CHAPTER 1
Don’t Get Surprised by Burnout
by Steven D’Souza
Coming back to the U.K. after an intensive, three-day consulting trip, I was on the edge of a panic attack. For a few seconds, I had a vivid “day-mare” of myself in the hospital, surrounded by doctors, with no way to cope or communicate coherently. As the vision passed, I became aware, for the first time in a long time, of a great heaviness and tiredness in my body. I realized—with some surprise—that I was burned out.
On the back of an envelope, I calculated that I had been working in over a dozen countries during the last few months—sometimes three countries in a single week. Because my collaborators and clients span time zones, the days were often long. Maybe I should have seen this ...
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