Did you know you can experience a total burnout while being head-over-heels in love with your work?

I am the living proof of that.

When we think of burnout, we usually picture people dragging themselves out of bed with dread every morning, crushed by a toxic company culture or a manager who drives them up the wall.

But when I was working as Director of Product at the fast-growing EdTech company GoodHabitz, I was absolutely thrilled with job and I adored my colleagues. I genuinely thought I could conquer the world. Then, from one day to the next, I collapsed and couldn’t even get out of bed. The brutal reality is that passion and enthusiasm can act as a dangerous blindfold, causing you to burn out completely without even noticing it.

It feels like a massive paradox, but when you love your work, a significant risk hides quietly inside your own enthusiasm.

My Very Own “Motorcycle Crash”

When I first joined GoodHabitz, we were a team of sixty people. Just a year and a half later, that number skyrocketed to four hundred. I sat on the board of directors, held ultimate responsibility for our entire learning platform, and was part of a product department that grew to two hundred people in no time. The responsibility was immense.

From the outside looking in, everything was perfect. I had a beautiful career, a great salary, and I went to work every single day with a massive smile on my face.

I often compare a burnout to a motorcycle accident. If you sleep poorly one night, you can still safely get on your bike. But if you sleep poorly, have a beer, it starts raining, someone cuts you off, and you happen to be speeding, you are practically begging for a crash.

For me, too many things collided at the exact same time. Corona hit, we were forced to work from home, and the company was growing at a breakneck pace. Simultaneously, my fiancée became pregnant with our first child, and we were dealing with some family stress in our private lives.

I never saw it coming, precisely because my work gave me so much positive energy.

Until one day, everything broke down. Our son was only four months old when I completely collapsed. It marked the beginning of a three-year journey of total exhaustion.

Where the Risk Hides Inside a Job You Love

A great job is not the villain here. It is an absolute blessing to have a career that makes you happy. However, that very passion creates a few blind spots that make it incredibly easy to ignore your body’s warning signs.

When your work is boring or mind-numbing, you naturally protect your boundaries much better. You count down the hours until you can leave and shut your laptop precisely at five o’clock. The line between work and personal time is crystal clear.

When your heart is in your work, that line blurs. These are the subtle traps I fell into myself:

The internal battery warning disappears: Because you love the work, your brain pumps out high amounts of adrenaline and cortisol while you perform your tasks. This completely masks your fatigue. You only feel the exhaustion when it is already too late.

The urge to always stay ‘on’: When you are enthusiastic about something, you bring it home with you mentally. You think about it in the evening, over the weekend, and even during your vacation. Your brain never gets the chance to truly disconnect and unload.

Unknowingly raising the bar too high: You want to perform so well for your team, your clients, and the success of the company that you become completely limitless. Your own health quietly slides to the absolute bottom of your priority list.

I ignored every single physical warning sign, from ringing in my ears to clenching my jaw and sleeping poorly. I simply thought: I love my work, so this can’t be the problem.

What You Can Do Right Now: Your First Step to Recovery

If you are reading this and feeling that wave of recognition, please know this first: it is not your fault. Your loyalty, passion, and work ethic are beautiful qualities. You simply deployed them so intensely that your body had to pull the emergency brake for you.

Now that you are sitting at home, the temptation to immediately analyze how this happened or how you can hurry back to that beloved workplace is incredibly strong. But that is exactly what you should not do right now.

Your very first and most crucial step is acceptance and total rest. Close that laptop. You do not have to solve or plan anything right now. Give yourself explicit permission to rest, sleep as much as possible, and just turn ‘off’ for a while. Your central nervous system needs time to calm down, and that only happens when you completely remove the pressure.

That great job isn’t going anywhere. But your health needs to come first right now.

Are you looking for help with your recovery? Click here.

Wishing you well,
Pim