You’d think burnout comes from working too much, right? It does. But also… it doesn’t.
I’ve been through burnout three times. Only one of those times involved the classic “hustle till you drop” kind of workload. The other two? I wasn’t even that busy. And that’s when it hit me. Burnout isn’t always about how much you’re doing. Sometimes, it’s about how much weight you’re carrying inside your head, your heart, and your life.
Let me break it down on the three burnouts I had in my life.
Burnout #1: The Broke Hustle
When I first started my business, I was working around the clock with my partner. We were trying to build something from nothing, juggling with the production, sourcing for vendors, setting up popup booth, basically doing everything short of selling a kidney just to pay for food amongst other stuff like rent, utilities, etc.
Sleep was a luxury. Eating out? Unthinkable. We were practically having coffee and crackers as meals. The kind of rest we needed didn’t even exist in our vocabulary back then. We were burned out, broke, and borderline…
