How to Prevent & Overcome Burnout
Overcome burnout today.
Welcome! We have five sections in the The Stoic Manual to help you live a distinguished life. The ‘Wealth Playbook’ will help you build wealth and enjoy the financial freedom and power it affords. The ‘Science-based Tools’ enhance your physical and psychological health, vitality, stress resilience, discipline, focus, motivation. The ‘Lead to Win’ & the ‘Le Monde Élégant’ refine your social skills, relationships & leadership skills — by Dr. Antonius Veritas
P.S: Most of you loved the previous entries on How To Deal With Toxic People and How to Process & Overcome Grief.
“Apply reason to difficulties: what is hard can be softened, what is narrow can be expanded, and heavy loads can be less of a burden on the shoulders when borne skillfully.” — Seneca
“We must allow our minds some relaxation: if rested, they will rise up the better and sharper to challenges. As one should not impose a strict regimen on rich fields— for, if their fertility is never granted remission, it will quickly exhaust them—so unremitting effort will shatter the mind’s vigour, while it will regain strength if it is allowed a small release and relaxation; mental effort permanently sustained produces in the mind a certain sluggishness and lethargy.” — Seneca
I once stumbled out of a seventy-two-hour hospital shift barely able to stand. My hands shook from too much caffeine, my head felt faint from too little sleep, and when I finally got home I collapsed onto the bed still in scrubs. The sunlight through the window almost gave me a migraine. My heart raced as if I were sprinting, yet I couldn’t summon the strength to climb a flight of stairs. It was a strange mix of exhaustion and hyper-alertness, as though my body was trapped in two opposite states at once.
I tried the obvious remedies. More coffee. Energy drinks. Walks. A half-hearted workout. They gave me an hour or two of shaky alertness before the crash returned harder. Nights became restless; mornings felt sticky. My focus slipped at work. I’d reread the same sentence three times and still forget it. I snapped at colleagues, forgot small details in patient charts, and felt embarrassed by mistakes I’d never have made if I weren’t running on edge.
That was the moment I began to wonder: what if the problem wasn’t just lack of sleep or overwork? What if my energy was failing because I didn’t understand how it actually worked - why I was alert at the wrong times and exhausted when I most needed to perform? That question sent me searching for a deeper explanation, one that revealed the innate rhythms beneath stress, energy, focus, and burnout.
This essay is about that control. About how to work with cortisol, the hormone that governs energy, stress, and recovery, so that you can perform when it matters, rest when it’s time, and avoid the downward spiral of burnout, or recover from it.
I. Understand Cortisol and Its Importance
Most people have heard of cortisol, and almost everyone associates it with…
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