The Science of Slowing Down: 4 Unusual Ways to Avoid Burnout

There’s never been a more salient time to prioritise our mental health. We’re up against global uncertainty, the blurring of work-life boundaries and hustle culture’s guilt-trip. In times like these, we’re in favour of action, but science says the counter-intuitive act of slowing down might be the secret to success. Here’s how to avoid burnout.

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How to avoid burnout: 4 unusual ways to slow down

1. Recognise that passion makes you more vulnerable to burnout

In the self-help classic, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma writes: “A burning sense of passion is the most potent fuel of your dreams”. You’ve heard it before – if you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.

But as Jennifer Moss quips in When Passion Leads to Burnout, this is a nice idea, “but it’s just a myth”. She explains that there are certain roles which hold an increased risk of burnout – and work that people feel passionately about is one of them.

She writes: “According to a study published in the Journal of Personality, this type of labour can breed obsessive – versus harmonious – passion, which predicts an increase of conflict, and thus burnout”.

Echoing this mindset, among the list of burnout risks cited by American health care company, The Mayo Clinic, is: “You identify so strongly with work that you lack balance between your work life and your personal life”.

This is something entrepreneurs are no stranger to, which explains why the term ‘entrepreneurial burnout’ has been coined and attributed to a mistaken belief that following your passion means sacrificing everything at hand.

Though that’s not to say you shouldn’t pursue your passion, you just need to be mindful of the associated risks.

David Whiteside, who holds a Ph.D. in organisational behaviour explains: “Despite the clear benefits of feeling meaningfully connected to your work, our data suggests that there are often real and undiscussed complications of purpose-driven work on employees’ health that can be related to the experience of burnout long-term”.

2. Embrace ‘niksen’ (the Dutch art of doing nothing)

Niksen is defined as doing something without a purpose, like sitting still, daydreaming or staring out the window. It’s forcing your mind to be idle, with the intention of having no intentions.

In her article for Forbes, The Fastest Way to be More Productive is to Slow Down, Amy Blaschka writes: “Research has found that when we're idle, we allow our minds to wander. And that daydreaming makes us more creative, better at problem-solving and better at coming up with creative ideas”.

She continues: “Our culture does not promise sitting still, and that can have wide-reaching consequences for our mental health…Practising niksen can recharge our batteries”.

It’s true – in our ‘always on’ culture, we’re wired to feel like we should be accomplishing things at all times. We believe that so much of our worth stems from our professional achievements.

Naturally, this means that disconnecting from our pursuit of productivity comes with a wave of guilt – or worse – failure, but taking real breaks to truly disengage is a factor of success, not a distraction from it.

3. Understand whether you’re a ‘satisficer’ or a maximiser

According to economist and psychologist Herbert Simon, there are two ways to make decisions. The first is ‘satisficing’ (a combination of the words ‘satisfy’ and ‘suffice’), where a “good enough” decision is made with the existing information at hand. The second is ‘maximising’, where the “best” decision is made after all possible options have been exhausted.

The problem with maximising is that you’re holding yourself to a standard that’s unachievable. If, in every decision you make, you labour over every possible outcome, you’ll exhaust your cognitive limits and develop decision fatigue. 

Organizational Development Consultant at Extinguish Burnout, Robert Bogue phrases this perfectly in Thrive Global. He writes: “Burnout is the gap between our expectations of our abilities and our reality. When we maximise and miss – as we are bound to – we invite burnout into our world”.

The solution? Do more satisficing. Luckily, Simon’s research found that none of us are whole-heartedly maximisers or satisficers, so choosing to make more decisions that are “good enough”, rather than “the best” will help preserve your mental energy.

Don’t let perfect be the enemy of done. In his book Move Fast and Break Things, Jonathan Taplin offers the perfect case study: Amazon, Facebook and Google focus on getting a lot of stuff done very quickly and moving onto the next thing, under the assumption that some of it will work.

4. Recognise burnout as a workplace problem, not a people problem

Offering a fresh perspective, author and workplace expert Jennifer Moss explains: “We tend to think of burnout as an individual problem, solvable by “learning to say no,” more yoga, better breathing techniques, practising resilience – the self-help list goes on”.

And while these are important, there’s another side of the coin. Moss writes: “When it comes to employee burnout, remember – it’s on you leaders, not them”.

A Gallup survey of 7,500 full-time employees found that the five most common causes of burnout are: unfair treatment at work; unmanageable workload; lack of role clarity; lack of communication and support from their manager; and unreasonable time pressures.

The research makes a solid case to suggest that burnout is less of an individual problem and more of a company culture problem. The good news is, this means that with the right prevention tactics in place from senior management, burnout is preventable.

Moss suggests a good place to start: “First, ask yourself as a leader, what is making my staff so unhealthy? Why does our work environment lack the conditions for them to flourish?”.