33 Warning Signs That You’re Going To Experience Burnout Soon

1. Everything irritates you, stresses you out. You tend to procrastinate at the smallest of tasks. There is this constant urge to just run away. Also, there is this feeling of isolation, and low self-esteem and low confidence.

2. Lethargy. A desire to do nothing every weekend because you don’t have the energy. Never feeling rested.

3. Apathy. Apathy towards work and things that used to motivate you to drive your career forward. Eventually, you accept that work is your life and you just don’t care. At that point, you’re burnt out.

4. Every little thing irritates you in your daily life.

5. When you begin to dread doing a task that you at one time took delight in doing.

6. Not being able to make a decision; even as simple as what to get for lunch.

7. Missing time. I don’t remember taking some classes.

8. Thinking that getting an injury would be nice. I could stop working for a while.

9. Desperately wanting to take a nap; especially at the most inconvenient time.

10. More focus on completion than quality.

11. Sudden increase in sick days (specifically sick days, not so much vacation or planned days).

12. Decrease in communication in general.

13. You look for more ways to escape, sometimes with mindless hobbies, sometimes just maladaptive daydreaming, and it gets hard to get excited about anything.

14. Out of nowhere pure hatred wells up for your colleague(s).

15. Irritable, all the time, work, home, everywhere.

16. Lack of appetite.

17. Increase in drinking.

18. Lack of focus.

19. Sometimes the urge to do a new project can be just plain impulsivity, but sometimes it can be our brains saying, “This isn’t working. I can’t do this anymore but I can’t just stop. I need a new way to approach this.”

20. Skin breakouts.

21. Forgetting to do everyday things (eat, shower, take medication).

22. Inability to hear what someone is saying unless I’m actively trying to pay attention and listen.

23. Excessive anxiety and existential dread.

24. Inability to relax: the compulsion to always be doing something productive, usually menial shit around the house.

25. Being overwhelmed, especially by simple tasks that you used to be able to accomplish easily.

26. Quick to anger over stupid crap that doesn’t mean anything.

27. Crying on your way to/from work.

28. Constant feeling of sadness, depression level sadness.

29. You couldn’t care less if you hit goals or not.

30. Less attention to detail than you normally would have.

31. Shortcuts / more mistakes.

32. The feeling of just keeping your head above the water. You survived today, and it was rough. So rough you can’t enjoy anything. And you dread waking up tomorrow to do it again.

33. When you start to feel burnt out you will also lose your will to fight back against the thing that’s causing you stress/fatigue. You begin to wonder whether this is just normal for everyone and you doubt the validity of your own tiredness. ‘Maybe I’m just over-reacting?’ and as a result you may even slightly resent the people around you trying to help – like if your partner or friends tell you to take a break you may feel annoyed because ‘it’s not that simple’ or that ‘I have a responsibility to continue.’

This is the most dangerous thing I think, you will begin to normalize the burn-out which is how it will get to the stage where you actually cause harm to yourself physically or mentally.