Practical Burnout Recovery Strategies
Burnout Isn’t Failure, It’s Protection
If you’re experiencing burnout at work or in daily life and looking for practical burnout recovery strategies, these tools can help you reset and regain energy. If you’re not sure how at risk you are right now, you can take the Burnout Self-Check for a quick snapshot before trying the tools below.
Nothing is “wrong” with you. Your body and brain are protecting you under sustained pressure, just like muscles needing recovery after a hard training session. With the right approach, resilience can be rebuilt and performance can improve.
A lot of research points to a simple core idea: burnout tends to happen when work demands outweigh your capacity to recover. Over time, this mismatch drains energy and dims motivation. The good news is that while you can’t control everything about workload or culture, you can rebuild skills that change how you respond – in the next minute, over the next week, and across the next quarter.
Below are three trainable skillsets that will help you turn the ship around:
Recovery
Reframing
Resetting
1) Recovery: Practical tools for burnout recovery
“Rest isn’t a reward – it’s a foundation. The better we feel, the better we will perform as well.”
Arianna Huffington
Your ability to recover is what makes challenging work sustainable and helps prevent burnout. Recovery isn’t just sleep or days off. It’s the small choices that let your nervous system reset so you can think clearly, focus, and engage.
Protect recovery in your calendar the same way you would protect an important meeting. Micro-recovery during the day and deeper recovery at night compounds into real, noticeable change. These simple burnout recovery strategies, from box breathing to open loop writing, are small actions that compound into lasting resilience.
Tools to try today
- Box breathing (2–4 minutes).
Breathe in for 4, hold 4, out for 4, hold 4. Repeat. Calms the nervous system and sharpens attention. - Body scan (3 minutes).
Sit or lie down. Start at your forehead and move your attention slowly down the rest of your body all the way to your toes. Wherever you find tension, see if you can gently soften it. - Open-loop dump (5 minutes).
Write down every unfinished task, worry, or reminder without editing. Circle the one thing you can advance today and schedule the rest. Your brain rests when it trusts the list.
Why this helps: Short daily breathwork practices boost mood and lower anxiety. Body scans relax your nervous system, and writing down open loops takes the load off your working memory so you can switch off.
2) Reframing: A mindset shift for stress at work
How you interpret stress changes your biology, your performance, and even your risk of burnout.
Your mindset about stress is not wishful thinking; it measurably shifts your body’s response. In studies where people learned that stress can be useful (a sign that your body is mobilising for a challenge) they performed better and felt more capable under pressure. I explore this in more depth in my article The Truth About Stress: It Might Not Be What You Think, which explains how reframing stress can reduce anxiety and even improve performance.
Tools to try today
- Connect stress to meaning (1 minute).
Ask: What bigger purpose does this effort serve? Family, mastery, a future role, service to others. Naming it turns strain into chosen effort. - Choice language.
Swap “I have to”, “I need to”, or “I should do”, for “I choose to,” “I want to,” or “I’m willing to.” Choice cues autonomy, which reduces stress load and supports motivation. - Gratitude lens (60 seconds).
Identify one thing about this task or day you are genuinely grateful for such as a colleague, a learning, or a small win. Gratitude won’t make a tough situation easy, and it isn’t about pretending everything is fine. But it can soften the edges of stress, and with repetition, build a stronger foundation for wellbeing and performance.
Why this helps: Seeing stress arousal as fuel improves performance in high-stakes testing. Gratitude lifts wellbeing and energy, while choice-based language restores a sense of control.
3) Resetting: Quick techniques to calm your nervous system
When your system is stuck in “fight or flight,” use brief resets to come back online.
Under relentless demands we get frantic, wired and tired. Errors creep in. Everything feels urgent. Resetting is the art of stepping out of firefighting mode regularly so your thinking brain can lead again.
Tools to try today
- Hourly micro-reset (60–90 seconds).
Set a quiet alarm each hour. Do three resetting breaths: inhale through your nose, take a second quick top-up breath, then exhale slowly. Repeat three times, all through your nose if possible. - Two-minute tech-free walk (every 2–3 hours).
Stand up, walk, move, and if possible look at something distant like a window, horizon, or trees. Movement and visual distance tell your system it’s safe. - Breath check (30 seconds).
Notice: is your breathing shallow and high in the chest? Shift to low, slow belly breathing for 5 breaths.
Why this helps: Brief breathing breaks reduce anxiety and slow your breathing rate, a natural switch that tells your body to calm down. Even five minutes a day shows significant, measurable benefits. fuel improves performance in high-stakes testing. Gratitude lifts wellbeing and energy, while choice-based language restores a sense of control.
Be kind to yourself and keep going
Burnout recovery depends on small, repeatable steps. Like strength training, change happens with consistent reps. You don’t need to fix everything this week. Pick one tool and practice it today. Then tomorrow. Then next week.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, consider these next steps:
- Tell someone you trust what you’re noticing. Social support buffers stress.
- Simplify your week. Choose one priority per day and protect 60-90 minutes for it.
- Create a basic recovery scaffold: bedtime, movement, and one daily reset.
- Book a conversation with your manager or HR to adjust workloads where possible (it helps to come with suggestions). And if you would like guided support, reach out – this is exactly what my RISE work is for.
You’re not failing. Your system is asking for care so you can get back to doing meaningful work with steadiness and energy. Every small action you take is a vote for your future self.
Next Steps
Book a Workshop to strengthen resilience and focus in your team
Take the Burnout Self-Check to see where you stand today
Read the Sleep Guide to optimise one of the biggest levers for recovery
Explore Coaching for tailored burnout recovery and performance support
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