Burnout recovery does not always require immediately quitting a job, leaving an industry, or walking away from a career. The economic turmoil of high rents, high grocery and childcare costs, rising healthcare costs, and job instability often exacerbates the feelings of despair, hopelessness and overwhelm created by burnout. The thought of quitting and starting over somewhere new is as exhausting as the thought of continuing to trudge through the burnout day after day.
This article explores the options for burnout recovery in order from those the least likely to disrupt your financial status to those most likely to do so.
- Heal within your current role and position
- Take a lateral move within the same company to a more fulfilling role on another team
- Leave the company to take a similar role somewhere else (with comparable pay)
- Leave the industry entirely – a Career Pivot
- Early Retirement / Freelancing / Solopreneur
Through the course of my own burnout recovery journey, I did all of these steps at various points. Most of the steps in my book Burnout Recovery are designed for someone who can’t or doesn’t want to leave their current position. Many of us simply can’t afford to.
How to Start Recovering Within Your Current Role
Talk to your Manager. No, really. Your manager’s role should be to help you prioritize your workload to fit inside your working hours, to help you manage overwhelm, and to help you delegate tasks to other team members. The manager should be able to influence or adjust staffing for workload imbalances. And that manager should want you to thrive in your role. Talking with them is the first step to improving the situation. Also, as you work through your burnout recovery and start setting new boundaries, it’s good for them to have a head’s up!
Call the EAP. Most workplaces in the US have employee assistance offerings with free or low-cost confidential counseling. They also do therapist placement, and provide other mental health services. You’re going to need someone to talk to while you’re recovering. This is a solid place to start.
Know your why and ask for tasks that generate meaning and give you sense of achievement. You’re going to need to do a little self-discovery work to determine what brings you meaning and fulfillment. You might need to gain an understanding of your own strengths and how you can bring them to bear in your daily work. If you have tasks or assignments that are still meaningful and fulfilling, ask your manager about leaning more deeply into those. (For example, when I was utterly burned out on executing the tasks, but still found meaning in training others, I was able to shift to that other role.)
Burnout is often framed as an individual failure. And yes, there are parts of our personalities – like perfectionism and people-pleasing – that can lead to burnout. But more often it’s the company itself that creates the circumstances that lead to burned out employees.
When It’s Time to Look for Somewhere Else to Work
If the above steps didn’t help, it’s possible that the company or specific manager you work for is creating the situations leading to burnout.
Signs it’s your manager:
- They don’t say no to overwork when higher-ups send more tasks than the team can handle
- They are unfair in their distribution of work or of praise
- They don’t help with overwhelm or prioritization in one-on-one meetings
- There are negative repercussions for boundary setting
- They didn’t help when you talked to them about your burnout
If these elements are true for you, then getting out of that Manager’s sphere of influence is probably a necessity. Consider investigating a lateral move to another department. This allows you to target a role that might be more fulfilling to you, giving you a sense of achievement and meaning, while also getting you away from the negative manager. A lateral move also retains stability of seniority, institutional knowledge, benefits and salary.
However, sometimes it’s not the manager’s fault. The negative repercussions for boundary setting, for example, might be a larger company cultural issue.
Signs it’s the larger company creating your burnout:
- Unclear or unfair practices for paid time off, hiring, or promotions
- Messaging to do More with fewer people or to “just use AI” to replace laid off experts
- A culture of blame instead of learning and growth
- The executive team’s “walk” and “talk” aren’t aligned
- Documented low-boundary expectations (e.g. the handbook says you have to answer messages or emails after hours without compensation)
Many companies will talk about work-life balance, but then there are negative repercussions when you implement changes in your life to uphold that for yourself. The company’s leadership impacts workplace burnout from the top down, so take a look at how well what they say lines up with what they do.
When interviewing for a new position somewhere else, start to watch for signs that their employees are burned out!
When it’s Time for a Career Pivot
Sometimes, if you’ve cycled in and out of burnout enough without recovering fully, you might need to leave the industry entirely. You’ve tried everything to stay where you are, and it’s just not feasible anymore.
The basic steps of a career pivot are:
- Self-evaluation – what do you want to do?
- Skills-inventory – what can you already do?
- Job Skills Gap Assessment – What skills do you need to learn?
- Side Hustles and Learning – gathering the skills and experience you lack for the pivot
- Get Financially Ready – assume a career pivot might include a dip in income
- Start looking for a new role!
The idea here is to pivot into a new role that is more fulfilling and meaningful. However, there are still things that you do – habits you have with your work – that can lead to and create situations of burnout. So while you’re slowly creating a career pivot plan, you might need to work through the recovery steps to ensure that in this new role and industry, you’re taking proper care of yourself.
(In my book, Burnout Recovery, this is specifically referring to the “flood” stage of recovery.)
A career pivot from one industry to another can be an exciting way to breathe life into your work. Assuming you’re moving into an industry that is more fulfilling and meaningful to you, you will probably be able to retain a good bit of your previous financial stability.
If you career pivot into freelancing, solopreneurial work or other kinds of gig work, that’s potentially the most fulfilling of all routes – but also the most unstable. We return again to the “in this economy?” question in the title of the post.
Only you know the depth and destruction of your burnout, and only you know your full financial situation. However, if you’re interested in guidance or support in this journey, feel free to reach out for a coaching session.