Burnout, time-off, and true rest

It’s Monday morning and I feel as motivated and positive as I have felt in a long while on a Monday. My weeklong staycation aka my “recharge week” has seemed to work. Comparing how I feel today to two weeks ago when I all I felt like I wanted to do was crawl back into bed is night and day.

The last two weeks have thought me a lot about myself and work. I realized just how real burnout can be. I’m not sure where my level of burnout ranks on the spectrum, but I know that I largely had been ignoring the signs for months before I finally did something about it. Now that I have experienced that level of burnout, I know much better to spot it and prevent it from ever getting to that level.

The only remedy to cure burnout or exhaustion is simply just to take time off to rest your body and mind. That’s no secret obviously, but one thing that I’ve come to realize as well is that time-off isn’t made equal. I love to travel and while traveling is great away to get work off your mind, I also realized that it’s not always the best way to recharge and rest.

My travel schedule is often filled with early morning wake-ups, activities, etc., not to mention possible jet lag. That can be great, but can often be exhausting in it’s own way. I’ve heard the saying that “you need a vacation to recover from your vacation” quite often. Quite often after a trip, I come back to work and I’m even more tired.

This is an important insight for myself. When I take time-off, I need to put in proper time to also rest and recharge. If I don’t get that from a trip, then I need to schedule more relaxing weeks to actually get some rest. Taking time-off in itself does not cure your burnout or recharge your batteries - you need to actively rest.

For myself, the staycation was exactly what I needed. I didn’t need a trip to a foreign country, I just simply needed some time to sleep and get my mind away from work. Setting my intention for my time-off did wonders for me.

In the future, I’m hoping that I won’t need too many of these weeklong staycations to curb my burnout. Prevention is the ideal case. But in the occasion that I do run into it again, I know exactly what I’ll need.