Beating Burnout: Early Signs and Simple Fixes for Leaders

The Fatigue You Think Is Normal Might Be the Warning You're Missing

You know that feeling at the end of the day when you look back and think, "I've done nothing"?

You were in meetings. You answered emails. You put out fires. But the actual work, the important stuff, somehow didn't happen.

Then you tell yourself you'll catch up tomorrow. You don't. The cycle repeats.

This is not a productivity problem. It is the early stage of something much more expensive.

The Misconception That Keeps Senior Leaders Stuck

Here's what I hear from execs, GMs and heads of departments: "Burnout probably won't happen to me. I'll be right."

And honestly, that belief is part of the problem. Not because these leaders are wrong about their resilience. Most of them are genuinely tough. The issue is that burnout doesn't announce itself. It creeps in wearing the costume of "normal."

Fatigue? Part of the job. Mistakes? Everyone makes them. Exhaustion? That's just what leadership feels like.

Except it doesn't have to be.

Burnout Is Not a Wellbeing Issue

Let me be direct about something. Burnout prevention isn't a meditation initiative. It's not bean bags, breathing apps, or turning your break room into a soft-play centre for adults.

Burnout is a performance and risk issue. Full stop.

When someone is burnt out, they lose cognitive control under pressure. They snap. They miss things. They make decisions from a short fuse instead of clear thinking. In heavy industry, that creates risk. In any leadership role, it creates a culture problem that cascades through teams.

I don't want to be the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. I don't even want to be the fence at the top. I want to stop people walking up to the top in the first place.

You can't put a band-aid over a bullet wound.

Why "I'll Be Right" Is Usually Wrong

The leaders I work with are driven. They want to produce more. They struggle to let go. Sometimes that shows up as micromanaging, which is really just the inability to let go wearing a different hat.

None of that is a character flaw. It's programming. Somewhere along the line, doing more became the measure of worth. And now, even when doing more is destroying you, the pattern keeps running.

Here's what happens at the body level. Something in your environment, a comment, an email, a meeting that runs over, pulls your attention away from what you're doing. Scientific data suggests we're distracted after about 47 seconds. We can't even get a full minute before something grabs us, usually with a calendar invite and a "quick one" in the subject line.

So you fight to bring your attention back. Then it gets pulled away again. And you fight again. All day long, you're fighting yourself.

You get to the end of the day having won none of those battles. You've got nothing done. That creates stress. Stress pushes you into fight or flight. Your body floods with cortisol and adrenaline. Now everything looks like a threat. And because everything looks like a threat, you stay in fight or flight.

It becomes a loop. And the loop is expensive.

The Part Nobody Talks About

Here's the thing that changes everything when people hear it.

You don't react to the environment. You react to the sensations in your body that the environment triggers.

I know that sounds like semantics. It's not. It's the difference between being at the mercy of your circumstances and being responsible for your responses.

I'll give you an example I use in workshops. I ask who in the room loves their dog. Hands go up. I ask them how they know they love the dog. They say things like, "I want to spend time with it" or "It makes me happy."

Then I ask where they feel that love. Eventually they get to the answer: they feel it in their body.

Not on the floor. Not in the dog. Not floating somewhere near the ceiling. In their body.

Then I ask what would happen if that sensation wasn't there. They get a bit stuck. Because the truth is, without the sensation, they wouldn't love the dog. They wouldn't hate it. They just wouldn't feel anything about it.

It's not the dog they love. It's the sensations.

This is true for everything. Stress, frustration, overwhelm, all of it is sensation. And sensation, by its nature, passes.

This Too Shall Pass

Not as a platitude. As physics. The second law of thermodynamics tells us that over time, everything decays. Sensations are no different. They rise, they exist for a period, and then they pass.

When you understand this, you stop being hostage to whatever you're feeling right now. You know it will shift. The question becomes whether you let it run its course or whether you fight it and make it worse.

The intervention point is the sensation itself. Place your attention fully on what you're feeling in the body, and work with it instead of against it. Don't label it. Don't judge it. Don't justify or explain it. Don't resist it.

Just observe.

When you do this, you break the loop before it pushes you somewhere you don't want to go. You stop walking toward the cliff.

The Early Warning Signs

What should you look for? A shorter fuse than you used to have. Mistakes you normally wouldn't make. Fatigue that sleep doesn't fix. A creeping sense of not caring about things that used to matter.

These aren't character flaws. They're signals. Your body is telling you something, and the worst thing you can do is dismiss it as "just part of the job."

It doesn't have to be part of the job.

What You Can Do This Week

First, notice where you're fighting yourself. Pick one hour and pay attention to how many times something pulls you away from what you're doing. Count them. The number will probably surprise you.

Second, when you feel the stress rise, place your attention on the sensation itself. Not the situation. Not the person who caused it. The sensation. Let it be there without fighting it.

One question to sit with: If you stopped fighting the sensations, what would change?

The Invitation

I'm running a session for senior leaders who want to understand this properly. Not theory. Practical tools for preventing burnout before it becomes a crisis.

If you're tired of being tired, if you're making mistakes you normally wouldn't, if you're noticing a shorter fuse than you used to have, this is for you.

Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/TmrxfPGxTjezH6KokCF5ZQ

See you there.

Cheers.