The road to burning yourself out is paved with hard work and accomplishments, a.k.a. burnout’s favourite drug. And for as much as a stroll can do wonders for your health, I never want to walk that toxic road again.

Or, at least, I want to be better prepared to see the burgeoning signs of it in myself. Because burnout isn’t depression or anxiety (though certainly those don’t help matters), it is stress that has become so all-consuming it leaves you feeling like a hollow robot furiously chasing fumes to keep your head above water.

Everything feels heavy.

Burnout doesn’t happen all at once: it’s a slow creep that doesn’t show its hand until you’re already too far gone. It’s so bad, in fact that the World Health Organization has recognised burnout as a medical condition and laid out that it is actively making us worse at our jobs. But burnout creep is a depletion long game — death by million little cuts.

“Burnout isn’t sudden – it’s like death by a million cuts”