I have to tell you about something that happened a few weeks ago.

I was on a Zoom call with a group of consultants and one of them got really honest. He said he’d gotten so burned out in March that his brain literally stopped working. Not tired. Stopped. He had to cut his workload way back before he came back to himself. It has actually taken months to recover.

Nobody flinched. Everybody in that Zoom room knew they had been close to that and it resonated.

I remember thinking, good for him for saying that out loud. What I did not think was, could I be close to that edge?

The last month has been a lot. My move is always to push through. Friday is a day I set aside for client project work, so I keep telling myself I’ll be fine by the weekend. But this Friday I was facilitating strategic planning for a board I sit on. All day. It was a little unusual, but I thought “I’ll be fine.”

At 3:00 I hit the wall. I was D-O-N-E. It took me all weekend to come back.

Here’s the brain part, because it helps to know what’s going on in there. When stress stays high, cortisol stays high, and the prefrontal cortex starts shutting down first. That’s your judgment, your planning, your ability to keep your face neutral when somebody says something ridiculous in a meeting. You get foggy, you get flat, and you can’t make a call you’d normally make with no problem.

Vacation doesn’t fix it, either. Please don’t fall for that. There’s real research on the “fade out effect”. Whatever a week off gives you is mostly gone within two to four weeks. Not to mention all the work it takes to gear up to go and then re-integrate back.

Here is what research says actually works:

Detaching every day, not once a year. Not just away from your desk. Out of it in your head. Sonnentag’s research shows daily mental disengagement predicts recovery better than time off does. It’s a discipline.

Getting completely absorbed in something. Scrolling doesn’t count. Half watching a show doesn’t count. You need the kind of focus where you lose track of time, because that’s what refills the tank. Being out in nature is preferred.

Cutting the load. Delegate it, automate it, or quit doing it. So much of what’s wearing you down is admin nobody needed you to do anyway. Continuing to work that way shows you don’t trust your team and, honestly, fiscally irresponsible to spend your time on those types of tasks anyway.

So, here’s what I changed. This weekend I worked backward on my calendar and started blocking Monday afternoons as “CEO Block” – the creative work that is need ON my business. Not client deliverables. Not email. The projects/content I want to build, the ones that never happen because they’re never urgent.

That and my Friday client project work time are the only thing on my calendar I won’t move.

And notice where it sits. Monday. Not Friday. Not as a reward for surviving the week if there’s anything left of me. I am going to stop treating my well-being like a trophy and think of it more as a lifestyle.

If you want to discuss any of this, I would love to! DM me and I’ll make some time available,

Cristina “Creating Perfect Days” Filippo