Question: do I need to change jobs to recover from burnout, or can I recover where I'm at?

Whether you need to leave your job to recover from burnout depends on 2 factors:

Truthfully, the answer to the question of whether or not you need to leave your job to recover from burnout depends on two things: what is your work environment doing to you, and what are you doing to yourself?

Signs of a work environment you should leave:

The unfortunate reality is that some jobs, companies, and even whole sectors are structurally or culturally set up such that the chances of burning out there are high, while also hindering the chances of recovering from an active burnout. These work environments are characterized by high pressure and chronic exposure to high stress, and often put their own corporate objectives over commonly held values. While these environments cause excessive stress, they leave the burden of recovery to individuals to manage alone.

According to research by MIT Sloan Management Review, a toxic corporate culture is 10.4 times more powerful than compensation in predicting employee attrition. Some telltale signs of these environments include:

• A lack of psychological safety: as defined by Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson, a psychologically safe environment is where people can speak up, asking questions, or admitting mistakes is punished rather than welcomed.
• Individuals are expected to manage it on their own.
• Abuse, gaslighting, or other toxic interactions are tolerated or encouraged as a “weeding” mechanism.
• Overwork is role-modeled and/or expected, with perpetual understaffing.
• Work-life boundaries are disrespected, or seen as a lack of commitment.
• Ambiguous or blurred lines of responsibilities.

If these signs are present in your work environment, then trying to recover while staying in the job is like trying to use an umbrella to stay dry in the midst of a hurricane.

Granted – there are cases where recovering is possible even in a burnout-inducing structural or cultural work environment. For example, not every person who goes through a tough medical residency program burns out, or remains burnt out. That’s where the second factor comes into play.

How to recover from burnout (with or without quitting)

On the other hand, people can fall into the trap of thinking that a job change alone will solve burnout; yet, burnout can and does follow some people from job to job. Burning out can happen in a healthy environment, or from work you love, too. And, burnout doesn’t just go away on its own if ignored. Burnout can persist for years, and there is even a persistent form of chronic exhaustion known as “burn-on,” a concept coined by psychiatrist Bert te Wildt to describe high-functioning depression where individuals mask their suffering to keep working.

This brings us to the crucial second component: recovering from burnout requires you to make key changes.

Burnout may be affected by our work environment and support network, but the sobering truth is that burnout is also something we do to ourselves (or allow to be done to us).

We play a role in our own burnout when we push ourselves too hard, for too long to live up to an extremely high standard or set of expectations, without also doing the routines that would make maintaining such a level of high performance possible over the long run. We expect high performance of ourselves, without giving ourselves the high care needed to do so.

Such misaligned expectations make sense when considering how burnout stems from a compulsion to prove ourselves to the world, to resolve an insecurity, or to turn work into our identity. Understandably, we then feel guilty for taking time off, ashamed for making a mistake, or anxious about our performance or job security. With so much internal pressure, it becomes easy to let the need to keep up with work get in the way of our own care, until the imbalance is too big to ignore.

For example – maybe you've been saying yes to everything, but need to start saying “no” more. Maybe you've stopped taking lunch breaks or let work creep into your evenings. Maybe there's a conversation with your manager or a colleague you've been avoiding.

What you need to (un-)do to yourself to recover includes:

• Give yourself permission to take time off to rest (taking time off from work for longer than a weekend; for deep burnout, this is non-negotiable), and actually unplugging from work.
• Stop trying to earn your way out of burnout. (Recovery requires doing less, not doing more. The instinct to prove yourself out of the hole is what dug the hole in the first place.)
• Take breaks throughout the day, rather than working for hours straight on end.
• Improve your sleep hygiene (read our post on what to do if you can't sleep). The Sleep Foundation also notes that sleep loss is both a cause and a symptom of burnout; prioritizing rest is often the first physiological step to recovery.
• Eat nutritious food, drink enough water each day, spend quality time in-person with people who matter to you (and open up honestly to them), and get regular movement or exercise each week.
• Learn how to better manage expectations, conflict, and communication at work.

These are fixable things that require the courage to change, rather than a resignation letter.

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