If You’re Burnt Out, You’re Not Sleeping Enough

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Put simply, being burnt out means you’re running on empty across the board. You can’t muster the cognitive energy to do your job well, the emotional energy to feel positive, or the physical energy to reinvigorate your body. Often accompanying this exhaustion is a sense of deep shame—you want to pull yourself out of the rut, and you blame yourself for your inability to do so.

Burnout is a complex state, and research has identified a variety of causes behind it. Long-term stress has been the most popular explanation in the scientific literature, and it can be split into many distinct stressors, including but not limited to: high work demands, low levels of authority at work, lack of support at work, job insecurity, and an inability to mentally let go of work during off-hours.

However, the latest studies have found a causal link between slovenia telegram data sleep loss and burnout—one that appears to be even stronger than the stress-burnout connection. One such study monitored burnt out employees for two years, gauging their stress, sleep habits, and burnout severity through regular clinical assessments.

The researchers found that “too little sleep” (in this case, less than 6 hours of sleep per night) was the primary determinant of clinical burnout. Although “work demands” and “thoughts of work during leisure time” also contributed to burnout, they had less of an impact than sleep deprivation.

Other studies have backed the strong relationship between sleep loss and burnout. For example, we now know that insomnia recursively encourages the development and exacerbation of burnout, and vice versa.

Thankfully, research also indicates that the connection works both ways: reducing fatigue through sleep is a surefire way to fight back against burnout, and “the best predictor of return to work” for burnt out employees.

These findings may make it seem like the antidote to burnout is close at hand. But like any complex problem, burnout doesn’t have a simple answer. To truly stave off burnout, your employees need to look at sleep and their daily schedules through a new lens.