Burnout is often a timing problem rather than a workload problem, because cognitive capacity fluctuates across the day, week, month, and (especially for women) across hormonal cycles.
Sustainable productivity comes from learning your predictable high- and low-capacity windows (chronotypes) and matching task type to those rhythms: schedule heavy strategy and complex thinking when capacity is high, and do lighter administrative or relational work when energy drops, instead of forcing consistency.
Sheridan shares her own pattern of concentrating on demanding work early in the week to prevent burnout and make time off easier, and invites listeners to notice what feels doable and collaborate with others to create an ideal schedule. Examples include “Jack,” who protects 4–6 PM for deep work, and “Sally,” a rotating-shift nurse who uses micro-regulation and somatic practices between tasks to reduce cognitive depletion.
00:00 Burnout Is Timing
01:54 Find Your Rhythms
03:48 My Weekly Pattern
04:30 Design Your Schedule
05:52 Jack Deep Work Block
07:39 Sally Shift Work Strategy
08:48 Energy Map And Shoulds
09:24 Wrap Up And Challenge
Receive Support:
- The 5-week Energy Management Program: Work Doesn’t Have to Cost All Your Energy
- One-on-one somatic support for nervous-system-level patterns
Free Resources and Reports:
- What if you’re not the problem? Full report. Access the full report here: https://sheridanruth.com/what-if-youre-not-the-problem/
- Burnout Is Weird PDF: 7 real stories of people who stopped trying to “fix themselves” and found steadiness in unexpected ways. click here
- Read Somatic Intelligence for Success: Nervous system alignment to prevent burnout and leave an impact. Purchase here.
- Regulation Your Nervous System At Work: Learn to regulate with practices you’ll actually use. No need for more time, space or privacy. Download here.
- Try the Burnout Prevention AI ChatBot: Soma helps you shift out of spirals, self-doubt, and stress-based decision-making—so you can lead from your most grounded, self-aware state. Access here.
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This podcast explores the intersection of sales, money, and business success, offering entrepreneurial insights on overcoming the inner critic, burnout, and the unique challenges of ADHD and autoimmune conditions, while integrating polyvagal theory, Ayurveda, coaching, resilience, regulation, and trauma healing to support holistic growth and thriving in both life and business.
Transcript
So this leads us beautifully, I think, into myth number two, which is I just need to pivot my life and my burnout will heal.
Yeah. So everyone who hasn't heard what Hannah was saying about being in relation to us, and she mentioned a couple of different things, such as saying yes, when I really should say no, such as feeling into yourself, such as saying yes to things out of scarcity. Such as like if I don't, if I say no to this, when like, will I, will my success kind of go away? Um, redefining success. There was some self-doubt and stuff. Go back to myth number one because you'll, um, we're not going to repeat ourselves here, but that also lights some color around this myth. Yeah, I wanted to talk about this one because this idea of like, if I pivot then things will align and I think I'm gonna offer a bit of how I like to think about it now and also how I've gotten here. And then maybe we can re build off of that. So as we spoke about life, your nervous system, it mobilizes or demobilizes energy based off of its relationship and understanding of what's happening inside of you.
So it can increase the amount of energy you have based off of what it perceives. And say, okay, I need energy for this. Whether that is a healthy type of activation, like, ooh, buzzing, yay fun. Let's go do the thing. Similar to what you'd have when you're getting an orgasm or a fear-based response such as fight or flight. Like, oh my God, I really need to do this because if I don't, then my whole entire identity will people think of me. I better get this done. I make sure I have to. If I don't achieve this goal, then like, oh my God, I'm gonna run outta money
or flight, which can sound similar but usually has a little bit more, um, of a scattered energy and like it can tend towards running away from things and
deprioritizing things that would actually have build your success.
Such as like fear of being seen when
you want to be like a solo brand, for example. Um. So then we have freeze, which would be you demobilizing energy. So saying, wow, this problem is really big. I don't know how I'm gonna get there. I think I'm just gonna like do busy work and I'm just gonna like not have that conversation.
If you tend towards procrastination and heaviness and lethargy and really liking your sleep and Netflix, you're probably more of a freeze response. So we have these responses to things that are hard, and there's also this pivot response and what, what I've learned through my own experience in that of coaching hundreds of people through this is your response, your fight to flight or freeze. That is something that is pretty much in built in your body. It is by this point, you're at least over the age of seven years old or 15 years old. Your response is going to be a, a response that you have to life. That's your thing. Those are your tendencies. Love them. Get to know them because they're
gonna be with you for a while.
They will, you know, statistics tell us that they'll change, but statistics tell us that they will remain relatively the same over time. And so it's not about getting rid of these responses, it's about understanding them and then bolstering our life and, and creating a life where they're triggered less.
And also we have more space and capacity to respond to them. So what the hell does this mean? And about this myth of pivoting, right?
Yeah.
When we say, wow, I got really burnt out. I don't like this. Or, this is out of alignment and I'm really sad. I'm really just like sad and I'm just like not motivated. And our response is to pivot, to change careers, to change lifestyle if we're doing it, or change business strategies or change health strategies, even if we are doing it without. There's a difference between doing it in reaction to and response to misalignment versus getting deeply into alignment and d and de entangling from all of the fear-based stories and conditioning and stuff that is not helpful, and then pivoting in response to that. That takes longer and comes later.
But if you do it because you're like, wow, this didn't work, I'm gonna switch.
Mm.
You are taking with you, Hannah, you said this so well. Wherever you have, wherever you are,
There you are. Whatever there. You'll be, you're taking with you all of those relationships or to the way that you relate to other people saying no to you, the way that you relate to money, the way that you relate to opportunities, the way that you relate to, um, getting up early in the morning or even the way that you relate to responsibility and work or other people's expectations, judgment of yourself, other. People may be judging you your own, how seriously you take your own intuition or how you feel about being a woman or a man or a woman or a man in your industry. All of those things that carry so much energy, you taking them with you
Mm-hmm.
and those are the things that are depleting you not, I'm not saying your career wasn't, maybe it was if you're a shift worker or you have to work in a specific industry that is difficult for you, then probably it's depleting, but maybe it's 30% and not 70% of
what's taking your energy.
Hannah, what do you think?
Yeah, I, I totally agree with this. Actually, a friend said this to me when I was, um, she also worked in events at the time and was, as I was, we were both kind of talking about trying to move away from it and actually towards similar work, um, that we do now with like breath work and supporting clients and energy work.
And she said to me, you could work in like five different jobs and experience the same thing if you're not willing to look at these patterns that you might be bringing with you into this new environment. And I think that that speaks so beautifully to what you just said there, that like, this can be the case with moving to a new job, moving to a new city.
If the burnout is coming from patterns, like you said, if that's the majority of where that burnout is coming from, rather than your environment or your situation. Then those patterns don't just magically get left behind at the old job or in the old city. Um, they come with you because they are patterns, they're imprinted on your system, on your nervous system.
And those do take time, especially as you get older. You were mentioning their right that like some of them are kind of set and that doesn't mean that we can't make tweaks or changes or support them for different outcomes, but a lot of, you know, once you're into your adult life, a lot of the way that you react to things is set.
And I will say, especially as someone who is neurodivergent, some of the ways that I react or don't realize that I am on the edge of burnout because I don't have that, my brain doesn't work in the same way. I don't get the same alert system. I can blow past my signals much more easily potentially than another person.
And so that. That doesn't just magically dissipate because I'm like, oh, I've changed, I've changed paths now so I'll be good. Um, and I've seen this happen in clients. I've seen it happen actually in my sister, like going from job to job thinking, okay, this will be better. And really being intentional about it.
Not like, yes, there are some of some situations where we just abandoned ship and we're like, I'm just gonna go over here 'cause I don't wanna deal with this anymore. But in a lot of cases people are like, whoa, this really isn't working. I'm gonna be really intentional about the next place I interview with, or the next type of client that I take on.
I'm gonna really think about like, what is my ideal client? What is my ideal work situation? And ask the questions like, how do you, what's your culture like? How do you support, you know, these things that I might need? And then you get into the situation and you're six months in or a year into the new experience and you're like.
Wait a second. This feels really familiar. What is happening? I thought I did the things, I thought, I asked the questions. I thought I paused and reflected enough to not have this happen again. And then I think that can be really discouraging because then you're like, well, that means it's, I'm the problem here.
It's not the work. It's not the um, relationship. It's me because this pattern is reemerging. And while that's not wrong, it is you. It's not because you're broken. It's not because you should just like sit down and give up and you're always gonna hate your work, or you're always gonna be in a relationship that doesn't work for you, or whatever that looks like.
It's where can we look at ourselves and say, Hmm, okay. Like I have this. I realized I had this deep belief that like I didn't even fully understand until the words came outta my mouth. That success equals struggle. So for me, the only way I was ever gonna be successful is if it was hard and if it like, pained me to get here or to get to achieve my goal.
So, of course I'm gonna end out, end up in cycles of burnout because I think that I'm an ambitious person. I really wanna be successful. It has to be hard to get there,
and that burnout is just a byproduct, right?
Yeah. Yeah, I've, I heard that. I hear that one so much. I don't think I've ever felt, felt that one, that the thing that was coming up for me, as you were saying, that was this like belief that I had, that I actually fought, like my ego fought to hold onto it and was like, no, this is absolutely everyone else. And then I was like, oh, this keeps happening. Is this a me thing? Was this like belief that was, I don't know. And I think maybe it has something to do with, um, growing up neurodivergent being like diagnosed. Maybe it has
something to do with losing my hair when I was a kid. Maybe it doesn't, but this feeling of like, people criticize me.
Like people tell me,
people always tell me that there's something wrong and that they're not on my side and that they are not, it was like this, this feeling of like, they're out to get me. And so
that meant that I was like always moving through life in this more protected mode.
And I. It's kind of hard because it's such a both end situation because I think that for me to realize that I actually did need to see those same patterns coming up in a very, very different context and a different type of, um, environment or client or team, because that way my brain was like, had the space to be like, whoa, that's really different.
They are really different people and I'm, I still feel the same way
and I think I'd built enough. And this is, you know, coming off of a decade of like consistent somatic practice and discipline and of compassion and discipline of self love and reparenting to just be like, wait a second. Oh wait, that's actually not me.
And it doesn't necessarily have to be this heavy thing. I think when we do this. Practice and work over and over again. And we allow, and we build up the capacity to relate to ourselves without judgment and without shame. And we learn that shame and judgment is not necessary to create change
or to be a good person.
'cause that was something, or that's something that I know a lot of myself and my clients have dealt with. Maybe it's the Catholic upbringing of like, or like the authoritarian parents that are like, let's judge you into being a good person.
Yeah.
Um, when I learn that that's not necessary, then oh, oh shit, I didn't need to be so hard.
Like, that's actually not true. That might not have been true in the past. Um, so in some ways pivoting can help us see
these things, so I don't know. But you still gotta sit with them
either before the pivot.
or after the pivot.
totally. And I think that actually that leads to something that I thought would be a nice sort of takeaway, um, for you listening when you are feeling on the precipice of a pivot. Because listen, a pivot is awesome. Like
I love a pivot.
cha, love the pivot. Like change the relationship, move to the new city, like change your job, change your career.
Like these things are exciting and we have them at our fingertips to learn and grow and challenge ourselves. But when we are about to embark on a pivot or make a decision to, to make a big change in our life, sitting with, okay, what might follow me into this next chapter
That's a
that I would like to leave here or that I would like to shift my relationship to?
Like if I go to this new city or this new job. This thing comes with me, I'm gonna be really bummed. Like, that's not gonna feel good. And how could I proactively make sure that doesn't happen? Um, just in case, you know, in case this isn't the answer to all my problems, which I think is just, it's a nice way to reflect, right, of like what could be, what could be the reason that this pattern is here or this situation is happening and how could I, um, grow into my next chapter.
I like that. That's a nice takeaway.
Beautiful. I'm so glad you like that. It's something that I have used and need to remind myself to continue to use as
I just wrote it down. I'm like, I'll journal on that one later and
put it in a box.
Myth number four. Our final myth here is consistent income will make me happy. This is a juicy one.