You sit down to write that proposal or blog post you’ve been meaning to finish.

You open your laptop, glance at your email, reply to two messages… then your phone buzzes. A quick check turns into ten minutes of scrolling. When you finally click back to your document, the thought you were holding is gone. It’s like trying to grab water with your hands.

Most of us think burnout comes from doing too much, for too long. And sure, overwork plays its part. But there’s another kind of burnout that sneaks up on us – one that comes from how we work, not just how much.

Here’s the truth: burnout isn’t only a symptom of long hours. It’s the inevitable result of a distracted, fragmented mind. Task switching, open loops, and our addiction to constant digital input scatter our attention into pieces, leaving us drained even on “light” days. This kind of burnout can’t be solved by a vacation or a shorter to-do list. It requires something deeper: reclaiming your ability to focus, clearing the mental clutter, and creating an environment where your mind can do its best work.

The Hidden Costs of Fractured Attention

If burnout is the fire, fractured attention is the kindling. Every time you split your focus, you make it harder for your brain to recover and reset – which means you’re carrying mental fatigue from one moment to the next. Here’s how it happens:

Task Switching

Your brain doesn’t just “move on” when you change tasks, it lingers. Psychologists call this attention residue, and it means a piece of your mind stays stuck on the last thing you were doing. Each switch costs you precious focus and drains a little more energy. Do this dozens of times a day and you end up mentally exhausted before lunch. I talk about this in my book, Firing Yourself: The High Achiever’s Guide to Effective Delegation, because task switching doesn’t just slow you down. It keeps you locked in low-value work instead of your highest contributions. When you’re constantly bouncing between emails, texts, and projects, you train your brain to live in a distracted state, which is the fast track to burnout.

Open Loops

An open loop is any unfinished task, unanswered question, or unmade decision your brain is holding onto. Cognitive scientists (and teachers like Erick Godsey, whose work I’m currently studying) point out that our minds evolved to handle just a handful of open loops at a time. That made sense 100,000 years ago, when “to-do list” might have meant find water, make fire, avoid predators.

Today, most of us are carrying hundreds of open loops – anywhere from 200 to 400 – and our brains simply weren’t designed for that level of mental load. Each one is like an open browser tab, consuming attention and energy in the background. It doesn’t matter if you’re actively thinking about it or not, your mind is still tracking it.

The result? Mental RAM overload. You feel foggy, distracted, and tired, even before you start your day. The good news is that open loops can be closed – sometimes just by making a clear decision or by capturing the task in a trusted system so your brain can stop carrying it. (More on that later when we talk about building a Second Brain.)

The Energy Drain

Even when distractions seem small like a quick check of email, or a 30-second scroll, your brain pays a tax. Switching tasks and chasing stimuli forces your mind to repeatedly spin up and slow down, like flooring your car at every stoplight. It’s exhausting, even if you’ve technically “done less” that day.

Left unchecked, these patterns create a constant low-level stress load that accumulates until you hit the wall – not because you worked 80 hours, but because your brain never got a chance to rest in one clear channel of focus.

Why This Leads to Burnout

Burnout isn’t only about clocking too many hours. It’s about never giving your mind a chance to fully land anywhere.

When your attention is scattered, your brain is constantly shifting gears, holding onto dozens of loose threads, and scanning for the next ping or update. Even if you’re technically “working less,” you’re still running at high mental RPMs all day long. That sustained cognitive load keeps your nervous system in at least a low-grade state of stress.

Over time, this constant on-ness leads to:

• Decision fatigue – the mental wear and tear from making (and remaking) small choices all day.
• Shallow work default – a habit of living in surface-level tasks because deep focus feels harder to access.
• Diminished creativity – your best ideas require space, but space feels impossible when your brain is juggling hundreds of loops.
• Energy collapse – that moment you’re too tired to think straight, even if the day’s been “easy” on paper.

This is why burnout often surprises people. You can take time off, delegate a few tasks, or swap to a four-day workweek… and still feel depleted. Because the issue isn’t just the number of tasks, it’s the fragmented way your brain has been forced to hold them.

The antidote isn’t simply doing less. It’s learning to work in ways that restore your focus, close your open loops, and give your mind the deep rest it needs to recover its full capacity.

• Burnout isn’t just physical fatigue – it’s the inability to sustain attention on what matters.
• Mental exhaustion builds from decision fatigue, context switching, and the emotional weight of unfinished work.
• This kind of burnout is sneaky! You can “work less” but still feel fried if you don’t protect your attention.

Shifting from Fracture to Flow

Breaking the cycle of fractured attention starts with two commitments:

1. Creating intentional space for your most important work.
2. Building systems that protect that space.

Here are the three tools I teach to help make that shift:

1. Dharma Sprints

Dharma Sprints are focused, time-boxed sessions where you work only on tasks aligned with your deeper purpose, aka your dharma. No multitasking, no notifications, no checking “just one thing” in between.

I was introduced to Godsey’s community called The Dharma Artist Collective where I learned how to do Dharma Sprints about a year ago, and I owe sprinting the credit for finally publishing my book after almost three years of “working on it!” The idea of sprints was inspired by Cal Newport’s book, Deep Work. In the book, Newport outlines three ways to schedule deep, uninterrupted work:

• Monastic: Eliminating all shallow work entirely (think: total withdrawal from distractions for long periods).
• Bimodal: Splitting your time into clearly defined blocks – some for deep work, some for everything else.
• Rhythmic: Building deep work into your daily routine at the same time each day.

Dharma Sprints borrow from the rhythmic model, but with the added layer of intention: you’re not just focusing – you’re channeling that focus toward work that moves your life’s purpose forward. This has been an absolute game-changer for me.

2. A Second Brain in Notion

The term “Second Brain” is referencing Tiago Forte’s book, Building a Second Brain, but is also closely related to the work of productivity expert David Allen, author of Getting Things Done. Allen’s premise is simple: your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. When you try to store every task, project, and reminder in your head, you burn energy just keeping it all there.

A Second Brain is an external system – in my case, built in Notion – where you capture, organize, and track everything you need to remember or act on. Once it’s out of your head and into a trusted system, your brain can release the open loop and refocus on the task at hand.

3. Phone & Internet Boundaries

This is the unglamorous, non-negotiable part: you can’t protect your attention if you’re still letting every ping, buzz, and feed compete for it.

• Batch your communication checks instead of living in your inbox.
• Use Do Not Disturb or app timers to give yourself device-free focus blocks.
• Experiment with phone-free mornings or designated “scroll windows.”

Boundaries aren’t about restriction, they’re about creating the conditions where deep, meaningful work becomes possible.

When you combine these three practices – Dharma Sprints for intentional focus, a Second Brain to close open loops, and tech boundaries to keep distractions at bay – you stop running on mental fumes. Instead, you give your brain the space to enter flow and recover its full creative capacity.

An Invitation to Experiment

You don’t have to overhaul your entire life to start feeling more focused and less burned out. You just need to start experimenting with ways to:

• Create pockets of deep, uninterrupted work.
• Get your open loops out of your head and into a trusted system.
• Set gentle but firm boundaries with your devices.

Choose one of these to try this week. Even a single shift – like committing to a 90-minute Dharma Sprint focused on one meaningful project, or leaving your phone in another room for the first hour of your morning – can begin to change how your energy feels.

If you’d like more inspiration, you might also enjoy Clearing Mental Clutter: My Favorite Practices for Inner Stillness or Less Hustle, More Flow: 6 Practices for More Energy, Focus, and Creative Flow.

Closing Note

The first step in healing burnout isn’t necessarily working less, it’s learning to protect and direct your attention.

When you stop scattering your focus across dozens of half-finished tasks, endless notifications, and mental clutter, something shifts. Your mind feels lighter. Your energy starts to return. You remember what it’s like to work with clarity, purpose, and flow.

The truth is, your attention is one of the most valuable resources you have. Guard it well, and it will take you exactly where you’re meant to go.

So here’s your reflection question for today:

Where is your attention leaking, and what’s one step you can take this week to close that gap?