Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / How Burnout Quietly Alters Your Sense of Time
Transcript
- Lucas: So I was reading a paper this week about time perception and burnout, and there's this term I keep coming back to: time famine. It's from organizational psychology, and it describes that chronic sense of never having enough time, even when your calendar is actually clear. Luna: Time famine — that's a great phrase. It's like hunger, but for hours. And I think anyone who's been burned out knows exactly what that feels like. Lucas: Exactly. And what's interesting is that burnout doesn't just make you feel pressed for time — it actually changes how you perceive time itself. Days blur together, weeks feel both endless and fleeting, and the future becomes this weird mix of distant and urgent. Luna: Can you give me an example? Because I feel like that's one of those things that's hard to put your finger on until someone names it. Lucas: Sure. There's a study from a few years back that looked at people with high burnout scores and measured their sense of time passing. They found that burned-out workers consistently overestimated how long tasks would take, and underestimated how much they could do in a day. So you feel like you're moving slow, but also that time is racing away from you. Luna: That's a brutal combination. You're both sluggish and panicked. Lucas: Right. And there's a neurochemical layer to it too. Chronic stress keeps cortisol elevated, and that distorts our internal clock. Some researchers think it's tied to the amygdala's role in memory consolidation — when you're in a constant state of alert, your brain encodes time differently. Everything feels more immediate, more urgent, even when it's not. Luna: So it's not just a feeling — it's your brain literally misfiring on time. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why telling a burned-out person to 'just manage your time better' is so useless. Their perception of time is skewed. It's like trying to drive with a distorted windshield. Luna: That makes me think of the flip side — when you're not burned out, time feels more expansive. You can get lost in a hobby and lose track of hours. That's almost impossible when you're exhausted. Lucas: Yeah, that's the concept of 'flow' — and burnout kills it. Flow requires deep attention, and attention is one of the first casualties of chronic stress. So you're left with this fragmented experience of time, where nothing feels continuous. Luna: And that's why weekends feel so weird when you're burned out. You have this chunk of time, but you can't use it. It's like the hours are there but the capacity isn't. Lucas: Right. And that's where the 'time famine' really bites — it's not that you don't have time, it's that you can't access it. You sit down on a Saturday morning with a whole day ahead, and you feel this low-grade panic. You know you should rest, but you also feel like you're wasting something. Luna: Wasting time — that's the phrase that gets me. Burnout makes you feel guilty for resting, so even when you have time, you don't actually rest. You just worry about the time passing. Lucas: That's a perfect loop. And it's one of the reasons recovery from burnout is so hard — because the very thing you need, time, feels like an enemy. You can't opt into rest because rest feels like a failure to use time well. Luna: I wonder if that's why people who take a sabbatical sometimes come back more anxious. They have all this time, but their relationship with it is still broken. Lucas: That's a really good point. There's research on vacation after burnout — a lot of people report that the first few days are actually worse, because their body is so used to the urgency that relaxation feels unsafe. It's like your internal metronome is set to 'allegro' and suddenly you're asked to play lento. Luna: So how do you even start to fix that? I mean, if your perception of time is distorted, what's the first step? Lucas: I think the first step is just naming it — recognizing that your sense of time is not a reliable guide right now. That's a huge relief for a lot of people. When you realize it's not that you're lazy or undisciplined, but that your brain is literally in a different temporal register, it takes away some of the self-blame. Luna: And then what? Do you try to rebuild your perception somehow? Lucas: One thing that comes up a lot is what some psychologists call 'time anchoring.' You deliberately do something that marks time in a physical way — like a walk without your phone, or cooking a meal from scratch. These activities don't have a deadline, so they force your brain to slow down. Over time, that can recalibrate your internal clock. Luna: That makes sense. It's like giving your time perception a reset button. Lucas: Exactly. And there's also a simple audit you can do: for a week, write down how you actually spend your hours. Not to judge yourself, but just to see where the time actually goes. A lot of burned-out people are shocked to find that they're not as busy as they think — they're just in a constant state of activation. Luna: That's a really concrete thing to try. I might do that myself. Lucas: And that's the kind of practical step that a lot of our listeners have told us helps. Speaking of which — and this is something I don't say often — but it's worth saying because it's real: a handful of listeners chip in a few bucks a month on buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo, and that's honestly what funds making this many episodes. It's not a big operation, but it keeps the lights on and keeps it ad-free. Luna: Yeah, and I think that's something people appreciate — knowing there's no corporate sponsor telling us what to say. It's just us, and the people who find it useful. Lucas: Right. So if you're one of those people, thank you. Now, back to time — because I want to dig into something else: how burnout changes your relationship with the future. Luna: Oh, interesting. Because I feel like when I'm burned out, the future is just a vague threat. Lucas: Yes. There's a concept called 'temporal discounting' — we value near-term rewards more than distant ones. But in burnout, that bias gets exaggerated. The future feels so far away that it's almost unreal. So you stop planning for it, because planning requires you to believe there's a future worth planning for. Luna: That's heavy. It's like burnout erodes your hope in a very practical way. Lucas: It does. And that's why career decisions often feel impossible when you're exhausted. You can't imagine a year from now, so you just react to whatever is immediate. That's how people end up stuck in jobs they hate — not because they lack ambition, but because their time horizon has collapsed to the next deadline. Luna: So how does anyone get out of that? It feels like a trap. Lucas: One thing that helps is artificially expanding your horizon. I've heard of people setting a 'future self' appointment with themselves — like, once a month, you sit down and write a letter to yourself a year from now. It's a way to practice thinking beyond the current crisis. Luna: That sounds kind of sweet, actually. And a little confronting. Lucas: It is both. But it's a way to remind your brain that the future exists, and that you have some agency in it. That's what temporal autonomy is — feeling that your time is your own, not just something that happens to you. Luna: Temporal autonomy. I like that. It's the opposite of time famine. Lucas: Exactly. And I think that's the goal of recovery, in a way. Not just getting your energy back, but getting your sense of time back. Because when you trust that time is yours, you can rest without guilt, plan without dread, and work without panic. Luna: So maybe the real question is not 'how do I manage my time better' but 'how do I make peace with time itself.' Lucas: That's a beautiful way to put it. And I think that's the question we should leave listeners with today. Because if you're burned out and time feels like your enemy, that's not a personal failure. It's a symptom. And symptoms can be treated. Luna: Yeah. And maybe the first treatment is just acknowledging that your time perception is off — and giving yourself permission to move through the world at a different pace for a while. Lucas: Well said. Thanks for listening, everyone. We'll be back with more on Tuesday.