The Real Cause of Burnout

We’ve been having the wrong conversation about what causes burnout.

The story goes like this: We’re all working too hard. We’re glorifying the grind. We need to set boundaries, take more vacations, and learn to say no. Hustle culture is toxic, and if we could just hustle less, we’d all feel so much better.

Five years ago, I had to rebuild my life from scratch. Was it difficult? Of course it was. But it was much, much easier than all the previous times I had to reinvent myself and reconstruct my life.

Why? Because I finally figured out what motivated me to make the change in the first place.

Purposelessness.

This led to an even more important understanding, that might indeed ruffle some feathers: The real cause of burnout is a lack of purpose.

The Not Altogether Innocent Hustle Culture Scapegoat

Don’t get me wrong—I’m not here to defend 80-hour work weeks or the “sleep when you’re dead” crowd. But blaming hustle culture for our collective exhaustion is like blaming the fever for the infection. We’re treating the symptom and wondering why we’re not getting better.

The conventional wisdom says we’re burning out because we’re working too hard. The solution, then, is to work less. Take that sabbatical. Set those boundaries.

And yet, how many people do you know who’ve taken a two-week vacation only to return feeling exactly as unmotivated as when they left? Who spend their Sundays with a knot in their stomach that no amount of “self-care” can untie?

The vacation didn’t fail them. Their reasoning failed them.

The Purposeless Hustle Paradox

Here’s what I’ve observed after working with countless people navigating major life transitions—career changes, retirement, unexpected pivots: People will work incredibly hard, for incredibly long hours, on things they find seriously meaningful.

Think about the founder who’s launching a passion project. They’re working 14-hour days, fueled by cold coffee and sheer determination. Are they burned out? Sometimes physically tired, yes. But emotionally depleted? Rarely.

Consider the researcher on the verge of a breakthrough, or the artist finishing their masterpiece, or the person coordinating care for a loved one. These people are pouring immense energy into their work—and they’re not scrolling through job boards at 2 AM wondering if this is all there is.

The difference isn’t the hours. It’s the why.

When you’re disconnected from your deeper purpose, hustle becomes a desperate attempt to find meaning in sheer volume. It’s like running on a treadmill in a burning building—you’re expending tremendous energy, but you’re not actually getting anywhere, and the environment is slowly killing you.

The exhaustion doesn’t come from the movement. It comes from the futility.

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The Vacation Band-Aid

I once worked with a client—let’s call her Sarah—who was a director at a consulting firm. High achiever. Always delivered. Her calendar was a game of Tetris that would make your head spin.

She came to me after her third “burnout vacation” in two years. Each time, she’d take a week or two off, return feeling somewhat recharged, and within 72 hours, the dread would settle back in like London fog.

“I don’t understand,” she told me. “I’m doing everything right. I’m setting boundaries. I’m delegating. I even started therapy. Why do I still feel like I’m running on empty?”

Here’s what we discovered: Sarah wasn’t burned out from working too much. She was burned out from working on things that didn’t matter to her. She’d spent 15 years climbing a ladder that was leaning against the wrong building.

Her “hustle” wasn’t the problem—it was her attempt to manufacture meaning through achievement. One more promotion. One more big client. One more accolade. Surely that would make it all feel worthwhile.

It never did.

The real breakthrough came when we stopped trying to fix her work-life balance and started examining her work-life alignment. What did she actually care about? What legacy did she want to create? What would make her excited to open her laptop on a Monday morning?

Within six months of realigning her role with her deeper purpose (in her case, mentoring emerging leaders rather than just managing projects), Sarah was working roughly the same hours. But the Sunday scaries vanished. The vacations became actually restorative, not just temporary reprieves from a life she was dreading.

She didn’t cure her burnout by working less. She cured it by working on what mattered.

Why We Confuse Exhaustion with Purposelessness

We’ve convinced ourselves that burnout is simply a resource management problem. Too much output, not enough input. The solution, we think, is to balance the equation: work less, rest more.

But this framing misses something crucial: Burnout isn’t about the quantity of energy expended. It’s about the quality of meaning implied.

You can be physically tired from meaningful work and still feel fulfilled. But no amount of rest can compensate for soul-crushing emptiness.

This is why the “work-life balance” conversation often feels so hollow. We’re optimising the wrong variable. It’s like trying to fix a broken marriage by scheduling more date nights—sure, it might help, but if the fundamental connection is missing, you’re just going through the motions.

The Life Transition Crucible

This disconnect between hustle and purpose becomes especially acute during major life transitions. Retirement. Career changes. Empty nesting. Unexpected health challenges.

These moments strip away the structures that once gave our days shape—and suddenly, we’re forced to confront a question we’ve been outrunning: Why am I even doing this?

Some people respond by hustling harder. They fill the void with more activities, more commitments, more busyness. They’re terrified of what they might discover in the silence.

Others swing the opposite direction. They embrace the “do less” narrative with religious fervour. They quit. They rest. They set boundaries. And they’re often surprised to find that the emptiness follows in their footsteps.

Neither approach works because neither addresses the real issue: the absence of a guiding purpose.

The Real Fix

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: You can’t hack your way out of purposelessness.

You can optimise your calendar, delegate tasks, set firmer boundaries, and take more vacations—and all of that might be helpful. But if you’re pouring your life force into work that feels fundamentally empty, no amount of optimisation will save you.

The real fix is deeper and more difficult. It requires asking questions like:

• What do I actually care about?
• What impact do I want to have on the world?
• What would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?
• What would make me excited to get up in the morning?

These aren’t fluffy, abstract questions. They’re the foundation of sustainable energy. When you’re connected to your purpose, “work” stops feeling like something you have to recover from. It becomes something that fills you up, even when it’s hard.

This doesn’t mean every day will be blissful. Purpose-driven work can be exhausting, frustrating, and challenging. But it’s a fundamentally different kind of tired—the good tired, the satisfied tired, the “I’m building something that matters” tired.

A Different Question

So here’s what I’m curious about: Have you ever felt more energised by working 12 hours on something you love than 4 hours on something you don’t?

Have you experienced that paradox where you’re technically “working more” but somehow feel less burned out?

Or maybe you’re in the thick of it right now—feeling exhausted despite all the “right” self-care practices, wondering why rest isn’t restoring you.

I’d love to hear your experience. Because I think the more we talk about purpose as the antidote to burnout, the more we can move past the incomplete narrative that we just need to work less.

Sometimes the answer isn’t to step away from the fire. Sometimes it’s to find a fire worth tending.

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If you’re navigating a major life transition and suspect your burnout might be a purpose problem, not a workload problem, I’d love to support you. My Purpose Pursuit protocol is designed for those who’ve never quite identified their deeper “why,” while the Purpose Pivot protocol helps those who need to realign their existing path with new chapters of life. Both include personalised one-on-one guidance to help you build a life that energises rather than depletes you. Drop me a message if you’d like to explore which approach might be right for you.