Question: How do I recover when I still have to work to survive?

Here are 5 tips for people in a situation like you:

"Take a sabbatical." "Set firm boundaries." "Talk to your boss about job crafting." “Quit and get a better job.”

What do you do if the advice on burnout you find is too idealistic? Or not possible for you to follow? What if you’re thinking: “that's nice, but I couldn’t find something better. I need this paycheck and I can’t change the way my job works.”

That's fact, not fiction for many people who have to face burnout every year. 

Your bills don't take a break just because you need to figure out your mental health. Your kids still need to eat, so switching to a job that will hire you, but pays half as well isn’t an option. The reality that your health insurance is tied up with your employment can make the advice to "take as long off as you need to recover" sound downright tone deaf.

So what do you do when you're burning out but leaving isn't an option?

Even worse – what if your work environment is genuinely toxic – the kind of place where speaking up gets you punished, overwork is the unspoken expectation, and boundaries are seen as weakness?

The real talk is that this is not at all an easy situation. There are no immediate wins or silver bullets that will work here, and you will be starting with a disadvantage as you try to get out of burnout, and stay out.

What’s important in this kind of situation is looking for any leverage you might have to make things just a bit better. That’s because when you can't change the big things, the small things start to matter more. Earning small win after small win can eventually make the difference between recovery and staying burnt out.

Here are 5 small steps that could give you your next win against burnout:

Find little ways to take back control over your schedule. 

You may not be able to completely walk out, but you might be able to leave closer to on-time, rather than consistently overtime. You may be able to set up a few spaces of “focus time” throughout the week, where people know you’re heads-down and won’t be as fast to respond to them. Maybe you can block the first 30 minutes of your day to plan your day for the right tasks, or the last 30 minutes to make a “tomorrow’s list,” so your mind can unplug knowing what wasn’t done is accounted for.

Track what drains your energy during the week.

Spend a few days noticing which tasks, meetings, or interactions leave you most depleted, and give them a 1-5 least-to-most draining rating. Then mark down which of those are going above and beyond and not a must-do. Be honest about that and you will probably might find a few “drainers” you can stop doing, skip for a few weeks, or delegate without any negative consequences.

Ask yourself: what's the “good enough” version of this?

Chances are, you’re trying to uphold standards that no one actually expects or values as much as you do. Perfectionistic thinking is a very common driver of burnout, and is extra costly to your wellbeing when you're already running on empty. Find one or more task, conversation, or process that you can take your effort down to 70% without a hitch. That’s key, rather than giving 110% and then crashing.

Stop treating everything as urgent or high-priority. 

It’s easier to slip into the mindset of doing everything fast when you’re burnt out than it is to take the time to differentiate what’s actually high priority and what may seem like it, but isn’t. Realize that not every task needs to be finished before you leave, not every question needs a quick reply, and not everything needs to be done at all. It’s especially important to practice leaving things undone overnight. The anxiety of an incomplete to-do list is real, but learning to sit with it is part of how you claw back some capacity.

Create a detachment ritual at the end of your workday.

Go for a short walk, put on an accessory or different clothes, listen to certain music, or do something else that’s physical, and can signal to your body that work and focus mode is over. Your nervous system doesn't automatically know the difference between "at work" and "done for the day," especially if you work from home. You have to teach it.

Again – none of these will fix a broken system; but they might be enough to help you get one critical win that turns into another, and eventually makes a big difference.