After Workaholic: Five Faces of Burnout

Last time, I asked my daughter if I was a workaholic. You can read that piece here: Am I a workaholic?. Her answer stayed with me. But it also opened a bigger question I had been avoiding.

Working too much is one thing. Burnout is another. It doesn't always arrive with long hours. Sometimes it comes through silence, through love for the work, through comparison, or through a resignation letter we never send.

Below are five such situations I have lived through, and the thoughts that came with them. Each one passes through the same rhythm — Move, See, Reflect — because that rhythm is what helped me get through them. It didn't fix them. It helped me see them clearly enough to stop being run by them.

Read them in one sitting, or one a day. Stay with the one that stings.

1. The Tiredness That Didn't Need Overtime

Move

This week, keep a note on your phone. Every time you feel drained at work, write one line about what had just happened. Leave out how long you had worked. Just the moment.

See

I left office at 6:30 on Tuesday. No late call, no weekend email. Yet by the time I reached home I had nothing left — not for my daughter, not for dinner, not for myself.

The hours were fine. So I looked at the note instead.

A decision reversed after I had already informed the team. A meeting where I said yes while thinking no. A message I read three times to decode the tone.

None of these took long. Each of them took something.

We measure work in hours because hours are easy to count. Researchers who study burnout name other things: no control over how the work is done, no fairness in how it is judged, values that quietly don't match. A short day can carry all of them.

The body keeps a different timesheet. It logs every swallowed word, every task done against our own judgement. It doesn't care that the clock said 6:30.

Reflect

If your tiredness isn't coming from the hours, what is it really counting?

2. Nobody Said Anything

Move

Think of the last piece of work you were proud of. Now recall what happened after you submitted it. Write down exactly what was said, if anything was said at all.

See

The report went out on time. It was clean, it was right, and it closed an issue that had been open for months.

The reply was a forwarded mail with one word: Noted.

I told myself I don't work for applause. At fifty, I believed that. Yet that evening I kept opening the thread, as if a second line might appear.

In many Indian offices, appreciation is saved for the appraisal, and the appraisal is saved for once a year. Between the two sits a long silence that we are expected to read as approval. Most of us read it as nothing.

The silence was not the hard part. What hurt was noticing how much of my effort had been quietly waiting for it to break. Work done to be seen gets tired fast, because the seeing is never in our hands.

Reflect

Whose recognition are you still working for — and when did you last give it to someone else?

3. Loving It Doesn't Protect You

Move

List three things about your work you genuinely love. Next to each, write how many times this month you stopped doing it because you were too tired.

See

I love building things. A new course, a new process, a page that finally explains what we do. That love has carried me through years that should have broken me.

It also kept me from noticing when I was breaking.

Passion works like a painkiller. It lets you keep running on an injury. "I'm not tired, I just care" — I have said this to my family more times than I can count.

When we dislike a job, we watch it closely. We count the hours and guard the weekends. When we love it, we drop that guard. The boundary goes first, then the sleep, then slowly the love itself, because even the thing you love becomes heavy when it is all you carry.

The love was never the problem. Treating it as proof that I was fine was.

Reflect

What would you notice about your energy if you stopped using love as the reason to ignore it?

4. Why Is Everyone Else Fine?

Move

Pick one colleague who seems to handle everything easily. This week, ask them one honest question: "How are you really managing?" Then just listen.

See

Same office, same targets, same boss. They laugh in the lift. I go home and sit in the car for ten minutes before I can walk in.

The conclusion came quickly: something is wrong with me.

But I was comparing my inside with their outside. I knew my 2 a.m. thoughts. I only knew their lunch-time jokes.

The same job also lands differently on different lives. One person goes home to a cooked meal and an empty evening. Another goes home to an ageing parent, a child's exam, a loan. Some carry an old habit of proving themselves, some don't. The desk is the same; the load is not.

When I finally asked a colleague, he paused, then said, "I thought it was just me."

Reflect

What are you carrying into work that nobody else can see — and have you counted it?

5. The Resignation Letter in My Drafts

Move

If you have a resignation mail sitting in drafts, open it. Don't send it and don't delete it. Read only the first line, the reason, and ask whether leaving would actually remove that reason.

See

Mine sat there for three weeks. I opened it on bad days the way some people open a photo of the mountains.

It was never really a plan. It was a pressure valve. Just knowing it existed made Monday bearable.

When I read the first line honestly, the reason was not the company. It was a pattern: I say yes to everything, then resent the load. That pattern would join the next company with me, on day one, without a notice period.

Sometimes leaving is right. A place that harms you deserves your exit, not your patience. But often the draft is asking for something smaller — one hard conversation, one responsibility handed back, one evening that is truly off.

Quitting is a move. So is staying differently.

Reflect

If you could change only one thing and stay, what would it be — and what is stopping you from asking for it?