The 6 Types of Burnout

Like many of you, I’ve been enjoying the thrilling ups and downs of the Winter Olympics. Between raising a baby, running multiple businesses, and building my new media platform, I’m definitely feeling like I’m burning the candle at both ends.

The burnout is real.

So the Olympics is my brief escape and reset from the relentless demands of daily life.

I daydream sometimes about how liberating it must be to be an Olympian. To have such a narrow, singular focus without other distractions.

Of course, in the real world, Olympians face their own overwhelming challenges, so it was refreshing to learn the story behind Alysa Liu, who won the gold medal for the women’s individual figure skating competition this Thursday.

It was her father, Arthur Liu, who opened up about their bumpy road towards the gold.

He shared that Alysa quit figure skating at 16 because she was burned out.

He left her in Colorado Springs to train while he went home to run his law practice and raise four other children as a single father.

She fell out of love with skating, and it took years (and many changes) for her to rediscover her passion.

Success isn’t something we’re born with. You have to be able to show up everyday for years and chip away at it.

That’s why burnout isn’t just “being exhausted.” That’s part of it sometimes, sure, but it’s the disconnect between how we are asked to show up and what actually fills up our tank.

Today, I want to share six types of burnout and how to start thinking about solving for each. It hits us all differently, and step one is understanding your relationship to burnout.

I related to that story more than I expected.

In 2024, everything hit me at once. My dog — my best friend since college — died.

My company was going through serious turbulence. My days were filled with never-ending IVF shots and a rollercoaster of hormones. And I was just... exhausted.

Not the kind of tired where you need a weekend off. The kind where you wake up and can't remember why any of it matters.

So I did something that probably sounds a little dramatic. My husband and I got in an RV and drove from Los Angeles to the Arctic. Yes, the Arctic.

It was something that had sat on my bucket list for a long time. I didn't have a grand plan.

I just needed to get far enough away from everything that I could hear my own thoughts again. So, we drove. By the end, we had passed through more than a dozen national parks across the U.S. and Canada, shared meals with cowboys, and drank water from flowing streams.

Somewhere up there, in the middle of all the silence and emptiness, I remembered what I actually wanted.

That trip taught me something: burnout isn't just "being exhausted." It's the disconnect between how we are asked to show up and what actually fills up our tank.

And that disconnect looks different for everyone.

One of the most common questions I get from you — in replies, in DMs, at events — is about burnout. How to deal with it. How to push through it. How to know if what you're feeling is even burnout or just life.

So I've been thinking about this a lot. And over the years — between running teams, building companies, and navigating very different seasons of my career — I've noticed patterns. These patterns are not just in myself, but in the ambitious people (particularly women) around me. We all hit walls. But we don't all hit the same wall.

I want to be clear: I'm not a psychiatrist. This isn't clinical. This is what I've observed from living it, and from hundreds of conversations with professionals who are building big lives and quietly struggling behind the scenes. Think of this as a framework, not a diagnosis.

First, take the quiz yourself:
→ Take the What's My Burnout Type? Quiz

Based on those patterns, I've identified six burnout types:

The Overachiever — You're still delivering, but you're running on empty. Your identity is built around performance, and stopping feels more terrifying than burning out.

The Caretaker — You show up for everyone except yourself. Nobody thinks to check on the person who's always checking on everyone else.

The Idealist — You still care, you've just lost the thread. You're going through the motions without remembering why you started.

The Perfectionist — Your standards are high. Maybe too high. The bar keeps moving and nothing ever feels quite good enough.

The Dreamer — You're capable of more and you know it. You're not burned out from doing too much — you're burned out from doing too little of what matters.

The Receiver — You feel everything and it's wearing you out. Your nervous system is running a marathon every day just by being awake and online.

Me personally? If I’m being completely vulnerable, my primary type is The Perfectionist, sprinkled with a little Dreamer on top.

My husband and I have built a few businesses together. I spend a lot of time working late to perfect the thing before we launch it. I become so focused on getting it just right that I’ll work endlessly, second guess myself, and burn out.

Sometimes it boggles my mind when my husband says, “it’s good enough just get it out the door.”

The truth is, I can get to 80% pretty quickly, then spend an unlimited amount of time on the last 20%.

(My husband is The Idealist, by the way. He has a tendency to “zoom out” often and lose motivation because of the perceived absurdity of what we’re building.)

Bottom line: burnout hits us all in unique ways, and there is no one size fits all solution. My hope is that this quiz will empower and inspire you to start thinking about how to solve for burnout in your life.

Once I understood my pattern, it changed how I approach my work. Not perfectly (I’m still me, ADHD and all), but knowing why I burn out helps me catch it before I'm fully cooked. And the solution for a Perfectionist is very different from the solution for a Caretaker or a Dreamer.

I built a two-minute quiz so you can find out your type and get specific guidance on what to do about it:

→ Take the What's My Burnout Type? Quiz

Send it to a friend who needs it. We all know someone.

P.S. What burnout type did you get? How did it resonate? Hit reply and let me know. I read every email.

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