Maybe You’re Not Burnt Out. Maybe You’re Done.

Hi everyone and welcome to the Dr Sam Collins Podcast. It's the day after bank holiday Monday in the UK and even though I am now living in the US I still can't help myself and have to abide by bank holidays. But why is it that it's the day after a long weekend and I'm still fully completely exhausted? What is that all about? So I'm coming to you today definitely from not a place of perfection, a place of feeling pretty tired and wondering whether I might feel a bit burnt out on a few things, so I thought this was a good time to do an episode on burnout.
And I've been thinking about this a lot, maybe not in the most dramatic form of burnout, because I think that might be the end game of burnout, but that sort of gentle growing burnout that we often feel. And maybe you're not burnt out, maybe you're just done. So let me talk a little bit more about that.

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Many women are burnt out. Many people are burnt out or close to burnout or moving through repeated periods of burnout while continuing to completely function. Sound familiar? They're doing their own work, compensating for poor management, teams and leadership around them, protecting teams, protecting others, carrying a whole load of emotional labour and often beginning a second shift of caring. The first shift of caring and then the second shift of working and then the third shift of caring and household stuff before anything really starts in terms of any paid work and when the paid work ends each day.
I think the response over the last years is to frequently make women the improvement project. Do you know what I mean by this, the sort of DIY self-help? We're told to become more resilient. We're told to be more efficient on our time and read certain books and delegate more and set better boundaries, build our confidence and practice our self-care. I don't know about you, but I don't know that those things are truly working.
They work a bit, don't they? They work a bit, and they work for a bit, and if you're anything like me, they tend to not be incredibly long-lasting. And I wonder why that is. I think we make up that it's all our fault, something wrong with us, and we're not doing them properly, need to go back to the books and the courses and figure it all out and start again. This episode gives us permission to consider that our burnout, exhaustion, tiredness or whatever it is, may not be evidence of our own personal inadequacies.
It may be accurate information about a workplace, a role, a relationship or a system that actually needs to change. So not us that needs to change but what's going on around us needs to change. So we're going to move from this diagnosis and complaint place to a greater possibility. What could we create if our intelligence, courage, emotional intelligence, kindness and capability were no longer being consumed by just trying to survive and get through the day?
I am NOT claiming that all women need to lead in one way, that all men lead poorly, or that the world led by women would automatically be peaceful and free from burnout. Although, I have to tell you, I do have a very strong hypothesis in my head that would actually be the case. Of course, right now it's unproven and it's reductive claim and everyone's going get a little controversial about that. The argument here is that women's perspectives, intelligence and leadership remain largely underused and that so many women are tired, exhausted, close to burnout or in burnout and we need to have systems in place.
When I say systems in place, I mean, how we run our companies, how we run our households, how workplaces are structured, how schools are even structured, so that it becomes more human, more sustainable, more collaborative, may I even say more courageous. So maybe you're not burnt out, maybe you're done. Done with trying to fit the work of three people into one human workday. Done with being the person everybody comes to, especially your boss maybe, because you're the capable conscientious one and unlikely to let anything fall apart.
You're the one that does not want to upset people, wants to do a good job, doesn't want to be perceived as difficult and therefore over commits. Done with doing the job you're employed to do the work that nobody officially owns, the emotional labour your team needs, because if you have a team, you're probably not just their manager, you're probably also their therapist, their counselor, their scheduler, and goodness knows, whatever else, and the significant parts of your manager's job that you probably also…

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You might be done with opening your laptop too early and closing it too late and still worrying that you've not done enough. We've all been there and we all are there, especially with working from home, working remotely, working for yourself. You may be told to delegate but there's nobody available to delegate to. Who do you delegate to? Who do you delegate to if you work for yourself? Who do you delegate to if you're under resourced at work?
Who do you do? If you're the bottom of the work food chain and it is all being piled on you and you are probably so done with another article or podcast telling you to breathe, meditate, go for a walk, have a bubble bath or download a well-being app before returning refreshed enough to tolerate exactly the same bullshit conditions that exhausted you in the first place. Now let me be clear. I'm not against baths.
I love baths. I probably don't have enough baths. When I have a bath I do feel a bit better. I'm not against walking. I love walking especially when my knee is not playing up. I love walking. Resting. I love resting. I find resting very tricky because I don't feel very productive when I'm resting so I've had to learn how to rest. Resting is actually quite hard work for me. Meditation. I like meditation.
I've got much better at meditation. Boundaries. I love a good boundary. Hard to enforce, but I love a good boundary. And I'm planning. Not saying these things aren't useful. All of these things can support us. And if you don't do these things, the bath, the walking, the rest, the meditation, the coaching, the boundaries, the better planning, go for it, you want to have some of those things in your life, they're good friends and they can help you along the way.
But a bath cannot solve an impossible workload. A walk cannot give you the authority required to fulfil the responsibility or overwhelm or too much work that you have been given. A breathing exercise cannot make an ineffective boss suddenly competent. And no time management system can fit 60 hours of work safely into 40. I don't know of anyone that can do that, and if they can, let me know. We'll bring them onto the podcast.
Sometimes, I'm going to say all the bloody time, the woman, you, don't need fixing. Sometimes the workload needs fixing, sometimes the role need fixing, sometimes the leadership needs fixing, sometimes the culture needs fixing, sometimes the entire system needs fixing and sometimes you're not only exhausted, you are done. I work with extraordinary capable women. I had this woman came to me recently and she came to a call with me and she just was clearly so tired and so stuck and so confused about what she wanted to do with her job.
And she's a young mum, she's providing for her family, she's got a job that she should be really proud of, that her parents are proud of, that she's in. She's doing something purposeful, she's doing something that contributes to the environment and to climate and she loves So is passionate about her work. So it's not like she hates her job or she hates her work, and quite the opposite, but she's absolutely exhausted and she's not very productive right now.

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Talking to her, she has been given so many other responsibilities, so many things that she has to do, so many people that she has to manage, so much work, so much operational stuff, so much stuff that has to get done on a daily basis. And she's constantly in this reactive mode that she has absolutely no time to think, to plan, to strategize, to vision, which should be the primary part of her job.
And so, she's also in this loop where she can't think about, or she can't envisage what she would do if she wasn't in this job and believing that she needs a new time management technique it's all her fault. Giving her the idea that perhaps this isn't all of her fault and it might be part of the system that's around her and how she is managed actually made her a bit more depressed because she was like, okay, now what do I do?
Because if it's not my fault, it's their fault and I can't change them, then what the hell do I do? But really having a discussion about perhaps she does need to move on and think about somewhere else and apply for a new role. She works in a large organisation, there's lots of other roles, there's lots of other teams, there's lots of other departments, there's lots of other places that she could be doing what she wants to do.
And also maybe she can start having conversations with her boss and her team and really looking at this in a more systemic way, in a more cultural way, rather than putting all the blame on herself. So there are things that we can do and I do really believe that we have to start looking at this burnout in a more systemic way, and not just looking at ourselves and saying, it's my fault and here are all the things that I need to do.
Because what we're doing is we pass through this sort of regular period of burnout. Maybe we don't like to call it burnout. Maybe we feel like that's a bit embarrassing or it's not something we're really going to talk about, so we recover enough and then we plough on. We might not use it, the word burnout. We might tell ourselves it's a particularly busy period, that things will calm down after the next deadline, that everyone's under pressure or that we need to become more resilient.
But the problem is that particularly busy period has lasted for years and years, hasn't The deadline is followed immediately by six more deadlines and while everybody is under pressure, women are often absorbing the pressure for everyone else. We're still functioning, we're still looking prepared, we're still delivering the presentation, we're still responding to the emails, we're still remembering the names, the history, the detail, we're still checking that everyone's all right and then we go home and then we begin thinking about the kids, the partner, the elderly parents, the household bills, the medical appointments, the food, the forms, the emotional temperature of the family, and wake up in the night remembering that there's something else that we've forgotten to do.
So we're still producing and assuming that everything's fine, but it's not fine. So if it's not fine, then we'll say that we're failing. I think that's one of the cruelest parts of burnout for highly capable women.

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Your competence can conceal your collapse. Do you know the World Health Organization describes burnout as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed? It identifies exhaustion, growing mental distance or cynicism towards work, do you, as soon as I get that, do you know when you start feeling like just irritated and cynical about everything? And burnout is described as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition. So when it says it has not been successfully managed, but it has not been successfully managed by whom?
We need to have a manager of burnout, somebody in the organisation that is dedicated to making sure that people are, what would be the opposite of burnout, alive, ignited, happy, successful. I'm not a clinician and a podcast cannot tell you whether you're experiencing burnout or depression or anxiety. A doctor's got to do that. But if you're concerned about this, this is something to really start thinking about and to start seeking support for yourself, but also don't simply dismiss that this is just you, that this is also what is functioning around you.
We need to really realize that there is more to this than perhaps initially meets the eye, all right? And the trouble is as well, if you're feeling burnout and you're feeling these ways, it's hard to really do something about it because your energy is so depleted. And so I think starting to get your energy back up a little bit, realize, OK, here are some of the things that I can do, but also to really start looking at what's around you so we can start to make those changes there.

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Burnout is not a character deficit. It's a systems deficit. And we women should not make ourselves the problem when it comes to burnout. And if we are leaving, women are leaving jobs, they're in droves, voting with our feet. Organisations perhaps could look at that and try to understand why that is, the talent that is being lost and what needs to change so that women are willing to stay, so that women want to progress, so that women want to be in the leadership positions.
So many women that I will speak to will be very wary about wanting to be in a senior leadership position for fear of burnout. And I'm not just talking about a physical burnout from an impossible workload or working too many days. It's an emotional burnout from feeling inauthentic, from not feeling like they can be themselves, from all the politics that are happening and all the fakeness that they may feel that they have to be in order to be at that senior level position, all right?
So these are some of the things that we really need to start addressing from a both individual but organizational systemic and even societal level. All right, because this is something that is consuming so much of our energy and is really impacting our ability to make a difference. And in fact, when we're not burnt out, what are we? The flame is ignited again. The passion comes back. Our ability to achieve more in a way that is not just more hours, in a way where we can direct our energy, direct our time, direct ourselves towards work that is more purposeful.
And this is a bit of a wake-up call sometimes for us because we just think it's just too impossible because of the way that everything is around us. But I know many women who have said, no, I'm done. I'm done with burnout. I'm done with doing something that I don't love. I'm done with doing work that I love, not really being able to do it enough because I'm being pulled in so many directions elsewhere.

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So I think that this is the time to really understand burnout in perhaps a bit of a different way. The purpose is not to diagnose yourself or make any dramatic decision while you can be busy, tired, or exhausted. The purpose is to start seeing more clearly what What is happening here? Where the burden actually sits? And what and who may need to change? This is about becoming more free in our mindsets, more free in our psychology, and then really looking at the systems and structures around us and saying, okay, is this a place that is supporting me to be more free?
If yes, fantastic. If not, can I influence it? Can I change it? How can I impact in my small way the people around me? And how can I start to create those ripple effects of change in the systems that I live in and I work in? And never ever think that you're too small to make a difference and your actions can't start changing big systems because they absolutely can. Sometimes one small speaking up can really start to change and ripple effect something which you may not even know has happened as a result of what you've done, all right?
And it might be that you decide to create your own system. So many women are coming together and collaborating together to create their own businesses, charities, social enterprise consultancies that are completely on their own terms and saying, okay, but if I can't do it there, I'll do it here. And rather than being held back by those very common fears around money and time and capability, they're saying, why not me? Why not now?
Why not you? Why not now? Miracles happen for many others. Why should they not happen to you? All right, so if you're feeling these feelings of burnout, burden, and being done, it can also be a miraculous opening to something else where you get to that point where you're so tired, you've so had enough, you're so exhausted that you're willing to start thinking about other options. You're willing to start overcoming old belief systems, old assumptions that you've had for so long that if you really trust yourself, you will realize that there is something new potentially out there for you.

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So I've got a bit of an audit, a burnout audit that I'd like you to consider doing. you stay with me, take a piece of paper or your laptop or your phone or whatever it is, and I want you to answer some questions and you've got five sections. Are you ready? So the purpose here is to see more clearly for you what is happening, where the burnout sits and what might need to change, all right?
You ready? Here we go.

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So question one, what is happening to you? What is happening to you? I want you to notice what is true without trying to judge anything. So consider your energy, your sleep, your concentration, your patience. So you might say, I'm not sleeping. My energy is low. I feel more irritated than I used to. I've got no patience at work anymore. I feel cynical about some of the work that I used to love.
So I want you to notice without judging it, go, oh, why is it happening? I don't know. Try and separate that for a little bit. And notice whether you've stopped feeling proud or passionate about some of the work that you once cared for. Maybe you've got, your body is tired or achy. Now, if you're really concerned, of course, treat that concern seriously and seek some professional help.

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Number two, what are you actually carrying? So this is a bit more practical. What are you actually carrying? So write down everything you're holding. So not just the, or you can write down responsibilities in your job, the ones that are actually in your job description. You can also include the work that you do that is officially actually someone else's job, decisions that you're meant to make without really having authority, perhaps, problems you repeatedly rescue and conflicts you do and sort out.
So I want you to… What is it you actually list it? Everything you do at home and at work. And keep… Yeah, keep going. Keep going. Keep going. Even if you don't even realize that you're doing it, or the running around that you're doing, and all the driving that you're doing, and all the shopping that you're doing, and all the worrying… The worrying. Put down the worrying. Can you put the worrying down?
All the worrying that you're doing, all the concerning, all the disaster scenario, anxious stuff that you do, all of the… What else is it? I'm just thinking about some of the things that I do. All of the proactive future planning that you're trying to figure out for everyone around you, including yourself. You got it all down? Well, don't forget the washing, the laundry, the cleaning, the organizing, the planning. Yeah. How's your list going?
What is it you're actually carrying? and then maybe take a look at this list. Is this realistic for one person?

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Is this realistic more for a team of 10? The third question, what belongs to you and what belongs to the wider system? So this is a little bit more of a tricky one to do, but maybe here I want you to think about the things that are genuinely yours and the things that are really coming to you impacted by more external circumstances. If you work in a company or in a business and you're being asked to do things, so that's more of what we would call an organizational culture or leadership behavior than it is actually yours.
See, this is where it gets a bit confusing for some people because you might be like, No, it's mine. I need to delegate more. I need to say yes. But do you really? Is it really reasonable that you'd be giving all these things? So for example, if you are meant to work a four-day week, but you actually end up working a five-day week or a six-day week, but you actually get paid for a four-day week, right?
But in that four-day week, so you're working all this extra time and it's like leaking into your one day that you're meant to be doing other things or having a bit of a rest, you're making that your fault perhaps because you're not very good at time management, but actually it's because too much is being given to you or there's an organisational expectation that if there's a meeting on a Friday, even though that's your day off, you should go.
So what I'm saying is that expectation is actually not yours. I could do a whole load of coaching about how to say no and say no respectfully and all that's good but actually those you're going to keep getting asked because there's that expectation which is more cultural so it's not actually you. Does that make sense? So I want you to start trying and picking it apart on what's you and what's outside of you because I don't want you to put blame on yourself for a systems problem and do not surrender your power.
Do not surrender your power. Do not surrender your power because the system is difficult. Put responsibility where it genuinely belongs. This is one of the most empowering things you can possibly do. The expectations that people have on you and these things start to become very connected as well, I think. I was asked recently to by a company that I used to do some consultancy work for, could I please just do this one piece of work for them, and could I do it pro bono?
Now honestly, before I have done quite a lot of pro bono work for this company, who by the way makes billions every year, but anyway, I think I was trying to prove myself and show that I was a good little worker, and so I had trained them well, but anyway they came to me and said, would you please just as well? And I did push back. I did actually push back and said, not this time.
Then they came back again and said, would you just, I think there's a sort of expectation sometimes with coaches and consultants or small businesses that we're willing to do free work because we want to keep the relationship or whatever it is. And so I was like, okay, is this me? Because I'm feeling badly. I'm feeling guilty. Like I should actually do this piece of work for them. No, that's their culture. That's their expectation.
So it's a big no from me. And yeah, I felt very good and very empowered and in a very respectful way, letting them know that I wouldn't be doing this piece of pro bono work for them and explain why and the rest of it. So I think that we do sometimes really need to take a second look and say,

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is it me or is it the wider system? Question four. This is going to be a big one. Are you ready? What are you done with? What are you done with? So, I want you to complete five sentences and write these down madly. I am done pretending that… I am done carrying. I am done protecting… blank, I am done apologising for blank and I am no longer willing to blank, be precise, Name the condition, behaviour, expectation that you were no longer maintaining quietly.
That's huge, right? There's one thing about writing it down, of course, and there's another thing about actually doing it. It puts a little bit of a lump in my throat, even saying those questions out loud, but there could be some really big things in there. They could be family-related. They could be work-related. They could be health-related. Just like I'm done with that. In service of you being reignited from your periods of burnout, and in service of when you're reignited, of course, you're going to be happier, more vibrant, and making more positive influence and impact in the wider world.
And when we do this en masse, of course, whole world starts to slowly evolve and change.

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And question five, what needs to change? What needs to change? Ask yourself, from this list of things that you've just did and what you're done with, ask, what can you stop? What might you challenge? And what can you help start to redesign? I would choose one starting point rather than attempting to rebuild everything by tomorrow, all right? So take a breath, it's okay, just take one, one, I'm a big fan of baby steps, you know that, just little baby steps and keep that one with you.
You say, okay, I'm no longer willing to do this and therefore start practicing that and getting that a little bit more into your body and you say, okay, I can do this, I can do this, I can do this and then you can move on to the next one, I can do this, I can do this, I can move on to the next one. So yeah, we're moving from criticising ourselves and making it all our fault or making it all someone else's fault and going round and round in circles of doom here to some redesign.
A redesign, let's call it a redesign. A smaller scope, maybe a new way of thinking, protecting some time, really rethinking how you do some of the things that you do. All right? This is, I think, a very nice baby steps way of

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doing it. And I… Please be kind to yourself. I think people say this to us all the time. Be kind to yourself. What does that really mean? Be kind to yourself. Just relax into it and tell yourself, I'm doing something small here, soothe yourself like babies do, all right? Kind takes courage to be kind to yourself because we can be so hard on ourselves and take it easy and realize that burnout is happening globally.
People are exhausted, not just women, but women have additional burdens here and I do strongly believe that when women can come out of burnout, we're going to lead the change for everybody else, all right? We start to light back up. These lights are becoming brighter. They're flickering and becoming brighter and brighter. We've not lost our fire. We may have spent it. It might have gone out a bit, but it's not. It's definitely not lost.
So over the next 24 hours, name what you're going to do and take one action, all right? Just one action. And if you really want to go for that walk, have the bath, I'm not against any of those things. Turn off the phone, let someone else care for you, sleep all day. If you can, watch some stupid TV that your brain does not have to really focus on too much because your fire matters.
Not because the world is entitled to more work from you and not because you need to burn bright or improve yourself again. That's not what it's about. Your fire matters because it contains your judgment, your intelligence, your imagination, your courage, your anger, your love, your kindness and your contribution and a world full of exhausted women loses an incalculable amount all those things. So perhaps the question is no longer, how do you keep going?
Perhaps it's, what are you done with? What needs to change? What kind of leader do I choose to become? And I'm not talking about being a senior executive, you can be a leader at any age, at any stage, in any job, in any family, in any industry. And what deserves your fire right now? Thank you, thank you, and I will see you next week. Go keep burning brightly.

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