Burnout Didn’t Stall Her Career. Mispositioning Did.

(The exhaustion came later.)

She was hitting deadlines. Surviving reorgs. Closing out quarters. And still, nothing felt like it was moving forward.

Most people talk about burnout like it's about capacity. Too many hours, not enough rest. But the version I keep seeing in client conversations is quieter than that.

It shows up when effort stops compounding.

One client described it this way: "I'm exhausted, but I can't point to what it's building toward."

That sentence comes up more often than people expect.

In her case, the pace hadn't increased. The workload wasn't unreasonable. From the outside, everything looked fine. But the work she was doing wasn't creating signal for the next role or the next level. Another deck delivered. Another fire put out. Motion without direction.

And that's where the drain comes from.

Hard effort builds toward something. Heavy effort just accumulates. When you can't draw a line between what you're doing today and what you want next, energy leaks. Even capable, motivated people start to feel worn down by work that doesn't seem to add up.

This is why burnout can linger even when performance is strong. It isn't always about capacity. It's about clarity.

Once she could see where effort had been leaking, everything shifted. Not overnight. But within a few months, she'd landed a role that actually used what she was best at. Same talent. Same drive. The difference was that her work finally pointed somewhere.

Not all burnout is a signal to stop.

Some of it is a signal that effort has lost its direction.

And once you can see that clearly, the fix isn't rest. It's redirection.

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Onward.