Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / How Career Burnout Reshapes Your Sense of Time
Transcript
- Lucas: I don't know about you, Luna, but I've had days where I sit down at my desk at 8 AM, blink, and it's somehow 3 PM and I've accomplished nothing that feels real. And yet I'm completely drained. Luna: Oh, absolutely. And that feeling that time is slipping through your fingers — it's not just you being scattered. It's actually one of the hallmark symptoms of burnout. Lucas: Right. And we're not talking about the normal 'time flies when you're having fun' thing. This is different. It's a distortion. Burnout literally reshapes your sense of time. Your internal clock gets recalibrated into what researchers call 'time scarcity' — a chronic feeling that there's never enough, which paradoxically makes you less efficient. Luna: There's actually a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology that looked at this. They had burned-out workers estimate how long a simple task would take — like formatting a spreadsheet. And they consistently overestimated by about 30 percent. Lucas: Thirty percent. So you think a task will take an hour, it actually takes 45 minutes, but you're already stressed about the hour you don't have, so you rush, make mistakes, and then you're even further behind. It's a vicious cycle. And the interesting thing is, it's not just about being busy — it's about the quality of time perception itself. Luna: There's a concept I love called 'time confetti.' It's from a researcher, I think Brigid Schulte, who wrote about how our time gets fragmented into tiny useless pieces — a minute here, two minutes there — thanks to notifications, context-switching, email dings. And after a while, you have nothing but confetti. Lucas: Time confetti — yeah, that's perfect. And burnout makes you more susceptible to that fragmentation because your executive function is already depleted. You can't resist the dopamine hit of checking your phone, and every time you do, you're carving off another sliver of attention. By the end of the day, you've had 200 slivers and zero chunks of focused time. Luna: So what's the solution? I mean, we can't exactly quit our jobs and go live in a cabin. Most of us have to operate within this broken system. Lucas: Well, one of the most counterintuitive findings from burnout research is that the solution isn't more productivity hacks. It's actually the opposite — it's about reclaiming 'slow time.' Deliberate, undemanding time where you're not trying to optimize anything. Think staring out a window. Taking a walk without a podcast. Sitting with a cup of tea and doing nothing. Luna: That sounds terrifying to someone who's burned out, honestly. Because when you're in that scarcity mindset, doing nothing feels like you're falling further behind. Lucas: It does. And that's the trap. But here's the thing — your brain's time perception is actually linked to your autonomic nervous system. When you're in fight or flight mode, your internal clock speeds up. Everything feels urgent. But when you deliberately slow down, you activate the parasympathetic system, and time literally widens. There's a study from a few years back — participants who did a 10-minute mindfulness exercise reported feeling like they had more time available, even though the clock hadn't changed. Luna: So it's not about managing your calendar better. It's about changing your physiological state. That's actually pretty hopeful. Lucas: Exactly. And one practical takeaway that I've found helpful is something called a 'time audit.' But not the corporate version where you track every 15-minute block. No. Instead, for three days, you just note down moments when you feel time pressure — when you're rushing, when you're annoyed that something's taking too long. And then you ask: was the time pressure real, or was it my burnout brain overestimating? Luna: I've done something similar. I realized I was giving myself 20 minutes to write a first draft of a newsletter — which is insane. It takes me at least 45 minutes. But I had this internal narrative that I should be faster. Once I gave myself the full 45, the pressure dropped and I actually finished in 40. Lucas: That's exactly it. You recalibrated your expectation to match reality. And that's one of the biggest shifts — moving from 'I should be faster' to 'this task takes this long, and that's okay.' Burnout makes you feel like you're behind, but often you're not behind. You're just operating on a false timeline. Luna: There's also this phenomenon called 'Sunday scaries' — that dread you feel on Sunday evening about the workweek ahead. And I've noticed that for me, the scaries are worse when I have no sense of how Monday is actually structured. It's like this amorphous block of time that feels infinite and oppressive. Lucas: That's a great point. The unknown always feels bigger. So one trick is to end your Friday by writing down three concrete tasks for Monday morning. Not your whole week, just Monday morning. That way, when Sunday evening hits, your brain has a container. It's not an endless void; it's 'write the intro, review the deck, call the client.' That shrinks the perceived time demand. Luna: And that container gives you back a sense of agency over your time, which is exactly what burnout erodes. Agency. Lucas: Speaking of agency, I want to circle back to the slow time idea for a second. Because I think a lot of us feel guilty if we're not being 'productive.' But our chronobiology — our natural circadian rhythms — actually require periods of low stimulation to reset. Without those, your time perception stays distorted. Luna: So the prescription is literally: schedule boredom into your week? Lucas: I think so. And I know it sounds indulgent, but look at it this way — if you're burned out, your brain is running a deficit. You need to pay back that time debt with genuine rest, not just scrolling social media, which is another form of fragmentation. Real rest. Staring at a wall. Letting your mind wander. That's when your brain consolidates memories and regulates emotion. Luna: I've started doing something I call 'the golden hour' — the first hour after I wake up, I don't look at my phone. I just… exist. And I've noticed my mornings feel longer. I used to wake up at 6:30 and feel like I was already behind by 7. Now, 7 feels spacious. Lucas: That's a perfect example. And it's backed by research — morning light exposure, no blue light from screens, helps set your circadian rhythm for the whole day. Plus, you avoid that initial jolt of cortisol from seeing a stressful email. You're basically protecting your time perception from the very first moment. Luna: You know, I think a lot of our listeners are probably nodding along because they've felt this — the sense that burnout has stolen their sense of time. And I wonder if there's a way to get it back that doesn't require a radical life overhaul. Lucas: Yeah, and that's what we're trying to do with this show — offer small, evidence-based switches. Not 'quit your job and move to Bali,' but 'try a 10-minute time audit' or 'guard your first hour.' And if you've found these episodes helpful in rethinking your relationship with work, we'd love it if you considered supporting the show. A couple of dollars a month genuinely makes a difference — it's what keeps us ad-free and focused on the content. If you're able, you can find us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Luna: Even a one-time contribution helps cover the research time and the production costs. And it means a lot to us that people find value in what we're doing. Lucas: Totally. Okay, back to time perception. One last thing I want to mention: there's a concept from psychology called 'flow' — that state where you're so absorbed in an activity that time seems to disappear. And burnout makes flow nearly impossible because your attention is too fragmented. But the irony is that flow is also one of the best antidotes to burnout. Luna: So you have to break the cycle. You have to protect enough focused time to get into flow, even if it's just 20 minutes a day. Lucas: Exactly. And the way to do that is to batch your distractions. Not to eliminate them — because that's unrealistic — but to confine them. Check email at 10 AM and 3 PM, not every 10 minutes. That alone can give you back hours of coherent time. Luna: So the takeaway for today: burnout distorts your sense of time by making everything feel urgent and fragmented. But you can reset it by inserting slow time, doing a time audit, and protecting flow. Small moves, but they add up. Lucas: And maybe, most importantly, give yourself permission to take up space in time. You're not a machine. Your brain needs those pauses. And when you honor that, time starts to feel more like an ally and less like an enemy.