Why High Performers Burn Out Quietly
If you’re productive, motivated, and capable, people assume you’re fine.
Even when you’re running on fumes.
That’s the cost of always being “on.”
What does always being "on" look like? It doesn't necessarily mean the same for everyone, but you will notice certain of these statements ring true for you:
consistently mentally engaged
quick to react emotionally
consistently physically tired
always reachable
trouble falling asleep as you can't turn your brain off
Now I've used some significant qualifiers there, words like "always" and "consistently" don't take those literally, but do some self reflection on how often those are the case. And maybe you're in the group that runs this way during the week, and then uses the weekend to recharge. That method can work, but typically the weekends aren't long enough, or turned down enough to truly recover from the built up stress of the week.
What this habit of living in this "on" state creates is the situation of chronic stress, and that's important to differentiate from acute stress. Acute stress is the stress we want as that's short term and recoverable stress that our body (and mind) will be able to adapt to better handle in the future. This doesn't mean they have to be the intense kinds of workouts I mentioned earlier, but any sort of event that pushes the body past its level of normalcy is a stressor. In contrast, chronic stress builds over time and indicates that the body doesn't have the capacity to recover such that the stress starts compounding. This can lead to all sorts of physical and mental challenges that take orders of magnitude longer to recover from, REDS (Relative Energy Deficiency in Sports) and stress fractures being two common examples. Chronic stress with have a significant impact on your physical performance as well as mental capacity and motivation levels that far outweigh the downtime needed to prevent this buildup. High performers are especially at risk for these behaviors as they're generally more adept at tolerating stress for longer periods and will normalize any levels of fatigue as they'll "sleep when they're dead." This class of personality is also more likely to dismiss any of the warning signs and push any sort of recovery to the weekend, next week, or once this project ends.
So how does one maximize their performance without falling into a stress cycle they can't get out of? The first step, like with many other processes I've suggested, is an awareness of the patterns. If anything I've mentioned above rings a little true, it would be worthwhile to start paying more attention to your energy levels, mental acuity, sleep habits, and emotional states to understand how they fluctuate. If you notice a couple of these are trending in the directions you don't want, then you'll want to look for ways to help create more of an energy wave, and not an energy straight line. You can still have those peaks, but you need to also create some valleys. This can be done on any timeline you want, but a great place to start would be daily - aim for at least 2 peaks and valleys (to start) during the course of the day. These don't need to be long periods of time, but even carving out a block of time for a walk, phone call with a friend or loved one, or a TV show will help create those valleys. Once you get a handle on how effective this is, you can then look to see if perhaps a full recovery day might be helpful - whether that's on a weekly basis or more spread out. And for those longer more sustained periods of stress (large work project, major presentation, goal race, etc) you should plan for at least a day of recovery after the event to mentally and physically wind down. As you work to incorporate this approach, you'll notice your peaks can become longer and higher with the valleys becoming more natural.
Being “on” isn’t the same as being effective.
Performance is built on cycles — not constant pressure.
The goal isn’t to do less — it’s to recover better.
🔗 Subscribe to The Wellness Forge for strategies that help you perform without burning out.
