Is this thing on? – Fighting Burnout by Hitting Your Off Switch

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Have you ever heard of presenteeism? 

I know you’ve heard of absenteeism, where people don’t physically show up to work. It’s one of the key metrics organizations use to measure the cost of employee burnout.  

However, absenteeism only accounts for 11% of the cost of burnout.  

Over 80% of the cost of burnout is related to presenteeism, and I can almost promise you’ve danced with this devil at some point. Simply put, presenteeism is being physically at work, but mentally somewhere else entirely. It’s the sitting at your desk while astral projecting yourself to a beach chair in Cabo. Presenteeism is productivity’s silent assassin – tiptoeing around in the recesses of your mind and distracting you from thinking about anything else but the task in front of you. 

Presenteeism is a sign of neurological depletion. Your mental energy has been slowed to a gentle trickle. You’re working in bursts of a few minutes, only to space out again after quickly gassing out.  

I can’t say I’m surprised by its prevalence, though.  

When was the last time you gave your brain a break? Do you give it time to recover? Even on slower days, are you still, somehow, always on? 

Let me give you a glimpse into a life in modern times.  

Upon waking up, a screen is put directly in front of the face. Walking into the bathroom, the phone stays close by and is actively engaged with. Even while brushing one’s teeth, a YouTube video plays a couple of feet away. Then, if the person works at an office, they hop in their car and put on music or a podcast. If they work from home, they grab their coffee and swing open their laptop. While working, every few minutes, they hop from meeting to meeting, conversation to conversation, task to task, all while checking social media in between every engagement (and sometimes during them). Lunch becomes a working lunch or a lunch accompanied by some type of digital entertainment. The task switching/multi-tasking continues until the end of the day; the person drives home with a podcast or music on, gets home, makes dinner with a screen on and nearby, gets in bed, and then puts on a movie or show.  

Does that sound familiar? It does to me.  

If so, it’s important to realize that, in this type of day, the brain never gets a single moment to rest, process, file away information, or rejuvenate. It’s all energy depletion, all the time.  

Here’s the thing: Burnout isn’t always an issue of working too hard. It’s a combination of many things, one of which is working too hard without letting our brains rest between tasks. 

Our physiology didn’t evolve to be constantly stimulated 100% of our awake time, relying only on a few hours of poor-to-moderate sleep each night to restore our brain power. 

If our cave-dwelling ancestors saw how we’re behaving, they would undoubtedly club us over the heads. 

Here’s another thing worth knowing: Treating burnout is much more difficult than preventing it.  

Researchers who scanned roughly 1,365 people across 17 studies found the same pattern every time: in burned-out brains, the fight-or-flight center (amygdala) enlarges, and the critical thinking center (prefrontal cortex) thins, and the connection between them weakens. This means burnout physically alters the structure of your brain, which can take months to years to treat, and burnout occurs from never giving our brain the opportunity to shut down and reboot. 

This is why it’s so important to try to prevent burnout from setting in. However, preventing it requires some serious intentionality.  

Wiping away the “Attention Residue”

In 2009, researcher Sophie Leroy coined the term “attention residue.” The term describes the level of cognitive activity related to a task that persists after the task has ended. In other words, it’s the way in which one task bleeds into the next, reducing the ability to fully focus on the task at hand. 

Sophie proposed a solution to this concern, and it not only helps you be more productive but also helps prevent burnout.  

Sophie’s solution: Take a short break in between each task.  

Recently, one of Spirence’s content contributors and performance coach, Theresa Guinta-Johnson, also talked about this concept. She discussed the importance of time-blocking in maintaining high performance without burning out. She explained that the best high performers don’t switch from task to task, but schedule time in between tasks to recover their brain’s energy. She emphasized that people didn’t need to take a long break in between tasks, but should learn to give themselves a few moments in between opportunities if they want to consistently show up at their best.  

Research also supports this idea. One study found that taking 40 seconds to look at images of nature in between tasks led to fewer mistakes during the next one.  

There’s something about these breaks that gives your brain a chance to process the prior task, close the door on it, and move to the next one in a healthier, more sustainable manner. For me, I will take a quick 10-minute walk around my neighborhood. It may seem like a waste of time, but I’m showing up 100% (or close to it) for each task because of it, instead of at 50% because I refused to take a break between jobs. At the end of the day, taking breaks makes me more productive regardless of the time I “lose” resting. 

This concept doesn’t just apply to small, inner-day tasks either. It can apply to transitions throughout the day.  

The “Leave It at Work” Ritual

At the risk of sounding overly cliché, we live in a world of over-connection. We’re always “plugged in” to some extent, which makes it really tough to turn it off when we need to.  

I know I have an issue with phone notifications. I get this strong impulse to clear them out as they come in, but this comes back to bite me because it makes it hard for me to ever truly relax. It’s something I’ve had to do a lot of work on. As it turns out, the world doesn’t implode if I leave a few messages unread until the next day. Shocking…I know. 

I happen to love the “Leave it at work” ritual. The idea is that you do something to signify that your workday is over and your home life is resuming.  This even applies to people who work from home.  

How it works is that you develop some type of physical ritual that you engage in when the workday ends. Some people go for a walk. Some close their laptop and count to ten. Some jam out to a particular song in their car before entering the house. Regardless of what you do, you’ve got to do something physical to tell your brain, “Work is done,” and then you must honor that until the next day. That second part is the key. The ritual is the easy part; avoiding being sucked back into work is the hard part. 

You’d be shocked to find how freeing this feels if you can do it, though. We don’t realize how un-present (is that a word?) we’ve been until we become truly present. I remember one of my executive coaching clients, who embraced this idea, saying to me, “It was strange. It was like the world was full of color that I wasn’t even noticing. I didn’t realize how gray things had become for me.” 

As I mentioned earlier, these practices take intentionality. I’m asking you to swim against society’s current of constant connection. If you can, though, you’ll be surprised by how much better you feel, how much more productive you can be, and how much joy there is to be had.  

Being burned out, or on your way to it, makes the world feel bleak and lifeless. Taking a few moments to “turn it off” between tasks and embracing a transition ritual from work to home life just might be all you need to “turn life on” and get on the path to whole-person mastery. 

And, getting on the path to whole-person mastery is where Spirence can support you on your journey. We’re all trying to navigate this busy world together. Spirence offers the tools, skills, and education you need to navigate its ups and downs. To learn more, visit: SpirenceWellness.com 

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References:

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Ariga, A., & Lleras, A. (2011). Brief and rare mental “breaks” keep you focused: Deactivation and reactivation of task goals preempt vigilance decrements. Cognition, 118(3), 439–443. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2010.12.007 Springer

Chmiel, J., & Kurpas, D. (2025). Burnout and the brain—A mechanistic review of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) studies. International Journal of Molecular Sciences, 26(17), Article 8379. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijms26178379 nihmdpi

Golkar, A., Johansson, E., Kasahara, M., Osika, W., Perski, A., & Savic, I. (2014). The influence of work-related chronic stress on the regulation of emotion and on functional connectivity in the brain. PLOS ONE, 9(9), Article e104550. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0104550 nihPLOS

Lee, K. E., Williams, K. J. H., Sargent, L. D., Williams, N. S. G., & Johnson, K. A. (2015). 40-second green roof views sustain attention: The role of micro-breaks in attention restoration. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 42, 182–189. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2015.04.003 Medworm

Leroy, S. (2009). Why is it so hard to do my work? The challenge of attention residue when switching between work tasks. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 109(2), 168–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.obhdp.2009.04.002

Mark, G. (2023). Attention span: A groundbreaking way to restore balance, happiness and productivity. Hanover Square Press.

Savic, I. (2015). Structural changes of the brain in relation to occupational stress. Cerebral Cortex, 25(6), 1554–1564. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bht348 PubMed

The health and economic burden of employee burnout to U.S. employers. (2025). American Journal of Preventive Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2025.01.008 Ajpmonline

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