Chronic fatigue and burnout are serious conditions that can significantly affect the quality of life and productivity. These phenomena are rooted in complex psychological and neurobiological processes triggered by prolonged exposure to stress. We’re ready to reveal the main causes of burnout and help you understand how not to burn out when you’re tired of work.
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Excessive Workload
It may seem obvious, but not many know where to draw the line. The World Health Organization provides a clear answer: regularly working more than 50 hours a week increases the risk of burnout by 67%. This isn’t just statistics — there are fundamental processes happening in your body behind these numbers.
When you work overtime, your brain stays in a constant state of activation. This leads to increased cortisol release, the stress hormone. Prolonged exposure to high cortisol levels can exhaust the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, impairing your body’s ability to respond adequately to stress.
Moreover, overworking often disrupts your circadian rhythms. This can lead to reduced melatonin production, negatively affecting sleep quality and your body’s ability to recover.
For example, after a week of intense work, you may notice it becomes harder to concentrate, you feel more irritable, and despite getting enough sleep, you still feel tired in the morning, and in the evening, it’s hard for you to do something that you truly enjoy, like going to a gym or betting on your favorite sports through your 22Bet login account. These are the first signs that your body is starting to deplete its resources. If you’ve been wondering how not to burn out when you’re tired of work, the answer is simple: loosen your grip and give yourself time to truly rest.
Blurred Boundaries Between Work and Personal Life
From a neurobiological perspective, the inability to switch off from work leads to the constant activation of certain neural networks in the brain associated with work tasks and stress. This prevents the activation of the brain’s default mode network, which plays a key role in processing experiences, self-reflection, and creative thinking.
Psychologically, always being ready for work can create cognitive distortions, where you begin to perceive any free moment as potential work time. This creates internal conflict and guilt for resting, which further worsens stress.
For example, you may notice that even during family dinners or walks in the park, your thoughts drift back to work. You check your work email before bed or immediately after waking up. This behavior prevents your brain from fully resting and recharging, gradually depleting mental resources.
How not to burn out? It’s crucial to set clear boundaries for yourself. As one of the greatest modern thinkers said, “You are not your job.” Turn off your phone at the end of the workday and forbid yourself from thinking about work when you’re with family.
Lack of Recognition
Let’s combine two factors: no one at work shows appreciation for your efforts, and you don’t have clear success criteria. We’ve just created the perfect conditions for quick burnout. If you’ve been wondering how not to burn out, you’ve just learned something even better: how to burn out completely. Studies show that these factors can increase the risk of developing chronic fatigue syndrome by more than 50%.
Recognition and a clear understanding of your achievements influence your internal motivation. Moreover, according to self-determination theory, each of us has basic psychological needs, including the need for competence and autonomy.
When you don’t receive adequate feedback or don’t have clear criteria for evaluating your work, you can develop learned helplessness. This is when you feel like you have no control over the outcomes of your actions.
On a neurobiological level, the lack of positive reinforcement (in the form of recognition or clear goal achievement) can disrupt the brain’s reward system. For instance, you might begin doubting the value of your contributions at work. You question whether your efforts truly matter, and this doubt gradually undermines your motivation. You might find yourself procrastinating on important tasks more often or completing them with less enthusiasm because you’re unsure whether the outcome will be appreciated — or what the outcome even is.
This creates a vicious cycle: reduced motivation leads to lower productivity, which, in turn, reduces the likelihood of receiving positive feedback. Gradually, work loses its meaning, which is one of the key signs of burnout.
To understand how not to burn out and counteract this, it’s essential to actively seek feedback if it’s not provided automatically. Set clear, measurable goals for yourself and celebrate their achievement. This will help maintain a sense of progress and competence, even when external recognition is limited.
