Are We Burned Out, or Just Overstimulated?

You’re exhausted, but not necessarily sleepy. You have trouble concentrating, even when you have time to focus.

You reach for your phone whenever there’s a quiet moment. Your brain feels “busy,” even when you aren’t doing anything particularly demanding.  Are you burned out, or just overstimulated?

Burnout is generally associated with prolonged stress and can involve emotional and/or physical exhaustion, reduced motivation and performance, and increasingly negative attitudes toward yourself or others.

Overstimulation, though, can happen when we’re exposed to more information, notifications, conversations, media, decisions, and sensory input than we can comfortably process.

These two phenomena can overlap, but they’re not the same thing.

Modern life rarely gives us true periods of mental quiet. There are always emails, texts, Teams/Slack, and social media messages to respond to, podcasts to listen to, AI to query, and streaming services to wade through. We are constantly multitasking, making endless decisions, and trying to tune out persistent background noise. All of these things add to stress, sometimes referred to as technostress, which involves feeling anxious or overwhelmed by the constant flow of information and technology-mediated demands.[i] 

When our bandwidth is depleted, relatively minor demands can feel overwhelming. You might experience:

• a shorter temper

• difficulty being present with your family

• feeling socially depleted

• having trouble making decisions

• struggling to transition between your workday and being home

• and being impatient when someone needs your attention.

In response to demands, we sometimes inadvertently substitute more stimulation for restoration. We’ve all fallen prey to the thought, “I’m so exhausted, so I’ll sit on the couch and scroll social media for an hour.” While scrolling may distract us, it doesn’t give our attention a chance to recover.

The answer to breaking the cycle is not to disconnect from everything – that wouldn’t be very realistic. We need technology to do our jobs and stay connected with others. Instead, consider intentional periods of lower stimulation and distinguish between activities that involve passive stimulation, such as scrolling, checking headlines, and watching short-form videos, and restorative activities, like walking, sitting outside, reading, exercising, having a face-to-face conversation, or doing something creative.

Overstimulation can be reduced by simply making the conscious effort to choose more restorative activities and giving our brains a true break. If you do engage in passive stimulation, maybe set a timer so that your five-minute check-in doesn’t turn into a 2-hour doom-scroll session.

If you're up to it, try a mental reset experiment. Over the course of 24 hours:

• Turn off nonessential notifications.

• Don’t look at your phone for the first 30 minutes after waking.

• Take one walk without headphones.

• Eat one meal without a screen.

• Choose one period of the day to check email rather than constantly monitoring it.

• Spend 20–30 minutes outside.

• Give yourself 15 minutes of genuine quiet.

• Notice how your mind and body feel afterward.

While burnout is real and we certainly want to be mindful of it, I think it’s important to contemplate that maybe we’re not always exhausted because we’re doing too much. Maybe we’re exhausted because our brains are being asked to process too much, too often, with too little genuine recovery. 

[i] La Torre, G., De Leonardis, V., & Chiappetta, M. (2020). Technostress: How does it affect the productivity and life of an individual? Results of an observational study. Public Health, 189, 60–65. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.puhe.2020.09.013