Episode 3: Brilliant, Burned Out, and Barely Hanging On: Make Your Life Easier Without Another “Proven” Method, Hack, or Checklist

Whether you've been affected by burnout, or you're not sure what burnout is and want to know if that's part of what's made things hard for you, you are in the right place. Today, I'll help you discover or confirm the completely real realness of neurodivergent burnout, no matter who's told you you're just making excuses or that you need to — wait for it — try harder. (Spoiler alert: You're not and you don't, but we're getting there.)

When neurodivergent adults hold themselves to neurotypical standards without sufficient reprieve, we end up in burnout — all of us. It's not a character flaw, and it's definitely not evidence that you aren't capable of doing what you want and need to do.

From my perspective, that's the worst thing about burnout. It's caused by circumstances that require neurodivergent people to go against themselves, but I've seen many people interpret it as personal failure that fuels their beliefs that they can't do things and should stop trying. It essentially extinguishes their light, which is why I included the word "brilliant" in the title of this episode.

Brilliance isn't just about intellectual ability. It's about vitality, zeal, engaging in life, doing what you're good at and what you want to experience. That brilliance is threatened when doing something we set out to do and want to do for one reason or another, takes more from us than we have to give it. We become more and more depleted and start losing our grip on other aspects of our lives, but don't know what to do about it. If you can muster the strength and energy and humility to tell anyone you're going through this, you are almost certain to get advice about scheduling or tracking your time differently, delegating responsibilities to others, or developing better personal habits like prioritizing rest, following an exercise routine, or creating a non-negotiable meditation regimen.

Those are all great things to do in general, but they don't have anything to do with what causes burnout, so they don't prevent or resolve it.

That's why this episode isn't going to offer you another plan for being more productive.

I'm not going to recommend a time-blocking strategy, task prioritization method, or hack to optimize your morning routine so you can get ahead.

If any of those things worked for neurodivergent burnout, I would absolutely be screaming about them from a rooftop. I sincerely wish it were that easy, but it isn't, and you know that because you've tried those things, and all they did was make you feel worse about yourself.

I am here to help you understand why nothing like that has ever worked for you, because the real solution to burnout isn't fixing yourself, doing more, or trying harder. It's understanding what's actually going on beneath the surface, honoring your neurodivergence, and reclaiming the energy you're pouring into strategies that make things harder, not easier, for you.

Let's start by clarifying what neurodivergent burnout is and isn't. When people talk about being "burned out" on their job or a responsibility or a hobby, that's not neurodivergent burnout. Neurodivergent burnout isn't just having less energy for, or interest in, something you do. It's more than being tired or overwhelmed. Those are all normal responses to situations that have lost their novelty or challenge, or that legitimately require a lot of energy and effort.

Neurodivergent burnout comes from exerting the energy and effort situations require AND the energy and effort it takes to suppress your authenticity simultaneously. But it's not just doubling the energy and effort expended because going against your nature takes much more from you, just like doing something that comes naturally to you feels like no effort at all.

Most of the time neurodivergent burnout occurs in circumstances that are defined by and for neurotypical people. So those of us who don't know we're neurodivergent, or don't really understand our neurodivergence, are totally unaware that successes in those circumstances demand far more from us than it does from most other people. So we push ourselves harder, because that's the logical way to achieve more, but only in a system that fits you.

Consider this analogy: Let's say you had to get up 10 flights of stairs as fast as possible.

If you are 6'6", you might take two stairs at a time, which would be faster and actually takes less energy. But if you are 4'10", you may have to get both feet onto one stair before you can move one foot onto the next stair, so you're already spending more time and energy than the 6'6" person and probably every other adult in that stair race I just made up. Just trying to take two stairs at a time would take far more energy, and also you probably wouldn't be able to do it. The odds are you would lose your footing, fall, hurt yourself, or be too exhausted to continue to the top.

But here's what's critically important to understand about that example: If you'd kept going up the stairs the best way you could, you would eventually get up the 10 flights of stairs as fast as possible for you. What made it impossible was trying to do it the way other people were doing it. Burnout is just like that.

We're conditioned to believe we "should" be able to do things the same way as everyone else does, which is a double fallacy. First of all, because there isn't anything that everyone does the same way, but neurodivergent struggles can warp our perspective, so it looks like "everyone else" is way ahead of you or has it easy when it comes to certain things. And on top of that, even if it were true that everyone, or at least most people, could do something with greater ease than you can, that doesn't mean you should be able to do it that way. The 4'10" person may wish they could take the stairs as fast as everyone else, and everyone else probably wishes they could take the stairs two at a time like the 6'6" person, but it wouldn't be said, or even implied, that the 4'10" person "should" be able to climb 10 flights of stairs the same way, or at the same speed, as anyone else.

We still live in a world where there are a hell of a lot of "shoulds" on neurodivergent people, including the ones we put on ourselves, and if your energy and effort are at the mercy of what you believe you "should" be able to do, and how, you're going to burn out, but you might not even realize it.

Neurodivergent burnout can look and feel a lot of different ways.

It can be experienced as cognitive difficulties, like subtle or even dramatic changes in memory, concentration, the clarity in organization of your thoughts, and how you communicate them.

Burnout can cause you to experience emotions more intensely or unpredictably, like your feelings are overflowing and spilling out without you having any control. Or you may be numb and feel nothing, or have no idea how you feel.

Of course, that can significantly impact relationships. You may withdraw from people, or just be perceived to be detaching from people or that you no longer care. Even if you care more about a person or relationship than anything else, you might find you're just unable to show up the way you did before or even register needs to which you would want to respond.

Physically, burnout can manifest as profound exhaustion, but also insomnia, lower intensity but chronic fatigue, headaches, muscle pain, digestive issues, or greater susceptibility to illness.

Burnout really comes down to our brains and bodies stopping us because we haven't stopped pushing ourselves to do things in ways that go against our natures. The advice we're typically given, even by professionals, is also based on baseline neurotypical functioning, which is why it doesn't work, and can actually make things worse.

You've probably tried many so-called "proven strategies" guaranteed to reduce stress and boost your efficiency, because without really taking your neurodivergence into account, burnout seems like stress arising from inefficiency ~ plain and simple. But productivity hacks, time management systems, organizational routines, and self-care checklists almost always have a theoretical foundation of what everyone "should" do, including what we "should" want to do, what we "should" be able to do, and how we "should" be able to do it. And if all three of those things fall into place for you, an app that makes sticking to a schedule keep your virtual garden or virtual pet cat alive will be all you need to kick an already pretty decent level of functioning up to the next level.

If you're neurodivergent, you may not actually want to do some of the things you're pushing yourself to do, or you can't do them in the ways or timeframes you are holding yourself to, which has nothing to do with any plan, system, method, or hack you try, and watching that virtual gardened die or virtual pet cat suffer is sure as hell not going to help. On the contrary, the more desperate you are to get better results in a situation that requires you to go against yourself, the harder you'll try to change yourself, and the worse you'll feel when you can't.

But it doesn't have to happen that way. That pattern unfolds when we're trying to solve the wrong problem. And even more to the point, we're often trying to find a solution to something that isn't even a problem. By that, I don't mean that there aren't real difficulties in situations that stifle your brilliance, lead you into burnout, or cause you to feel that you won't be able to keep everything together much longer. What I mean is that those situations are the problem, not who you are. And, more than that, who you are isn't a problem at all. Your neurodivergence isn't a flaw; it's a difference, just like the height difference between a person who's 4'10" and one who's 6'6". The way going upstairs as fast as you can is quantified for each of those people is different, as is the way each of them would approach going upstairs as fast as they could, or if they would go up those stairs at all.

So now that we've looked at what burnout is and how it happens and why typical strategies just don't work, I want to talk more about what actually does help, and more importantly, what it looks like to start healing without trying to fix yourself.

Let's start here: Burnout is a message.

It is not a flaw or a failure. It's not proof that you're weak or broken or incapable. It's your body and brain sending you information ~ not because they're betraying you, but because they're protecting you. Burnout is your nervous system stepping in and saying, "Hey, I know you're trying to keep up, but the way you're doing this isn't sustainable. Something needs to change." And I know that's hard to hear, especially if you're someone who wants to do good work, show up for the people you care about, and feel like you're giving everything you can and getting everything you can from the opportunities you have in your life. The truth is most people I work with are incredibly driven and committed. They don't give up easily. In fact, they're often so opposed to giving up that they keep pushing long after something stops working, which is how they end up feeling like they're barely holding on. But giving up on fixing yourself isn't giving up on yourself or even on whatever you're trying to do.

If you stop seeing burnout as a personal indictment and start seeing it as information, it becomes clear that the first step is to listen to what it's telling you. If it's not obvious, ask yourself: Where are you feeling the most resistance or overwhelm right now? What are you dreading? Which part of your life feels heavier than you can bear? What's the thing you keep telling yourself you should be able to do, but can't seem to get yourself to do no matter how hard you try? The answers to those questions are your trailheads. They're where you start. They're where burnout is showing you that the approach you've been using isn't compatible with your brain and that it never really was.

And here's where things shift. Instead of asking, "How do I make myself do this better?", which is usually the starting point of every "proven method," start asking, "What about this isn't working for my brain?", "Where am I betraying my own needs or natural rhythms in order to fit someone else's model?", "What would this look like if it were actually designed for someone like me?" Those are not rhetorical questions; they're the questions that open the door to real and lasting relief.

As an example, let's say you keep trying to follow a morning routine because everything you've read says it's the key to productivity. You've downloaded the habit trackers, you're wearing the watch, you've tried to wake up at the same time every day, you've set goals to meditate and journal and exercise all before 8:00 a.m., but you've stopped and started, beat yourself up for hating it, and when you finally pass the marker of when those "proven" benefits would be felt, you were no more productive, but were a hell of a lot more tired, and even more certain that there's something wrong with you.

But what if your natural brain functioning doesn't align with an early wake time or an abrupt transition from sleep to structured activity? What if you're more of a night owl than a morning person, not because you have too much screen time, but because of your actual circadian rhythms, so the rest you need is much easier to get if you sleep from 2:00 a.m. till 9:00 or 10:00? What if your brain takes longer to move from sleep to fully awake, so what you actually need when you get up is extra time, flexibility, and gentleness with yourself, not more structure and rigidity. What if your failure to stick to a morning routine isn't a failure at all, but is your brain telling you, "Hey, this isn't how I work!"?

That's the kind of clarity that changes everything, but you have to be open to discovering it. Now I want to pause and acknowledge something here because I know what some of you are probably thinking, and I've thought it myself. It's something like this: "Okay, I get it. The thing that's supposed to work for everyone doesn't work for me because it wasn't made for my brain. But I still have a job and a partner and kids. I still have responsibilities. I can't just rewrite every rule in my life. I can't sleep till 10:00, then give myself two hours before I have to do anything."

If that's what you're thinking, I want you to know you're right. Most people aren't in a position to overhaul their lives in one swoop, and I'm not suggesting you do, but it's not an either/or situation. If your job is really awful, but you can't quit, that doesn't mean it has to be as awful as it is. If you feel like you're constantly blowing it as a parent, you shouldn't stop being a parent, but that doesn't mean you can't rethink the standard you're not meeting. If you've been caught in cycles of burnout and recovery, or just narrowly avoiding it, for a long time, it's easy to believe that nothing short of a complete transformation will help. But most of us can't take a year off or make an immediate and total career pivot, and most of us don't want to end important relationships, even if aspects of them are burning us out.

The good news is that you don't have to blow up your life to start changing your experience of it. You can start where you are and with what you have and feel a difference. In fact, the people I've worked with who've gone the route of a massive life overhaul felt less relief than those who've made a series of small shifts that gave them back the energy that was being siphoned from them.

Let me give you a few examples of what those shifts can look like:

It could mean giving yourself permission to pause a task the moment you feel yourself shutting down, instead of pushing through until you've completely finished it and are fried.

It could mean dropping the idea that there's a "right" time of day to do specific tasks and being guided instead by when doing something is least overwhelming for you. It could mean keeping track of how long it takes you to do something, not to race against the clock or set incremental goals for doing it faster and faster, but to make space in your schedule to do it the way you do it.

It could mean rearranging your work schedule so that your most cognitively demanding tasks happen at the time of day when you feel sharpest, even if that's not first thing in the morning like every productivity book recommends.

It could mean deciding that rest and peace don't have to be earned, that you don't need to tick off a list of accomplishments before you get to lie down, or stare out the window, or leave a situation, or have something nutritious to eat, or stim, or watch something comforting for the hundredth time.

It could mean telling people who care about you that you're unhappy at your job, or struggling to be the best parent you can be, and while you're working on improving things in ways that work best for you, you're going to be less available to talk or get together. It could even mean asking those people to be more available to you during that time.   

Doing any one of those examples or something like them doesn't require you to start your life over, but it can be just as revolutionary because listening to what burnout is telling you, and making small corresponding shifts, teaches your nervous system that it doesn't have to keep bracing itself against what you think you should be able to do, that your brain and body are safe in your own care, that you're no longer willing to treat yourself like a problem to solve.

That shift is what will change your life.

Not rage-quitting your job or selling everything you own in moving to a tiny beach town in Mexico. Not installing an app that locks your phone after 30 minutes of screen time. Not recruiting an accountability partner you have to give money to if you don't send proof you went straight to the gym from work. Not the millionth new planner you've purchased or joining a social club to "force yourself to be more social" as some kind of antidote to preferring to spend your downtime by yourself.

The rubric for this understanding is this: When you're going against yourself, going against yourself more won't make anything easier. Doing what works best for you will make your life easier, because it will prevent you from continuing to have experiences that make you feel flawed and incapable again and again and again, and it will heal the parts of you that have been hurt by those experiences in the past.

To be clear, recovering from burnout doesn't mean you'll suddenly get all your energy back or everything will immediately feel easy. Recovery and prevention aren't ever linear or even predictable. It's not even always recognizable when they're happening. Sometimes, they feel like grief. Sometimes, they look like anger. Sometimes they mean doing less and feeling worse for a little while because your body finally believes it's safe enough to crash. That's your system resetting after years of trying to protect you, and it's part of this process. It is also why this kind of healing isn't compatible with rigid strategies, because rigidity is the thing that got you here.

You don't get out of or prevent burnout by forcing yourself to follow new rules; you get away from burnout by understanding that there are no universal rules. The rules that work for you will follow your rhythms, allow for your ways of doing things best, and accentuate your brilliance. That doesn't mean you won't ever have to put effort and energy into things, but there's a huge difference between working for something and working against something, and no one can do both all the time in every area of their lives forever. And no one has to. You don't have to.

If your shoulders dropped just a little, or your breath came a little easier, at any point in this episode, I want you to know that's not a coincidence, and it's not just because I said the right words. It's because you caught a glimmer of your life without so much fucking struggle. It's because you recognize truth. You don't need another method. You don't need a better habit stack. You don't need a stricter morning routine or a fancier planner. What you need is to finally feel like you're allowed to be who you are, and to build your life around that, not around trying to change it.

That's why I am here, [and what I want to help you do, so make sure you subscribe so you're notified of new episodes, and check out any that you've missed. If you'd like to explore having my personal support so you can get away from burnout faster, visit my website to request a free, 20-minute Clarity Call with me. It's not a sales pitch, just a quick conversation. You can tell me what's going on, I'll help you make sense of it, and if it feels like a good fit, we can talk about working together more deeply. And if now's not the time for that, that's okay, too. Just remember: You don't have to change yourself to deserve happiness or success. Being who you are isn't the problem; it's the solution. And I am rooting for you — exactly as you are.