Burnout is a massive challenge within the neurodivergent community. We often spend vast amounts of our energy navigating barriers which come from environments which don’t fit us, or situations which expect us to mask.
For the past decade or so I’ve been formally and informally coaching ND folks through burnout.
In that time I’ve noticed an interesting pattern.
Burnout is rarely about total energy… more often it’s about the efficiency of how we gain energy from sleep, and the perceived value of how our energy is used.
A few weeks ago I ended up writing a thread about it on bsky… this is a blog post version of the thread, covering the same concept in slightly more depth. I hope it’s useful to share :)
So, with that in mind, I find they the two most useful questions around burnout are not ‘where does the energy go / what feels like too much’ and instead they are:
The answer to these questions can help identify a good first step in debugging burnout and finding a way forward. Not a solution as such, but a direction to explore.
The two questions each have a ‘high’ or ‘low’ answer… which produces a natural grid of four common scenarios. Each scenario then has a different starting point for debugging and finding solutions.
Here are the most common scenarios and the starting points I’ve found to be useful.
This generally hints at sleep related issues. Possibly due to routine, maybe physical pain, possibly sensory stuff.
Debugging sleep is a good place to start… little experiments while tracking hours asleep & spoons per day can be useful to identify barriers getting in the way.
Experiments can be sensory based (bedding, changing toothpaste, different underwear) routine based (timing of sleep, meds, food ) or behaviour based (sleeping with partner, sleeping with a plushie etc).
I’ve seen folks double thier sleep quality this way. It’s remarkable.
This normally means too many demands. Theres simply too much going on; no matter how painful, something needs to stop
Working out what to drop / delegate is a good starting point. Map where the spoons go & where you want them to go.
In this scenario spoons are rarely wasted so rather than stopping one thing entirely you might be able to reduce the energy cost of a few things a little and end up in a good place.
Good candidates can be simplifying food, simplifying transport and / or simplifying social demands.
It can also be useful to map which activities are most sensitive to energy invested.
Some activities might be quite flexible, with 80% of the benefit possible with half the energy. Other activities may be inflexible so 20% less energy results in a 90% drop in benefit.
For me, email is flexible. Giving myself permission to write more direct emails reduced the energy cost by easily half… and the emails where more or less just as effective.
Conversely, my flight sim training is inflexible. It only works when I put the effort in to do it ‘properly’. Setting up the proper controls at my desk, using the procedures and even making radio calls to an empty room all have huge value. It’s very much a ‘do it right or do it later’ activity.
This is the most complex to debug.
I often find the two things interrelate. Having our energy wasted will often result in poor sleep.
It could be primarily sleep driven (in which case, start with the suggestions in scenario 1)… but it can also be a cycle of “I’m tired, so I make mistakes… i then burn even more spoons fixing the mistakes”
If that’s the case, first see what can be simplified right now… this could be work or home life related. Try to keep an eye out for times when you do things more than once… the errors brought on my low sleep might be obvious. But they can also be more subtle. For example, when I’m low on sleep, I find writing & editing text much much slower and more error prone.
Another technique is adopting the mantra ‘slow is smooth, smooth is fast’. Going slower to make less mistakes, results in less rework and ends up being faster in the long run.
If we adopt this mantra it can be mega helpful to tell people around us. That way, they know what’s happening and it won’t confuse them. It can help to set expectations. I use this technique a lot with my accessibility clients. I will be very slow to start with because i am focusing on things going smoothly with minimal rework. As we find a groove things often speed up.
Equally, high energy wastage may be an indicator of a job which just isn’t a good fit.
Sometimes this can be addressed with help from line managers and a good discussion of where energy is being wasted. It’s easy to assume line managers / leadership folk know about things, when often they don’t.
Other times, it’s part of a bigger issue. I worked at the BBC for 11 years. My spoons being wasted on fixing avoidable issues was a large part of why I left.
This type of burnout often comes from having too little autonomy or control. There is plenty of energy, but the wastage is burning it in unhelpful ways.
A good start is making a list of things you want to ‘decide about’ & working out how to gain control of those things. Many small things add up fast. Eg control of clothing, food, sleep arrangements… it’s amazing how much of a difference it can make to simply be in control. Even if you choose not to make any changes.
So erm. Hope that’s useful to share.
This is a model I’ve been slowly evolving with my own experiences and from my coaching & support stuff.
It’s inexact and vauge… but it’s about finding a starting point, trying stuff and seeing what happens.
It’s helped me a lot so I figured I’d share it. If you’d like to chat about it. Feel free to contact me via bsky or email. It’s always fun to explore these things together.
