031: What Are the Causes of Burnout and How to Deal With It

Stephen Yeh and Mike Chang dive into the concept of burnout, exploring its meaning, causes, symptoms, and strategies for recovery. 

They discuss burnout as a state of mental and physical exhaustion where one is unable to function due to severe stress, leading to symptoms like persistent headaches, injuries, and an overall sense of energy depletion. 

Mike shares his recent personal experience with burnout, characterized by intense headaches and an inability to concentrate, attributing it to a significant increase in workload and neglecting self-care essentials like sleep, movement, and nutrition. 

He emphasizes the importance of foundational health practices in preventing and recovering from burnout, recounting his own recovery process through extended rest, reduced workload, and self-care routines. 

The conversation also touches on the necessity of balancing work demands with health maintenance to achieve long-term success and the realization that excessive work without adequate rest can diminish overall productivity and well-being.

Connect with Mike Chang:
- Instagram: @mikechangofficial
-Youtube: Mike Chang
- Website: www.flow60.com

Connect with Stephen Yeh:
-Instagram: @iamstephenyeh
-Twitter: @iamstephenyeh

Transcript

Stephen: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of Body Over Mind. This is your host, Stephen Yeh, with your co host, Mike Chang. Today, we are going to talk about what it means to have burnout, what the causes of burnout are, as well as the symptoms and also how to deal with it. Mike, what would you say burnout means to you?

Burnout 

Mike: means that we're not able to function mentally or physically. I think sometimes when we get close to burnouts, we may feel, like we're really stressed. Which are good symptoms that burnout is coming. We may experience some injuries in the body. We may experience some discomforts, energetic drain, but a real burnout is where you can't really function.

Your head is hurting to the point to where you just can't focus. You can't think like you're mentally and physically. The body is just so drained that you [00:01:00] can't do the thing you need to do. You can't really walk around much. It's like the body's given up, so to speak, just breaking down.

I think this subject is something good to talk about. And the reason why is because I recently just experienced one. And so I thought it'd be a really good subject to talk about. And about three days ago, I experienced. Where my head was hurting so bad that I couldn't think or focus. And before that I started to experience the symptoms.

However I didn't slow down too much. I just kept on going. I've been really busy, lots of work, so I just kept going. I'm going with my normal 14, 16 hour days, five, six days a week, sometimes more. And. Then three days ago, I felt that pain come through and unlike just a normal headache that comes and it's gone, this one stayed and it just stayed throughout the day [00:02:00] and then by the nighttime, it continuously stayed, there was no downtime, it just was always there and it increased in pain when I, Was to think or focus on anything and it was very clear it was not a normal headache It's not I'm not just getting sick.

This is a mental burnout. 

Mike (2): Hmm 

Stephen: I've seen you work. It's not normal for you to work 14, 16 hour, days.

Why do you feel like you're experiencing burnout nowadays compared to in the past? 

Mike: I think from two reasons. I think the first thing is because there is a tremendous amount of increase in workload in the past, I would say about the past two months. More than before by far, new departments, venturing into new projects, just new things, building out new teams, and just a lot more work and work that I'm not good at doing all of this.

Some, but not all. So it's very challenging. [00:03:00] I think the other big component was. That I was feeling sick right before experiencing the burnout. So in other words, if I did the foundational three things, which is sleep, move and eat good, there was a chance that I wouldn't have had the burnout, but before the burnout happened, I was feeling sick and I realized that I can feel it in my body.

I started getting some aches and so I knew, okay, I need to take it easy. Okay. So I slowed down a little bit, but it wasn't enough by that time it was already the body's immune system was already very low. So those are the two things I didn't take care of my body like I usually would. And on top of that, a tremendous increase in workload.

So, , so what I did was really simple. It's nothing fancy. All I did was get a tremendous amount of sleep. The first night I slept only, it's only been [00:04:00] two nights since this happened. First night, I slept maybe about 13, 14 hours. I slept in a separate room from my wife and son because my son wakes up a lot of times throughout the night and that disturbs the sleep.

And the second night I slept, the first night that actually, this is not third day, it's actually the fourth day, because the first night I slept in the bedroom with them and that wasn't a good idea. I tried to get this sleep, but I didn't get that good of a sleep. I woke up I still felt it a little bit better, but I still felt it, I just kept waking up.

So the second night I slept in a separate room, and I got good amount of sleep, about 13, 14 hours. And then the second night, same thing. And that was this morning and every night since I've been getting the extra sleep and I've been feeling better and better. That was one thing. The second thing is I canceled pretty much almost all of my meetings and just taking it really easy.

I'm still working, but I'm working [00:05:00] very minimally compared to how it was. My eyes was hurting so bad and sometimes people think I wear contacts and they will think, Oh, something's wrong with my contact, but because I had this happen so many times, I knew it had nothing to do with the contacts. Yeah, I do need to take them off.

So I took them off and I don't wear them. And now I'm just wearing my glasses. And most of the time, I'm not even wearing the glasses because when I focus, my head hurts. That's how bad it was. So even today, I didn't wear my contacts. I just had glasses. And even right now, my glasses are off.

I wear them and there they are. So I take them off. So this way, it helps me to not focus as much because everything's more blurry. So I don't focus as much, so simply by relaxing, by taking it easy and by getting a tremendous amount of sleep and eating a lot less, I usually have a pretty big appetite [00:06:00] and I purposely kept it really simple.

I skipped a meal or so and usually eat about three to four meals a day. I'm at about two now. Just those basic things, it's exactly what a person would want to do on a daily basis. They wanted to keep up with their health, to have optimum health, but when our health goes down or something like this happens, if we just start doing the right things, it can come back.

Now, I have been known to, to heal faster than a lot of people around me. I've seen this over the course of my life. For me, by the end of today, once I sleep, the next day, tomorrow, I'll be fine, because I'm about 85 percent right now. I don't feel it much, but it's still there. I can feel it a little bit, but not much.

So by tomorrow, I'll be fine. Most of the time when I talk to people with burnout, they'll experience weeks. They'll have to take at least a couple weeks off. Or taking it really easy for at least two weeks, but my recovery time is usually a little faster. Mm. [00:07:00] So little 

Stephen: bit. That's, I, uh, sounds like a lot faster.

Mike: The funny thing is I've always seen myself to be like, Wolverine just recover. Mm. And, I think there's, part of it is just because of my genetics. I can't say it's just because I take care of myself, no part of it is genetics. It's a big part. But the other part is also because I take care of myself.

I have all these years of training, like I can switch off and just start eating clean right away and start training. I stretch even more and now my stretches are even deeper and I spend time just sitting in stretches throughout the day versus before I drop into them quickly and then I'm out doing what I need to do.

Now, I would just spend time going into the stretches repeatedly. And so I'm just doing a lot of these extra things, but I've built a habit of doing them over the years. So now when I'm not feeling good, I can do them effortlessly. If somebody didn't have those habits, which most people don't. So then [00:08:00] even if they're trying to now move around a little bit, their little bit of movement is like nothing.

, it's just, it's not even doing anything. And then the idea that if they were to try to go in and stretch for an equivalent of two and a half hours a day, for them, like their body probably couldn't even handle that. But because my body can handle it. So then I do it. And then when I do it, the recovery speeds up that much faster because we're just not allowing anything to stay blocked.

Everything is flown. And the first day I was barely able to breathe. And then I would stretch and stretch. And then my nostrils open, which means I know that energy and oxygen circulate. And then every day when I'm doing the stretches, I'm eating less, I'm staying more relaxed. I can tell my energy is flowing because my breath, my nostrils are open.

That's how you can tell. Most people's nostrils get blocked when they're sick and when they're not well. So if you just check your nostrils, you always know how you're doing. If you're blocked, your energy is low. Your mind's not sharp. 

Stephen: It sounds [00:09:00] like you started to get the burnout with two reasons.

One is the, just the extra load of work that has been happening right now. The other one, it just sounds like you, you haven't been taking care of yourself as much as usual. The first one, it doesn't sound like it's going to go away anytime soon. Right? Probably your workload is going to continue to be where it's at or potentially even increase.

So how are you going to make sure. That you can continue to do the work without experiencing burnouts over and over again. 

Mike: I will have to increase more breaks. I usually don't give that much breaks. I just go from one thing to another. Now, that to me is like a sprint. Which is like this constant sprint every day.

So, with the one day of family day on Sundays, it still wasn't enough. Because then I would just go 14, [00:10:00] 16 hours in a day. So what I plan to do differently now is, well, reduce the hours on a daily basis. Because when we need a sprint, we sprint, because you need to, because things need to get done, but it doesn't make sense to sprint until you get burned out, until you get, so you get physically, mentally injured.

And then you can't. Do any more, and therefore the total amount of gain is actually less as if we just don't even look at health and we just look at the performance, look at the results, you're going to get less results. So if you want the most amount of results, you got to be consistent, right? You can't just go and speed it up and then drop off.

And when you come back, you're trying to pick it up. You'd lost momentum already. So for the sake of results, still got to take it easy. If you got a sprint for a short period. Don't make it into this [00:11:00] long thing. My mistake was sprinting too long. There's a principle called expand your limitations.

And it's simply that, expand your limitations, know how far you can push yourself. But then how do you know when you hit the edge? For me, that's how I know, that's how I found out. So I've been sprinting like this for, I don't know how many, months, at least. No, actually longer.

For a long time. Yeah. Cause it's six months since, since I got back to Bali. And then before that, when I was on the road, you should have seen, but it wasn't 14, 16 hours on the road. I gotta say. I worked, definitely worked, but it was just us three. So I wasn't doing this many hours.

So I would say this was about six months, pretty much, six days a week, almost every week, 14, 16 hour days. Yeah. Yeah. So then that's where my limits at. 

Stephen: Did you notice, the weeks coming up to this point [00:12:00] of any shifts and changes? Did you notice any symptoms come up and you're like, no, I can just keep going?

And if you did, what were they? 

Mike: I noticed it was easier for me to get injured. I started feeling little pains, pains in my right knee, pain in my left shoulder, pain in my neck, I think a right side of my neck, kind of traps area. So I started seeing these, little pains. So I knew it wasn't coming from the exercises because nothing really changed there.

So I tried to take it a little easier, but it wasn't really enough. I basically just relaxed and then let go of the tension so the pain won't be as high and it helped. And the thing is, if I got enough sleep, I could have sustained this work schedule. But personally for me, I'm not saying that this is something that somebody else should do, but I know my own body.

And if I got the actual sleep, [00:13:00] 14 to 16 hour days, I can do that for a good amount of time. I've done that for a long time before, but because I didn't get the sleep. That's the, , that's the number one thing that I can't cheat. If I don't get the sleep. I will break down. It's just a matter of time.

And that's what happened was the last two months or so, my sleeping has been a little off. I would get, maybe two days of really good sleep and about five days of so so to just not good. Not good would be about four to five hours. So so would be six to seven, sometimes with some interruptions, good sleep.

Maybe about eight, eight hours or so I need good sleep. If I can get good sleep, five to six days a week, I'm fine with the workload. It wouldn't even, bother me because I don't see work like a stressful pressure thing. [00:14:00] It's just everyday life. It's just having a conversation, but if I don't sleep, then it just breaks down.

So that's the main thing. Only because a person like me is , already taking care of the other two functions, which is eating decent and getting the movement. If a person's not doing those two things, then they need to do all three. They need to make sure they're moving, they're eating and they are sleeping.

But because I was doing the other two, I was able to get away with less sleep for just a little bit before eventually it caught up. 

Stephen: I'm just surprised that you can get away with five days of not such good sleep. I guess I'm not surprised.

I see how you work, but for me personally, even one or two days straight of like subpar sleep, I can feel it for the rest of the day. It really sucks actually, because if I don't [00:15:00] get the proper amount, I can feel just how much it can affect my state. Sometimes I can get away with one, but especially once it comes to two, three days in a row, I can feel this lethargy throughout and movements and cleaning.

It can help some, but really for me to really recover. It takes just a good night's sleep. And then I get back on track, but I think, um, yeah, like you said, I think everybody has their own kind of genetics involved. And for me, I almost, I remember growing up and starting to do better habits. And what I realized was.

When I get off the track, even just for a little bit, even just going when I was younger and I would go to the club or a bar until 1, 2 a. m. Some of my friends are going like the whole night, they go until 4 or 5 a. m. I'm like, [00:16:00] how do you even do that? I go home, I get to sleep around 2, let's say, and when I wake up, I'm like, I need a whole day recovery from that, but yeah, it definitely feels like those three factors, sleep is one of the main ones, right?

I'm glad that you started to, I guess you've known about it, but I guess the symptoms finally caught up. 

Mike (2): And for 

Stephen: a period of time, you just got to. 

Mike (2): Yes, sometimes 

Mike: We just need the reminder, it's always needed to do the best we can with the habits that we have, but we also got to balance it out with what it is that we want to accomplish.

I think everybody likes to like to believe in this idea that everything is to live as balanced as possible and just have everything. They'll just have everything in their life checked and everything is great. [00:17:00] However, as much as a person would like to believe that this is the key to having a great life and this is what it takes to be successful.

When you talk to people that have succeeded in whatever it is that they want to do, you're going to find very different stories A very different story. Most of the time, what you're going to find is stories that are similar to something I'm sharing right now. You're going to bust your butt. You're going to work your ass off.

You're going to be imbalanced for a while. And that's what it took to create a foundation, create the baseline, to build up, and then at some point you start to get past that part, that startup part where most people either make it or break it, and most people break. They can't get past that part. It's too hard.

But the people that have strived, the people that stuck to it, committed to it, they get past it and then it becomes a little bit easier. They still work, but a little bit easier. And then [00:18:00] eventually things start to flow more. They've got support. They've got teams, they've got revenue. They actually have positive net profit and not just making money and then burning it with building it up.

And then they start to focus on the balance. And then you look at their life and they have balance and they talk all about the balance. I found that a lot of times what happens, I haven't heard much stories about somebody who's balanced right in the beginning. Oh yeah. No, I always made sure I have a balance in all of this.

And then we built this company from nothing to the ground up. No investors, just sweat equity. Having balance to take vacations, having balance to have our off days, working just eight hours a day, taking our breaks, taking the kids out to play. Bullshit. 

Mike (2): Doesn't happen. That's 

Mike: a one in very few. Everybody else that actually succeeded.

You see the people that actually say that they haven't succeeded. They haven't accomplished what they want. Success is just, it's [00:19:00] relative, but they haven't accomplished what they want. This is usually a person who has a dream, but they haven't accomplished it because once they actually start to go after it, they will find a different story.

So therefore, That being said, going all the way back, nothing is wrong with working hard, putting in the hours when you're doing something you're passionate about, when you're going after something, you know, is part of your purpose in life right now, but just take it for me, you can't last for a long time. If you don't, take care of the fundamental three things, movement, sleep, nutrition, even if you miss out on one.

You're going to feel it and out of the three sleep, probably the most important, to be honest, obviously all three are equally important. I think it's really hard to say in reality, which one's important. I might just have a bias of view on that, but they're all very important. Right.

[00:20:00] If I slept really good, I'm moving, but I just eat so bad. Right. And we know how it's like that it's, could it even work out? No, I couldn't function throughout the day because. Mind's too foggy, body's inflamed, body's hurting because my eating is so bad. So then it disturbs my sleep. I can't get good sleep if I'm feeling that way, stomach is not feeling well.

So then I don't even want to move. I try to move, but it's , ultimately they're all three is just really important and 

Mike (2): our 

Mike: goals depend on it and our ability to function depends on it. 

Stephen: There we go. Going back to basics. Once again, just sleep movement. nutrition 

Mike: When was the last time you experienced this, Stephen?

Stephen: It's been a while. I also haven't pushed myself to the extreme for quite a long time. So, last time was when I had a [00:21:00] business selling on Amazon, I remember I was really focused and spent a lot of time there. And again, I think sleep was decent. I don't remember, but I was first one in last one out of the office.

I was on a computer. I remember my eyes just constantly burning all the time. It was like an everyday burn. And then just after a period of burn, I remember the experience of not wanting to look at the computer anymore. , It was almost like if you get drunk and you start to vomit and throw up, you don't even want to think about alcohol anymore.

Even the reminder of it makes you sick. That's what it felt like for me for a period of time with computers. So then I had to do a little break with that. It took a little while actually, because I was quite averse to it for a period of time. And 

Mike: how's the eyes been really hurting? Did you feel anything else?

Stephen: Yeah, there was the eye [00:22:00] pain. There was also just looking back right now, it's like this constant tension inside and also just, it was almost like automatic negativity in some ways. Whereas even if I was just sit there, it's just, some thoughts would come up without me consciously thinking, they just appear.

It was also a time where I also didn't do as much meditation and training and things like, this is. Also, the reason why I think I ended up spending a lot of time in temples and doing lots of meditation, walking meditation, sitting, just to see what was going on. I even remember when I was sitting in the temples.

And actually not even in the temples, just in general, when I look up in the sky, the clouds would form into these like evil looking Jekyll's just laughing at me. And then when I would look at the [00:23:00] wood inside of the room, I would see faces that didn't look so nice. And so that was quite an interesting experience for a period of time.

I would just, yeah. And I'm assuming it really just was reflecting on the state of my mind at the time. Yeah. A lot of, a lot of, a lot of low energy. I don't really experience that much anymore. 

Mike: Yeah. It sounds like you're on the verge. You're moving towards burnout and. Moving towards burnout, because burnout, it's just, it's relative.

What does it really mean? , when I think about burnout, I think about we lose the function. But before that, we definitely are, what you're talking about, which is you just are tired of it. You're tired of it. You don't like it. And you're seeing all the symptoms. That's the thing. There's a good chance 

Stephen: I didn't even hit burnout.

Mike: Which is good. But if you kept going, there's, there's a possibility you could have That's the thing, right? 

Stephen: [00:24:00] If 

Mike: somebody gets their sleep in, but then they are experiencing like what you were. They're just tired of looking at the computer. They just don't care about what they do.

They just hate it. They just don't like it. They may not get full burnout because they're getting the rest and they're getting a little bit of movement in, but they're just at this point where they're just so tired. I think sometimes , people call that burnout as well. 

Stephen: I guess it just matters the degree.

What I do remember now reflecting back on it is I really started to get a verse from it when I just launched a new product, a new brand, it was actually going to do exceptionally well. And then one of my competitors, they did some shady stuff and started reporting to Amazon that I infringed on their trademark, which was BS because the supplier was the one who created it.

Yeah, I'll just share it. Why not? And then my mind went into very dark places where [00:25:00] I even thought about going onto the dark web and hire someone to go over to their house and shackle them. And then, I don't know, my mind went into, I'm going to go read. One of those forbidden books of torture and figure out and go over there myself so that I can experience torturing him.

And then after that I was like, after a couple days of that, I was like, I might need to take a little break from this sense 

Mike (2): and go 

Stephen: and really go take a look at my mind and what's going on there. . 

Mike: Yeah, 

Mike (2): that's, 

Mike: that's the thing, right? When you seen, the saw one, two, and three , you may, you may get a.

You can make you some ideas. Yeah. You know, my mind will think of random things. It'll just keep going. Especially when we're feeling a little low. That's why we need to meditate every day, right? That's why we need to go and [00:26:00] learn how to relax and stay calm, do practice, and all those things. I think those are all, really important signs to let someone know that they're on the verge to experiencing burnout.

Whether you experience it like me to where your mind just breaks down, mentally break down, you just can't function anymore and you got to relax. Or if it's like you, or it's just, you just are hating it so much to where you just want to go and hurt somebody, it's like, either way, it's all, we can just all call it burnout.

I think when that happens. Again, the solution is always, so simple. It's just that people just have to take the action and do it. Doing it is tough. The solution is simple. If a person got more sleep, their body become more calm. Their body get more rested. Their mind has a chance to take a break.

If they go and do practice, not just go and just regular workout, but if they go and do a real practice that allows them to get into a peaceful state. [00:27:00] They're stretching, they're breathing, they're getting their cardio in, they're moving that energy in their body, and they're meditating, even if it's really bad, but they're able to go and create space, and they're not able to get all so clustered and frustrated in their mind.

And then having clean food allows their energy to stay flowing in the body. Even if they're dealing with the same situation, they may not have got to the point to where they're thinking about that stuff. And therefore they may have gained some clarity on maybe on another solution, maybe another way to go in and pursue the business.

Another strategy. Who knows what could have came up. 

Stephen: Hopefully you guys got nuggets of wisdom within this episode. Thank you guys once again for listening in and we'll see you on the next episode.