When Burnout Comes Back

A personal lesson about work technology and the example leaders set

By Steve Feller

Life's obstacles can arrive at any time, and they do not care about title, salary, experience, or how strong we think we are. A CEO can hit a wall. So can a warehouse supervisor, a frontline worker, or the person sweeping the floors at the end of the day. No one is immune.

A few weeks ago, one of those obstacles hit me like a brick wall. I did not plan for it. I did not expect it. Life has a way of tapping us on the shoulder, or in my case grabbing me by the collar, and saying, "Something needs to change."

What shook me most was not simply that I had burned out. It was that I had been here before. Twenty-three years earlier, I had learned this lesson the hard way. For most of the years since, I lived differently because of it. Then, over the past year, I slipped back into old habits and ended up in a painfully familiar place.

A Lesson I Thought I Had Learned

Twenty-three years ago, I was working long hours and trying to be everything to everyone. My family life was strained, and my work life was relentless. On average, I worked about 14 hours a day between my job in St. George, Utah, and trips to Las Vegas. I knew I was wearing myself down, but I kept going because I believed that was what hardworking people did.

I was exhausted and under tremendous stress. When a doctor told me that I had experienced a severe panic attack connected to stress and work overload, part of me resisted the message. I was strong. I was tough. I was a hard worker. I thought those qualities should protect me from the pressure.

They did not.

People did not talk as openly about burnout then. Looking back, however, I can see that work had overtaken my life. The strain did not stay at the office. It came home with me, affected the people I loved, and changed how I felt and functioned.

For a long time, that experience changed me.

Then came a different job, different responsibilities, and a different season of life. Yet here I am, confronting the same pattern again.

When Burnout Comes Back

The Work Never Fully Leaves

One difference between then and now stands out to me: technology.

Twenty-three years ago, much of my overload came from long days, travel, and the sheer physical weight of the schedule. Those pressures still exist, but now work can follow us almost anywhere. Email arrives at dinner. Team messages appear during the weekend. A notification can pull our attention back to a problem while we are on vacation or sitting with family.

The issue is not technology by itself. The issue is what happens when useful tools become an expectation of constant access. We no longer work only long hours. We work interrupted hours. Even when we are physically away, part of the mind can remain at work, waiting for the next message or rehearsing the next problem.

I fell into that pattern. I confused being reachable with being responsible. I treated quick responses as proof of commitment. Little by little, I gave work access to time that should have allowed me to recover.

The Leadership Question

My experience has forced me to ask a harder question than "How did I let this happen again?"

What was I teaching other people through the way I worked?

Leadership is communicated through behavior as much as through words. I can tell people to take care of themselves, but if I answer messages at all hours, skip time off, carry every problem personally, and praise the person who always rescues the day, my example sends a different message. People may conclude that availability is commitment, exhaustion is ambition, and asking for help is weakness.

That is not the culture I want to create.

A leader's habits can become a team's unwritten rules. An evening email may feel like a request for an evening response, even when the sender did not intend it that way. A leader who never disconnects may unintentionally make rest look risky. A workplace that repeatedly depends on heroics may have a workload, staffing, priority, or process problem that personal resilience cannot solve.

Leaders are not responsible for diagnosing employees or acting as therapists. We are responsible for paying attention to the conditions we help create. We can clarify what is truly urgent, set reasonable response expectations, examine workloads, listen when someone says the strain is becoming too much, and point people toward qualified support when they need it.

We also have to look at ourselves. If I cannot step away without everything stopping, that is not proof of my value. It may be evidence that I have not delegated, developed others, or built a sustainable way of working.

What Burnout Means

It is important to be careful with the word burnout. The World Health Organization classifies it as an occupational phenomenon rather than a medical condition. It describes burnout in terms of exhaustion, greater mental distance or cynicism toward work, and reduced professional effectiveness resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.

That definition matters because it keeps the focus on work without pretending that burnout explains every symptom. Anxiety, depression, sleep problems, pain, or other physical and mental health concerns deserve their own evaluation by qualified professionals. In my own case, I am taking what happened seriously and getting help. I am not trying to diagnose myself or reduce every health concern to stress.

Careful language does not make the experience less real. It helps us respond to it honestly. Burnout is not a character flaw, and it should not become a label we use to explain away everything. It is a signal that the relationship between a person and the work needs attention.

Why We Ignore the Warning Signs

The signs are often easier to explain away than to confront. Driven people can make almost any warning sound temporary: it is a busy season, things will settle down, or I just need to push through. Sometimes the push is necessary. The danger comes when it stops being an exception and becomes the normal way of working.

We also tie identity to output. When our sense of value depends on productivity, slowing down feels like failure. We treat rest as something to earn after the work is finished, even though the work is never completely finished. We fear disappointing people, so we absorb one more task, solve one more problem, and postpone one more honest conversation.

Leaders can reinforce these habits without meaning to. We celebrate the save but fail to ask why a rescue was needed. We reward responsiveness without defining boundaries. We say that people come first, then allow priorities to multiply until every request feels urgent.

The cost does not stay with one person. Strain changes how we listen, decide, communicate, and show up for the people around us. Families feel it. Teams feel it. Customers can feel it. The people closest to us often recognize the change before we are willing to name it.

What I Am Changing

This time, I do not need guilt or shame. I need clarity and action. These are the commitments I am making for myself and the leadership example I want to set:

·   I will separate the truly urgent from the merely important. When everything is urgent, people lose the ability to recover and the organization loses the ability to think.

·   I will make boundaries visible. That means clearer expectations about response times, more care with after-hours messages, and the discipline to step away myself.

·   I will watch capacity as closely as outcomes. Results matter, but so do the workload, staffing, and pace required to produce them.

·   I will delegate before I reach a crisis. Sharing responsibility is part of building a capable team, not an admission that I cannot handle the job.

·   I will make it safer to speak early. People should not have to hit a wall before they can say that the current load is not sustainable.

·   I will take health concerns seriously and seek appropriate help. Toughness is not ignoring a warning. Sometimes it is being honest enough to respond to one.

These changes are simple to describe and harder to live. I know that because I have learned the lesson before. The work now is to build habits and expectations strong enough to hold when the pressure rises again.

The Lesson for Leaders

Twenty-three years ago, burnout taught me to slow down. This time, it is teaching me to listen earlier and lead more honestly.

A title loses its value if the price is your health, your family, or your sense of self. The same is true of a workplace result achieved through a pace that people cannot sustain. Good leadership includes performance and accountability, but it also includes building a team that can keep doing meaningful work without treating exhaustion as a badge of honor.

I do not want to repeat this lesson in another 20 years. I also do not want the people around me to learn it only after their own breaking point.

If you recognize part of your story here, do not wait for life to grab you by the collar. Ask what pattern needs to change. Ask what expectation you are setting for others. Then have the conversation, change the workload, set the boundary, or get the help that the answer requires.

Burnout does not have to be the end of the story. It can be the moment we decide to work, live, and lead differently.

Source note  World Health Organization, Burn-out an occupational phenomenon, ICD-11 frequently asked questions.