Train the shut-off, not just the stress

Burnout is easy to read as a personal coping failure, but the more accurate frame is an input problem on top of a broken shut-off. Being spread too thin keeps the stress system chronically on, and every low-return “yes” is another hit on a system already running hot. So the first move is subtractive: audit where bandwidth is leaking — which commitments, inputs and novel stressors keep re-triggering you — and decline the low-ROI ones, rather than trying to cope harder with the same load. Avoidance is not the alternative; hiding from stress carries its own documented health cost. The goal is to lower unnecessary input while raising how much the body can tolerate.

The second move trains the part that actually breaks: the return from stress to rest. Three levers help. Low-intensity aerobic work — roughly 150 minutes a week at a conversational pace you can still talk through — raises vagal (parasympathetic) tone, lowers resting stress hormones and expands mitochondrial capacity. Brief, voluntary stressors such as a sauna session, cold exposure or lifting something heavy rehearse the transition out of sympathetic arousal, so the system learns to switch off faster. And direct down-regulation supports — protected sleep, hydration, in-person connection, and deliberate parasympathetic activation — give the system somewhere to land. Stack several of these rather than relying on any one.