How to recognise burnout... and take control of your work-life balance

For a long time, Tom Mann dreamt of opening a coffee van. Instead of long hours in the office, endless meetings and deadlines, he’d have the freedom to do his own thing and live a more balanced life.

Then, a few years ago, he got into sports and wondered whether he should be a personal trainer. Maybe that would be his way out of the rat race.

“Work was always this thing that I did to get paid, but it wasn’t my passion. I was always thinking of what else I could do,” says the 44-year-old IT project manager from Buckinghamshire.

Then Covid hit and a combination of burnout, family demands and a house-build project led Tom to ask for a nine- month sabbatical – his first big chunk of time off in 20 years.

A couple of months before he was due back at work, the anxiety began.

“I wasn’t sure whether to go back. I went around in circles thinking what else I could do. Everything I looked into paid no money. I started looking at doing personal training, but I’d have to work at weekends, which would eat into my family time. Starting from the bottom again was daunting… so, in the end, I decided to go back to work. Then a friend asked if I would be able to go back part-time. It was something I’d never considered.”

Tom wasn’t sure how his company would react to the request, but figured he had nothing to lose by asking. He says they could not have been more supportive. It was agreed that Tom would take a 40 per cent pay cut to do a three-day week.

“Honestly, it’s changed my life, it’s like the best of all worlds. I have more time with the family, more time for me to do the stuff that you can’t normally do when you’re working full-time, but I also get the security of a salary and paid holidays. I realised that I don’t want to do something else, I just want to have capacity and space in my life,” says Tom.

And Tom is not unique. Far from it.

The past two years have been a shock to the system that has made many of us reassess absolutely everything – particularly the role that work has in our lives. The term the “Great Resignation” was coined to describe the huge number of people who quit their jobs during the pandemic, but now we are in a new phase, which is seeing people downsizing and reconfiguring their work so that it fits into their life, rather than the old way of trying to fit a life around your work.

Carolyn Parry, founder of Career Alchemy and president of the Career Development Institute, says, “Instead of quitting, people are reshaping their jobs. We saw the Great Resignation take hold and now a great rebalancing is ­taking place.

“Significant emotional events, such as death or severe illness of family, combined with a focus on the helping professions, served to highlight what is most important in life and helped those who were still sleepwalking through work and life to respond to the pandemic as a wake-up call.

“People’s focus on work is in the ­process of being rebalanced with more emphasis on other parts of their lives, as well as an increased sense of wanting to make a difference and an impact on something worthwhile.

“When things are stripped back, we see the importance of friends, family, health and time to do things that matter to us. All of this led to a sense of gratitude for what we have, rather than running the old script of, ‘I will be happy when I get the next promotion, bonus etc.’”

This was my own situation during lockdown.

Work was always the most important thing in my life. In my 20s, I worked my way up in newspapers, so that I was a features editor by the time I was 30. The achievement meant a lot to me, as did the designer handbags that went with it, but I was also constantly sick and stressed and working 12-hour days. So I quit that job and became a freelance writer and author… and even then, work was central to my days and who I was.

In lockdown that changed.

I was supposed to be writing my second book, but faced with stories about people dying, and doctors and supermarket workers giving their all, my writing felt insignificant and indulgent. I wanted to be of use.

I volunteered with local charities and then, thanks to a friend’s suggestion, I put a note up on social media asking if anyone would be interested in doing a therapeutic writing session on Zoom.

People from all around the world showed up and 18 months later they keep showing up. These Saturday writing sessions have been one of the most rewarding things that I have ever done – but they do not pay my bills, so I feel very lucky to be able to earn a living as a writer, too.

As a freelancer, I have a lot of freedom to shape my work, but so, increasingly, do many employees. The rise of remote working means that people can apply for jobs that would have been geographically impossible a couple of years ago. Smart companies, such as Tom’s, know they need to be flexible if they want to keep good staff.

Selina Barker, a career coach and author of Burn Out, says that now is a great time to have a conversation with your boss: “When people are burnt out, they think they need to do something completely different – like quit and open a coffee shop. But before throwing the baby out with the bathwater, throwing away a career you have spent one or two decades building up, ask yourself is there another way? 

“Is there a way you can do less? Or get rid of the parts of your job you don’t enjoy? For example, many people move up to being a manager when they actually prefer doing the job itself. So often the life-changing change is more doable than we think.”

This was the case with Emma Barnes, who works in behavioural market research, also called “user research”.

“It was an area I fell into, but one that I really enjoyed. I did a master’s in psychology and I was good at talking to people and interviewing them, so it suited me.

“After a good grounding in user research, I moved from an agency to an in-house team. I built the research lab for a huge company and I loved it,” says Emma, who lives in the outskirts of Huddersfield with her husband and son.

“The next step up was to become a senior manager and leader. I could see that role took its toll on people – there was a lot of travel, working at weekends, competition and politics, but I wanted the challenge, so I applied and got a management job working in a new company, building a larger team.

“Then the pandemic hit and we all got moved to working from home. I was no longer doing the job I enjoyed, I was getting other people to do it. So much of how I spent my time was out of my control, I was always waiting for other people to deliver. 

“I found it hard to manage people, especially online. I hated not being in the room with people when we were talking, I found it draining. I started to get headaches and I barely moved from my computer all day. 

“After a while, I found myself crying most days. I felt very unsupported and a huge amount of pressure was being put on me to deliver. I was not in a very nice place. I needed out, but I was scared about stepping down because I wondered who I would be without the job. 

“I didn’t understand what my purpose was any more. I kept asking myself, ‘What am I doing? Am I doing something that’s worthwhile? Am I doing something that’s really adding value to people,’ which is where I set out to be. I questioned all of that.”

Like Tom, she wondered whether she should be in a completely different field, maybe working in something more creative, but then she realised that she had liked her job before, she just didn’t like being a manager.

Emma applied for a different role in another organisation, going back to what she used to do.

She now works four days a week and spends the fifth day with her son. She took a small pay cut, but she says it was the right decision. “I am 100 per cent less stressed. I don’t manage anybody. I’m on much fewer calls. I just do my work and that’s it.”

She is being invited to apply for promotions again, but is currently resisting.

She would even consider dropping further down the career ladder, by taking a consultancy role and doing two or three days a week, so that she could explore other interests outside work. “I was always very creative and I feel like I’ve been doing myself a disservice by not following this part of me.”

She and her husband have bought a camper van, she has the time with her son and has signed up for a pottery class. She is hoping to turn the garage into a creative space.

Selina Barker says this is common. “In the early days of lockdown, people had time for hobbies, sometimes for the first time in their adult lives. They realised that they didn’t want to go back to spending all their time working.”

She says that for many years work was a huge part of our identity and ­self-worth, but now there is a sense that work should only be one part of your life.

“Fulfilment can happen outside work – with your relationships, or by taking on physical challenges, or pottery. Your job can just be a way to earn enough money to facilitate that.”

Leah Steele, 37, lives in Bristol with her partner

I worked as a lawyer for 11 years, specialising in contentious probate – so when somebody had died and there was a dispute over the person’s estate, I would handle it. I used to jokingly refer to it as the worst combination of criminal, family and probate law because you tend to have grieving, often somewhat dysfunctional families, who have experienced something big. Most of my cases involved historic child abuse, physical abuse, neglect, alcohol and addiction issues… It had a heavy emotional toll, but I kept going, working 70-, 80-, even 90-hour weeks for years. I spent 15 to 20 hours commuting each week.

I was doing very well from the outside. I had a magazine column and I travelled all over the country speaking and giving lectures at conferences. I was sought around the country for what I did. I was 30 years old.

Then, my mum died suddenly and I realised I was experiencing burnout.

I decided to get a job at a local law firm, which was a five-minute drive from my house and I thought that would be easier. But it was the wrong fit and I was still working too much. It got to the stage where I was crying in the lavatories most days. I was on beta blockers for anxiety and hadn’t seen my friends in months. It took all my energy just to try to cope with the week ahead.

Over the past year, we have seen studies from the International Bar Association and the mental-health and well-being charity LawCare that show the average lawyer is at high risk of burnout and scores highly for exhaustion. Last year, a study found that 26 per cent of lawyers are actively looking to leave the profession altogether. But it doesn’t need to be this way.

Beyond the law, Gallup’s 2020 poll found more than three-quarters of workers were experiencing some level of burnout, and in the same year, the Health and Safety Executive found more working days had been lost than ever before, with more than 50 per cent of cases of absence from work due to stress, depression and anxiety, conditions that have a huge overlap with burnout.

I have now changed my role, so instead of practising law, I am helping other lawyers to avoid burnout.

I don’t like seeing lawyers quit their careers, but so many do, just to protect their health. There is this idea that work has to be hard, that it has to hurt to be worthwhile, but I don’t think that’s true. If you encourage people to go more slowly, they will be with you for much longer.

I would love for us to remember the lessons we’ve learnt from the past couple of years, when we saw that there are so many ways to work, and that we can do it in a way that enhances everyone’s happiness and wellbeing.

We are in the middle of a huge societal change and we have an opportunity to completely remake the working world, which has been the same nine-to-five since the 1920s.

I wanted to be a lawyer from the age of eight. I thought they helped people. Now, I still help people, but in a way that doesn’t hurt me.

I now work less than half the hours, I don’t travel any more, I work from home, I see my pets and my partner, and I don’t wake up every day dreading what’s ahead.

Have you been affected by burnout? How did you overcome it? Let us know in the comments section below