Writing About Burnout Without Sounding Like a LinkedIn Post

The internet is full of burnout stories that end with a promotion. That is not burnout writing, that is brand management.

Real burnout writing is smaller and less flattering. It is about the Tuesday you sat in the car park for twenty minutes because you could not make yourself go in.

Show the cost in units of ordinary life

“I was exhausted” means nothing. “I stopped cooking, and then I stopped eating anything that required a plate” means something. Burnout is measurable in the things you quietly gave up: the gym, the phone calls to your mother, the books, the friends who got slower and slower replies until they stopped replying.

Do not write a resignation letter in public

If your employer is identifiable, be careful. A published piece can follow you into the next interview. The safest approach: write about the pattern, not the company. Write about what the work did to you, not what your manager did.

• Risky: naming the company, the team, the project.
• Safe: “The job rewarded the version of me that never logged off.”

The part nobody writes

Burnout is often accompanied by a strange grief: you miss the person you were when you cared. That is the real subject. Not the hours. The loss of your own enthusiasm, and the fear that it is not coming back.

I used to be the person who had ideas in the shower. Now I stand in the shower and make a list of emails.

Write it before you quit, or long after

Writing it while you are still inside the job is honest but dangerous. Writing it a year later is safer and usually better — you can see the shape of it. Either way, write it. The alternative is that the story stays in your body instead of on a page.

More on career and ambition.