6 Less Obvious Signs of Burnout You Should Definitely Pay Attention To

You should also keep an eye on who’s setting you off, Kali Cyrus, MD, MPH, assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medicine, tells SELF. If your energy-vampire coworker often gets under your skin, for example, that’s not necessarily a sign of burnout; you might just not like them. That’s why Dr. Cyrus recommends “paying attention to increased or consistent irritability toward people that normally don’t elicit that response,” like your best friend or partner.

It’s also important to note that irritability, along with some of the other common symptoms of burnout (including lack of motivation and exhaustion), can also indicate that you’re depressed. If you’re showing signs of depression, ask your primary care doctor, if you have one, to screen you for the disorder.

2. You feel overwhelmed by even small requests. 

When you’re burned out, you have less capacity to deal with…anything. As a result, every request, even the smallest one, may feel overwhelming or even impossible. This reaction is common in parents too. “A lesser-known symptom of burnout is easily flying off the handle when your child or family member makes a small request of you,” Pooja Lakshmin, MD, author of Real Self Care and founder and CEO of mental health digital education platform Gemma, tells SELF. “Your kid demanding a PB&J, not a PB and banana, could be enough to drive you up a wall.” Or maybe your partner’s request to switch up your go-to Friday night show sends you huffing out of the room. 

Basically, if your irritation level doesn’t match the situation, and your disproportional outbursts happen more and more frequently, that can indicate burnout, according to Dr. Lakshmin. You may also find that you start turning down more requests, even ones you would normally find enjoyable. (For me, it’s often saying no to going to dinner or a movie with friends—because I just can’t do one more thing.)

3. Your normal self-care routines start to fade.

Occasionally feeling overwhelmed by daily tasks is totally normal in our fast-paced world, but wearing sweatpants way more often than usual or having a much messier desk or kitchen might also be a sign that you can’t find the energy to keep up your routines or take care of your household—another possible sign of work burnout. This change in daily habits might also look like “ordering more takeout rather than cooking, taking the dog on shorter walks, watching more TV late into the night instead of getting in bed at your regular bedtime, or more drinking or drug use at the end of the workday,” says Dr. Cyrus.

4. You start to procrastinate on the job. 

When it comes to work tasks, if you notice yourself avoiding more and more items on your to-do list or avoiding important projects, it might be a sign that you’re starting to get overwhelmed to the point of burning out. In fact, in a 2019 study of more than 3,000 college faculty members, researchers found that burnout was associated with an increase in procrastination. In my experience, this could start with something as small as not responding to emails and later lead to such a pileup of projects that you don’t even know where to begin. At that point, you might even decide not to start anything at all, as an act of defiance against all that you have to do.

5. You keep forgetting things or generally feel scatterbrained.

I’ve had many patients who are showing other signs of burnout tell me they’re concerned that they’re developing permanent memory loss because of experiences at work like opening up a document and forgetting why they opened it, or writing an email and never hitting send. And it makes sense: As it turns out, burnout can affect your memory and executive functioning. This is actually due to neurobiological changes in response to chronic stress, including a decreased volume in the basal ganglia, an area of the brain that regulates executive functions, including working memory.

6. You daydream about doing any other job.

Burnout can make other types of work, even ones you would have had no interest in before, seem appealing. Maybe you once thought doing math all day would bore you to tears, for example, but becoming an accountant and clocking out at 5 p.m. sharp every day is starting to seem like a dream job. Or maybe you can’t stop thinking about working at an ice cream stand on Lanai, or running a farm even though you have zero agricultural experience.