Mindful in 5 Podcast

Breaks to Beat Burnout

• Spiwe Jefferson • Season 5 • Episode 173

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Chime in and tell me. How do you beat burnout?

Do you feel that familiar tension building between your ambition and well-being? That profound emptiness where you're emotionally checked out and unable to recover even with normal rest? Welcome to the danger zone of burnout—where you might show up physically but your mind, spirit, and enthusiasm have quietly quit.

Join us today as we tackle this universal challenge with actionable strategies anyone can implement—without expensive vacations or extended time away. We explore five science-backed approaches to beat burnout.

Your greatest breakthroughs likely come during periods of apparent inactivity. Elite athletes understand that recovery isn't what happens when training stops—it's what makes training effective. The same principle applies to cognitive performance. When designing your rest strategy, focus on quality over quantity; a fully disconnected weekend provides more restoration than a vacation spent checking emails. Burnout isn't inevitable, and you don't have to work yourself into the ground. Use these strategies to transform time off from an indulgence to your competitive advantage. 

Join our LinkedIn Mindful in 5 group to share which approach works best for you, and remember—sustainable success requires more than just pushing through exhaustion.

Transform career setbacks into powerful comebacks with mindful strategies and AI tools that helped me land executive roles as shared in my upcoming book, 'Phoenix Rising - Ignite Your Job Search.' Secure your spot in our exclusive Early Bird community for pre-launch access and an intimate launch event by pre-ordering through the Phoenix Career Chronicles podcast show notes or at spiwejefferson.com today.



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Spiwe Jefferson:

Welcome to Mindful in 5, where busy professionals find your peaceful oasis to thrive in complex work environments. I am Spiwe Jefferson attorney, certified mindfulness practitioner and author of the Mindful in 5 book series. Here to guide you to a clearer, softer and more supported life. Join me and your fellow mindful ninjas as we explore science-backed mindfulness strategies for successful leaders that you can implement, starting with just five minutes a day. Elevate your work, empower your life, work higher, live stronger. Let's go.

Spiwe Jefferson:

Are you noticing the warning signs of burnout creeping into your high-performance routine? You noticing the warning signs of burnout creeping into your high-performance routine? Even as you drive results and lead forward, you may feel that familiar tension building between your ambition and well-being. Well, today I've got you, because we are talking about breaks to beat burnout. As an accomplished professional, you recognize that sustainable success requires more than just pushing through exhaustion. When burnout advances unchecked, it doesn't just compromise your health, it undermines your decision-making, diminishes your presence and ultimately threatens the competitive advantage you have worked so hard to establish. Burnout isn't just stress. While stress feels like having too much to handle, but still being in the fight. Burnout is that profound emptiness where you feel like you have nothing left to give. You are emotionally checked out, you are on empty, you are unable to recover, even with normal rest, and perhaps this is where you quietly quit. You show up in body, but not in mind spirit or enthusiasm. You show up in body, but not in mind, spirit or enthusiasm.

Spiwe Jefferson:

So today I wanted to give you one powerful intervention that can rewire your relationship with work and rest, and that is strategic time off. Now, before you start saying, oh Spiwe, I don't have time for all that. That is a luxury for people with money. I don't have time, I don't have money, I can't afford to go off for some fancy schmancy vacation. I can't afford to be away from work. Stop, just stop, because I'm going to give you five easy ways to work breaks into your schedule. The most resilient professionals aren't just working hard. You know this. They are resting strategically as well.

Spiwe Jefferson:

Your brain's neural pathways require periods of disengagement in order to strengthen connections and process complex information. That's why we have sleep. We're supposed to do it every day, every night, for long periods of time, and you know how you feel when you haven't had enough sleep, and you know how awful your day is when you haven't had enough sleep. So we are wired biologically to take these breaks, and what appears as doing nothing is actually your mind's most sophisticated form of problem solving, of problem solving. So here are five pattern interrupting approaches that I would love you to try, and if not all five, certainly just pick one, just pick one. So what are they?

Spiwe Jefferson:

First, Embrace micro-sabbaticals, brief but complete disconnections from work. Research from the University of California found that even a 24-hour period of total work detachment can reset stress hormones and improve cognitive function by up to 37%. What a concept, especially since most of us have a two-day weekend. So schedule these brief sabbaticals quarterly, marking them in your calendar, with the same commitment you would give your most important meeting. I'll give you a personal example.

Spiwe Jefferson:

I find that over the weekend now, I work lots and lots of hours. But I do find that over the weekend, if I completely unplug from work, I am much more enthusiastic, excited, fresh and creative when I go back on Monday, compared to if I work a bit on Saturday and I work a bit on Sunday, or, worse yet, if I spend a lot of hours over the course of the weekend working, when I get back to the office on Monday, I'm tired, I feel depleted. I'm not I know I'm not as productive, I'm not as creative because there I was thinking, oh, I'm just going to push through and I'm going to get a jump on this and that, whereas it actually does not. My body does not respond that way. Coincidentally, over the past three weeks, I have taken off each Thursday and Friday. Coincidentally, over the past three weeks, I have taken off each Thursday and Friday.

Spiwe Jefferson:

First, my husband and I went to Sedona, arizona, for a long weekend. The next week we attended our niece's graduation in Alabama and finally our son's graduation in Virginia. Okay, I can't claim that I never did any work, but I did make a real effort to disconnect and be fully present, to rest. I even exchanged congratulatory messages with one of my girlfriends who was on vacation in Jamaica when we were in Arizona and both of us were literally crowing with victory over our ability to rest and recharge and do nothing. So she's sending me pictures of her legs because she's laying in a deck chair and she's facing this gorgeous view of this ocean and this pool and she's doing nothing. She's like look at me, I'm not doing anything and I am in a wicker chair by the pool in Arizona, at this resort, and I am sending her pictures of me doing nothing, and so we are both celebrating the fact that we are taking time to rest, which tells you something about how we usually operate. So if you are like me, then this will resonate with you.

Spiwe Jefferson:

Second, implement the 10-minute nature reframe. Neuroscience research has demonstrated that even brief exposures to natural environments triggers alpha brainwaves associated with creativity and reduced anxiety. The psychological shift begins within seconds of exposure to natural settings. So just go outside. I have a friend who goes for daily walks during all but the most extreme weather, and he swears by this practice. This doesn't require money. It doesn't require anything except you getting off your duff and walking outside.

Spiwe Jefferson:

Whether you walk around your neighborhood and you just observe the grass and the trees and the breeze and mindfully walk, be present and just experience with your body. What am I seeing, what am I hearing, how am I feeling, what am I tasting, what is going on around me? It can make all the difference. This is a deliberate cognitive reset that can activate your parasympathetic nervous system and it will make you feel better and increase your clarity. Practice strategic incompletion. Did she say incomplete, incomplete? Yes, I did incompletion. I know this is counterintuitive, but sometimes the most productive thing you can do is deliberately leave work unfinished at a natural breaking point. The Zeigarnik effect a cognitive bias where unfinished tasks occupy mental bandwidth can be leveraged to your advantage by doing this. By intentionally stepping away midpoint, after you document your next steps, your subconscious continues processing solutions while you rest. This transforms that time off from an interruption to an integral part of your problem-solving process. Just letting it go and doing something else.

Spiwe Jefferson:

I have found that going to bed mulling over a challenge that needs a solution can be incredibly effective. God-lovers, give the problem to God and ask Him to help you solve it. When you wake, you may find that you have a solution with such clarity that it seems obvious and you're surprised you didn't see it before. So try that. Fourth, create ritual boundaries between work and rest, because your brain responds to symbolic transitions. This is one of the reasons why I strongly advocate and a fundamental component of the Mindful in 5 approach is this idea that your day will go better if you begin it by taking at least five minutes in the morning, by sitting in stillness in the same place, in the same way every day, because your brain will automatically start to go into that calm mode that makes it easy to shut off the five senses and go within and focus internally if you continue to do it day in, day out and you create a habit out of it. So why am I suggesting ritual boundaries between work and rest? Well, once upon a time, when many of us worked outside the home and we didn't have hybrid schedules, the ritual that we had to prepare to go to work and to prepare to come home every day created that separation between work and home. That was very natural. Well, now, if you have a remote role where you're working from home every day, or even if you have a hybrid role where you're working from home some days, you don't have that natural transition time anymore. So create it, develop a simple ritual. Develop a simple ritual. Even if it's as short as 90 seconds, that signals the end of work. Maybe it's changing clothes, it's a specific breathing pattern or getting outside for that walk as part of how you end your day. My husband and I sometimes like to go cycling at the end of the day, and that is a very natural breaking system between I just got home from work and now I'm doing this, or I just left my desk at home that is my workspace and now I'm going to go do this completely different thing and engage my mind in a completely different way. This neurological boundary setting prevents work from infiltrating your recovery time.

Spiwe Jefferson:

Finally, and this is the simplest one of all of them, I love micro breaks between projects. When I leave a meeting, for example, I will take a five-minute break. I might go to the restroom or just walk around and clear my head and think about my day from just at a high level. So if I started my day with my centering time, one of the things that I do is I also like to reflect on what are the three most important things I need to get done today so that I can go to bed at peace and not be fretting at night and working all kinds of well. I do work crazy hours, but working even more crazy hours and then being stressed out about it. So when I take that micro break, it allows me to reset in real time. Am I doing the things I intended to do today? How am I doing on those three priorities? Have my priorities shifted and, if so, should they? Should I get back on track? And what does that look like now? And it only takes five minutes. It is astounding to me how much clearer and refreshed I feel by just taking that five minute break, and it's also a form of reward.

Spiwe Jefferson:

Sometimes people have trouble with rewarding themselves in the right way. There's some people who reward themselves with food. There's some people who reward themselves with food. There's some people who reward themselves with alcohol. There's some people who reward themselves with many habits that they don't necessarily think of as healthy, but they're compelled. This is a way to reward yourself.

Spiwe Jefferson:

After every block of work that you do, ideally every 25 to 30 minutes, take a five minute break and just get away and clear your head, and you will be more productive than if you just try and power through the whole day. So all of that to say if you're one of those hard charging professionals who likes to go, go, go all the time and I'm speaking to myself too, so this is no judgment Just remember that resting does not mean you're not being productive. It is, however, the foundation of sustainable performance. Elite athletes understand that recovery isn't what happens when training stops. Recovery is what makes training effective, and that same principle applies to cognitive performance.

Spiwe Jefferson:

When designing your time off strategy, focus on quality over quantity. A fully disconnected weekend provides more cognitive restoration than a week of vacation where you are still monitoring emails. The psychological trigger is the depth of your disengagement. Ask yourself what would happen if I approached rest with the same strategic intention I bring to my work. This cognitive reframing transforms time off from an indulgence to a competitive advantage. I think the most counterintuitive truth about preventing burnout is that your greatest breakthroughs will likely come during periods of apparent inactivity. Your brain's default mode network. The neurological system responsible for connecting disparate ideas and generating insights functions optimally when you step away from deliberate problem solving.

Spiwe Jefferson:

So let's recap. I would love for you this week to try at least one, maybe even two, of these strategies to disconnect. Number one embrace the micro-sabbatical. Number two implement the 10-minute nature reframe. Number three practice strategic incompletion. Number three practice strategic incompletion. Number four create ritual boundaries between work and rest and finally, plan those five-minute micro breaks. Burnout is not inevitable. You don't have to work yourself into the ground and if you do get to it, use burnout as a signal that your current approach to work and rest needs realignment. Don't judge, don't beat yourself up. Just come up with ways to change how you are working. Let me know how it goes and share this episode with someone who could use a burnout reset Until next week. This is Spiwe saying be mindful and be well.

James@DiscovertheVoice:

Thank you for listening to Mindful in 5. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend, follow and rate it on your favorite podcast platform. Pick up your signed copy of the book and journal from spiwejefferson. com, or unsigned copies from Amazon, Barnes, Noble or wherever you get your books. Visit spiwejefferson. com to download sample chapters of the book, watch videos and become a mindful ninja. Join us on the LinkedIn Mindful in 5 group and share your thoughts. Until next time, be mindful and be well.