The thing I thought I was “too smart” and “too experienced” for happened to me again. Burnout.

And today, I’m burned out in a way that can sometimes feel worse than regular burnout. I’m burned out on the thing that I feel incredibly passionate about and want to do better on.

As I sit here in March 2023 and trace my steps back to where I went wrong and took on too much, it’s all kind of obvious. I’m recording my story and the steps I’ve taken along the way in case you are in this place too.

Strategy #1: Assess Your Trigger Points

In March 2021, I declared I would write 16 new nonfiction books for authors about selling books wide. I figured each book was less than 100 pages (around 20,000 words) and I knew each book was a weeklong project at most. I figured I would give myself 3-4 weeks for each project and it was totally manageable.

It mostly was—I got 14 of the 16 books out according to deadline. But people still thought I was a little crazy—which it was, too. I wanted to write them quickly because I knew if I didn’t, the project would drag on and I would lose interest after multiple years.

What I never told anyone was that before making that declaration, I had written or completed major updates on about 10 nonfiction books in the preceding eight months, and that during this same period I wrote even more books for other pen names.

By April 2022, a year later, I was pretty exhausted…Which was partly because I ran my first huge Kickstarter campaign with my business partner Russell Nohelty in November 2021. It was a learning curve for me. I remember sitting on a panel at 20Books, an independent author conference that took place in November 2021, saying, “I’ve written 21 books in the last 16 months…I’m tired.” It was true. And I pushed myself far beyond that, writing another 5 or 6 in the few months after that.

For me, I knew I needed a deadline to get books done. I still do. I’ve tried all sorts of other things, but without the meaningful external deadline, I struggle greatly to complete large projects like a book.

In that sense, what I did was good.

And at the same time, I also now know that if I’m going to have a ton of deadlines, I can’t keep all the other plates spinning in the air. Taking on the Kickstarter campaign with Russell, along with some talks at various conferences, became too much. I was fine but tired (and needed to take a break) when just doing the books. The campaign tipped me over the edge.

Strategy #2: Figure Out What You Will and Won’t Do Forever Going Forward and Set Boundaries For Yourself

I heard recently that the way to make real change in your life is to only attempt to hit your goals doing things that you are willing to do every day.

And it’s true: doing it any other way will lead to burnout, unless you are capable of stopping before you hit that point.

Just as my crazy preorder deadline schedule was wrapping up…I found myself starting a new and unexpected company with Russell.

In March 2022, he came to me and said, “If Brandon Sanderson is doing a $41.2 million dollar Kickstarter campaign, we have to launch our Kickstarter course for authors again.”

He was right—we would have been stupid not to. The demand was heightened. We had written the best book on Kickstarter for authors in the entire world—still is, sorry not sorry—and we had also accidentally built the best course on it, too. (Sorry not sorry not sorry.)

So we spent April and part of May 2022 launching the course. We made a lot of money, and we decided to legally form Writer MBA—a play on a brand I already owned called Novelist MBA.

I thought I was okay, because I had no more preorder deadlines at retailers. I didn’t have to write any books. So I kept going, ramping up at Writer MBA, saying yes to and signing up for things that I didn’t necessarily even want to do, but that I knew I should do financially.

The truth was that I didn’t have time to start the new company, and if I am really honest with myself, I was already burnt out on the foundation of why we started the company, which was teaching Kickstarter. I wasn’t starting the company out of immediate passion…The money was just too good to say no to. This was true then and also, it’s true now.

A big part of that was how much work I had already invested into Writer MBA, including seven years of thought leadership in an industry, hundreds of hours running the campaign, writing the book(s), and building the course. As tempting as it can be to quit just as you’re about to get what you want, I also think there is a good reason to push through. I am a more capable person having done it, and I have proven to myself that my capacity to stretch is greater than I could have imagined.

I have no real regrets. Writer MBA is still a great business and has helped a lot of people, and that is something I’m passionate about.

Also, that period of my life showed be all the things I was not willing to do every day forever to keep building Writer MBA—or frankly, any other company. I’m super grateful for that. We are infinite beings, so all experiences that give me the deep self-knowledge that I gained from Writer MBA in 2022 are welcome.

And so this is where I stand on this: if you are going to push to reach your goals, let it be temporary. There are some definite benefits and short-term gains to be had, but do it knowing that you will have to eventually shift to building success only doing things you are willing to do forever.

I made that list of things I was willing to keep doing and not willing to keep doing, and after I hit a true burnout breaking point, I had an honest conversation with Russell about how we had to rebuild our company to work better for both of us.

We are in the midst of that now, and it’s going well! We’re happy.

Ultimately, this experience helped me set better boundaries for myself. All burnout stems from lack of boundaries, so this is key.

Strategy #3: Immediately Stop Scheduling Your Life as If You Have 48 Hours in a Day

I ran two more Kickstarter campaigns that summer of 2022 and that in itself wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I had no good and clear plan for how I was going to manage fulfillment. I figured it was still early enough in the year that I could get it done by the end of 2022. It was six months out. Surely I could figure it out?

Spoiler alert: I did not deliver in time!

This is still a disappointment I have in myself and also embarrassing for me. I had thought that I was past the stage in my career where I overpromised and underdelivered—but as they say, new level, same devil.

The truth was, while I did have six months, I had already packed those six months with 3 conferences, 15+ talks (several virtual), and 3 huge launches. In my personal life, my child started school and had trouble adjusting, I attended my brother’s wedding, we had the one-year anniversary of my dog dying, and another important person in my life died. In three months, I traveled to five different cities and got sick 5 times (I was basically sick for four months straight due to my immune system getting pummeled over and over again and having to take off December 2022 as well).

Obviously, there was no time to write books in the midst of this mess—but at the time I made the promise, I couldn’t see that. I figured I would just push through like I always did. But the reality is that eventually you can no longer push through. There are no more hours left in the day, and there are no more fumes left in the tank.

I think if the personal stuff wasn’t happening, I could have probably handled the launches + conferences well enough. Or if I wasn’t doing the launches and conferences, I could have written books while handling the personal stuff. But in the end, the equation did not work at all and sometimes you just have to admit to yourself that you can pound the buttons of a calculator over and over again and 16+16+16 will never be under 24 hours in a day.

I got through the end of the year, but a large portion of my stuff wasn’t done. So by the time I finally got my voice back in December 2022 (yep, I literally couldn’t speak for about a week—that’s how bad of shape I was in!), I was not really ready to face the wreckage that I now needed to pick up.

But it didn’t matter, in many ways. Because the first step to recovery is to immediately stop digging a deeper hole. So here is your permission to cancel absolutely everything when you hit this point.

Strategy #4: Be Realistic About Burnout Recovery and Communicate

By January 2023, I thought I was on the edge of burnout. In truth—I see it now—I was in recovery from burnout and had been since late November 2022 when my speaking engagements had ended. And that’s a pretty huge distinction.

Still, the new energy of the new year made me feel more ready to tackle the wreckage. I thought to myself, “I’ll just catch up on Kickstarter projects this month.” But as I looked through them and dug into the challenges, I realized that I was in big trouble and there was no way I was going to catch up on projects that quickly.

When shit hits the fan, the most natural response is the Flight trauma response. We are ashamed, so we hide away. We lack control, so we check out. We don’t want to be rejected, so we disconnect.

But I knew from experience that lack of communication makes everything worse. So I did communicate, even though it was hard and I didn’t want to write those messages. I admitted I f*cked up and told everyone I was going to fix it.

And unfortunately, communication is not a one-time thing. It’s an ongoing process and I’m still having to tell people that I f*cked up and I’m fixing it. Because “fixing it” takes a while!

I strongly recommend communication because for the most part, people are going to be understanding—especially after the pandemic. My audience luckily knows a thing or two about burnout, so while they may not have been happy about the update, they did have compassion and understanding, for the most part.

For me, this helped me move from the “I f*cked up” narrative in my head to the “I’m fixing it” narrative, which is where I’m at today. “I’m fixing it” is what I can control now. This is what being an adult is all about.

Strategy #5: Connect the Wreckage to the Present

As January rolled to February, and as February rolled to March, I found myself doing my best to chip away at things I owed to people, but the time off from starting new projects wasn’t actually helping anymore. I found myself really demotivated by having to go back before I could go forward. It was a lot like having a noose around my neck creatively, especially as that new energy made me feel like I wanted to engage in something new creatively, too.

This may not be true for you, and that’s fine. But if forward momentum is a motivator for you, I think this could be helpful.

For myself, I couldn’t think of the wreckage and the catchup work as that. I had to connect it to something in the future that would motivate me. I had to think of each piece of catchup work as a task on a new project that excited me.

On Myers-Briggs, I’m a P, not a J. P’s tend to love starting things, while J’s tend to love finishing them.

So one by one, I started to check off those boxes, in large part because I connected them to what is coming next that I have motivation for.

It’s hard not to feel guilty about wanting to move on from something creatively. It feels like I’m betraying the people that invested in the previous thing. But I’m finding that moving forward (for me) is actually helping me deliver on those past Monica promises in a bigger and better way.

Strategy #6: Give Yourself Time, Even If You Feel Guilty

Obviously, if you hit burnout, you need to take some time for yourself. And even more obviously, taking that time and making your way back to your passions is going to make you feel guilty AF.

That guilt is what got you into the mess.

That guilt is why you didn’t say no enough and tried to be everything to everyone.

That guilt is why you people-pleased and went along and kept making promises to assuage others.

That guilt is why you wanted to be liked, to stay relevant, to do more, to stay connected, to help help help.

So don’t be surprised that the same exact guilt is going to lead you back in the wrong direction now. You get to be the curse breaker of this guilt. And the only way to break the curse is to:

Give. Yourself. The Time. You Need. To Recover. And. Catch Up. AND. Find Your Passion Again.

You need to be selfish right now and do what your heart tells you.

You need to choose yourself above every single other person in the world right now.

The way you got into this mess was fear and abuse of yourself. The way you will get out is love and loving yourself.

It’s going to feel like you’re walking through hell, but it is the only way to break the curse.

This I know after over a decade of pursuing a creative and entrepreneurial life.

And if you follow these steps, you will not necessarily recover from burnout fast (aka according to your controlling and fear-based timeline), but you will recover from burnout faster than you would if you took any other path.

I’m right here in the trenches with you.

Good luck.