There was a period in my life when I could reliably count on burning out once a year. I could almost set my clock on it. By November, the early warning signs would surface – fatigue that sleep didn’t fix, irritability, a creeping sense of detachment. By December, I’d inevitably be rundown and fighting sickness – just in time for Christmas.
Comedically (at least to me), this was during my university years when I was blissfully free of responsibility. These days, I don’t have time to burn out. Instead, I get by with semi-regular ‘mini meltdowns’ (i.e. temporary loss of composure), carefully scheduled somewhere between “after school snack” and “bath time”.
As it turns out, I am far from alone.
Women’s Agenda’s 2025 Ambition Report found that nearly three in four women have experienced burnout in the past year. Many point to the collision of work and caregiving demands; others cite poor leadership and unrealistic expectations. So common is this experience that some working mothers admit to fantasising about disappearing for a while – a non-life-threatening case of mono/glandular fever/Covid, perhaps. Preferably something contagious that keeps people at a safe distance.
To be clear, this is not about wishing to be sick so much as a yearning for relief. A desire to escape from the relentless responsibility of people who need stuff from us.
This isn’t a failure of resilience. When capable, committed women begin imagining escape just to rest, the question is not how we can cope better. It is a signal that something is out of balance in the way we live and work today.
Burnout is more than being tired
We often use the term ‘burnout’ to describe bone-deep exhaustion, but that is only part of the story. Burnout, classified in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) as an occupational phenomenon, is characterised by three dimensions:
- energy depletion or exhaustion
- cynicism or detachment from one’s job
- reduced professional efficacy
From my work with leaders in large organisations, I know that burnout rarely arrives in one dramatic moment. Instead, it creeps in. First comes the exhaustion (“I’m so tired I could sleep for a week”). Then the detachment and cynicism (“What’s the point? Nothing changes”). Then the quiet erosion of confidence and meaning (“Maybe I’m not cut out for this” or “It’s just a job now”). By the time we call it burnout, the warning lights have been flashing for months.
When work becomes unsustainable
Decades of research show burnout isn’t random. It emerges when the demands of work consistently exceed the resources we need to meet them.
- Finishing the day’s work, then logging back on at night just to keep up.
- Being expected to respond instantly while juggling meetings, messages and shifting priorities.
- Carrying the team’s emotional load because you’re the ‘caring one’.
- Doing a full day at work followed by a full shift at home.
- Being the reliable high performer who gets more work, not more support.
When demands stay high and resources stay low, exhaustion and disengagement rise. When people have clarity, support and control, engagement and wellbeing improve.
Put plainly, burnout is the result of unbalanced systems, not an inability to cope.
A gendered lens
To talk about load, we need to talk about total load – not just workload.
Australian women perform around 32 hours of unpaid care and domestic work each week – about nine hours more than men (WGEA). And while flexible work has increased, it often expands working hours rather than reducing them.
Microsoft’s Work Trend Index shows work bleeding into the margins of the day, with nearly 30 per cent of employees checking email after 10pm and more than 40 per cent online before 6am. But when this boundary erosion collides with unequal care responsibilities, the impact is not evenly felt. For many women, evenings were already occupied by caregiving and household responsibilities. When paid work resumes after dinner, the result is not just a second shift, but a third – one that erodes recovery time and compounds fatigue.
Ambitious working mothers may be particularly at risk because the very qualities that drive success – commitment, care for others, reliability and high standards – can also drive self-neglect. For these women, self-care becomes another task to squeeze into an already impossible day. Burnout, in this context, becomes the cost of sustained over-functioning.
From endurance to sustainable work design
Seen through this lens, burnout stops looking like a personal failure and starts looking like a design flaw. When work requires people to always be on, to absorb expanding demands without relief, and to recover in time that no longer exists, exhaustion is not a weakness – it is a predictable outcome.
We can keep teaching individuals to cope better, or we can redesign work so it can actually be sustained. Only one of those approaches addresses the root cause.
What fixes burnout is rarely a wellbeing program. It’s work design. Leaders can start by getting brutally clear on what matters most (and what can wait), reducing meeting and message overload, and protecting recovery time. Then back it up with autonomy, role clarity, and resourcing that matches expectations. When the system changes, wellbeing follows. And at a time when technology, demographics and expectations are reshaping the world of work, we have a rare opportunity to design something better.
Because when exhaustion becomes normal, that’s not a resilience problem, it’s a design flaw.