Here Is the Difference Between Feeling Stressed and Being Completely Burnt-Out
What burnout felt like for me as a startup founder — and 3 things that helped me through it.
In co-founding and being CEO of a business, there were many times when I felt the utter exhaustion that comes with shouldering a company. There were sleepless nights, months without weekends, and times when I would wake up and immediately turn my computer on as the first thing I did with my day (as in, the computer was on the nightstand and I would turn it on before getting out of bed). We’ve told ourselves that this is what it’s like to be a startup founder, and I totally bought that story. And while I was stressed for much of my time leading my company, there is a difference between feeling stressed and being completely burnt out — I know, I’ve been in both places.
Here’s what complete burnout felt and looked like for me:
An inability to do my work: I’m talking staring at my computer screen with tons on my plate but feeling overwhelmed to the point where I just wouldn’t do anything. We’re talking: needing to review budgets but instead watching videos of dogs being rescued. Like, I physically couldn’t get myself to do my work any longer. I found myself trying to find the end of the internet so that it looked to the outsider like I was “working” — because I was technically on my computer and able to respond to email and Slack, but I was actually reading a Bored Panda article about a man who built a house in his yard for a squirrel.
Feeling deeply unhappy and hopeless: I can still viscerally remember screaming into a pillow, tears streaming down my face, telling my husband that I just wanted it (and by “it” I meant the business) to end. I said things like, “I just feel like this is never going to work. I just feel like we’re never going to catch a break. Is it supposed to be this hard? If I had known it was going to be this bad, I wouldn’t have started in the first place.” And the difference here was that I was saying and feeling these things constantly for a matter of months. I felt a continual deep despair and hopelessness about the fate of our business.
My visionary-idea well was dry: If you know me, you know that I am the type of person who has new crazy ideas all of the time. Give me a week and I’ll usually have one or two business ideas and a fully-thought-out game plan on how to execute them (this week, I’ve done this three times — ask my poor husband). That said, when I was burnt-out, the idea well was dry. It felt like my inspiration was gone. My usual exuberance about trying new things had left the building. For months, I just felt stagnant and deeply uninspired.
Physical manifestations of stress: The final and most concerning aspect of my experience with burnout was that I began having health issues. I started having full-on panic attacks where I felt like I was at the mercy of volatile and painful emotions. I would get lightheaded while doing normal everyday things. And I even experienced chest pains while trying to go to sleep more than once.
So, once I acknowledged that I was burnt-out (after the second time I experienced literal chest pains), I started trying to help myself. Here are three of the things that I did that helped me pull up from burnout:
I reconnected with my purpose and vision for the company. We started Conscious Company Media with a grand idea of trying to redefine success in business in service of all life. When I would sit and think about what this meant and intentionally try to reconnect with my “why,” I would start experiencing some semblance of inspiration again.
I finally set boundaries. At the request of my husband, I turned my computer off at 8:00 pm and didn’t look at it again until 8:00 am. I also turned off all notifications from email, Slack, and Asana on my phone. My husband and I committed to 10:00 pm bedtime and a reading period from 10:00 to 10:30 pm where we would read about anything that didn’t have to do with work to get our minds thinking about something else before going to bed. I also committed to taking one of my two days of the weekend completely and totally off. This meant no computer at all for an entire day.
I started a gratitude practice. I got a journal and every morning I wrote down three things I was grateful for that had to do with my business and every evening I wrote down three things I was grateful for that had to do with my life. It changed the game.
Burnout looks different for everyone, but when you’ve realized you’re experiencing it, it is incumbent on you as a leader to start doing things differently and seek help. You owe it to yourself, your family, and your business.