocrite? I’m the one who gives talks on productivity . I’m the one who writes entire novels in six to eight weeks and teaches other people how to do it . I can’t burnout. It goes against my whole brand!

Truth is, that’s ego talking.

We all burnout. We’re not machines that keep chugging, as much as we like to believe we are.

The signs of burnout look different for everyone. Some people become tired or depressed. You might suffer from a lack of sleep or a drop-off in a social life you once enjoyed. Some people become anxious or jittery.

For me, it took until I lost my passion for what I loved most to admit my tank was empty. If I had admitted it earlier, I might not have gotten to that point.

So if you feel tired, or bored, or frustrated, don’t ignore that feeling, especially if it's beginning to impact your creative energy.

Take a moment and a deep breath and ask yourself if you might be doing a little too much. Be willing to recognize the signs of hitting your limit before you actually hit it.

You’ll be far better off for it.

2. Ask for help

As much as we hate admitting to our limitations, we hate asking for help even more.

When I finally admitted to being burned out, I took an honest look at what I had on my plate and decided to finally ask for help.

• I asked a friend to help me read and review the last few indie books on my plate.
• I requested two days off work and used it to build up a cushion of articles so I could relax my writing schedule a little.
• I asked family members to watch the children for a few extra hours.
• I requested extra time on my current book—time I desperately needed, and time necessary to make my book the best it can be without neglecting other authoring activities. (There’s nothing wrong with giving yourself a little leeway.)

With a few things off my plate, I breathed easier and took time to get organized. I also kept myself from overloading the extra time with more tasks and instead allowed myself to spread out what I need to do over more time.

Asking for help is an important step you need to take to overcome burnout. Be honest with your loved ones that you need support.

Don't be ashamed, be proud of yourself for doing this.

3. Self-care

Self-care can be kind of a buzzword. If you google self-care, ninety percent of what comes up is bath bombs and scented candles. If all of our problems could be solved by those, then life would be a lot simpler.

Real self-care is a little more complex. It involves honestly identifying what you need and what you can do to fulfill it. This may take a few tries, but once you figure it out, it’s absolutely worth it.

For me, I did a very simple thing: I learned how to nap.

I’ve never been a napper, but in the midst of burnout, I realized my energy reserves were terribly low, especially in the afternoon. Low energy led to tiring evenings when I’m supposed to be doing most of my writing.

So I decided I had nothing to lose if I gave napping a try. I had to learn how to power nap in a way that works for me: twenty minutes in the early afternoon with the lights on so I don’t fall into too deep a sleep.

Working from home in the corner of the bedroom was finally proving to be convenient for something!

This simple change has been lifesaving. I felt much more refreshed not just in the afternoons, but on a day-to-day basis.

The solution won’t be this fast and easy for everyone. And this new addition to my day certainly didn’t solve everything. But sometimes a minor change can have a major impact, and that can be the first step to getting yourself back on track.

You might need a boost to your physical health by taking a walk, or maybe you need some quality time in your family life to refill your creative well. Even if you need a short break from writing, it's worth it to come back to the page refreshed and ready again.

[/share-quote] A minor change can have a big impact. What can you change in your daily routine to give you more energy to write—and less likely to avoid writer's burnout? [/share-quote]

4. Change things up

Never underestimate the power of change.

Switching things up can give your brain a much-needed reset.

Earlier this year, I made a conscious decision to set aside my other passion—art—in order to make more time for writing. However, as the year wore on, I found myself increasingly frustrated and tired by the drudgery of working and writing.

A few weeks ago, I dug up a sketchbook on a whim and spent a few minutes sketching and—surprise, surprise—it turned out to be a much needed release.

Since then I’ve made an effort to spend time drawing at least once a week, even only for fifteen minutes. The change of pace has been much needed, more than I was willing to admit at first.

If you're suffering from creative burnout in one mode of creation, try switching things up. You might find your writing inspiration racing back to you with a little distance.

5. Lower the bar

This one is hard, because it sounds an awful lot like I’m asking you to compromise the quality of your work. I'm not.

The truth is, burnout often has to do with high expectations.

We push too hard because we expect too much of ourselves and end up expending more energy and time than we have. And yet, when we get to that point, rather than accepting we’ve reached our limit, we end up being disappointed in ourselves for not meeting an expectation that was probably not realistic in the first place.

Lowering the bar doesn’t necessarily mean lowering the quality of your work. Rather, it means setting more realistic expectations based on your current available resources.

Learn six helpful ways to overcome writer's burnout in this article. Tweet this

J. D. Edwin

J. D. Edwin is a daydreamer and writer of fiction both long and short, usually in soft sci-fi or urban fantasy. Sign up for her newsletter for free articles on the writer life and updates on her novel, find her on Facebook and Twitter ( @JDEdwinAuthor ), or read one of her many short stories on Short Fiction Break literary magazine .

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Home / Book Writing / Writer Burnout: 19 Tips for Recovery and Prevention

Writer Burnout: 19 Tips for Recovery and Prevention

Do you find your creativity dwindling? Have you lost the passion to write or create stories for your readers? If so, it might be time to read this article.

As someone who has experienced severe burnout in the past, I will discuss signs of burnout and provide tips to recover from and prevent it in the future.

I will also discuss how writers can maintain their sanity by taking care of themselves in order to avoid burning out.

• What burnout is
• The signs and symptoms of burnout
• The difference between burnout and writer's block
• How to recover from burnout
• How to prevent burnout in the first place

Table of contents

• What is Burnout?
• Physical Signs
• Emotional Signs
• Behavioral Signs
• Writer's Burnout vs. Writer's Block
• Why is Writing Mentally Exhausting?
• 1. Take Time Off
• 2. Improve Your Sleep
• 3. Pick Up A Hobby
• 4. Write Something Else for a While
• 5. Find Inspirational Stories
• 6. Reduce, Reduce, Reduce
• 7. Freewriting
• 8. Spend Quality Time With Loved Ones

9. Identify Your “Why”

• 10. Change Your Scenery
• 1. Establish A Regular Writing Routine
• 2. Eat A Healthy Diet And Exercise
• 3. Explore A Meditation Practice
• 4. Organize

5. Focus on the “One Thing”

6. learn to say “no”.

• 7. Take Regular Breaks
• 8. Try New Things and Never Stop Learning
• 9. Treat Yourself Now and Then
• You Can Overcome Burnout

Burnout is a form of mental exhaustion, usually caused by a variety of conditions and stressors taking place in the workplace, in your family life, in your health, or in your social life.

Burnout is the result of all these stressors combining to make you feel overwhelmed, emotionally fatigued, depressed, and like you just can't keep up with everything.

It is particularly harmful for writers, who rely on their writing to make a living. Writing is one of the most brain-intensive things that we can do, so burnout can be common among authors.

Common causes include:

• Taking on too many responsibilities
• A disorganized work environment
• Excessive or prolonged stress
• Having work that is not in alignment with your values
• Feeling undervalued at work
• A lack of success
• A lack of sleep
• A lack of support from friends, family, and coworkers

Burnout affects all types of writers, from the online content writer, to the novelist, to the freelance writer. Thankfully, the tactics to improve true burnout are applicable to all.

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The Signs of Burnout

It's important to recognize the signs of burnout if you want a chance at recovering or preventing it. Sometimes, when we are in a burnt out state, we don't even realize that there is a problem, and so we can't correct it.

Generally, these signs can be categorized in three ways: physical, emotional, and behavioral. Let's look at all three of these.

We may take this for granted a lot of the time, but the body and the mind are actually two parts of the same thing. Here are some physical signs of burnout that you might want to look out for.

• Physical fatigue
• Feeling sick without a clear source
• You wake up feeling exhausted

Emotional signs are some of the most common signals that you are experiencing burnout. Here are a few to watch out for:

• A feeling of hopelessness
• Feeling detached from your work or from others
• A lack of motivation
• A feeling of pointlessness regarding your writing
• You can't relax
• You don't enjoy writing
• You're moody and negative
• You forget things easily

Lastly, are the behavioral signs. These are things you might do or say that indicate you have writer’s burnout. Here are just a few.

• You no longer have a social life and isolate yourself a lot
• You abuse alcohol or food
• Your ability to keep commitments worsens
• You procrastinate
• You keep thinking about what you have to do even when you're supposed to relax
• You snack a lot

Do any of these sound familiar? If so, then you may be experiencing burnout. And you don't have to have all the symptoms either. If you're a busy person, or write a lot , you are at risk of experiencing these symptoms if you're not careful.

It's easy to think that writer's block and writer burnout are the same thing. But in fact, the two are quite different.

With writer's block, you usually want to write, but the creativity is simply not flowing. This can be from a problem with the writing itself, with your outline , or just a simple lack of knowledge of what comes next.

With writer burnout, or creative burnout in general, it results in a complete lack of desire to write in the first place, even when you know what to write down.

Writing is known to be one of the most thought-intensive acts that we can do. When it comes to work, it can be very hard. And even when the words are flowing, this still puts a large load on our brain.

Why is that?

The truth is that mental exertion can cause many of the same symptoms as physical exertion, which is why we can be tired at the end of a full day of content writing, even if we sat in the chair all day.

Writing (and any form of creativity, really) also requires a lot of decision-making, which is known to break down our limited source of willpower over the day.

This is why you will often see a lot of authors, even authors who write for a living, only writing for 2 to 3 hours a day, and spending the remaining time doing other tasks that are less creatively draining.

How to Recover From Burnout

so if you read everything up to this point, you may have an idea of whether you have writing burnout or not. If you decide that you do, don't beat yourself up about it. Almost every author has experienced creative burnout at least once, if not multiple times. You are in good company.

Recovery, however, can be a rough road, and it can be different for everyone. So here is a list of tips that you can apply to recover from burnout. Not all will be relevant for you, but these are great places to start in your recovery process.

Some people will tell you that you should not stop writing if you are experiencing burnout, I respectfully disagree.

While you shouldn't put off writing for too long, and in some cases you may have to continue writing for whatever reason, I recommend you take at least a little time off.

This can be in the form of a vacation, an extended weekend, or simply a week or two where you are not writing, but focusing on other forms of creative work instead.

The point is to give yourself a hard reset, a palate cleanser, so you can come back fully refreshed and focused.

In today's society, most of us do not get enough sleep. Sleep is essential for our management of stress, and renewing your mind and body.

If you are experiencing burnout, this is one of the first things I would look at. Are you getting at least seven hours of sleep per night? If not, move things around, eliminate some items on your to-do list, do whatever it takes to get that extra bit of sleep.

Because you are not going to have success recovering from burnout if your sleep still suffers.

For many of us, writing was our hobby. When it becomes a job, that can often lead to writer burnout, because something that used to be your creative escape has now become work.

So for some, you might find it beneficial to find a new creative outlet for expression. Maybe you could start painting a picture, or playing chess, or learning a martial art.

The point is that you expose yourself to something new that will refresh your brain.

Perhaps you are simply tired of what you're currently writing. You've been in the same world or the same genre for too long.

If this is the case, then it can help to have something to switch to when you are tired of one thing. For example, I personally like to switch between fiction and nonfiction writing as a kind of palate cleanser for my brain.

You'll need to be careful with this one however, because switching between two different things can often result in a feeling that you have too much to do. Proceed with caution.

I find that when I hear the inspirational stories of others, it can often help me get the motivation I need to continue one.

Find other authors that have also gone through burnout, and learn what they did to get out of it. One great resource I recommend for most authors are the books by Becca Syme , they go into great depth on this subject.

Reading other books by authors like yourself is another great way to get that fire of inspiration going again. Tell yourself that if they could do it, you are capable of doing it too.

By far the biggest problem leading to burnout is that you are doing far too much. You are trying to write that book, work a full-time job, take care of a family, run a business, manage employees, etc.

All that can build up.

Sometimes it can be difficult to find things to eliminate, but this is an essential step if you want to reduce your symptoms of burnout.

You want to focus on what you do best. So find someone like a virtual assistant that can help take a load off for you, particularly with those tasks that you don't like.

Or you can simply eliminate them. I think you will be surprised at how many things we think are urgent and necessary, but that we can give up in favor of focusing on that which is more important, like the writing.

I also like to tweak my processes to see if I can find new ways of doing things that are more efficient: that old adage of working smarter, not harder.

For example, I found that dictation really helped me improve my writing speed , but also the trepidation that I felt when starting a big writing project.

Reducing that stress has definitely helped me recover and prevent burnout.

Let's say you need to write anyway, even with burnout. One great way to do this is to freewrite.

Freewriting is where you simply start putting words down on the page, without even thinking about what they should be about, or where to start.

You just write.

Incidentally, this is also a great cure for writer's block. It helps you get past certain barriers in your head, and helps to put you into flow, which is kind of the opposite of burnout.

If you have a special friend, a spouse, other family members, or someone you deeply respect, it can be a great idea to spend some time with those people.

Doing so will increase your feeling of self-worth, and it literally causes physical changes to the body that help refresh and renew it.

If you can combine this with tip #1, that is the ideal way to do it. But bear in mind that you need to spend time with people that will not get you down.

Spend time with people that are supportive and encouraging of your goals, who won't bring you down further by unfairly criticizing your choices. Because this can actually worsen burnout if that love and encouragement is not there.

If you haven't already, you need to identify the “why” of your writing. Why are you choosing to spend this time writing? Is it for work? And if so, why did you choose to take that job?

If you are writing a book, what made you want to write it? Why do you want to start a business? Is it for the financial freedom, the creative expression, to fulfill a lifelong dream?

The answers to these questions will be very revealing, and I encourage you to review your answers anytime you feel burnt out. It can help to keep you motivated, keep your eye on the ball, and give you the extra push you need to overcome burnout.

Another great way to reduce and prevent burnout is to get out of your current location.

This can be taking a vacation, as I mentioned above, but it can also be simply getting out and writing in a place where you don't usually write, such as a coffee shop or a library.

This can help you see things in new ways, and it also gives you some mental distance from the problems that are causing burnout.

How to Prevent Burnout

Okay, so we have covered what to do if you have burnout, but burnout is something that is better prevented than healed. If you don't take certain precautions, that burnout will come right back before you know it.

So what are some steps that we can do to prevent burnout from happening in the first place? Here are a few:

My first step would be to establish a regular writing routine . Studies show that when you establish a habit, it takes less willpower to perform that task.

How much you write is up to you. It can be as little as 15 minutes a day, to several hours in a day. It can be only on weekdays, or every single day.

The most important thing is that you remain consistent. Doing this over a period of time will eventually help you become automatic in your writing, reducing the amount of mental work that it takes to get started, and thereby avoiding burnout.

Disclaimer: I am not a doctor nor is this medical advice. That said, there is a wealth of evidence that improving your diet, and having regular exercise, greatly improves your mood, your productivity, and lowers your stress.

As a personal example, a few years ago I was diagnosed with Type II Diabetes. As I started improving my diet to lower my blood sugar, I found that I was able to write a lot more, and with a lot more efficiency, than I had before. I suddenly discovered that the brain fog that I was feeling was not normal, and could be prevented.

This is often the most overlooked area, because we don't necessarily put together the mind and the body as being part of the same thing.

But they are the same thing, so by fixing one we fix the other.

If you can only pick one thing from this list to improve, I highly recommend that you work on your diet and exercise.

Meditation and mindfulness are other areas, related to diet and exercise, that can have a huge effect on your overall health. Plus, they focus primarily on the mind, which is huge if you want to master burnout.

Once you get into it, what I have found is that meditation allows me to see my thought patterns more clearly, giving me greater awareness on how they affect me throughout the day.

This can help us discover ways in which we can improve our writing life by making changes to how we think and what we focus on.

You don't have to meditate for hours to get the benefits, just a few minutes every day will help you immensely if you do it regularly over time (which is key).

Sometimes, just cleaning up your workspace is enough to help you get back on track.

This could be clearing off your desk, or fully reorganizing your house to be more Feng Shui.

This is another way to improve mental clarity by making your physical space more manageable and less cluttered, and it can definitely help avoid burnout.

Just make sure that you are not cleaning and organizing as an excuse to not write, because it can become a huge procrastination tactic. That said, a cluttered workspace can be detrimental to your mental health, so it's good to take care of.

One step I should mention is to focus on the “one thing.”

In his book, Outliers , Malcolm Gladwell suggests that it takes about ten thousand hours of practice to become a master at something.

What this means is that you have to be very focused and deliberate in how you spend your time if you want to become the best at something.

Additionally, having too many things on your plate can be a huge contributor to burnout. So eliminating those things and focusing on just one thing is a great way to avoid it.

Find the thing that generates the most results for you, which I assume in this case is your writing, and focus on that for a while.

I think you will find it to be very liberating.

One skill that is very important is learning to set healthy boundaries with other people.

A lot of the time, we feel guilty saying no, so we end up doing things that don't make us happy or use our unique talents and abilities.

This can be really detrimental in your creative endeavors if you are constantly taking on more than you can accomplish.

One tip is to take regular breaks from what you are doing.

It's good for your mind and prevents burnout.

There are multiple layers of break-taking.

• You can take a vacation: I recommend this at least once a year
• You can take an extended weekend : I recommend this at least once per quarter
• You can take a least one day off per week : I use Sundays as my day when I don't write a word
• You can take short breaks throughout the day : I recommend the Pomodoro technique

Taken altogether, these breaks can really help refresh your mind and spirit, which will prevent burnout.

Another great way to prevent burnout is simply trying new things.

Whether that's different writing styles, or just exploring techniques and methods you haven't tried before, you can turn burnout into an exciting time for your career.

For example, if you are burned out on blogging, it's a good idea to try podcasting.

Or if your style is too rigid and confining for you, try writing poetry or some other form of creative expression which does not require so many rules.

We need to challenge ourselves as writers by trying new things in order to continue growing and improving our craft.

As I mentioned above, dictation was one of these things that really helped me to reinvigorate my writing, and I'm sure there are many things like this that you can try to both prevent and recover from burnout.

Finally, and this is a big one, treat yourself now and then.

It's good to be disciplined with how we work, but it's also important that we reward ourselves for working well, otherwise we have no sense of success, and therefore no motivation.

This can be as simple as taking a day off when you finish a book, or going out to dinner on Friday night after you have accomplished everything you set out to do during the week.

Or it can be as big as going to the spa and getting a massage.

Just make sure that you don't choose rewards that are detrimental to your health, as this can increase your burnout. Examples would be too much drinking, or rewarding yourself with sugary snacks.

If you are experiencing burnout, don’t fret.

There is hope for you. Many authors have been in your situation and have overcome it.

You can do that too.

Start by applying some of the principles that I’ve outlined in this post, and I think you will already begin to see a difference.

The most important thing you can do as a writer is to take care of yourself. If you can always remember that, the writing will eventually take care of itself.

Jason Hamilton

When I’m not sipping tea with princesses or lightsaber dueling with little Jedi, I’m a book marketing nut. Having consulted multiple publishing companies and NYT best-selling authors, I created Kindlepreneur to help authors sell more books. I’ve even been called “The Kindlepreneur” by Amazon publicly, and I’m here to help you with your author journey.

• 9. Identify Your "Why"
• 5. Focus on the "One Thing"
• 6. Learn to Say "No"

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7 Ways to Fix (and Prevent) Writer Burnout

Writing is mentally exhausting, and if you work for long stretches of time, it can be physically exhausting too. This is where writer burnout comes into play. Writers are just as prone to burnout as anyone else , and if you’re writing on top of going to school or working a full-time job or taking care of a family, you’re especially at risk.

Burnout can show up in any number of ways: writer’s block, mental or physical exhaustion that you just can’t shake, lackluster work, difficulty concentrating, or a feeling of dread when you sit down to write (or just think about writing).

Even if you’re in the midst of writer burnout, there are ways to mitigate and calm that feeling. Here are ways to fix your current writer burnout—and how to keep it from coming back.

4 ways to fix writer burnout

1. if you need a break, take a break.

One of the most common bits of advice writers receive is to write every day, no matter what. This is a great habit, of course, and one of the best ways to prevent writer’s block and stay on track to meeting your goals—but it can also make you feel worn down.

This is your permission to step away. Sometimes you just need a break , and that’s OK. You might find that after a day or two away, you’re ready to get back to the page, or you may find that an interval system works better for you (more on that later).

2. Balance your mind

Sometimes you can’t take a break from writing. When this is the case, adopt a meditation practice. You can start and end your day with meditation or simply start and end your writing session with a moment of mindfulness.

Learning how to quiet your mind at any time of day will help you manage, and eventually smooth out, that feeling of being overwhelmed.

3. Be an editor for a while

If you’re feeling stuck on your manuscript, forget you’re the writer and become the editor for a while. Editing is an important part of any writing project, so when you need a break from the burn and churn, pretend you’re the editor. Review your manuscript with a critical eye and imagine how a reader might experience your manuscript: Mark questions for the writer, note where your mind starts to wander or where the language is unclear, and jot down ideas for new material.

4. Change the topic or play with form

You might not be burnt out on writing altogether, just your current project. If you want to keep writing, consider tackling different subject matter or writing about the same subject matter in a different form (like fiction to essay, for example. This can give your brain a much-needed break and even stoke your creativity and give you new ideas for your regular projects.

3 ways to prevent writer burnout

1. write in sprints or intervals.

Writing every single day may have contributed to your being burnt out. If daily writing sessions aren’t sustainable, develop a rhythm to your discipline by writing in sprints or intervals.

Maybe write every day becomes write every other day. Maybe you alternate long writing sessions with short ones, or write for three days, then take a break for two. Maybe you write for two weeks, take one day off, then edit for a week.

You may have to experiment with writing schedules to figure out what works for you. But to keep yourself on task, make a calendar that you can easily follow and plan for. If you need accountability, share your writing calendar with a friend or writing buddy who can help you stick to your new schedule.

2. Join a writing workshop

Writing workshops and writing groups are a great way to balance discussion, writing, and critiquing others’ work, which can help you stay inspired and engaged with your projects.

3. Balance writing with gathering material

Writing doesn’t always mean sitting at your computer or at your desk. Writers also need experience. It’s where we get our ideas and inspiration, and it’s how we let the magic of our brains turn fragments into thoughts and ideas and, eventually, into words on the page.

There’s no need to take a big trip or invest in deep research. Gathering material can be as simple as going to a coffee shop to people-watch, taking a walk in your neighborhood, going to the park, or visiting a museum to take in a new exhibit. Make sure you have a pen and paper on you, though—just in case inspiration does strike.

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How to overcome writer’s burnout

Writer’s burnout can happen for lots of reasons – stress, overworking yourself, putting pressure on yourself and your work, forcing the work in spite of difficult circumstances. It’s fairly common, especially among writers who also have a full-time job and/or other responsibilities. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to overcome it, no matter how you got there.

First, you’ll want to figure out the reason for your burnout.

Why are you burnt out?

Before getting down to how to overcome writer’s burnout, it can be helpful to identify why it happened. This will help you put together a plan to prevent it happening again, or at least make it happen less intensely. It can also help you to spot signs of when you need to slow down and prioritise rest in the future.

Take a look at your life, including stressors, responsibilities, and priorities. What could be contributing to the burnout? How does writing fit into your life? Some examples could be:

• Working long hours or at a stressful job on top of writing
• Too many responsibilities at once (for example, writing, a full-time job, a baby or children, pets, socialising, housework and errands can all pile up)
• Forcing writing when you aren’t feeling your best, or on top of an illness or condition

Spending too long on the same project

• Putting unnecessary pressure on yourself – whether that be to write a lot, to publish by a certain date, or to reach a goal that isn’t able to be controlled
• Lack of breaks, including not pausing between projects
• Getting rejections on your work and feeling discouraged

When you have some idea of what’s causing your writer’s burnout, you can think about how to overcome it.

The causes of writer’s burnout – and how to overcome them

Depending on the cause of your burnout, you’ll need to adjust your approach and make some changes. What can you do, in each of the above situations, to get writing again without feeling drained of energy?

Working long hours or having a stressful job

If you have a stressful job or profession, writing can be much harder. And when you work long hours, it’s difficult to find time where you aren’t feeling drained or tired from your job. If you’re in this situation, I really do sympathise.

In these types of situations, it’s important to remember that some of the common writing advice just won’t apply to you . All too often we hear “you should write every day” or “you should write X words per day”. This doesn’t apply to writers working full-time jobs, or who have stressful careers. I have an entire blog post dedicated to this situation . But to sum up: the solution to burnout in this case is to readjust your expectations, write when you’re able to, and be okay with writing less than some of your peers.

It’s an unfortunate truth that in your writing circles, you probably know someone who can afford to only work part-time, or who can devote all their time to their writing because they have a working partner. You might know someone with a more flexible job. Someone who earns more money and works less. These people probably have more time for writing than you do.

Comparing yourself to others doesn’t help, because unless you’re able to work less hours, or can afford to reduce your hours, the situations will never match up. I know how hard it is to avoid comparison, and it’s easier said than done. Just be kind to yourself and remind yourself that you’re on your own journey, and have your own circumstances.

Too many responsibilities

To overcome writer’s burnout related to too much responsibility, it can help to see where you can cut back. I do hesitate to give this advice so firmly though, because in a lot of circumstances, it’s just not feasible. If you’re a carer, you can’t cut back on care. If you have a full-on job with no control over your hours or the stressors involved, you won’t be able to do less.

Another way to cut back is to look at your non-working hours (or non-responsibility hours). What are you doing with your time, when you aren’t working/caring for someone/managing your health/etc? Can you cut back on 45 minutes of TV or Netflix at night to give yourself time to write? Can you write in bed for a while before you to go sleep? How much time are you spending scrolling through social media, and can you use an app blocker or productivity app to reduce scroll time? Do you have a commute or lunch hour you can use for writing?

We all have at least some downtime, so have a look at what you’re doing with it. Schedule regular writing hours in that time and stick to it. Do be mindful of doing too much, though, or neglecting self-care. Put limits on your writing time if you find that helpful. I’m not here to suggest sacrificing sleep, time with family/loved ones, or your health because those things are important too.

Find pockets of time where you can.

Forcing writing when you aren’t feeling your best

We’ve all done it – sat down at the keyboard and forced out words even though we’ve had a bad day, or aren’t feeling the greatest. To a certain degree, the “butt-in-chair” method works. We need to be disciplined if we want to keep consistent as a writer and make sure we finish projects. But sometimes, forcing it just doesn’t help and your mental wellbeing could suffer. If you keep forging ahead anyway, the burnout can appear – and last longer. If you’re going through a difficult time and aren’t feeling good mentally, now may be the time to rest.

You can still do activities that feed your writing! Read books, watch movies, research things that interest you, jot down notes, and get inspired. All of this will help you overcome any burnout and feel keen to get writing again.

If you live with a long-term condition or a health problem, this one will be more difficult, because the times when you feel your best are likely limited. In that case, setting a limit on how long you write to make sure you get rest and take care of yourself might help.

If you’re really struggling with your mental health and nothing is helping you creatively, or you’ve lost interest in everything including hobbies, you may need to get help from a doctor or mental health professional.

If you’ve spent a long time on the same story, you may start to feel tired or sick of it – that’s normal as you’re getting a manuscript into shape, especially in the later editing stages when you may be on your fourth or fifth draft. But if you’ve spent, say, five years on one manuscript, and it’s all you’ve worked on, that could lead to writing burnout. We’ve all heard stories about people who have spent a decade revising and rewriting the same project.

Having fresh writing projects to tackle can keep you feeling excited about writing, and that’s the perfect antidote to burnout. Sometimes, we need to learn when to let an old project go and move on if we want to stay enthusiastic and not feel fatigued and burnt out.

Some writers are able to work on a few projects at the same time to give themselves variety, so if you think that might work for you, there’s no harm giving it a try. You could also try writing short stories or flash fiction to break up a longer project.

Putting pressure on yourself to reach certain goals

All writers put pressure on themselves at some point. You might want to get an agent and a book deal by a certain age. Finish writing your manuscript by Christmas. Write 50,000 words during National Novel Writing Month . Self-publish ten books in a year.

Goals can help us keep focused on what we want to accomplish. But they can lead to burnout if we’re constantly pushing ourselves to do more, especially if we’re working towards goals that are outside of our control.

Getting an agent and book deal before you’re thirty, or forty? Winning a literary award? Getting your book turned into a film? Sadly, these are goals that are outside of your control.

Make sure your goals are things you can work towards and accomplish, and don’t overstretch yourself. If you’re forcing yourself to write 50,000 words in November when you have a full-time job and other responsibilities, that can pave the way for burnout. Try for more manageable goals: to write for an hour in the evening, to finish a chapter, to write your query letter, to send out five submissions.

Lack of breaks, including between projects

If you’re a bit of a workaholic like I am, you might forget to take breaks. Cramming your days with work, responsibilities, and writing often results in feeling burnt out.

Learning to finish projects and dedicating time to writing are important, but you don’t have to write every day, nor do you have to push yourself to write all the time. Schedule in breaks for yourself. Have a day where you don’t write at all. Take two weeks off from writing when you finish a big project. Refill your creative well – that’s an important part of how you can overcome writer’s burnout.

Rejections on your work

Rejections can leave you feeling burnt out on the whole process of writing and publishing, not just the writing itself. It’s one of the most difficult parts of being a writer, and there’s no getting around it or avoiding it. Even if you self-publish, odds are, you’ll experience “rejection” in the form of people not buying your book, or negative reviews. The emotions that can come along with rejection may leave you wanting to stop writing altogether.

Taking a break from submitting your work, or avoiding reading your reviews, can help. Reading stories of people going through rejection can be encouraging, too, and make you feel less alone. Author Mandy McGuiness has a great collection of rejection stories from authors on her blog. And LitRejections has a page all about bestsellers initially rejected .

If you’re feeling burnt out, it’s okay . It happens to all of us at some point, especially if we’ve been pushing ourselves too hard. Once you’ve figured out the cause of your burnout, you’ll be better equipped to deal with it. If your burnout isn’t going away, or the strategies and techniques you’re doing by yourself aren’t working, please do seek extra help from a medical professional.

If you’d like more writing and publishing advice like this sent straight to your inbox, join my writing advice  newsletter .

Rachel Rowlands is a fiction editor and the author of Snowed in at the Cat Café, published by Hodder & Stoughton and being translated into multiple languages worldwide. She also wrote the Nethervale series of romantic fairytales. As an editor, Rachel loves helping other writers to refine and polish their stories. She has worked on over 200 books and her client list has included Hachette, HarperCollins, Black Library, and Penguin Random House.

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Friday, August 17, 2018

The hidden risks of emotional burnouts in writing.

The Trickery of Writer Burnouts

Physical symptoms of writer burnout, mental symptoms of writer burnout.

• Irritability
• Memory problems
• Loss of interest in writing

What to Do When Suffering From Writer Burnout

• Don't wait for vacations, take a couple of days off if feel exhausted.
• Evaluate the scope of your writing tasks, and don't be afraid of delegating some whenever appropriate.
• Set boundaries: don't write during your off work time.
• Take regular breaks while writing.

More tips needed?

• Take care of your sleep . A deep one is most helpful.
• Go in for sports . Physical exercising stimulates endorphins secretion, decreasing anxiety.
• Don't forget to take breaks from work, even if deadlines are at the back of the pack.
• Practice activities other than writing: painting, gardening, or any other creative outlets will work like meditation feeding you with new writing ideas and motivation to work.
• Write in different locations: coffee shops, coworking spaces, parks... A scenery change will help to catch your writing muse and, therefore, avoid blocks leading to anger and frustration.
• Identify your blocks. What does make you feel bad about writing: you can't concentrate, you are afraid of failure, you don't have enough writing skills to expand the idea, you're tired of writing on one and the same topic, you can't think of power words to develop the story?
• Define your physical condition. Health problems make our creative geniuses slow, locking motivation and inspiration to write. Indeed, what writer can stay productive when suffering from pain or stresses related to physical health?
• Take a vacation. For many writers, it's the best way to cope with burnouts. Several weeks without a pen or a keyboard in hands may lead to new experiences and, therefore, new writing ideas after you come back to work.
• Evaluate your current writing path. Are you happy with it? Does it allow you to achieve goals? Maybe it's time to change the approach to work, think of new genres, or even change the niche?

Good post. Appreciate you sharing your issues and what worked for you. I often find that just getting up from the computer and doing a simple household task refreshes me. But not having so strict a goal for each day also helps. As well as trying to change up tasks.

18 Tips to Overcome Writer’s Burnout

by Tess Marshall

Writer’s burnout can be described as severe exhaustion, feeling depleted, running on empty and lack of inspiration and motivation . Frankly, you feel like you don’t give a damn.

You begin doubting your capabilities and the value of your work. Your enthusiasm and energy have vanished. Your ideas have dried up and you fear everything you write isn’t worth publishing.

Understanding writer’s burnout, can help you face your problem and refresh your writing and creativity.

What causes writer’s burnout?

Lack of down time Feeling overworked and undervalued Too much responsibility Lack of monetary rewards for your work Doing unchallenging or tedious work Failure to socialize Consistently working too many hours Lack of support Demanding perfection A negative view of yourself Unwillingness to delegate The need to control everything Feelings of overwhelm

Symptoms can be physical, emotional or behavioral

Physical Headaches Poor sleep patterns Feeling tired Feeling sick

Emotional Depression Lack of energy Irritability Disengagement Lack of motivation and productivity Loss of meaning and passion

Behavioral Isolation Coping with alcohol or drug abuse Ignoring work and deadlines

“Life is actually really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” ~Confucius

Steps to Enjoyable Writing

Use the following suggestions to bring the joy back to your writing and other areas of your life.

1. Clear your desk. A cluttered workspace influences your state of mind. A neat and sparse desk will help you stay  focused and clear. Keep only the necessities in the open. Find a place for everything else or get rid of it.

2. Mind your own business. Don’t allow other writers to drive you. Don’t make comparisons. There will always be better and worse writers than you. Focus on improving your writing and enjoy the process.

3. Learn to accept constructive criticism. Everyone experiences criticism and rejection. Don’t internalize or take things personally. Improve your work and let the rest go.

4. Read books on writing. Read books on writing for enjoyment. Skip the “how to” exercises therein. See if you can relate to the author. If the author was sitting across from you at dinner what would you talk about? What advice would you want? What questions would you have?

5. Free-writing. If you want to enjoy writing, learn to write for yourself. Find pleasure in your writing, challenge yourself. The purpose of free-writing is to express yourself for your eyes only. It’s very liberating.

6. Chill out. If your bored, stressed or tired, deal with those emotions before sitting down to write. Take a walk. Write in your journal. Clear you head. When you are in a relaxed state begin again. You can’t do your best work when you don’t feel your best.

7. Connect with yourself. When you are tempted to fill up bits of free time with texting, checking emails, Facebook or Twitter, take a few moments to pause and breathe. Breathe in “calm” and breathe out, “peace.”

8. Become unreachable. The world doesn’t end when you disconnect. Take 10 minute breaks throughout your work day and walk away from everything digital. Go outside for a breath of fresh air. Sit silently and gaze out a window and daydream. Anything can be put off for 10 minutes.

9. Decompress and reflect. Take a mental health day, a vacation day or a sabbatical for personal renewal. Spend a day at the beach. Watch the sunset. Check into a bed and breakfast or a hostel in another city. Spend a day in a museum or attend an art fair. Choose to do something unrelated to writing. It’s a great way to silence your inner writing critic.

10. Empty your brain. Do a mind dump by writing down everything that comes to mind on paper. Write down dreams, goals, memories, random thoughts, ideas, everything. Do this for fifteen minutes. Next, read over your list and look for future topics and ideas for your writing.

11. Mix it up. If you currently like to write essays experiment with list or how-to articles. Write about your personal experiences. Change the tone of your articles, be conversational, revealing, funny, silly or serious. Make experimenting fun.

12. Communicate. Seek help and support from a therapist, coach, a friend or family member. Explore your problem area and do what it takes to prevent burnout from happening again. A second party can help you turn things around and prevent future burnout.

13. Diet and lifestyle changes. Avoid sugar and caffeine. Drink enough water and get adequate sleep. Take nutritional supplements. Learn to  meditate or schedule a massage.

14. Make exercise fun. Do what you enjoy. Partner with a friend to dance, walk, or bike. Get outside and move. Hiking to the top of a mountain can feel like you’ve conquered the world!

15. Expand your mind. Learn new things. Study a second language, read about great philosophers, and everyday heroes. Avoid depressing news both online and off.

16. Find quality time for the important people in your life. Take your brother out for dinner or attend the symphony with a neighbor.  Play board games with close friends. Meet your mentor at a favorite coffee shop on Saturday morning. Never underestimate the power of creating good times with the people you love.

17. Slow down and be of service to others. Send a distant relative a hand written note, talk to a lonely neighbor, send flowers to someone special, make a meal for someone who is ill. When you get out of our own story and help others you keep life in perspective.

18. Change your scenery. J.K. Rowling wrote her first Harry Potter book in a cafe near her flat in Edinburgh. Natalie Goldberg recommends writing in coffee shops and restaurants. It’s easy to get distracted by the household chores, the refrigerator, and television when you work and write from home.

Be gentle on yourself. Remember there is no end to self-care and creativity. When you write for love and with conviction, joy leaps from every page.

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5 Steps for Recovering from Writing Burnout

by Lewis / November 23, 2021 / Inspiration , NaNoWriMo

Writer’s block is a major issue in the writing world…

However, it’s far from the only one. Alongside writer’s block, there’s another, even more dangerous ailment that can grind your writing journey to a halt for months at a time—and that is writer’s burnout.

Distinct from writer’s block, writer’s burnout is a deeper problem, one wrapped up in feelings of shame, guilt, or an intense need to be “productive.” And, while it’s particularly prevalent during NaNoWriMo and the New Year, it’s still something you can struggle with at any time. So, whether you’re taking part in an intense writing challenge or just trying to get a handle on your writing routine, let me help you confront this writer’s burnout head on!

What Causes Writer’s Burnout?

• 1 What Causes Writer’s Burnout?
• 2 The Danger of Writer’s Burnout
• 3.1 #1 – Stop What You’re Doing:
• 3.2 #2 – Find an Outlet:
• 3.3 #3 – Rest and Reflect:
• 3.4 #4 – Clarify Your Goals:
• 3.5 #5 – Get Back to Writing:
• 4.1 Spruce up Your Outline:
• 4.2 Schedule a Brainstorming Day:
• 4.3 Read, Read, Read:
• 4.4 Write About Something Else:
• 5 Finding Balance in Your Writing Life

“Exhaustion of physical or emotional strength or motivation usually as a result of prolonged stress or frustration.”

For writers, this can manifest in a variety of ways. Some writers find themselves exhausted at the end of a writing session, or never work up the energy to write to begin with. Others struggle to take a break from their novels, consumed by the pressure to be productive. Personally, burnout makes me feel depressed just thinking about my story. The shame that I’m not writing fast enough or that the words aren’t flowing as easily as they should quickly saps the fun out of my writing.

All of these feelings are a sign that you’re suffering from writer’s burnout—and they can strike at any time of year. Often, we think of burnout as being an issue unique to challenges like National Novel Writing Month , but writer’s burnout can happen for a variety of reasons:

• Excess stress in your daily life
• Unattainable writing goals
• Perfectionism
• Poor physical health, such as a lack of sleep
• Intense pressure to be productive or successful

Of course, writer’s burnout is not the same as writer’s block.

While writer’s block is the feeling of not knowing what to write next, writer’s burnout is when you have no creative energy left to give. You’ve worked too hard, draining your mental reserves until you’re effectively running on fumes.

This is important, because writer’s block and writer’s burnout are handled in two different ways. To overcome these hurdles, you first need to know what you’re dealing with!

NOTE: Looking for advice on overcoming writer’s block? Check out this article for more!

The Danger of Writer’s Burnout

With that said, you might be thinking: “I’ll just push past my writing burnout! If I can do that, everything will be fine.”

Unfortunately, I have bad news. Writer’s burnout is a difficult problem to handle, because it can’t be solved by brute force alone. Since excess stress and pressure cause burnout, putting even more strain on your creative brain will only make things worse.

This results in a whole slew of issues:

• Burnout makes it harder to reach your writing goals,
• It prevents you from enjoying the writing process,
• It causes the quality of your writing to suffer,
• And it can add even more stress to your daily life.

Basically, if writer’s burnout continues untreated for too long, it could easily put you off writing for years. This is why beating your head against the wall in an attempt to force your way forward is not an effective strategy—and why many writers get trapped in a cycle of burnout for months.

Fortunately, there are ways to recover from writing burnout. The key is learning to give yourself space, recharge your muse, and create a bit more balance in your writing life. Let me walk you through five steps that should be able to help…

5 Steps for Overcoming Writer’s Burnout

#1 – stop what you’re doing:.

A good way to think about burnout is in terms of a car. If that car gets stuck in the mud, no amount of revving the engine will help. The wheels will simply spin in place until eventually the engine overheats and dies. Writer’s burnout works in much the same way—meaning your first order of business is to turn off the car.

Give yourself a break, completely guilt-free. Watch a sappy TV show, or spend an afternoon baking a tasty treat. Go on a long walk with a dear friend, or pick up that video game you’ve been eyeing for months. Whatever this break looks like to you, it should be a chance to indulge in something you enjoy without the pressure of writing hanging over you.

Of course, all breaks need a limit.

Rather than taking a break that stretches forever, pick a date when you’ll return to your novel. This could be a single week, or an entire month, depending on what you need. Regardless of how long your break is, make sure you stick to your return date. This way, you can enjoy your break, safe knowing that you’ll return to your novel in due time.

#2 – Find an Outlet:

All people are creative in their own way, and that creativity needs an outlet. Because of this, you don’t want to spend your entire break doing nothing but vegging out and watching TV—even if that’s the guilty pleasure you chose in Step #1!

Instead, pick a project as your creative outlet.

This could be drawing, building a birdhouse, organizing your junk drawer, or anything that will keep your hands and mind busy . While you can and should make time to relax, setting aside an afternoon to do something more active will help you feel positive, fulfilled, and less stressed about putting your writing on pause.

Again, the goal here is to achieve a balance, both in your writing and normal life! Productivity doesn’t have to mean pulling all-nighters and driving yourself to exhaustion, and this is a good way to prove that. 🙂

#3 – Rest and Reflect:

Burnout is tightly linked with feelings of shame, guilt, and frustration. Maybe you feel like your writing isn’t good enough, or that you need to prove you’re a “real writer.” Perhaps getting stuck on your story made you question whether your novel was worth writing , or maybe you got overwhelmed comparing yourself to other authors.

Whatever your personal hurdles are, you need to face them.

As hard as this may be, the best way to overcome these kinds of mental blocks is to address them head on. Ask yourself:

• Why are you frustrated with your story?
• Do you feel any shame or guilt about your writing?
• Are you trying to live up to an ideal of what a writer should be?
• What do you really want to achieve in your writing life, and why?

I know these kinds of questions are stressful to ask, but they’re also important. If you want to recover from your writing burnout, you’ll need to take time to sit with these thoughts, consider them, and then move forward, all without judgement or pressure.

#4 – Clarify Your Goals:

Once you understand why you’re burnt out, it’s time to make a plan for the future. To do this, start by writing down your current writing goals:

• What are you trying to accomplish?
• Why is that goal important to you?

From there, consider what your new plan will be:

• What is a realistic goal, one that will give you time to rest when needed?
• How will you incorporate that goal into your writing life?
• Does that goal respect the responsibilities and commitments you already have?
• Is this a goal that you’ll feel proud of when you accomplish it?

As you go through this process, avoid comparing yourself to other writers as much as possible. It’s easy to get trapped by a constant need to match up to other authors you admire, but this is rarely productive. We’re all individuals, and thus we’ll all go through our writing journeys at our own pace.

Rather than force yourself into a mold that doesn’t fit, it’s better to craft a path that’s unique to your writing life.

#5 – Get Back to Writing:

Finally, after your break is over, it’s time to incorporate writing back into your routine.

The key here is taking things easy. You won’t want to immediately dive back into writing full force, or risk ending up back where you started. Instead, experiment with new writing styles, games, or techniques. Try writing sprints, pull out a few interesting prompts, and slowly work your way back up to your novel itself.

All of this will help you rediscover your writing groove, without too much pressure. 😉

Of course, one risk of taking a break is that you’ll lose momentum and never return to writing at all. It’s hard to work up the courage to open your current draft and put words on the page—especially with all the negative emotions writer’s burnout can create.

So, here are a few ways to stay productive as a writer, even when you can’t work up the energy to work on your novel itself…

4 Thing to Do When You Can’t Write Another Word

Spruce up your outline:.

When it comes to recovering from burnout, this makes outlining a huge help.

If you’ve never heard of an outline before, this is a document that organizes the most important information about your story—from your plot to your premise, characters, settings, and more. This is a great way to plan your novel before you begin writing, or to simply test new ideas before committing them to your draft.

If you’d like a guiding hand to help you outline your own novel, check out The Ten Day Outline . The ten-day process you’ll find inside could be the perfect way to take a break from writing!

Schedule a Brainstorming Day:

Writers are lucky because, believe it or not, staring out the window lost in thought is technically productive!

Sometimes you just need an afternoon of brainstorming to explore everything your story has to offer. So, try scheduling some down time, turning on some music, and grabbing a notebook. Then, sit with your novel. See where your mind takes you and imagine all the different paths your story could take. As you go, write down a few notes to remind yourself of what you came up with when it comes time to return to your draft.

Read, Read, Read:

If you want to make progress on your novel, but don’t have the energy to write, it might be a good time to channel your inner student and do some studying.

After all, when you can’t write, you can always read.

This is a great chance to pick up some classics you may have missed out on in the past, or perhaps read a brand new book that’s been trending in your genre. Consider tossing in some books on the writing craft too. These will help you refine your writing skills, all while thinking about your novel in a new way. Who knows, you might even have a breakthrough that reinvigorates your desire to write!

If you’re looking for books on the writing craft, here are a few I recommend:

• Write Your Hero
• The Writer’s Journey
• Plot Versus Character
• Create Story Conflict

Write About Something Else:

Last but not least, sometimes you want to write, but just not your novel—and that’s ok.

If you’re feeling this way, start by giving yourself permission to work on other stories, at least for a little while. Then, try pulling up a list of interesting writing prompts, set a timer, and dig into some writing sprints. Or, consider writing flash fiction, a wacky short story, or a side story based on one of your secondary characters.

Whatever you choose to write about, the important thing is that you’re writing. 🙂

Finding Balance in Your Writing Life

Being a writer involves a lot of hard work, dedication, and patience. Because of this, no matter how perfect your writing routine may be, writer’s burnout is a fact of life. Sometimes, you will need a break, and knowing how to make the most of that break is hugely important to your overall writing journey.

Ultimately, the goal should be to find a balance in your writing life.

Rather than push yourself to the breaking point, quit writing for months to recover, and then rush to catch back up— trust me, been there, done that —you’ll be far better served by setting realistic goals, being kind to yourself, and enjoying the writing process at every stage of the journey. That way, no matter what hurdles life throws at you, you’ll feel safe knowing you have a creative outlet you can enjoy.

When you start to feel that tension settle into your shoulders, I hope you’ll put some of the tips in this article to work in your own writing routine!

How do you handle writer’s burnout? Let me know in the comments!

Thoughts on 5 steps for recovering from writing burnout.

Thank you for this enlightening words of wisdom. Just realized that writer’s block is different from writer’s burn out. Yes, burn out takes a long time for recovery and recovery is a lot of effort to take. Sometimes some people may not get over with it and give up writing. This could be also true to other work you’re doing. Thanks again and more power!

Glad to provide some encouragement Hope! Don’t give up!

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Burnout for Writers

Making art can push you to burnout — but it can also save you from it..

Posted January 22, 2019

• What Is Burnout?
• Take our Burnout Test
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By now, millions of people have read Anne Helen Petersen’s recent Buzzfeed article, How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation , which examines how and why millennials (people currently aged 22-38) seem chronically unable to escape from a sense of perpetual overwhelm.

The essay has inspired many pieces that have deepened and expanded the discussion in important and thoughtful ways, including Tiana Clark’s exploration of black burnout , Shannon Palus’s argument that burnout is not a condition specific to one generation , and a selection of burnout testimonials that represent a diverse and widely varied spectrum of experiences , collected by Petersen.

The portrait they paint is one of people trapped in an endless cycle of doing that leaves no time or space for being . Petersen explains that “exhaustion means going to the point where you can’t go any further; burnout means reaching that point and pushing yourself to keep going, whether for days or weeks or years.” Take a look at these quotes pulled from Petersen’s article and see if anything here sounds familiar:

• “Why am I burned out ? Because I’ve internalized the idea that I should be working all the time.”
• “How... can I optimize myself to get those mundane tasks done and theoretically cure my burnout?”
• “The feeling of accomplishment that follows an exhausting task... never comes.”
• “Burnout... takes things that should be enjoyable and flattens them into a list of tasks... everything... becomes tinged with resentment and anxiety and avoidance.”

While the idea that one should be working all the time may be a product of factors like a shaky economy and tech that binds us to our jobs, it’s nothing new to writers, many of whom go to bed every night believing they could’ve, should’ve spent more time writing and determined that they will tomorrow. Over the years I’ve worked with countless writers who’ve had to force themselves to celebrate milestones — finishing a chapter, getting over the hump of a tough revision — because they felt weighed down by the knowledge that there’s still more work to do. I spoke with a novelist recently who told me she couldn’t even enjoy her latest book’s publication day because she was already worrying about how long it would take to finish her next book.

These symptoms of burnout are nothing new to writers; they seem to be part of the job. And it's no wonder; after all, the majority of artists cram their art into the cracks between everything else that fills up life: paying work, family, romantic relationships , caregiving , friendships, and the many obligations that keep us from spending time pursuing our passions. When life is packed that full, it’s easy to feel burnt out.

And yet most of the artists I know would never trade their creative practice for more time spent doing anything else. In over a decade as a life coach for writers and artists, I have never had a writer I worked with set a goal of spending less time on their creative work.

Artists who make time regularly to create may be busy and tired, they may be dogged by guilt , obsessed with optimizing, frequent procrastinators, and neurotic as hell, but they would seldom point to their creative work as a source of burnout.

Making art doesn’t suck the oxygen out of artists — it adds fuel to their fire.

Creating art is work that is inherently restorative. Certainly, there are days when the writing process is nothing of the kind — it can be a painful slog or, as David Rakoff once memorably put it, “like pulling teeth. From my d*ck.” But at its best, when you’re in that flow state , it can be a transcendent experience that elevates you from your life and intoxicates you like a drug.

Getting to that flow state also requires stepping away from email, texting, social media , the day's headlines, and all the other ways our devices contribute to burnout. Being a creative practitioner forces us to set boundaries around our time and space in a way that little else does.

Work that is labor can distance us from ourselves, but art is the type of work that reconnects us with ourselves and helps us process our lives. Making art is not a quick fix for anything, which is why it makes a different impact than the pseudo-remedies Petersen dismisses in her article (such as taking a vacation, using a meditation app, bullet journaling, and “overnight f*cking oats”). On the contrary, building a sustained creative practice is a slow, incremental process — which is exactly what makes it rewarding.

Writing is therapy , writing is meditation, writing is self-care. Writing is overnight oats.

When writers and artists are pushed to burnout, they have a built-in reserve of mojo to draw from, an outlet for working out complex emotions and experiences, and sense of deeper purpose that can mitigate the frazzle of a hamster-wheel life no matter what happens with their work out there in the world. It’s not about how others experience consuming your work — it’s about how you experience the process of creating it.

And that process just might be what keeps you on fire.

Kendra Levin is an editorial director at Simon & Schuster, as well as a coach, teacher, and the author of The Hero Is You.

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WRITERS HELPING WRITERS®

Helping writers become bestselling authors

What Is Writer’s Burnout?

August 13, 2020 by Guest Contributor

Hi everyone! Today we’re happy to welcome author Chrys Fey to the blog who is sharing an excerpt from her book, Keep Writing with Fey: Sparks to Defeat Writer’s Block, Burnout, and Depression (affiliate link) where she focuses on writer’s burnout. This is something that’s a real risk, especially this year. We’ve all had a lot more to handle and it takes a toll. So please, read on.

When I mention writer’s burnout, many people get the wrong idea about it, so I thought I’d mention a few of the most common myths about writer’s burnout first and then get into the facts about what it is and what causes it.

– Writer’s burnout is the same as writer’s block. – You only get burned out by writing too much. – If you can write an essay or a poem, you’re not burned out. – If, deep down, you want to write, you’re not burned out.

The Confusion:

Writer’s burnout is often confused with writer’s block when, in actuality, it is more extreme than that. Writer’s block is the condition of being unable to think of what to write or how to proceed with writing.

When you are burned out, it is very different. We’re not just talking about things that can stop you from writing. You don’t even need to be blocked in order to get burned out. You could be able to easily think of what to write next and may even have the next scene or chapter plotted out and still suffer from this extreme condition. Anyone who works too hard, pushes their limits in order to get one task after another done without a break, and is eyeball deep in stress, can experience this. It doesn’t matter what your profession is, either. Usually, it’s called job burnout, but when it comes to being a writer, and when this burnout affects you as a writer, I call it writer’s burnout.

When I suffered from writer’s burnout, I had many ideas of what to write and a workable outline for the next book in my series. I was not blocked. I wanted to write, but I couldn’t. I’d try and fail. Again, not because I was blocked. I’d have a good day or two of writing a fictional story with fresh energy that would make me think I was back to normal, and then I wouldn’t be able to muster up the energy, the motivation, to write a single word more on the third day. I’d want to. Oh, boy, did I want to. I wanted that energy I had the previous two days. But it wasn’t there. I was depleted. Utterly exhausted, from my mind to the tips of my fingers and toes. Even my soul felt drained. I had worked myself beyond the breaking point, through depression and stress, and faced the severe consequences.

During that time, however, I managed to write essays about my life as a child and teen. These essays were non-fiction and ranged from a page or less to three pages long. See? I could write something. I found writing about my life (for myself and no one else) relatively easy, but writing fiction, the thing I’d been writing for well over a decade, was hard. I didn’t have the motivation or energy for it anymore.

I did a small amount of non-fiction writing when, suddenly, even that became too much and I couldn’t manage to write another short essay. Eventually, because I kept trying to force myself to write, I did lose all motivation for anything writing related. I didn’t even want to write emails. That’s how exhausted I was. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is burnout.

What is Writer’s Burnout?

Burnout is defined as a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by stress or by doing too much. Believe me, you can be physically exhausted as a writer.

You can lose motivation and feel as though you have nothing else to give in the area that caused your burnout, which usually means your job. For athletes, it’s their sport, the one they’ve devoted and dedicated their lives to. For writers, it can be anything related to being a writer, not just the act of writing. And that is something many don’t understand. You don’t need to be writing five thousand words a day to burn yourself out as a writer. You can burn yourself out by revising or rewriting a project over and over again. You can burn yourself out by editing one thing after another for others. You can burn yourself out by focusing on marketing day in and day out and getting upset that nothing is helping your sales.

Once you have burnout in one area of your life, it can leak into all areas of your life, like an oil spill, covering everything with a thick greasiness and zapping your energy for things even unrelated to writing. That is how dangerous burnout is for creatives and career-oriented individuals.

What Causes Writer’s Burnout?

Anything. It can be different for everyone, and you may have several causes working together to burn you out completely.

For me, doing too much in other areas (blogging and editing for clients), stressing myself out over marketing, and depression, which partially stemmed from my writing life, brought about my long battle with burnout.

Common Causes:

– Excessive stress – Overworking yourself – Taking on too many responsibilities – Chaotic work environment – Feeling undervalued – Too many expectations – Setting unachievable goals – Lack of support – Sleeplessness

Symptoms of Writer’s Burnout:

– Feeling drained and tired (fatigue) – Insomnia – Lowered immunity (illnesses) – Frequent headaches – Sadness, anger, or irritability – Sense of failure – Negative outlook – Feeling detached – No or low motivation – Lack of interest – Unhappiness – Depression – Alcohol or substance abuse – High blood pressure – Heart disease

That’s a lot, isn’t it? That’s why burnout is not something to shrug your shoulders at. That’s why burnout should be taken seriously and understood.

How are you feeling right now? Are you experiencing writer’s burnout? Let’s talk about it.

Chrys Fey is the author of Write with Fey: 10 Sparks to Guide You from Idea to Publication (affiliate link) . She is also the author of the Disaster Crimes series. Visit her blog, Write with Fey , for more tips on how to reverse writer’s burnout.

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Reader Interactions

June 24, 2021 at 7:07 pm

Loved blog Chris <3 This is a useful and excellent share. Will definitely share it with people I know.

August 17, 2020 at 5:03 pm

A burnout for me is usually coupled with an emotional trigger. On your common causes list, it would be overworking myself and feeling undervalued. I start to think, “What’s the point of doing all this work if no one appreciates it?” To get out of it, I take a break. Some break days are spent simply enjoying myself. Other days are spent contemplating. Why was I working so hard to begin with? Was I striving toward a goal? And if so, what did I hope to achieve with that goal? Was it recognition or was it a sense of accomplishment? If it was for recognition, then I re-evaluate my goal. If it was for a sense of accomplishment, I try to regain that hope for accomplishment.

With my writing, I often get bogged down emotionally with imposters syndrome. It’s a constant fight between giving up or pushing through because I enjoy the creative process and I can only get better if I keep writing. There have been times when I pushed through so much that I got burned out. It took a lot of effort to get back into writing for the sole purpose of acquiring a sense of accomplishment within myself without the worry of what others think.

August 18, 2020 at 9:04 am

I can relate to the feeling of being undervalued. For me, it’s mixed up with the idea that only publication is validation. I don’t get to write much but I’m a member of a crit group and some of the other members write a lot and get a lot of acceptances, and post about it. I don’t like to be mean spirited and envious but it makes me feel useless. I think the key to that could be to step back from it all and try to think about it in a different way. Starting with “so what if they are?”

August 18, 2020 at 12:33 pm

We all struggle with envy and comparison. The best remedy I’ve found for this particular issue is to look at the benefits you’re getting from writing—even apart from publication. It’s therapeutic; you’re writing stories no one else can write; look at how much better you are now than when you started; consider the joy your get from writing… If someone’s only validation is being accepted by a publisher, they’re going to be frustrated and could easily burn out. Not to say publication isn’t something to strive for; but for the sake of longevity, we need other motivators. Find those motivators and focus on those :).

August 24, 2020 at 1:54 pm

Looking at the benefits we receive through writing is a great strategy. When I started publishing, all of my writing became about publishing those stories. That brought me down big time and ended up stopping me from writing. After I fought my way through depression and burnout, I learned to push aside any thoughts of publishing during the writing/creative process. I’ve finally gotten back to writing for fun…for me. Once I finish writing, that’s when I allow myself to think about publishing that project. It took a bit to get here (and often that follows a lesson or coming through the other side of a deep struggle), but it is possible. <3

August 24, 2020 at 1:49 pm

Seeing others’ accomplishments has brought me down time and time again, no matter how happy I am for them. I think it’s totally normal. But that doesn’t make it any easier. I ended up unfollowing (but staying friends with) a few writers on Facebook because of how often they posted their successes that fed into my depression. We gotta do what we gotta do. <3

August 24, 2020 at 1:47 pm

I can also relate to overworking myself and feeling undervalued. Both of those triggered my burnout, as well as my depression. I love how you ask yourself questions to evaluate the situation and how you feel. That is very smart and the best way to heal…if you have understand yourself and what you’re going through.

August 16, 2020 at 9:03 pm

Excellent post, Chrys! You’ve nailed it. The only time I experienced true burnout was due to so many of the factors you mentioned. Stress (so much stress surrounding my mother’s first stages of dementia), lack of sleep, and being totally overwhelmed by life. Thankfully so many things improved and it seemed to resolve itself! Your book is going to help a lot of people!

August 24, 2020 at 1:44 pm

Thanks, Jemi! I am glad you that the things that were contributing to your burnout improved and everything worked itself out. 🙂

August 15, 2020 at 6:28 am

Wow! Thanks for this – it gives me insights into so many issues that contribute to what I have long wondered about for me, that enables clear seeing and a potential resolve.

August 24, 2020 at 1:43 pm

You’re welcome, Fox!

August 14, 2020 at 8:14 am

Thank you so much for bringing attention to this issue. I am all too familiar with it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

August 14, 2020 at 2:57 pm

You’re welcome, Erin! <3

August 14, 2020 at 6:59 am

Thanks for explaining what writer’s burnout is and how it’s different from writer’s block. Writing is so time-consuming that it can be easy to get burned out if you don’t pace yourself and remember the joy of just writing instead of focusing on getting published.

August 14, 2020 at 2:58 pm

The joy is what it’s all about. I had lost that joy and had to find my way back to it. I am there again, and feeling much better. <3

August 13, 2020 at 2:49 pm

Wow. This is so me. I thought at first it was Writer’s Block but it was worse than any block I’ve ever had. Still trying to struggle through with limited success. What helps???

August 13, 2020 at 2:50 pm

So, I just went and downloaded your book to my kindle. 🙂

August 13, 2020 at 1:53 pm

Thank you so much for hosting me today! This topic is very important and very near and dear to my heart.

August 13, 2020 at 12:09 pm

In month ten of creative burnout. I would love to see a follow-up post or two about how to recover. I’m finding it difficult to “fill my creative well” like I used to do so easily with a weekend of reading, walking and focusing on spiritual things. Burnout is WORSE than depression (and I have both) so maybe it’s worse because of depression. We need to be mindful of self-care before we get to the point of burnout.

August 13, 2020 at 1:58 pm

Hi, Sharon! If you check out my book, Keep Writing with Fey, I discuss how to recover (or things you can try) there, in the part dedicated to burnout. I won’t be doing follow-up posts here, because everything I could share here is there in my book. This is an excerpt from it. 🙂

I wish you all the best and hope you can find your way back to your creative self. And I truly hope you’ll consider looking at my book. Because it’s packed with tips, encouragement, etc.

August 13, 2020 at 11:16 am

I have experienced burnout. Exercise and a couple of days rest usually helps. Great post, Crys. A reminder to care for ourselves.

August 13, 2020 at 2:01 pm

Hi, Ingmar!

Exercise and rest can certainly help, especially when burnout is caught early. Sometimes, though, burnout can be so extreme that exercise and rest, even when combined, don’t do the trick. Taking care of ourselves and listening to our bodies (and our minds) before we can get to the point is so important.

August 13, 2020 at 9:10 am

I struggle with burnout, in my case just from managing too many things and having too many projects. My problem is that I need to hire help, but there’s never time to really invest the time into figuring out what that should look like and find the right people…so I just keep trying to manage it. And of course, this on top of all the family and life stress as worry eats away at what’s going to happen for everyone with this pandemic…UGH. I know “staying afloat” isn’t sustainable, so I need to make this shift to sourcing help a greater priority. Thanks for posting with us Chrys – such a good topic, especially right now.

August 13, 2020 at 2:05 pm

Oh, yes. Doing too much is how I always get burned out. I hear you about wanting to hire help. I say it all the time that I wish I had an assistant, but I don’t have the financial means to do that right now. I wish I did.

I hope you can find it in you to invest in finding someone to take some of your tasks off your plate, because after you do that, you won’t have to invest in as much or manage so much.

Take care, Angela! And thank you for having me as a guest. 🙂

August 13, 2020 at 8:55 am

Yes -I am experiencing writer’s burnout. It’s good that it has a name. It’s exactly as you describe it and in my case it’s down to the stress of being stuck indoors with my family, who don’t get on too well, plus trying to hold down the day job.

August 13, 2020 at 2:06 pm

When I was first experiencing burnout, I had no idea what it was, either. And then a light bulb went off in my head and the word “BURNOUT” blazed through my mind. It is comforting to know it has a name and that there are remedies one can try to reverse it. That’s why I wrote my book. <3

Thanks for commenting, Judith!

[…] the energy to write to begin with. Others struggle to take a break from their novels, consumed by the pressure to be productive. Personally, burnout makes me feel depressed just thinking about my story. The shame that I’m not […]

[…] Fey has written a book about burnout for writers. She lists overworking yourself and setting unachievable goals as some of the contributory […]

[…] Nathan Bransford explores writing as a series of lenses, Steve Laube discusses what happens when disagreements arise during the publishing process, Randy Susan Meyers says that being terrified about writing your novel is excellent, and Chrys Fey defines writer’s burnout. […]

[…] Link to the rest at Writers Helping Writers […]

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How to avoid procrastination and burnout when writing.

BY ROBERT PARMER

As a college student, workflow can oftentimes feel like a series of ebbs and flows.Sometimes you’re on top of your game, cranking out schoolwork at the rate of a tsunami. Other days can feel like ‘low tide’ as burnout and procrastination increase levels of stress and decrease productivity.

Writing papers for college is something that essentially every student will face. This requires an immense amount of self-delegation as students at university level are regularly faced with heavy research requirements and harsh writing deadlines.

As someone who’s struggled with procrastination and burnout at school, I can confidently say that there are ways of getting past these roadblocks. The following tips will help you regain lost traction within your writing endeavors at school.

Set Your Goals and Priorities

You may already be buried in procrastination and experiencing levels of burnout right now, and that’s completely alright. While you may feel hopelessly stuck now, there are always ways to break the cycles of procrastination at school.  Fortunately, you can start breaking out of it, at this very moment!

An excellent starting point is to get a pen and notebook (or your text document of choice) and jot down the following:

• Write exactly what needs done in detail.
• What writing projects are you currently working on? Include what’s holding you back from completing each task or each phase or your writing.
• Prioritize this list from most important to least, make sure deadlines and due dates at the front of your mind.
• If you haven’t, try breaking writing projects into smaller, more attainable tasks–with that, you should now have an easy-to-follow plan of action.

If you are very behind on writing assignments you may have some long weekends of work ahead of you. Be willing to put forth a tremendous amount of effort to get caught up. Oftentimes this is the only way out.

But in the long run this effort always pays off. Focus on consistency within your writing workflow once you are at a good point again. Don’t let the procrastination bug bite you again!

Furthermore, this simple piece of advice from University of Alabama Birmingham is absolutely relevant in terms of becoming a more successful writer and student:

“Students must be mature, self-disciplined, organized, and have excellent time management skills to succeed.”

Related: 5 Ways to Deal with Fatigue for Busy Students

Give Yourself More Time Than You Think You Need

As students, we tend to overestimate our abilities. Keep in mind, just because you think you can complete a project in three days doesn’t mean you always will. You could get sick, the project might require more research than you estimated, or family could surprise you with a visit at an inconvenient time.

These are all important  when creating a threshold for your writing; give yourself some wiggle room to finish your projects! Do your best to overestimate timeframes. This will help guarantee that you have plenty of time to meet writing deadlines and can even spark extra motivation if you finish early.

Related: 7 Time Management Tips for College Success

Don’t Become a Workaholic

When feeling extra burnt out, take a step back and ask yourself: ‘Am I simply working too hard, or too much?”

Writing papers can result in hours upon hours of working without proper breaks or time to wind down, and detract from work. Be sure to have ample time for self-driven work and everything else in your life outside of work!

Take breaks throughout the day. Make time for your other hobbies and for self-care. Say no when you really don’t have time; don’t compromise if you don’t want to! Set boundaries like these for yourself, and paint your own masterpiece of a writing schedule.

Remember: scheduling out schoolwork requires balance and harmony.

If you’re someone who simply despises writing, keep your chin up and your attitude positive. Love it or hate it, writing at university level isn’t going away. So embrace the fact that you’ll have to write rather than loathing it.

Since college students call the shots when it comes to scheduling and completing schoolwork, it’s important to be mindful and urgent without becoming completely burned out. What other tips do you fellow freelancers have to alleviate procrastination and burn out?Finally, this can all look different from student to student so any and all suggestions are absolutely welcomed in the comment section. I encourage you to describe what’s worked for you to personally avoid getting behind or feeling burned out from writing college papers.

Robert Parmer is a freelance web writer and student of Boise State University. Outside of writing whenever he has spare time, Robert enjoys creating and recording music, caring for his pet cat, and commuting by bicycle whenever possible. Follow him on Twitter @robparmer

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The Trick to Avoiding Supplemental Essay Burnout

You, dear student, may be teetering on the brink of a classic case of burnout, which can happen when you have to do a lot of (what feels like) the same thing over and over again. In the world of college applications, you’re likely to feel an overwhelming sense of doom and dread when you scan your list of supplemental applications; all of the schools on your list may be asking you to write one, two, even five additional essays. It’s a lot of work with seemingly little reward at this point, but we’re here to brighten up your day with a little magic trick. You can tackle all of these essays using two basic steps that will save you from the sameness trap and help you get everything done as efficiently as possible.

STEP 1: Don’t write.

What the what? Yeah, we said it. You don’t have to write your supplemental essays. Well, really, what we mean is you don’t have to write ALL of them. Colleges tend to ask a few common kinds of questions, and nothing feels worse than doing the same thing over and over again. So, your first crucial step is to change your mindset: you do not need to write a new essay for each individual prompt. Round up all of your supplemental essay prompts and look at them as a large, comprehensive assignment, rather than as a series of little individual assignments. Now, think strategically: what can you do to minimize the amount of writing on your plate?

STEP 2: Categorize and conquer.

As you change your frame of mind, you’ll start to notice how many of the supplemental prompts overlap. How many schools want to know about a meaningful activity? How many of them want you to talk about community contributions past, present, and future? Group all of the prompts into categories and work through them systematically. Two potential approaches we’d recommend here are:

• Start with the prompt with the HIGHEST word count requirement. Once you have the long version, you can very easily tweak it and pare it down for the other prompts in the same category.
• Or, start with the school that has the most pressing deadline. This strategy will probably work best for any folks who are planning on applying early. Prioritize the rapidly-approaching EA/ED deadline and then use your early essays as a jumping-off point for you to approach your other essay prompts.
• BONUS: If you’re applying early to more than one school, you’ll want to use a combination of both strategies. Isolate the supplements for your early schools and write in clusters, starting with the longest. Then start work on your regular decision apps.

Okay, we know, we know, you still actually have to get all of these essays done, but once you start thinking about the writing process as a strategic game, you’ll notice your world fill up with color. Each step you take will really feel like progress towards a goal, and we know you can do this.

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Category: College Admissions , Essay Tips , Supplemental Essays

Tags: college admissions , college application help , college applications , college essay , college essay advisors , college essay help , essay help , essay tips , supplement help , supplemental essay help , supplemental essays

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Burnout: Modern Affliction or Human Condition?

Burnout is generally said to date to 1973; at least, that’s around when it got its name. By the nineteen-eighties, everyone was burned out. In 1990, when the Princeton scholar Robert Fagles published a new English translation of the Iliad, he had Achilles tell Agamemnon that he doesn’t want people to think he’s “a worthless, burnt-out coward.” This expression, needless to say, was not in Homer’s original Greek. Still, the notion that people who fought in the Trojan War, in the twelfth or thirteenth century B.C., suffered from burnout is a good indication of the disorder’s claim to universality: people who write about burnout tend to argue that it exists everywhere and has existed forever, even if, somehow, it’s always getting worse. One Swiss psychotherapist, in a history of burnout published in 2013 that begins with the usual invocation of immediate emergency—“Burnout is increasingly serious and of widespread concern”—insists that he found it in the Old Testament. Moses was burned out, in Numbers 11:14, when he complained to God, “I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is too heavy for me.” And so was Elijah, in 1 Kings 19, when he “went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough.”

To be burned out is to be used up, like a battery so depleted that it can’t be recharged. In people, unlike batteries, it is said to produce the defining symptoms of “burnout syndrome”: exhaustion, cynicism, and loss of efficacy. Around the world, three out of five workers say they’re burned out. A 2020 U.S. study put that figure at three in four. A recent book claims that burnout afflicts an entire generation. In “ Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation ,” the former BuzzFeed News reporter Anne Helen Petersen figures herself as a “pile of embers.” The earth itself suffers from burnout. “Burned out people are going to continue burning up the planet,” Arianna Huffington warned this spring. Burnout is widely reported to have grown worse during the pandemic, according to splashy stories that have appeared on television and radio, up and down the Internet, and in most major newspapers and magazines, including Forbes , the Guardian , Nature , and the New Scientist . The New York Times solicited testimonials from readers. “I used to be able to send perfect emails in a minute or less,” one wrote. “Now it takes me days just to get the motivation to think of a response.” When an assignment to write this essay appeared in my in-box, I thought, Oh, God, I can’t do that, I’ve got nothing left, and then I told myself to buck up. The burnout literature will tell you that this, too—the guilt, the self-scolding—is a feature of burnout. If you think you’re burned out, you’re burned out, and if you don’t think you’re burned out you’re burned out. Everyone sits under the shade of that juniper tree, weeping, and whispering, “Enough.”

But what, exactly, is burnout? The World Health Organization recognized burnout syndrome in 2019, in the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases, but only as an occupational phenomenon, not as a medical condition. In Sweden, you can go on sick leave for burnout. That’s probably harder to do in the United States because burnout is not recognized as a mental disorder by the DSM-5 , published in 2013, and though there’s a chance it could one day be added, many psychologists object, citing the idea’s vagueness. A number of studies suggest that burnout can’t be distinguished from depression, which doesn’t make it less horrible but does make it, as a clinical term, imprecise, redundant, and unnecessary.

To question burnout isn’t to deny the scale of suffering, or the many ravages of the pandemic: despair, bitterness, fatigue, boredom, loneliness, alienation, and grief—especially grief. To question burnout is to wonder what meaning so baggy an idea can possibly hold, and whether it can really help anyone shoulder hardship. Burnout is a metaphor disguised as a diagnosis. It suffers from two confusions: the particular with the general, and the clinical with the vernacular. If burnout is universal and eternal, it’s meaningless. If everyone is burned out, and always has been, burnout is just . . . the hell of life. But if burnout is a problem of fairly recent vintage—if it began when it was named, in the early nineteen-seventies—then it raises a historical question. What started it?

Herbert J. Freudenberger, the man who named burnout, was born in Frankfurt in 1926. By the time he was twelve, Nazis had torched the synagogue to which his family belonged. Using his father’s passport, Freudenberger fled Germany. Eventually, he made his way to New York; for a while, in his teens, he lived on the streets. He went to Brooklyn College, then trained as a psychoanalyst and completed a doctorate in psychology at N.Y.U. In the late nineteen-sixties, he became fascinated by the “free clinic” movement. The first free clinic in the country was founded in Haight-Ashbury, in 1967. “ ‘Free’ to the free clinic movement represents a philosophical concept rather than an economic term,” one of its founders wrote, and the community-based clinics served “alienated populations in the United States including hippies, commune dwellers, drug abusers, third world minorities, and other ‘outsiders’ who have been rejected by the more dominant culture.” Free clinics were free of judgment, and, for patients, free of the risk of legal action. Mostly staffed by volunteers, the clinics specialized in drug-abuse treatment, drug crisis intervention, and what they called “detoxification.” At the time, people in Haight-Ashbury talked about being “burnt out” by drug addiction: exhausted, emptied out, used up, with nothing left but despair and desperation. Freudenberger visited the Haight-Ashbury clinic in 1967 and 1968. In 1970, he started a free clinic at St. Marks Place, in New York. It was open in the evening from six to ten. Freudenberger worked all day in his own practice, as a therapist, for ten to twelve hours, and then went to the clinic, where he worked until midnight. “You start your second job when most people go home,” he wrote in 1973, “and you put a great deal of yourself in the work. . . . You feel a total sense of commitment . . . until you finally find yourself, as I did, in a state of exhaustion.”

Burnout, as the Brazilian psychologist Flávio Fontes has pointed out, began as a self-diagnosis, with Freudenberger borrowing the metaphor that drug users invented to describe their suffering to describe his own. In 1974, Freudenberger edited a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues dedicated to the free-clinic movement, and contributed an essay on “staff burn-out” (which, as Fontes noted, contains three footnotes, all to essays written by Freudenberger). Freudenberger describes something like the burnout that drug users experienced in his experience of treating them:

Having experienced this feeling state of burn-out myself, I began to ask myself a number of questions about it. First of all, what is burn-out? What are its signs, what type of personalities are more prone than others to its onslaught? Why is it such a common phenomenon among free clinic folk?

The first staff burnout victim, he explained, was often the clinic’s charismatic leader, who, like some drug addicts, was quick to anger, cried easily, and grew suspicious, then paranoid. “The burning out person may now believe that since he has been through it all, in the clinic,” Freudenberger wrote, “he can take chances that others can’t.” The person exhibits risk-taking that “sometimes borders on the lunatic.” He, too, uses drugs. “He may resort to an excessive use of tranquilizers and barbiturates. Or get into pot and hash quite heavily. He does this with the ‘self con’ that he needs the rest and is doing it to relax himself.”

The street term spread. To be a burnout in the nineteen-seventies, as anyone who went to high school in those years remembers, was to be the kind of kid who skipped class to smoke pot behind the parking lot. Meanwhile, Freudenberger extended the notion of “staff burnout” to staffs of all sorts. His papers, at the University of Akron, include a folder each on burnout among attorneys, child-care workers, dentists, librarians, medical professionals, ministers, middle-class women, nurses, parents, pharmacists, police and the military, secretaries, social workers, athletes, teachers, veterinarians. Everywhere he looked, Freudenberger found burnouts. “It’s better to burn out than to fade away,” Neil Young sang, in 1978, at a time when Freudenberger was popularizing the idea in interviews and preparing the first of his co-written self-help books. In “ Burn-out: The High Cost of High Achievement ,” in 1980, he extended the metaphor to the entire United States. “ WHY, AS A NATION, DO WE SEEM, BOTH COLLECTIVELY AND INDIVIDUALLY, TO BE IN THE THROES OF A FAST-SPREADING PHENOMENON—BURN-OUT? ”

Somehow, suddenly, burning out wasn’t any longer what happened to you when you had nothing, bent low, on skid row; it was what happened to you when you wanted everything. This made it an American problem, a yuppie problem, a badge of success. The press lapped up this story, filling the pages of newspapers and magazines with each new category of burned-out workers (“It used to be that just about every time we heard or read the word ‘burnout’ it was preceded by ‘teacher,’ ” read a 1981 story that warned about “homemakers burnout”), anecdotes (“Pat rolls over, hits the sleep button on her alarm clock and ignores the fact that it’s morning. . . . Pat is suffering from ‘burnout’ ”), lists of symptoms (“the farther down the list you go, the closer you are to burnout!”), rules (“Stop nurturing”), and quizzes:

Are you suffering from burnout? . . . Looking back over the past six months of your life at the office, at home and in social situations. . . . 1. Do you seem to be working harder and accomplishing less? 2. Do you tire more easily? 3. Do you often get the blues without apparent reason? 4. Do you forget appointments, deadlines, personal possessions? 5. Have you become increasingly irritable? 6. Have you grown more disappointed in the people around you? 7. Do you see close friends and family members less frequently? 8. Do you suffer physical symptoms like pains, headaches and lingering colds? 9. Do you find it hard to laugh when the joke is on you? 10. Do you have little to say to others? 11. Does sex seem more trouble than it’s worth?

You could mark questions with “X”s, cut out the quiz, and stick it on the fridge, or on the wall of your “Dilbert”-era cubicle. See? See? This says I need a break, goddammit.

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Sure, there were skeptics. “The new IN thing is ‘burnout,’ ” a Times-Picayune columnist wrote. “And if you don’t come down with it, possibly you’re a bum.” Even Freudenberger said he was burned out on burnout. Still, in 1985 he published a new book, “Women’s Burnout: How to Spot It, How to Reverse It, and How to Prevent It.” In the era of anti-feminist backlash chronicled by Susan Faludi, the press loved quoting Freudenberger saying things like “You can’t have it all.”

Freudenberger died in 1999 at the age of seventy-three. His obituary in the Times noted, “He worked 14 or 15 hours a day, six days a week, until three weeks before his death.” He had run himself ragged.

“Every age has its signature afflictions,” the Korean-born, Berlin-based philosopher Byung-Chul Han writes in “ The Burnout Society, ” first published in German in 2010. Burnout, for Han, is depression and exhaustion, “the sickness of a society that suffers from excessive positivity,” an “achievement society,” a yes-we-can world in which nothing is impossible, a world that requires people to strive to the point of self-destruction. “It reflects a humanity waging war on itself.”

Lost in the misty history of burnout is a truth about the patients treated at free clinics in the early seventies: many of them were Vietnam War veterans, addicted to heroin. The Haight-Ashbury clinic managed to stay open partly because it treated so many veterans that it received funding from the federal government. Those veterans were burned out on heroin. But they also suffered from what, for decades, had been called “combat fatigue” or “battle fatigue.” In 1980, when Freudenberger first reached a popular audience with his claims about “burnout syndrome,” the battle fatigue of Vietnam veterans was recognized by the DSM-III as post-traumatic stress disorder. Meanwhile, some groups, particularly feminists and other advocates for battered women and sexually abused children, were extending this understanding to people who had never seen combat.

Burnout, like P.T.S.D., moved from military to civilian life, as if everyone were, suddenly, suffering from battle fatigue. Since the late nineteen-seventies, the empirical study of burnout has been led by Christina Maslach, a social psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1981, she developed the field’s principal diagnostic tool, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and the following year published “ Burnout: The Cost of Caring ,” which brought her research to a popular readership. “Burnout is a syndrome of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment that can occur among individuals who do ‘people work’ of some kind,” Maslach wrote then. She emphasized burnout in the “helping professions”: teaching, nursing, and social work—professions dominated by women who are almost always very poorly paid (people who, extending the military metaphor, are lately classed as frontline workers, alongside police, firefighters, and E.M.T.s). Taking care of vulnerable people and witnessing their anguish exacts an enormous toll and produces its own suffering. Naming that pain was meant to be a step toward alleviating it. But it hasn’t worked out that way, because the conditions of doing care work—the emotional drain, the hours, the thanklessness—have not gotten better.

Burnout continued to climb the occupational ladder. “Burnout cuts across executive and managerial levels,” Harvard Business Review reported in 1981, in an article that told the tale of a knackered executive: “Not only did the long hours and the unremitting pressure of walking a tightrope among conflicting interests exhaust him; they also made it impossible for him to get at the control problems that needed attention. . . . In short, he had ‘burned out.’ ” Burnout kept spreading. “College Presidents, Coaches, Working Mothers Say They’re Exhausted,” according to a Newsweek cover in 1995. With the emergence of the Web, people started talking about “digital burnout.” “Is the Internet Killing Us?” Elle asked in 2014, in an article on “how to deal with burnout.” (“Don’t answer/write emails in the middle of the night. . . . Watch your breath come in and out of your nostrils or your stomach contracting and expanding as you breathe.”) “Work hard and go home” is the motto at Slack, a company whose product, launched in 2014, made it even harder to stop working. Slack burns you out. Social media burns you out. Gig work burns you out. In “Can’t Even,” a book that started out as a viral BuzzFeed piece, Petersen argues, “Increasingly—and increasingly among millennials—burnout isn’t just a temporary affliction. It’s our contemporary condition.” And it’s a condition of the pandemic.

In March, Maslach and a colleague published a careful article in Harvard Business Review , in which they warned against using burnout as an umbrella term and expressed regret that its measurement has been put to uses for which it was never intended. “We never designed the MBI as a tool to diagnose an individual health problem,” they explained; instead, assessing burnout was meant to encourage employers to “establish healthier workplaces.”

The louder the talk about burnout, it appears, the greater the number of people who say they’re burned out: harried, depleted, and disconsolate. What can explain the astonishing rise and spread of this affliction? Declining church membership comes to mind. In 1985, seventy-one per cent of Americans belonged to a house of worship, which is about what that percentage had been since the nineteen-forties; in 2020, only forty-seven per cent of Americans belonged to an institution of faith. Many of the recommended ways to address burnout—wellness, mindfulness, and meditation (“Take time each day, even five minutes, to sit still,” Elle advised)—are secularized versions of prayer, Sabbath-keeping, and worship. If burnout has been around since the Trojan War, prayer, worship, and the Sabbath are what humans invented to alleviate it. But this explanation goes only so far, not least because the emergence of the prosperity gospel made American Christianity a religion of achievement. Much the same appears to apply to other faiths. A Web site called productivemuslim.com offers advice on “How to Counter Workplace Burnout” (“There is barakah in earning a halal income”). Also, actually praying, honoring the Sabbath, and attending worship services don’t seem to prevent people who are religious from burning out, since religious Web sites and magazines, too, are full of warnings about burnout, including for the clergy. (“The life of a church leader involves a high level of contact with other people. Often when the church leader is suffering high stress or burnout he or she will withdraw from relationships and fear public appearances.”)

You can suffer from marriage burnout and parent burnout and pandemic burnout partly because, although burnout is supposed to be mainly about working too much, people now talk about all sorts of things that aren’t work as if they were: you have to work on your marriage, work in your garden, work out, work harder on raising your kids, work on your relationship with God. (“Are You at Risk for Christian Burnout?” one Web site asks. You’ll know you are if you’re driving yourself too hard to become “an excellent Christian.”) Even getting a massage is “bodywork.”

Burnout may be our contemporary condition, but it has very particular historical origins. In the nineteen-seventies, when Freudenberger first started looking for burnout across occupations, real wages stagnated and union membership declined. Manufacturing jobs disappeared; service jobs grew. Some of these trends have lately begun to reverse, but all the talk about burnout, beginning in the past few decades, did nothing to solve these problems; instead, it turned responsibility for enormous economic and social upheaval and changes in the labor market back onto the individual worker. Petersen argues that this burden falls especially heavily on millennials, and she offers support for this claim, but a lesson of the history of burnout is that every generation of Americans who have come of age since the nineteen-seventies have made the same claim, and they were right, too, because overwork keeps getting worse . It’s this giant mess that Joe Biden is trying to fix. In earlier eras, when companies demanded long hours for low wages, workers engaged in collective bargaining and got better contracts. Starting in the nineteen-eighties, when companies demanded long hours for low wages, workers put newspaper clippings on the doors of their fridges, burnout checklists. Do you suffer from burnout? Here’s how to tell!

Burnout is a combat metaphor. In the conditions of late capitalism, from the Reagan era forward, work, for many people, has come to feel like a battlefield, and daily life, including politics and life online, like yet more slaughter. People across all walks of life—rich and poor, young and old, caretakers and the cared for, the faithful and the faithless—really are worn down, wiped out, threadbare, on edge, battered, and battle-scarred. Lockdowns, too, are features of war, as if each one of us, amid not only the pandemic but also acts of terrorism and mass shootings and armed insurrections, were now engaged in a Hobbesian battle for existence, civil life having become a war zone. May there one day come again more peaceful metaphors for anguish, bone-aching weariness, bitter regret, and haunting loss. “You will tear your heart out, desperate, raging,” Achilles warned Agamemnon. Meanwhile, a wellness site tells me that there are “11 ways to alleviate burnout and the ‘Pandemic Wall.’ ” First, “Make a list of coping strategies.” Yeah, no. ♦

How to Avoid Burnout: Building Resilience in Your Daily Routine

Student burnout is a widespread phenomenon, impacting learners worldwide. Cultural, social, and educational factors contribute to its prevalence in diverse societies. It is not exclusive to college students – burnout affects individuals across various educational levels, from high school to postgraduate studies.

According to BMC (Bio Med Central), academic prostration affects over 50% of students, with factors such as gender, grade, monthly living expenses, smoking habits, parents' education level, study and life pressures, and the current level of interest in professional knowledge significantly influencing its occurrence. Implementing an effective wellness program and conducting annual long-term fatigue assessments can be instrumental in substantially decreasing student burnout rates.

In this article, we will show you how to recognize, prevent, treat, and how to avoid academic burnout effectively. One of the first and foremost tips would be to use an essay writing service to prevent workload overload and relieve stress. 

What Is Student Burnout: Definition and Common Triggers

Academic burnout refers to a state of chronic physical and emotional exhaustion, often accompanied by feelings of cynicism and detachment from academic responsibilities. It is a prevalent issue among students and can significantly impact their overall well-being. Common triggers contributing to student burnout include:

Academic Overload

• Excessive academic demands, including heavy workloads, assignments, and exams, can overwhelm students and contribute to tiredness.

Pressure to Excel

• High expectations from oneself or external sources, such as parents or faculty, to achieve academic excellence can create immense pressure and lead to burnout.

Lack of Support

• Insufficient social and emotional support, both academically and personally, can contribute to feelings of isolation and increase the risk of depletion.

Financial Stress

• Students facing financial challenges, including high living expenses and the need to work while studying, may experience heightened stress levels that contribute to burnout.

Uncertain Future

• Anxiety about future career prospects, job market competitiveness, and the pressure to make significant life decisions can contribute to burnout among students.

Poor Work-Life Balance

• The inability to balance academic commitments with personal life and leisure activities can lead to chronic stress and eventual burnout.

Health Issues

• Physical health problems, chronic illnesses, or sleep disturbances can exacerbate stress levels and contribute to the development of burnout.

Perfectionism

• Unrealistic expectations of perfection, whether self-imposed or external, can create a constant sense of inadequacy and intensify the risk of burnout.

Understanding how to avoid burnout in college is crucial for both students and educators in developing proactive strategies to prevent and address student burnout effectively.

Noticing the Symptoms of Burnout?

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Academic Burnout Symptoms

Student burnout exhibits striking parallels to workplace exhaustion, manifesting in the three primary symptoms of exhaustion, decreased productivity, and cynicism. However, student depletion is characterized by a unique set of symptoms that serve as clear indicators if you are experiencing it. If you are experiencing these symptoms, we suggest contacting our service with a do my project for me request to decrease the level of pressure and stress that you currently have. In the meantime, here are the five most prevalent symptoms of student burnout to be mindful of:

Diminished Motivation and Interest

Decreased motivation and interest often serve as initial indicators of student burnout. This symptom is typically characterized by waning enthusiasm for academic pursuits. For instance, if a longstanding dream of becoming a lawyer no longer elicits excitement, and you find yourself skipping classes and procrastinating, it may be a sign of fatigue. The lack of motivation and not knowing how to avoid burnout as a student can extend beyond studies, affecting interest in extracurricular activities and social events. If you sense a loss of drive and enthusiasm toward both academic and social goals, student tiredness may be the culprit.

Difficulty Sustaining Focus

Experiencing difficulty in maintaining focus, such as repeatedly reading a sentence without comprehension, can be attributed to student burnout. This common issue is often linked to heightened stress, anxiety, and inadequate sleep. If you notice increased forgetfulness, indecision, and reduced productivity, these may serve as noteworthy indicators of depletion. If you don’t feel focused today, pay for essay and recharge your batteries while our writers will be taking care of your assignment. 

Deterioration in Physical Health

Frequent illnesses, such as recurring colds, can be more than mere inconveniences; they might signify underlying college burnout. Studies indicate a direct correlation between breakdown severity and physical symptoms. Common health issues associated with enervation include digestive problems, skin rashes, tension headaches, sleep disorders, and respiratory illnesses. It's crucial not to overlook these physical warning signs, as student collapse can impact both mental and physical well-being.

Decline in Academic Performance

A decline in academic performance is a significant manifestation of student burnout, stemming from factors like diminished motivation, impaired focus, or physical health concerns. The effects of tiredness can vary among students, with some engaging in procrastination and class avoidance while others hyperfocus, leading to overwork. Regardless of the specific manifestation, student burnout leaves individuals mentally, emotionally, and physically drained, ultimately influencing their academic achievements.

Creativity Drought, aka. Writer’s Block

Student burnout can manifest as a notable lack of creativity, hindering problem-solving abilities or stifling inspiration in creative fields like writing or marketing. If your cognitive processes seem sluggish and you struggle to generate innovative ideas, it may indicate the presence of student prostration.

Expert Advice on How to Avoid Burnout

If you recognize signs of exhaustion, it's advisable to proactively take steps to enhance both your mental and physical well-being. Fortunately, there are several actionable measures you can implement to alleviate stress and anxiety. Here are some useful tips on how to avoid academic burnout.

Identifying Emotional Signs, Physical and Behavioral Changes

Recognizing the symptoms of burnout in college involves paying close attention to emotional indicators. Persistent feelings of exhaustion, despite adequate rest, may signal depletion. If you find yourself increasingly detached, cynical, or disengaged from your academic responsibilities, these emotional responses could be early signs. Additionally, heightened irritability, mood swings, and a sense of dread or hopelessness about college tasks may indicate burnout's impact on your emotional well-being.

Beyond emotional cues, collapse often manifests physically and behaviorally. Chronic fatigue and changes in sleep patterns, such as insomnia or oversleeping, can be indicative of fatigue. Be attentive to shifts in appetite, weight loss or gain, and any unexplained physical ailments. Moreover, changes in academic performance, increased procrastination, and a decline in the quality of work may reflect the toll tiredness is taking on your overall college experience. Recognizing these varied symptoms holistically is essential for addressing burnout effectively.

Make Sleep and Exercise Your Priority

A 2023 study by the International Journal of Medical Students highlighted a significant link between inadequate sleep, lack of exercise, and heightened rates of exhaustion among students. The logic is straightforward: sufficient sleep and increased physical activity contribute to improved mental health. If you want to know how to avoid burnout as a student, incorporating regular exercise into your daily schedule and giving priority to sleep are essential strategies.

Engaging in exercise doesn't necessitate becoming a fitness enthusiast; the key is finding an enjoyable activity. Whether it's increasing daily walks or hitting the campus gym a couple of times per week, even modest physical activity can have a substantial impact. On the sleep front, achieving the recommended 7-9 hours might pose challenges. Establishing consistent sleep routines, reducing screen time before bedtime, and creating a dark, quiet sleep environment are practices that can significantly enhance sleep quality and contribute to burnout prevention. 

Emphasize Time Management

Giving due attention to time management is integral, especially when coupled with the ability to say no assertively. College students often undertake ambitious side projects or major endeavors without fully grasping the time commitment involved. This tendency, commonly known as the planning fallacy, leads individuals to consistently underestimate the time required for tasks, even if they have considerable academic experience.

Enhancing time management skills enables students to operate with efficiency and effectiveness. It is essential to allocate more time than initially anticipated and steer clear of procrastination. The research underscores the detrimental consequences of chronic procrastination, including elevated stress levels, heightened anxiety, compromised health, and increased susceptibility to burnout. Adopting robust time management practices is not only a safeguard against these pitfalls but also a proactive measure for maintaining overall well-being. By the way, here are some really great tips regarding time management tips for students .

Cultivate Resilience

After recognizing and addressing academic burnout, the subsequent pivotal step involves actively building resilience. Utilizing various methods significantly enhances your ability to cope with stress.

Gratitude Practices. Cultivate gratitude to generate positive emotions and train your mind to find positives in every situation.

Social Connection. Combat the isolation often associated with student exhaustion by fostering stronger social bonds with peers, friends, and family. This support network can effectively assist in stress management.

Journaling for Self-Reflection. Allocate time daily for journaling, a practice that promotes self-awareness. Additionally, documenting your achievements is a motivational tool, fostering a sense of accomplishment.

Homework Planner Tool. Explore the potential benefits of utilizing a homework planner tool for stimulating creative thinking and streamlining the completion of your assignments by 300%. 

Incorporate Enjoyment into Your Schedule

While academics play a significant role in college life, they shouldn't monopolize every waking hour. Filling each moment with relentless schoolwork is a guaranteed path to college burnout before the semester's end.

Making deliberate efforts to allocate time for enjoyment is vital in preventing exhaustion. Prioritize connections with friends and family, whether through regular dinners with friends or weekly phone calls with family.

When taking breaks, it's crucial to leave school-related stress behind. Refrain from carrying the weight of assignments or deadlines into other activities. Grant yourself a mental hiatus from academic pressures, allowing you to return fully refreshed and ready for the challenges ahead.

Embrace Your Passions

As a student, it's crucial to embrace your passions as a powerful antidote to fatigue. Engaging in activities that genuinely inspire and invigorate you can serve as a refreshing break from academic pressures. Whether it's participating in a club, pursuing a hobby, or diving into a personal project, connecting with your passions provides a vital source of motivation and fulfillment. Whenever you need help, a college essay writing service is the number one solution to fighting burnout and restoring inner balance.

Trust Your Instincts

Amid the hustle and bustle of academic demands, trusting your instincts becomes a valuable guide. Pay attention to your inner voice, recognizing when you need to recalibrate and prioritize self-care. For those who want to know how to prevent burnout, trusting your instincts enables you to make informed decisions about allocating your time, energy, and attention, fostering a healthier and more sustainable college experience.

Acknowledge Warning Signs

To effectively combat college burnout, it's imperative to acknowledge and heed warning signs before they escalate. Pay attention to shifts in your mental and physical well-being, such as increased stress, fatigue, or a decline in motivation. The trick how to avoid burnout lies in recognizing these indicators early on to empower yourself to take proactive steps, such as seeking support from friends, family, or campus resources. To teach you the importance of emotional intelligence , we’ve prepared this insightful guide for students who wish to control their emotions and channel energy in the right direction. 

Constantly Feeling Tired and Exhausted?

These are the two most common signs of burnout. We suggest you use our writing services as an opportunity to restore the work-life balance.

Determining the Right Time to Seek Professional Support for Burnout

According to research published in the National Library of Medicine in 2023, students with academic weariness accounted for 59.9%, with male students having higher burnout scores than female students, upper-grade students – higher than lower-grade students, and students who smoked – higher than non-smokers during the school day.

Seeking professional help for a burned out student is a crucial aspect of maintaining mental and emotional well-being. When the feelings of exhaustion, cynicism, and reduced efficacy persist despite efforts to address them independently, it may indicate that professional intervention is necessary. 

A key consideration for seeking professional help is when exhaustion manifests in physical symptoms. Chronic stress can manifest in various physical ailments, such as headaches, digestive issues, or sleep disturbances. If these physical symptoms persist or intensify, it's advisable to consult with a healthcare professional who can assess the underlying causes and recommend appropriate interventions.

Bottom Line

This article underscores the importance of knowing how to overcome burnout in college, prevent it promptly, and intervene proactively before irreversible damage is caused. We’d like to emphasize proactive strategies to prevent breakdown, highlighting the significance of self-awareness and recognizing early warning signs. 

Embracing passions, trusting instincts, and seeking professional help are essential components of a comprehensive approach to overcoming fatigue. By encouraging students to prioritize their mental well-being and providing actionable insights, we aim to empower them to withstand the pressures of college more effectively, fostering a supportive and resilient academic journey. If you’re feeling the signs of burnout, make a preemptive strike – say, ‘ write my research paper ’ and enjoy peace of mind.

is an expert in nursing and healthcare, with a strong background in history, law, and literature. Holding advanced degrees in nursing and public health, his analytical approach and comprehensive knowledge help students navigate complex topics. On EssayPro blog, Adam provides insightful articles on everything from historical analysis to the intricacies of healthcare policies. In his downtime, he enjoys historical documentaries and volunteering at local clinics.

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How to recover from burnout

Feeling worn down, checked out, or bitter about work the answer is not to ‘just work harder’. try these steps instead.

by Debbie Sorensen   + BIO

is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Denver, Colorado. She is a co-host of the podcast Psychologists Off the Clock and co-author of ACT Daily Journal: Get Unstuck and Live Fully with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2021). Her newest book is ACT for Burnout: Recharge, Reconnect, and Transform Burnout with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2024).

Edited by Matt Huston

Need to know

‘I’m exhausted.’ As a clinical psychologist who specialises in burnout and chronic stress, I hear these two words frequently. Many people around the world are under chronic stress these days, and burnout is rampant. Perhaps you are going through it yourself. If so, you might see elements of your experience in mine.

For me, burnout happened when I was working as a psychologist on a medical team, in a hospital setting. My workload was demanding, and I was having trouble keeping up – with patients, trainees and ceaseless administrative work. I had two young children at home, so my downtime was limited, and I always felt as if I was dropping too many balls, both at home and at work. Without realising it, I got to the point where I was emotionally drained and disengaged from my work – work that I normally love. I felt like I was going through the motions, instead of feeling my usual level of passion and enthusiasm. I started to get irritated by little things. I was utterly depleted. It took me a while to recognise what was going on and why I was feeling this way.

Once I realised I was burned out, I started making some changes. I tried being more realistic about what I expected from myself. I got better about setting boundaries and saying no to extra work. I reengaged with my coworkers, and talked to supportive people about what I was going through. And I started to prioritise caring for myself, giving myself more time and space to rest and recharge.

Eventually, I recovered from burnout. My energy for work came back, and I started to care again. My bleak outlook changed. There were still times when my work was difficult – that’s life! But my feelings about my work became more balanced. I returned to feeling like myself. Since then, I’ve had periods of high stress, and times when exhaustion started creeping up on me again. But now I’m better equipped to deal with those periods, because of everything I’ve learned about burnout. In this Guide, I will tell you some of what I’ve learned, and share ideas and strategies I’ve found helpful for myself and my clients.

What is burnout, and who’s at risk?

Although the word ‘burnout’ is used frequently and most people have an intuitive understanding of what it is, it’s important to know what the condition really entails. As the World Health Organization defines it, burnout typically has three dimensions:

• a state of energy depletion or exhaustion
• mental distance, or feelings of cynicism or negativity toward work
• feeling less effective than usual in a work role

Burnout is not considered a medical condition or mental health disorder. Rather, it is described as an ‘occupational phenomenon’ that occurs in response to chronic work stress. This is important because if you are burned out, you might pathologise your experience, assuming there’s something ‘wrong’ with you when you are, in fact, having a normal human reaction to unremitting stress. Over time, too much stress can wear you down and lead to exhaustion and disengagement.

Burnout is commonly associated with paid employment, but it can also happen in other roles, such as caregiver, parent, student, activist or athlete. I like to think of ‘work role’ broadly – as any role, paid or unpaid, in which you engage in goal-directed effort for a specific outcome. Many types of work roles can be demanding and stressful and, while they each have their own unique features, they are similar in terms of the burnout experience, and in terms of how to recover.

Anyone who is experiencing chronic work stress can develop burnout – people of any age, gender or socioeconomic standing, and from all walks of life – but there does seem to be greater risk for those who:

• invest a lot of their time and energy into their work
• have jobs where they must interact with people – such as customer service jobs, or helping professions like social work and teaching
• frequently work in emotionally charged situations, like emergency response or other high-pressure or high-conflict settings
• have a high workload, or have too many demands and/or too few resources
• work on competitive or uncooperative teams, or in workplaces that are unsupportive of employee wellbeing
• feel unappreciated or undervalued at work
• hold personal values that don’t match those of their organisation
• work in industries such as healthcare, where there is a cumulation of these types of factors

Burnout is not your fault, but you can do something about it

Burnout always happens in the context of chronic stress, and we live and work in stressful times. Around the world, we have recently faced a pandemic, wars, economic uncertainty, fears about the climate crisis, political unrest and more. Many of us experience culturally driven problems with workplace culture, pressure to achieve and limited opportunity to rest. This is certainly the case in the United States, where I live, and in many other places as well. These factors all contribute to chronic stress. If you are experiencing burnout, it’s not your fault. It’s a product of the broader cultural, historical and economic contexts in which you live.

Fortunately, even though burnout isn’t your fault, there are things you can do to get to a better place. Sometimes the experience of burnout can be transformed with some internal, psychological shifts, and sometimes it requires some important changes in external circumstances. Whether you are currently burned out and looking for strategies to recover, or are worried that the weight of chronic stress will soon tip you toward burnout, there are steps you can take now to set yourself on a different course. It starts with recognising the problem.

Recognise the signs

It can be easy to overlook the signs of burnout when it’s developing. When I experienced burnout, it took me months to realise what was happening. I felt ‘off’ – tired, stressed, less enthusiastic about my work than usual – but didn’t recognise it as burnout. Instead, I blamed myself for being unable to keep up and for being so emotionally drained.

These days, I pay attention to signals that my stress level is starting to get too high and that it’s starting to impact me. My first indicator is that I begin to wake up in the middle of the night and lie awake with worry and stress. I also notice preoccupation with work, and feeling that I can’t stop working, even on weekends. When I notice these signs, I look at my situation and start thinking about what needs to change before my stress gets worse and leads to burnout.

To be more aware of burnout (or potential burnout), ask yourself questions like these:

• What are the early indicators that you might be under too much stress? Have you noticed any changes that tend to occur when your stress level is high, such as changes in your relationships, sleep, eating or work habits? Do you notice any changes in your mood or thinking patterns, such as more irritability, worry or self-criticism? What do you notice happening in your body when you are under a high level of stress? For instance, you might notice that you carry tension in your shoulders, feel jittery and antsy, or have trouble focusing.
• Based on the criteria described in the Need to Know section above, what might burnout look like for you? Do you frequently feel exhausted? Emotionally disengaged? Cynical? More self-critical than usual? All of the above?
• What would someone else observe about your outward behaviour if you were highly stressed or burned out? Do you see yourself exhibiting these behaviours?

Once you have identified that you are (or might be) experiencing burnout, you can start to think about what types of changes might help you, and consider implementing some of the suggestions that will follow.

For some people, burnout can be severe and long lasting, and can coincide with a mental health condition such as depression, anxiety or a substance use disorder. It can also be associated with symptoms like hopelessness or suicidal thoughts, or physical symptoms such as changes in appetite or weight, gastrointestinal problems or frequent headaches. If you are experiencing symptoms such as these, I recommend that you speak with a licensed health professional about them, in addition to considering the other advice in this Guide. If you think you are still in the early stages of burnout, don’t wait! Use this as an opportunity to take action before it becomes more severe.

Rethink what stress means and how you respond to it

Some degree of stress is a normal and expected part of an engaged life. At moderate levels, it can help motivate you to take action and feel energised. The problem is that stress can also drive inflexible and ineffective behaviour patterns, and these can contribute to burnout.

Some common ways of trying to reduce stress often help in the short term, but not so much in the longer term. For example, some people overwork in response to stress, thinking that if they work harder, they will eventually outrun the stress, catch up on their work, and be less busy. They might feel productive for a while, but this perpetuates the cycle of overwork. Or, people try to deal with stress by procrastinating, or seeking comfort through alcohol, cannabis, social media or the like – things that feel good in the moment, but often increase stress and contribute to exhaustion later.

While these behaviours make sense, because they are ways of trying to cope with stress, avoidance and control rarely help much in the long run. If you have engaged in these or similar ways of coping, you can start the process of responding differently by taking a different point of view about stress. Rather than looking at stress as the enemy, you can view it as part of life and – when it’s gotten very high – as an indicator that you might benefit from slowing down, as we’ll discuss in subsequent steps.

Get some perspective on burnout-related thoughts

In my work as a therapist, I have noticed that people with burnout are often stuck in unhelpful thought patterns that amplify the pressure they feel. For instance, someone might believe that their worth is tied to their productivity and think that they can’t take a break from working. They may also be self-critical about their work, worry about getting everything done, or compare themselves unfavourably to their coworkers. They might think that they deserve blame for not doing enough and for struggling with burnout.

The problem with these thoughts is not that we have them; the problem is when we start to believe them.

If you find yourself stuck in these types of thoughts, it can help to take a step back and recognise that they are just thoughts, passing through your mind. To do this, start by labelling such thoughts when they appear: you might refer to them internally as ‘burnout thoughts’ or ‘self-critical thoughts’. Then, try to observe what’s happening in your mind as you would observe an animal in the wild – from a distance. Notice that your mind is just doing what human minds do best – giving you a running monologue of internal chatter – and remember that you do not have to give these thoughts too much power over you. Your thoughts do not have to run your life. For instance, you can have the thought ‘I can’t afford to take a break’, and still choose to take a break anyway.

Many such thoughts – like those related to productivity, rest and ‘laziness’ – reflect culturally driven narratives that you likely have internalised. When they pop up, you can remind yourself that, most likely, these are mere opinions rather than facts, and they are definitely not the whole story. Getting some space from burnout-related thoughts and narratives can help you to unhook from the ones that are not serving you well.

Practise saying no and setting boundaries

People who are prone to burnout often have trouble saying no. On the upside, they are often caring, wonderful people who like to help out, work hard, and do nice things for others. But a pattern of people-pleasing can contribute to burnout. If you don’t say no and don’t set limits, you can easily end up overworked and overcommitted. You may end up feeling drained by relationships that demand too much of you, and unsure of how to untangle yourself.

If this description seems familiar, consider the possibility that you could benefit from setting better boundaries. It might be helpful to set new boundaries with your workload, such as by keeping more reasonable limits on your work hours or taking on less extra work when possible. For example, if you work in an environment where people are encouraged (either subtly or overtly) to work unreasonably long hours, you can set a boundary by stopping work at the end of the day. Even if your boss is working late, and you are worried about disapproval, you can walk out the door or log off your computer at the time when your work day is officially over. You can choose not to respond to those 11pm messages until the next morning, sending a signal that you aren’t willing to work around the clock. (And if doing so is a regular expectation, and your boundaries aren’t respected, then at that point it might be worth considering a job change.)

Similarly, you can decide to stop at a ‘good enough’ point in your tasks, when possible, even if your work isn’t absolutely perfect. And in some work roles, it’s possible to selectively choose projects or assignments you work on instead of opting to take on everything that comes your way.

There are other worthwhile ways to set boundaries in your interactions with people, especially people who tend to drain your energy. You can practise saying no to optional requests that you don’t have time for, and work on taking less responsibility for keeping everyone else happy. You can speak up for your own needs, including by asking for help and support when you could use it. Constantly putting the needs of others before your own can eventually wear you out.

Tune into your emotions rather than avoiding them

Part of the experience of burnout is emotional disconnection. You might find yourself bottling up or avoiding your feelings, running on autopilot, or ‘checking out’ from your present experience. In this state, you are psychologically inflexible, rather than emotionally engaged, aware and intentional.

To reconnect with your experience in a meaningful way, you can practise tuning into your emotions and making room for them – even the uncomfortable ones like fear and sadness – instead of pushing them away. Reconnecting with your full emotional experience can provide you with a greater sense of vitality, which is a refreshing change after being burned out and disengaged. It can also help free you from struggling against your emotions.

Practise tuning into the present moment, instead of acting on autopilot, distracted by thoughts about the past and future. You can try it right now, pausing to notice how you feel. Scan through your body, from your toes to the top of your head, and notice what sensations you feel at each point along the way. Then, tune into your emotional experience by noticing what you feel. Label the emotions that are present for you right now. Describe them, and notice where you feel them in your body. For instance, you might notice tension in your shoulders and say to yourself ‘I’m feeling overwhelmed’, or notice a tingling sensation in your chest, and say to yourself ‘I’m feeling angry.’ Allow your emotions, whatever they may be, to be there, and simply notice them. Acknowledge that they will come and go, like waves in the ocean, as they always do.

The skills of openness and awareness can not only change your relationship with the feeling of stress; they can help you make more intentional choices in how you respond to the stress. Instead of doubling down on stress by working harder, you can – having recognised and accepted its presence – choose to take a break, or to get some sleep. Or, instead of procrastinating to avoid a challenging emotion that work is stirring in you, you can intentionally choose to finish some of the work that needs to be done, and then turn to something else. You can be more flexible in choosing the most effective response to the situation at hand, even if it’s not always comfortable to do so.

Reconnect with meaning and purpose

When you are burned out, you feel disconnected from the meaningful aspects of your work – even if you normally love your job. A sense of meaning, purpose and vitality goes missing. To me, this disconnection is the biggest cost of burnout. Life is short, and you don’t want to miss it because you are disengaged.

Try reconnecting with the big-picture reasons why you are doing the type of work you do. Make a practice of reflecting (either in your mind, through writing, or verbally by talking with someone) on what matters to you about your work. It is likely that you chose your work because you care about it in some way, or because you care about what you get out of it. Maybe the work itself is purposeful and makes a positive contribution to the world. Perhaps your job provides you with an opportunity to use your skills and feel proud of your work. Tapping into reasons such as these can be especially helpful when you’ve lost touch with a sense of caring about your work.

If you feel that your work is out of line with your values, or that there is no longer any purpose to the work you are doing, it might be time to consider the possibility of pivoting to a more meaningful and values-aligned type of work, if you can. But for now, at least, you could consider looking at your work in a different way: perhaps it provides you with a pay cheque that supports you and your family, or the kind of life you want, and that, in itself, offers a sense of purpose.

You can also tap into smaller, meaningful moments throughout your day. First, ask yourself what kinds of moments are meaningful to you. What gives you a spark of vitality? For example, it could be the experience of connecting with someone at work, or giving yourself some space for creative expression in the morning before you start on other tasks, or (if you’re a parent) devoting some time to having fun with your child in between the day’s demands. When you have the choice, try to spend less time on tasks that are unimportant to you and seek out more of those meaningful moments. And when you do, see if you can slow down and experience those moments more fully.

Carve out time for activities that help you recharge

When I’m busy and stressed, the first things that go on the back burner are the very things I probably need most. I undervalue sleep, and I feel like I don’t have time to exercise. And, of course, sleep and exercise both help me recharge and cope with stress more effectively. Caring for myself doesn’t always seem very important, though, when I am busy and behind with work.

I recommend taking an inventory of your daily routine and habits. Think about behaviours that help you recharge and cope with stress better – both those that help you feel energised (like exercise or having fun with friends) and those that help you feel more relaxed (like a nap or a day off from work). Based on this inventory, make a list of two or three manageable things you could do today or tomorrow that feel recharging to you. Ideally, these are small, realistic steps that will work for you. Although it can be hard to find time when you are busy and stressed, try giving yourself permission to care for yourself by making some space in your schedule for these activities.

Next, think about the habits that tend to exacerbate your stress in the long term, or that leave you feeling even more depleted. Things like, possibly, alcohol, staying up too late, or scrolling through social media. Try intentionally choosing other behaviours instead, at least some of the time. Try having a glass of sparkling water instead of an after-work cocktail, or reaching for a book instead of your phone before bed.

Ask for support

I have noticed that people with burnout often feel isolated. They may feel uncomfortable sharing what they are going through or assume that they are alone with their struggles. They are often managing a large workload on their own, without enough support, and feel as if they can’t ask for help.

One of the best predictors of wellbeing is supportive relationships. Social support helps us get through tough times. So if I was to give you a single piece of advice for coping with burnout, it would be to reach out for support. It could come from a coworker, a friend or another person in your life. And sometimes professional support – perhaps from a therapist like me – can be helpful as well.

Start by telling someone you trust how you’re feeling. Ask them if they’ve ever been under chronic stress or if they have felt burned out. It can help to consider whether you need a particular kind of support: do you need a shoulder to cry on? Practical support at work or at home that will help relieve your stress? Or just someone to have some laughs and blow off steam with? It’s also OK if you don’t know what you need. Simply sharing your experience with a caring person can help you feel less alone, by tapping into a sense of common humanity with others who have felt this way. It can ease the burden of carrying your struggles alone.

Use burnout to spark growth and change

While I wouldn’t wish burnout on anyone, I do think that burnout experiences can sometimes inspire a person to make necessary changes in their life. Someone can reach a point of exhaustion where they realise that they can’t go on in the same way anymore. Perhaps your encounter with burnout will be the first time you truly learn to speak up for yourself or to say no to people who ask too much of you. Or you might be considering a big change, whether in your work or another area, and finally get to the point of taking action. Reckoning with burnout might lead you to look at your priorities and make some hard decisions about where you invest your time and energy. It might even inspire you to take action to improve an unhealthy work situation.

If you are experiencing burnout, I hope that you will use it as an opportunity to ask yourself some big, existential questions about your life. For instance:

• What is burnout telling you about your situation, and what can you learn about yourself?
• What are your most important values and priorities? Think about how your life is currently going. How well is your life aligned with what matters most to you?
• What changes – big and small – might help you get to a better place in your life?

Today, years after I experienced my most extreme burnout period, I look back at it as a blessing in disguise. The changes I made in response to it – learning to protect my time and energy, allowing myself rest, and other improvements – have helped me to this day. I have also found meaning in helping other people with burnout. My life now feels much better to me than the overly busy and stressful life I was living before.

Perhaps, someday, you too will look back at burnout as a blessing in disguise.

Key points – How to recover from burnout

• Burnout is a complex response to chronic work stress. You might feel not only exhausted and less effective than usual, but also disengaged from or negative toward your work.
• Burnout is not your fault, but you can do something about it. Workplace culture, pressure to achieve and other external factors are the true sources of burnout. But you can still lighten your burden with changes in thinking and behaviour.
• Recognise the signs. Consider how the main features of burnout, such as depletion and disengagement, might be showing up in your day-to-day experience. Notice any other indicators of high stress.
• Rethink what stress means and how you respond to it. Instead of trying to avoid stress, or to ‘outrun’ it through more work, treat a high stress level as a signal that something needs to change.
• Get some perspective on burnout-related thoughts. Identify and label any harsh or self-critical thoughts about work that ramp up your stress. Remember that you don’t have to let them determine your behaviour.
• Practise saying no and setting boundaries. Try to stick to reasonable work hours, decline optional requests, or take other steps to protect your time and energy.
• Tune into your emotions rather than avoiding them. Regularly noticing when you’re experiencing difficult emotions can help you respond to them in more effective ways.
• Reconnect with meaning and purpose. Make a practice of noting why you do the work you do. Consider the moments of your day that feel especially meaningful and seek out more of these.
• Carve out time for activities that help you recharge. Work demands can make these seem trivial, but they’re not. List some activities that energise or relax you, and choose a couple that you can make time for this week.
• Ask for support. Tell someone you trust how you’ve been feeling. Seek whatever kinds of social support you might need, whether it’s practical help at work or home, or just a chance to feel heard.
• Use burnout to spark growth and change. Reflect on what burnout suggests about your current situation, what matters to you, and what changes might be worth making in your life.

Why wellness interventions alone are not enough to end burnout

As a clinical psychologist, my job is to help individuals who are suffering get to a better place. But burnout is not just an individual problem; it’s a result of working in stressful situations. No one can sustain very high levels of stress indefinitely without it taking an emotional toll. In order to really confront the problem of burnout, changes must be made at the organisational and cultural levels.

Some burnout experts are concerned that individual interventions for burnout put the onus on the burned-out person to solve a problem they didn’t create, rather than addressing the root of the problem. There’s rising backlash against employer-sponsored mindfulness classes, and similar interventions, when they aren’t coupled with changes to the workplace factors that contribute to burnout. The term ‘ carewashing ’ has recently been used to describe a superficial workplace culture of care that does not match employees’ daily experiences at work. Being asked to take part in a mindfulness programme can amount to yet another task that one must add to an already overloaded schedule.

What could lead to more meaningful, systemic reductions in the problem of burnout? It’s a hard problem to address, but I have hope. Some corporations and organisations are starting to address burnout and employee wellbeing with substantial changes to workplace culture and policies. Here are some of the kinds of improvements that could help reduce burnout on a wider scale:

• Leaders of organisations can prioritise worker wellbeing as essential. They can make sure to compensate people fairly and give them enough resources, like time, money, staffing and support, to do their work. They can also give employees adequate time away from work, and encourage people to use vacation time and take their earned time off.
• Employers should create a supportive, emotionally healthy and psychologically safe workplace culture – one in which people are allowed to take breaks, express emotions, talk openly about mistakes, ask for help and so on. They should give people as much autonomy and agency in their work as possible.
• Leaders and workers alike can normalise and role-model a healthy work/life balance by keeping overwork in check. For example, long hours and late-night emails to coworkers should not be treated as a badge of honour.
• Employers, employees, and others who aim to promote workplace wellbeing must work together to change the narrative on productivity, work and rest. People should challenge the idea that a person’s value depends on high productivity, as well as the idea that rest is a luxury that must be earned.

I feel strongly that we must address burnout at all levels. It is imperative to make broad cultural changes. Meanwhile, since those changes can be slow, anyone who is suffering from burnout deserves the guidance they need to help them get through it right now – even though it’s not their fault.

Links & books

For a deeper dive into the concepts in this Guide, check out my book ACT for Burnout: Recharge, Reconnect, and Transform Burnout with Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (2024) . My podcast , Psychologists Off the Clock, covers burnout and related topics in psychology, and my blog features regular posts on burnout and other subjects.

Christina Maslach is a pioneer in burnout research, and her book The Burnout Challenge: Managing People’s Relationships with Their Jobs (2022), co-authored with the organisational psychologist Michael P Leiter, explores what managers and organisations can do to address the problem.

To learn more about the importance of social support, read the book The Good Life: Lessons from the World’s Longest Scientific Study of Happiness (2023) by Robert Waldinger and Marc Schulz, and the book Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World (2020) by Vivek Murthy, the US surgeon general. For more on how to establish social connections, check out my previous Psyche Guide on ‘ How to ask for help ’ and Marisa G Franco’s Guide on ‘ How to make friends as an adult ’, and watch Adam Dorsay’s TED Talk ‘Friendships in Adulthood: 5 Things to Know’ (2021).

Cultural narratives on productivity and rest have recently started to change for the better, thanks to books like Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto ( 2022 ) by Tricia Hersey, Laziness Does Not Exist ( 2021 ) by Devon Price, and Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less ( 2016 ) by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang (the author of Psyche’s Guide on ‘ How to rest well ’). These authors can help you continue to rethink your assumptions about rest and its value.

Oliver Burkeman’s brilliant time-management book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals (2021) will inspire you to look at your priorities and make some difficult but important decisions about where to spend your precious time and energy. And Jodi Wellman’s book You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets (2024) will help you think through some existential questions about your life and what you do with it.

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This is what admissions officers really want to read in college essays

The important thing is not to overthink it.

by Allie Volpe

One of the most memorable essays college admissions counselor Alexis White worked on with a student wasn’t about a harrowing personal challenge or a rewarding volunteering experience. “It started with the sentence ‘My hair arrives in a room before I do,’” says White, the founder and director of the consultancy firm Alexis College Expert. “It just was the best. And everybody who reads it loves it.”

College application essays have an infamous reputation for being one of the most difficult aspects of the application process. But it remains a crucial way to share details about your life and interests — a way to distinguish yourself beyond your grades, test scores, and extracurricular activities, even in the era of ChatGPT (more on that later).

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Admissions officers are looking to be entertained when reading application essays, White says. Of course, students should use their essay to showcase their curiosities, character, and point of view, but contrary to popular belief, these personal statements don’t need to recount devastating moments of painful growth. “You can be fun,” White says. “You don’t have to have trauma.”

There are a number of essays students will need to write as a part of their college application. Over 1 million students apply to college through the Common App , a streamlined platform that allows students to apply to multiple schools at once. There, students write a personal statement, usually between 500 and 650 words , centered on a student’s identity, beliefs, accomplishments, and interests, and can choose from among seven prompts for the 2024–25 application season. One prompt even allows the applicant to write about a topic of their choice. “Write the essay that your heart wants to write,” says college essay coach Cassandra Hsiao .

Individual colleges also ask for additional shorter pieces ( around 250 words ), also known as supplemental essays, which may ask applicants to explain why they’re applying to this specific school, and about their academic interests and extracurricular activities.

With so much to write, students need to dedicate serious time and effort — White suggests at least eight weeks — into crafting compelling and effective essays. Here’s what college essay pros want applicants to know.

Make sure your essays are unique to you

Students often put pressure on themselves to have a one-of-a-kind essay topic, White says. There are very few unique concepts, she continues, but what will set you apart is your way into the essay. Start strong with an attention-grabbing first sentence, experts say, that immediately hooks the reader.

Can’t decide what to write? Try these exercises.

Look around your house or room and pick 10 items that spark a memory — like a soccer trophy or a painting you made — and write them down. Or recount a typical day in your life in detail, from the music you listen to in the shower to the snack you grab before bed.

The point, Brook says, is to home in on things that you may think of as humdrum, but that you can use to tell a story about yourself.

Don’t discount minor details when thinking about extracurriculars and accomplishments. “When my kids are stuck, it’s a lot of chatting about things that they think don’t matter and then we typically come to something really great,” says Tyler.

Another tactic is picking five adjectives would you use to describe yourself, suggests White. Expand on each with an experience or memory.

Focus on developing a unique lens through which to see an event in your life, with an original point of view. These can be small moments, says Stacey Brook, the founder and chief adviser at College Essay Advisors . For example, one student she worked with wrote an essay about bonding with her mother during drives to gymnastics practice. After the student got her license and no longer had these moments with her mother, she wrote, she felt a sense of loss. “She was reflecting on what those drives meant to her and what it means to grow up and to gain things and lose them at the same time,” Brook says. “That’s the tiniest moment, the smallest slice of life out of which you can make an incredible essay.”

Even if you’re writing about a common topic, like school sports or lessons learned from an adult in your life, one way to differentiate your essay is to add dialogue, Hsiao says. “It’s in the specificity that only you can write because you went through that,” she says.

Avoid regurgitating your resume, Hsaio continues. Instead, lead the reader through a narrative arc showing your growth. You don’t need to explicitly state what you learned from the experience. Instead, use descriptive, scene-setting language — about how tense you were during that big game or your excitement when you stepped onto the stage — that shows how you’re different on the other side.

Again, you don’t need to share the worst thing that’s ever happened to you — or try to dramatize your life to make it seem more challenging than it is — but help the reader understand the effort you put in to get a new club off the ground, for example. “What you went through objectively might be really small on a global scale,” Hsiao says, “but because it felt big to you and I care about you as the writer, it will feel big to me.”

Don’t even think about copying from ChatGPT (or other generative AI)

While Brook understands the appeal of ChatGPT, experts say don’t use it to write your essay. College application reviewers will be able to tell.

The purpose of these pieces is to display your personality and writing ability and bots will never produce a unique, personalized essay. These chatbots use a style and tone that is immediately identifiable to readers, one that is rife with cliches and an awkward cadence, experts say.

Appropriate uses of generative AI include spell and grammar check or as a thesaurus. “Once you start pulling full paragraphs, you’re cheating,” White says. “It’s not your work.”

Tailor supplemental essays to each school

Depending on the school, you may be asked to write one or two shorter supplemental essays . These prompts may have similar themes, about your academic interests or how you relate to the people around you . For these essays, experts say you can reuse answers for multiple schools — but make sure you revise your answers to be specific to each school.

To ensure you’re tackling supplemental essays efficiently, Brook says to collect all of the prompts for the schools you’re applying to and see where they overlap. Hsiao suggests brainstorming three or four activities, obsessions or aspects of your life you know you want to showcase and try to match these topics to essay prompts. This can be anything from an extracurricular to your favorite TV show. “We are prioritizing what is important in our lives and then showcasing that by mixing and matching per school for the supplemental essay questions,” she says. For example, if you plan on writing about your future major for one college, adapt that essay to each school. However, make sure you’re researching each university and adding details about their specific program to your piece, Brook says.

For essays asking why you want to attend that specific college, ensure your answers are unmistakably catered to that school. “‘I love Delaware because I can’t wait to go to football games and pledge a sorority, and I’m excited about the business school.’ That is not going [cut it] because you could say that about Rutgers,” says Kyra Tyler , a senior director and college admissions consultant at Bright Horizons College Coach. Instead, pepper your answer with details about school traditions, an honors program you hope to join, interesting research opportunities or what you observed when you went on a tour (whether in person or virtual), Tyler says.

Tell a vivid story — and showcase your writing ability

Not only do your essays need to be of substance, but they should showcase style, too.

Tyler suggests students avoid metaphor: Don’t talk about caring for your younger sibling in the context of a Bluey episode — be straightforward. (“Kids can’t get away from [metaphors],” Tyler says, “and what happens is they get stuck under them, and they can’t write.”) You’ll want to write vividly using concrete examples instead of plainly spelling everything out, White says. For instance, if you were a camp counselor who helped a nervous child come out of their shell, write a scene showing the camper interacting with other kids rather than simply saying the camper was less reserved.

Write as if you were talking to your best friend, Tyler says. Avoid slang terms, but let your personality come through your writing. Try reading your essay aloud to see if it sounds like you.

Don’t forget about the basics, like good grammar, proper spelling, and word choice (make sure you’re not repeating similar words and phrases). You don’t need to focus on the five-paragraph structure, Hsiao says. Just make sure you’re telling a compelling story. Have a trusted adult, like a teacher or parent, read your essay to help point out style and structural issues you may have missed.

After you’ve completed a draft, set it aside for a few days, come back to it with fresh eyes for revisions, Tyler says.

College application essays are your chance to share who you were, who you are, and how this university will shape who you hope to be, Hsaio says. Focus on topics you want admissions officers to know and let your voice and passion carry the essay.

Correction, September 19, 11 am ET: A previous version of this story conflated the number of applicants with the number of applications sent through the Common App. Over 1 million students apply using the Common App.

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I Was Writing About a Medical Mystery. Then I Experienced My Own

M y left eye performs magic tricks: now you see it, now you don’t. My daughter disappears beside me on the shoreline of a beach, where the murky Gulf foams, darkens the sand, rears back to colder depths. I hold up my arm: beyond my wrist, my hand is gone, though its shadow remains—a phantom dismemberment. My husband steps into the blind spot, and he has no head.

There is a gap between what I see and what I know.

It began the way many life-changing things do: almost imperceptibly. On December 6, 2023, I woke up with a dull headache. My left brow and eye felt tender as a bruise. And in the center vision of that eye was a tiny dark spot I could neither blink away nor see past.

The morning made its demands: cutting waffles, searching for kids’ shoes, yelling, “Outside, both of you,” to the two new puppies who’d once again peed on the curtains. I dropped off my daughter at kindergarten and my son at preschool. At a red light, I stared at a bumper sticker on the car in front of me. A white oval read, inscrutably, Boost Inside , but with the left eye, I could only see the word Inside . Boost simply . . . disappeared, covered with a pixelated mosaic blur like an identity might be concealed in a documentary.

Unnerved, I made an optometry appointment, then met the mom of one of my daughter’s classmates at a nearby coffee shop. She’s a nurse, and I’d asked to interview her for my new novel, which features a live-in nurse caring for a woman with mysterious, unnamed ailments. During our conversation, I tried to pretend her nose wasn’t a smeared absence on her face.

The optometrist was young, with a dark mustache and a scab between his eyebrows. I say young; I mean around my age, 39, and is that young? It feels that way most of the time, until I’m confronted with actual youth—my children, a grocery-store cashier calling me “ma’am,” 20-year-olds giving makeup tutorials on Instagram—or experts who seem to be my age or younger, instead of decades older as I would expect them to be. Then I’m forced to reassess, to ask myself what youth means to me when I’m on the cusp of 40, an age I used to see as decidedly middle, humdrum, with the best, most exciting parts of life behind you. 

This maybe-young, maybe-middle-aged optometrist showed me two photos. In the images, my retinas were smoggy yellow orbs, threaded with red veins like the spindly branches of dead trees. He pointed to a glowing circle, like a headlight, on the right eye: my optic nerve. Showed me its clean, defined borders. Then pointed to the left eye, where that headlight was more like an explosion, large and messy and spreading, lava from a volcano.

“It’s called optic neuritis,” he said—or inflammation of the optic nerve, which is responsible for carrying messages from the eye to the brain. “It could be idiopathic . . .” The silent but reverberated around us. I asked him what might cause it if there were a cause.

The optometrist gave a nervous laugh. “That’s above my pay grade.”

He told me I should see a neuro-ophthalmologist, but the only one in San Antonio was semi-retired, had an established patient list, and “would laugh if he received a referral from me.” My mind snagged on the word neuro. The optometrist asked me to return to the lobby while he made some calls.

While I waited, surrounded by racks of gleaming eyeglasses, I Googled. Symptoms of optic neuritis include pain when moving the eye and a hole in the center of your vision. Optic neuritis can be idiopathic and resolve within a year. But it’s also often the first sign of muscular sclerosis.

There’s a 50% risk of developing MS within 15 years of an episode of optic neuritis . That risk balloons to 72% if an MRI—the recommended next step after a diagnosis of optic neuritis—shows lesions on the brain. Women are two to three times more at risk than men of developing relapsing forms of MS and often diagnosed between the ages of 20 and 40.

My hands shook as I texted my husband. I felt unmoored in my body, as if I’d awoken in a different house than the one where I’d fallen asleep, or perhaps the same house, only in the morning it was missing a roof. A sudden sense of unreality, the familiar overlaid with strange, the uncanny valley between what had been and what might be.

I pictured my children in their classrooms and ached with bittersweet gratitude that nothing had changed for them. Perhaps it wouldn’t. Then the optometrist hurried out with a name, phone number, and address scrawled on a sheet of printer paper. He’d referred me to an ophthalmologist, and the appointment was set for Friday, two days later. Never had a doctor made a referral appointment for me, on the spot, scheduled with such glaring immediacy.

By Friday, the tiny central blind spot had shifted to the left and expanded like a black hole, my pupil blown out and unresponsive to the light I shone on it in the mirror. I went for a walk in the mild winter chill and couldn’t see the houses to my left. My husband, Adrian, returned from taking the kids to school and insisted we go to the emergency room. If an MRI was likely the next step, maybe we could get it done before my appointment with the ophthalmologist that afternoon.

He drove us, and I clutched his hand. The last time I’d truly panicked had been after taking a wrong turn on a solo hike in West Texas, ending up flush against the side of a mountain, which was too steep to keep climbing down or, seemingly, back up. I had whimpered and panted, struck by my absolute aloneness. There was one rock I could possibly use as a foothold, but if it gave, I’d fall. I felt that way now, in the car. Panicked, on the verge of falling.

“I can’t see you,” I said to Adrian. “I can’t see you.”

He gripped my hand back hard, grounding me. I wasn’t alone this time.

My bloodwork and CT scan came back normal, but they couldn’t do an MRI without a referral because this is America and nothing in health care can be straightforward. We left the ER hours later, in time to pick up the kids from school. I wanted to protect them from the fear we were feeling, the uncertainty about the ways our lives might change. I wanted them to remember me the way I’d been instead of the way I might become. I was already thinking in terms of their memories of me, and mine of them. Since we didn’t have childcare, we decided Adrian would stay with them while I went to my appointment. They were on the backyard swings when I waved and called, “See you guys in a little bit!” I didn’t even hug them goodbye before walking out to my Uber.

A packed, dim waiting room. Bluey on the wall-mounted TV. Dilated eyes. Hours after I arrived, the ophthalmologist, another white man my age, took my eye pressure and showed me more photos of my retinas. Impassively, he told me I had papilledema, optic-disc swelling caused by increased intracranial pressure.

“There’s pressure in my brain ?” I said, aghast.

He Googled a phone number, picked up his cell phone. “I’m going to call over to the emergency department and tell them to expect you.”

It was 6 p.m. on a Friday. Time for the kids’ dinner, bath, bed. The nightly ritual I’ve performed most of the days of their lives. Instantly I regretted all the times I’d counted down till they were asleep, so eager for a few hours of adult time. One day, they say, you’ll put your child down and never pick them up again. There’s a last time for everything, and mostly we never see it coming. Some kind of line was being drawn, a before and after. I could feel it, and shuddered against its coldness.

“I have to go right now?” I asked. “I mean—it’s that urgent?”

“Yes,” the ophthalmologist said flatly, phone to his ear, though with enough pity that I sat up straight and ordered another Uber.

The MRI machine was loud. I lay still, eyes closed, a warm blanket over my legs and pillow beneath my knees as it clanked and groaned. With each metallic bang of a captured image, I imagined other snapshots: my kids on the swing set, the way I’d casually waved as I left. My son mixing pancake batter, his dimpled knuckles . My daughter grinning in her rainbow goggles. Floating with Adrian in a calm ocean. Family lunch at my parents’ house. The Australia trip we’d planned in April to see Adrian’s family. Past and future, fear and yearning, tangled and knotted. The secrets we keep from our children about the capriciousness of loss and violence, the never-guaranteed tomorrows. Please, I thought, over and over again. Please.

Adrian asked a friend of ours to stay with the kids while he joined me at the hospital. I spent the night in a cot in the triage room, where cold saline dripped into an IV and I was given painkillers for the headache. Early the next morning, a kind, red-bearded nurse told me the MRI showed brain lesions. But, he added, they were inconsistent with MS lesions. “Do you get migraines?” he asked, and I shook my head. Well, he told me, a hospitalist would be in soon, followed by a neurologist. A room had opened up on the neurology floor, and I’d be taken there soon for more tests and a five-day course of IV steroids to try to reduce the inflammation in my optic nerve.

“Five days?” I exclaimed. “Am I going to be here for five days ?”

The nurse was sympathetic. “The doctors will have more answers than I do.”

But they didn’t. “An interesting case,” they said. “An anomaly.” My left arm blossomed black with bruises from the multiple daily blood draws. A second CT scan, two more MRIs. A lumbar puncture. Mornings of IV steroids, flushed cheeks and pounding heart. A patch over my eye, pirate jokes. My vision was so unbalanced that I felt dizzy with my eyes open. I couldn’t watch TV or read. I wondered, if it came to it, if I could learn to see with my hands, use them to trace the changing contours of my family’s faces, comprehend a language of raised dots. I scrawled notes for myself, for my novel, an act of hope. Joked that this was all elaborate field research, anything for the art!

I heard patients in the rooms on either side of me coding. Imagined leaving my children without explanation or goodbye, not getting to watch them grow up, answer their questions about the world, hold them through their own joys and sorrows. I imagined Adrian raising them alone. Imagined them forgetting me. That was the one truly unbearable thought.

My mom and sister drove from Laredo to San Antonio. Friends rotated with Adrian for childcare. My brother and sister-in-law brought my baby niece, a jolt of purity and joy. My dad filmed increasingly elaborate skits starring himself as a character he named Rodeo Popo, which made me laugh until I cried.

There were no apparent masses or clots in my brain. The markers for various autoimmune diseases, including MS, trickled in slowly, all negative. No one could tell me why this was happening.

“You’re in your Medical Mystery Era,” my brother joked.

Friends gifted me audiobooks, sent care packages, earned honorary MDs from the Google School of Medicine. I asked for my IUD to be removed after a friend read that it might be linked to an elevated risk of something called pseudotumor cerebri, or increased pressure in the brain that can cause symptoms of a brain tumor, like papilledema. An actual doctor friend made calls and did research. My sister started watching episodes of House on the off chance some TV writers had scripted a situation like this. I used to love that show, much in the way I loved Law & Order: SVU or murder docuseries. The terrible thrill of knowing a particular fate hasn’t befallen us, so therefore we are safe, and perhaps we, along with the doctor or detective, might solve the crime of other bodies’ betrayals. It’s different, of course, when the body in question is your own.

The morning before my lumbar puncture, when spinal fluid would be removed and examined for markers of brain and spinal cancer; increased pressure in my brain; bacterial, fungal, and viral infections; and autoimmune diseases like MS, there was a brief snafu when my favorite nurse said, “Hey, Katie, random question: you’re not pregnant, are you? ‘Cause Bill from Radiology put a big banner on one of your images saying we need to confirm how far along you are.” I was not, in fact, pregnant – Bill had simply mislabeled me – but briefly I hoped I was, that this was all somehow the beginning of a new life, instead of the possible end of mine.

I’d had 39 years of mostly good health. So many and too few. Right before all this happened, I’d been contemplating the fine lines on my forehead, the deep crinkles beside my eyes when I smiled. I’d been thinking about these “visible signs of aging,” wondering if I should make a Botox appointment. As if aging were a curse I could reverse with the right skin care. Now I wished for more lines, more years.

Inside, I felt close enough to touch all my selves: the 5-year-old stroking ladybugs on a chain-link school fence; 17 and going 95 on the highway because grown life was just starting and I was immortal; 27 and separated, crying in my parents’ bed; 33 and remarried, first child hot and wailing on my chest; 35, a second baby in a pandemic; child, woman, wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend. In the hospital, all my selves held hands inside me, waiting.

I missed my daughter’s school Christmas pageant. She was a sheep. On FaceTime, she asked, “Mommy, are you going to die? Because my friend’s aunt went to the hospital and no one took care of her and she died. ”

“No, baby,” I said. “I’ll be home soon.”

I raised my arm, watched my hand disappear. Tilted my head and lost the air-conditioner vent. My sister slipped into the blind spot and vanished.

At night I wondered how I’d found myself in the kind of doom scenario that, ever since having children, has sometimes loomed over me like a dark wave, pulled back silently from the shore to collect on the empty horizon and curve back around, a watery scythe. I wondered if my daughter would ever forgive me if my hope turned out to be a lie.

After five days, I was discharged with no answers.

I should see a neuro-ophthalmologist, they said. Plus a regular ophthalmologist, a neurologist, and, if I was worried, perhaps an oncologist. Would they help make those referrals? I asked. No, they said, and handed me a long printout of names I couldn’t read. I’d need to figure out which specialists were in-network, then ask my primary-care doctor to make referrals, then wait for my HMO insurance to authorize them, and then finally set the appointments, quite possibly for months in the future. I felt stunned and overwhelmed, shunted back to the start as Adrian walked me slowly to our car.

The next morning, my vision deteriorated with shocking swiftness, as if a pane of frosted glass had descended, thick and impenetrable. “I think I’m going blind,” I told Adrian, trembling so violently I could feel my neck stiffening, on the cusp of a debilitating muscle spasm. My parents had driven up, and they stayed with the kids while Adrian took me for an emergency ophthalmology appointment. By that time I could hardly move my head. Could hardly see anything from my left eye at all.

It was a different doctor that day, an older man with Christopher Lloyd Back to the Future hair. He took one look into my eye and diagnosed me with a corneal infection and pseudotumor cerebri—the false brain tumor with a possible link to the IUD I’d had removed. Adrian and I looked at each other in shock. It could be treated, he said, and I’d get my vision back. We laughed and cried, and the doctor was out of the room on the tail of the same whirlwind that had blown him in.

I started taking the diuretic and antibiotic eyedrops he’d prescribed. The next morning, the frosted-glass effect had lifted from my central vision. I was no longer as dizzy or off balance, though the blind area remained. I crashed into Adrian’s arms, weeping as I told him it was better. I was better. I’d never been so happy to brush my children’s tiny pearl teeth, to help them pull uniforms overhead and socks over uncooperative feet. All those beautiful, banal moments I had missed so desperately.

Then the neck and head pain descended again, paralyzing in its intensity. It was the kind of pain that made me rank my worst pains, starting with childbirth, and wonder if this was worse. Adrian drove the kids to school and I went back to bed. Strangely, the pain disappeared completely as soon as I lay down. Not a muscle spasm, after all, but a post lumbar puncture headache. My spinal fluid was leaking. I needed to return to the hospital.

I did not have pseudotumor cerebri. Nor was it ocular shingles, my next diagnosis, by the ophthalmologist who’d first sent me to the ER.

In the days, then weeks, after the hospital, I reviewed every word of hospital paperwork, more than 100 pages, as if I might find something the neurologists didn’t. A pattern, a clue. The possible diagnoses that first night had included stroke, aneurysm, and brain tumor. It was strangely validating: I’d had reason to be so afraid. To give Adrian my passwords, remind him of the letters I occasionally write to our kids and how to find them. To mourn my unfinished book. My unfinished life.

Every time I caught myself asking how this, whatever “this” was, could be happening to me, I answered myself back: I am not special. A pleasant woman who appears stated age. A generic description I saw over and over in my hospital notes, worried like a stone between my fingers. I am anyone, everyone, a soul within a body that is temporary, fragile, finite. The body’s loss happens to us all, but doesn’t the soul always perceive it as a tragedy?

The doctor who put us on the path to real answers was, improbably, our kids’ pediatrician, Dr. Yvette Almendarez.

It was the week before Christmas, and both kids had gotten sick. Adrian, who’d been single-handedly keeping our family going for weeks, took them to Dr. Almendarez, a family friend who asked if I’d like a second opinion on the shingles diagnosis. Her close friend was an ophthalmologist and she’d be happy to put in a call.

I went to see Dr. Teresa Treviño Whitney two days later. She spent nearly two comprehensive, gentle hours with me. The optic nerve was still enormously swollen despite the five-day course of IV steroids. It was also white and fuzzy when it should be pink and smooth, and there was inflammation in the uvea, the middle layer of the eye, which no one had noted yet. She referred me for bloodwork and promised to find me a specialist in uveitis. When I left, she said, “I may not have all the answers, but we’re going to figure this out.”

Of all the doctors I’d seen, she was the first to say those two simple things. A new space opened up between the known and unknown, a place to rest. I had a teammate now. A we.

In the weeks since leaving the hospital, MS had not been entirely ruled out. It seemed less likely, based on test results, but I was intermittently convinced it was the answer since the one thing everyone agreed on was optic neuritis. Plus, those brain lesions, however small and atypical. At night, my arm and leg began jerking, waking me from uneasy sleep.

The horror I’d initially felt at the possibility shifted into something quieter—the understanding that I could live with an MS diagnosis because I would still be living. As my blind spot remained, unchanged, a different lens sharpened and clarified. We all have to find ways to live in our bodies as they age and change. I would find a way to live in mine, and I would be grateful, because I’d heard the alternative in those hospital rooms coding beside me. I would accept anything, anything that let me stay in my life, however redefined it might become.

Three days after Christmas, Dr. Mamta Agarwal, the uveitis specialist Dr. Whitney had found for me, examined me in near silence. She was cool, almost aloof, as she softly directed my dilated gaze. When it was over, she said, “It’s toxoplasma chorioretinitis.”

Adrian and I exchanged dumbfounded glances.

“A toxoplasmosis infection,” she said. “Do you have cats?”

I shook my head. Only those two curtain-destroying puppies, then three months old, who may or may not have been the culprits. Dr. Agarwal told us toxoplasmosis is very common, caused by a single-celled parasite in animal-to-human contact or contaminated food or water. It infects approximately a third of people worldwide , and about 11% of Americans have had the infection. Most infections present as a cold, if there are any symptoms at all. Only 2% occur in the eye , and only a small percentage of those are symptomatic. When the infection is acquired as opposed to congenital, it’s usually unilateral . Dr. Agarwal saw this all the time in India, where she’d worked for nearly 20 years before moving to Texas.

“So . . . I don’t have optic neuritis?” I asked.

She shook her head. “No.”

I couldn’t speak. Couldn’t believe how quickly and firmly she’d just dislodged the foundation undergirding everything that followed: the excruciating hospital stay, the terror of sudden death, the crushing disappointment of misdiagnoses.

We’d need bloodwork to confirm, but she wanted me to start medication immediately: oral steroids, two antibiotics, two eyedrops, an antacid, and calcium. Nearly 20 pills a day for the next six to eight weeks.

“So—” I hesitated. “I’m going to be OK?”

She smiled. “You’re going to be OK.”

One week later, my bloodwork came back positive for toxoplasmosis.

Treatment ended up lasting five difficult months. On the first day I finally took my son to school, he tripped and I tripped over him; then I fainted. Five weeks into treatment, a rash spread across my body like an acid burn, requiring a biopsy. Dr. Agarwal told me to stop the medication in case I was having a reaction to it. The rash faded and I restarted the medication. One dose and I woke up scratching hard, my skin mottled and scalded. Every pause in treatment meant the infection had time to rebound. In addition to the blind spot, I developed a filmy haze and amoeba-like floaters in my left eye that remain even now.

Finally, in early summer, Dr. Agarwal told me the infection was no longer active. Toxoplasmosis can’t be cured, only controlled, and recurrence rates for ocular infection are between 40% to 79%. She would keep a close watch on me for the next year. After months of sometimes weekly appointments, I no longer saw her as cool or aloof but deeply caring, even calling me personally for updates during that allergic reaction. It does not escape me that the three doctors, of the very many I saw, who treated me as a human being, and for whom I didn’t need to perform pleasant competence, were young—or rather, my age—women of color.

Throughout the course of those long months, I often wondered where I was in the medical -mystery narrative: were these new, unruly symptoms the beginning, or did they preface a sudden end? Were the false promises of the first diagnoses the murky middle, soon to give way to a satisfying denouement of recovery and healing? Or was I, actually, still at the start, the way some illnesses never go away but become part of us, invisible and chronic? Any attempt to write the narrative in my own mind failed because I never knew where I stood in it.

Now I see that medical mysteries resist linear storytelling. My recovery looks the same as the initial illness, when all the houses fell off the world to my left. Optic nerves don’t regenerate. Way in the back of my eye a bridge has fallen between what my eye perceives and what my brain interprets. The only difference is back then I thought I was dying. Now I know this is life. This is living.

Sometimes, when I bump into something or lose sight of my child, I still think about my vision in terms of loss, of lack. Other times it strikes me as a strange and lucky wonder, to know something exists but watch it disappear. A Dalían world, my own mind’s eye. A jester, a trickster. A new kind of sight, to be able to hold what I know in spite of what I can’t see. Every day a reminder that here, in what I now hope turns out to be the early middle, with so much still before me, anything can happen next.

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Students & Burnout: A Critical Review Essay

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Burnout, and in particular, teen burnout, has become an issue of fundamental concern as it is positively correlated with negative behavior and emotional outcomes, such as substance abuse, alcoholism, emotional breakdown, depression, fatigue and the proliferation of antisocial behavior.

Perhaps these reasons may have informed the needs of the author of the article “Teen Burnout can be Hard to Spot” to shed more light on the issue of teen burnout by summarily discussing a research study of 770 Finnish students aimed at analyzing how students entering high school exhibit burnout (Barton para. 2).

The topic of teen burnout is of immense importance to educators, parents and other relevant stakeholders, but the author, in my view, has failed to illuminate the topic in a way that could assist all those concerned, particularly educators, parents and students, to deal with it.

Going by the research findings of the Finnish study, the author of this particular article does well to postulate that girls and boys react to school stress in different ways, but he is economical on providing a systematic analysis on these ‘different ways’ he talks about, preferring to use the lame excuse of school pressures as the predominant determinant of teen burnout in school settings.

Indeed, the author associates pressures of school life with cynicism and the development of a negative attitude toward society (Barton para 2). While this may be so, the author fails to outline other dynamics that could equally lead male students to develop cynic behavior and a negative attitude toward society.

A comprehensive discussion of the recently released Finnish study, in my view, would have included what other research articles have said on the topic of teen burnout.

More important, experience demonstrates that teens in high school may experience serious emotional burnout occasioned by minor issues, such as lack of proper time management, lack of interest in the academic discourse, and attitude toward education or instructors.

The inclusion of such information in the article, in my view, could have added important insights into the effective management of teen burnout.

The author, it seems, provides some useful information on teen burnout by illuminating a major research finding, which suggests that “…boys experience a strong crisis concerning a sense of disconnectedness” (Barton para. 3).

This, in my view, is a good point, but only for professional psychologists, psychiatrists and counselors who understand the concepts of ‘crisis’ and ‘disconnectedness.’ To the average parent or educator in school settings, these concepts may be difficult to understand, not mentioning that the author does not make any attempt to expound on the concepts.

Personal experience as well available literature demonstrates that a crisis in life does not necessarily lead to a feeling of loss, confusion or disconnectedness; rather, a crisis may lead to the development of a strong and resilient character and behavior depending on the methodologies that are employed to handle the crisis.

Consequently, it can be argued that the author of the article has engaged in providing half-baked truths of the issue of interest without taking the initiative not only to evaluate the dynamics of the problem but also the cause-effect paradigms.

It is true that a crisis can lead to teen burnout, but equally it can lead to a strong character and reinforced dedication if it is harnessed using the right channels.

As such, the author should have spent more time illuminating the channels that may lead a crisis to turn into a serious emotional burnout, such as lack of adequate information and lack of support services.

The author of the article is at it again by citing a good research finding, which suggests that girls internalize stress hence become susceptible to feelings of inadequacy in school settings, leading to depression (Barton para. 4).

Despite citing this important finding, the author fails to make an impact due to her version of providing inadequate information that may be of little or no consequence to the average stakeholder.

For instance, the author should have taken time to illuminate the fact that stress is not the same as burnout although both oscillate along the same continuum, and that feelings of inadequacy are more likely to lead to stress than to emotional burnout.

Sustained stress is what leads to burnout, and there is a big difference between burnout and depression. As it stands, the author of the article insinuates that depression is synonymous with burnout, which is a wrong representation of the facts.

We are increasingly depressed by every day life experiences, but that does not automatically translate into the fact that we suffer from emotional burnout. Equally, high school students may experience some form of depression arising from the many academic demands set upon them by their instructors, but this does not necessarily translate into burnout.

The original research study found that pressure at school is not always negative, a fact that the author elaborates correctly by citing the researchers’ observation that it is imperative to provide teenagers not only with adequate stimulation to prepare them for the demands of life, but also with the right kind of challenges (Barton para. 6).

This assertion, in my view, can greatly assist parents and stakeholders to mould responsible teenagers with the right kind of stamina and attitude to withstand and conquer the challenges that may eventually lead to emotional burnout.

However, there is inadequacy in argument on the part of the author since she could have mentioned some of the methodologies that could be used to assist teenagers achieve adequate simulation, such as receiving encouragement to think positively, spiritual nourishment, and role-modeling.

Additionally, instructors in school settings should be encouraged to provide the students with reasonable assignments and justifiable time-frames.

Finally, the author reports findings that “…boys and girls on the more competitive academic track were much more likely to suffer from burnout” (Burton para 7). Equally, it was acknowledged “…that the less demanding vocational track offered a more supportive environment than enhance feeling of competence and relatedness” (Burton para. 7).

Although the findings may be correct in their own right, it is generally felt that the author is only engaging in rhetoric since she does not care to provide supporting evidence as well as explain the dynamics behind these associations. The involved stakeholders, in my view, need to be told that competition comes with its consequences, and so does a non-competitive environment.

The onus really should be for the stakeholders, particularly students, parents and instructors, to come up with checks and balances that will provide direction to the learning discourses in school settings and ensure that no single approach leads to negative ramifications.

For instance, students engaged in competitive class environments may be encouraged to join support groups and the many sports activities available in school so that they have effective channels to vent out their stress and frustrations. This type of information, other than merely describing facts, is what is needed to ensure that students adequately deal with burnout.

Works Cited

Barton, Adriana. “Teen Burnout can be Hard to Spot.” Globe and Mail. 2012. Web.

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Bibliography

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