Taking a Breath: My Journey Back from Burnout and Towards?Balance.

For the past 3 months, I’ve been on a journey, a sabbatical forced by the ever-present, yet rarely discussed, monster: burnout. Let’s be honest, the tech industry thrives on hustle but rarely acknowledges the toll it takes. Over the past 12 months, I have seen more people take a step back because they could no longer find the strength to keep pushing.

Late January, I reached a point where the “always on” mentality drained the passion that fuelled my work. Disconnected, depleted, and disgruntled, I knew I had to hit pause. It wasn’t a failure, but a necessary detour. Everything that required any form of brain work(career, school, passion projects, hobbies e.t.c) felt like a blood-sucking demon and all I could see or hear was my brain screaming STOP, I can’t do this anymore. I found myself feeling depressed burdened with anxiety and panic attacks, over-delegating to get by and also just showing up physically but not mentally, my once-prized work ethic took a nosedive and for someone who prides herself in how she delivers, that wasn’t an easy thing to experience. My physical health was failing too, I was in and out of the hospital trying to figure out what was going on more times than necessary and getting the same response?—?‘we can’t find anything wrong with you’. Well, that was until I got a psych evaluation, which confirmed my initial suspicions: You are burnt out and need to take a break.

You may ask, when did I start experiencing the symptoms? Interestingly, the first wave of the burnout was in Q3 2022, right after I completed the task of establishing TalentQL’s ‘AltSchool’ office in Kigali Rwanda. This was one of the most exciting projects I had carried out at the time and I was working between 10–13 hours a day on average(Don’t do it, I promise it’s not good for you). A month after we moved into the Norrsken Kigali space I started losing concentration and would often find myself losing or jumbling words together during meetings, I was isolating myself more and feeling out of touch with myself, took a 3 weeks vacation, went on to experience the refreshing crisp of the Montréal bagel and obligatory poutine. I returned to work feeling refreshed, and excited, feeling more in tune with myself and I thought I was just tired and needed a break, nothing to be worried about. Interestingly, two months after that I started feeling tired again, but I told myself ‘You just got back from a break, you just miss those warm bagels melting in your mouth, you need to snap out of vacation mode and return to work mode, and I did, I snapped out of it and returned my focus to work. Uhmmm well, turns out that was the beginning of my problems because what I did was place a bandaid on an untreated wound, and what do they say about those? Yeah, they get infected and spread.

Mid-2023, I began to feel the same way I felt before going on the 3 weeks vacation, this time around it was more subtle but I could feel it creeping in and this time, because more people were sharing how burnt out they were I could see the symptoms more glaringly and I knew I was getting burnt out but I told myself to keep going, one day at a time, at the end of every day, I would tell myself ’see, we made it to the end of the day’, little did I know that my push and pull was chipping away parts of me I was trying so hard to protect. By December, I took my annual leave, allowed it to align with the holidays so I could have some extra 2 weeks. During those 4 weeks, I spent time volunteering for different causes: increasing access to free medical aid and enabling women and young adult business owners to run more sustainable and scaleable businesses, truly a time was had, and I went to bed feeling so refreshed and fulfilled. I also spent lots of time with family, besides, some time with loved ones, some time doing humanitarian work, and some time alone, bliss! Going on a break for a month should fix me right back up, right? Right? Well, wrong! I resumed work like we all did in January and something was missing. Yeah, in some ways, I’d say my will to work stayed back home in northern Nigeria.

January 2024, I had big plans for Q1, at work, personally and even for the entire year, but it was one of the most mentally stressful month for me. It felt like I was dragging my brain over hot granite for it to show up. They say burnout comes in waves, recall that I have had two waves already, this third wave was even more brutal, I was zoning out of conversations(I know we all do this in boring conversations but we don’t zone out for 10–15 minutes straight), while writing or speaking, I get lost mid-sentence, chains of thoughts became lost more often within a single conversation, I began to over delegate, all of the places & people I loved to spend time with, I couldn’t stand, I wasn’t sleeping anymore, when I did I woke up with tears soaked pillows because I dreaded waking up to face one more day of this endless loop, I was having series of anxiety attacks daily, nothing that made sense before made sense anymore, I was losing time, It was almost like I was zoning out on life.

The final straw? Zoning out during a crucial meeting and a panic attack in early February. That’s when I knew it was time to hit the brakes?—?hard.

Taking a break wasn’t exactly zen. My workaholic nature kicked in, and I latched onto a new “community-driven” project to fill the void. Deep down, I knew I was clinging to a shred of normalcy because, for someone who is always on the go, it felt weird not doing anything at all. Thankfully, my Stanford GSB LEAD Trailblazers community had my back, they helped me acknowledge that it was okay to take a break when I asked for tips, a few jumped on check-in calls with me and on one of those check-ins Ba?ak Büyük?elen (a fellow LEADer and burnout survivor) had a particularly honest conversation with me and pushed me to answer some really hard questions, that 30 minutes call allowed me to finally let go, I dropped anything & everything and just let go. That conversation allowed me to properly start my healing journey.

This break allowed me to rediscover the things that make me, well, ME. Lots of self-reflection, quality time with loved ones, recharging through the joys of KDrama and a lot of Star Trek, curling up with a good book (fiction, not white papers!), remembering the pleasures in the rhythmic click-clack of knitting needles(I had always loved to knit as a child in primary school), these became my havens. I also had to be honest with myself about the unhealthy patterns I had engaged in and redefine what made sense for a better version of me to not find myself back in this hole, I had to let go of some things and people, and I also got to pick up new patterns and nurtured some new and existing relationships.

3 months down, now, back at it, but I’m approaching work differently. I am intentional about the projects I take on, boundaries are my new best friend(don’t be jealous Jo), and scheduling “pause moments”, are my new mantra. Is there such a thing as a perfectly balanced life? Maybe not. But I’m committed to building a life where work fuels me, not drains me. A life where I can be present, creative, and yes, even a little bit dancing-queen-esque (don’t judge!). The truth is, while I am happy to be back because I feel more in tune with myself, I feel different, I don’t know how to explain it(yet) but something has changed within me. My good friend Victor Ekwealor mentally prepared me and articles further helped me accept how you don’t fully recover from burnout, you process it, you find better ways to not be on the far end of the spectrum and you find a whole new meaning and patterns that keep you feeling more alive and inching away from it fully, it takes years to recover. So while I am back, I know deep down that I am not completely healed because healing is a journey; I ripped the band-aid off after my chat with Basàk and started treating the wound, and I am committed to getting it fully healed, so all that’s left is a beautiful scar, a reminder that I am not a robot and life isn’t all about work and those ‘pause moments’ are truly important to live a more balanced and fulfilled life because it is possible with the right sacrifices and boundaries.

Here’s the thing: burnout is real, and it can happen to anyone in this fast-paced industry. So, I ask you: are you prioritising your well-being? If the answer is a hesitant “maybe,” take a deep breath. It’s okay to pause. It’s okay to re-evaluate.

Sharing my story is my way of saying, “We’re not alone.” The more we talk about burnout, the more we can rewrite the narrative. We can build a tech ecosystem where innovation thrives alongside mental and physical well-being. So have a pause moment today, not as a sign of weakness, but of strength.

Week one back at work down, healthier weeks, months and years to go!

Have you battled burnout? Share your tips and stories in the comments below! Let’s rewrite the burnout script, together.

#burnout #wellbeing #worklifebalance #techlife #mentalhealth #sabbatical #selfcare