Last week, I indulged in some meaningful self-care and watched a documentary about Avicii. The film captured a striking picture of how burnout can emerge—even from the best things in life. He was traveling the world, making music, and doing what he loved. Yet, all that stimulation and success took a significant physical and mental toll on his well-being. As a therapist who works with many “overdoers,” it was heartbreaking to witness someone living their dream but unable to fully enjoy or be present in it.

One common myth about burnout is that it’s only caused by negative events or bad attitudes. While negative experiences can certainly drain us faster, they’re not the sole culprits. Burnout is ultimately a capacity issue. It’s the accumulation of everything happening in our lives—both the amazing and the awful—that impacts our bandwidth and contributes to our exhaustion.

If you’re feeling like your capacity is tapped out, understanding your bandwidth is a crucial first step in addressing burnout. In this post, we’ll explore how to take personal inventory, develop a holistic view of your capacity, and use self-compassion to turn awareness into meaningful action.

A Quick Review of Burnout and Capacity

It’s easy to feel stuck when trying to make sense of abstract concepts like personal capacity and burnout. In therapy, we aim to provide a tangible framework so you can track your bandwidth much like you would physical symptoms. Understanding the language around these concepts can make identifying and addressing burnout feel more approachable and less overwhelming.

Here are some key definitions to help you assess your burnout and current capacity:

• Resources: These are the factors that shape your capacity.
  • Internal resources: Physical energy, mental focus, emotional awareness, physical comfort, and overall health.
  • External resources: Time, money, support systems, knowledge, and attention.

• Capacity/Bandwidth: These terms are often used interchangeably. They refer to the overall level at which you can access resources, process information, and handle problem-solving. In short, this is how much you can take on at any given time.

• Energy: Think of energy as currency for your nervous system. Tasks require energy, but they can also refuel it. Understanding energy flow helps you see which activities replenish you and which ones drain you.

• Mental Load: This refers to the invisible labor or cognitive energy spent managing tasks, responsibilities, or situations.

• Burnout: Burnout is the body and mind’s response to consistently overusing resources without sufficient replenishment. It manifests physically (fatigue, restlessness) and emotionally (sadness, overwhelm, detachment).

By giving yourself a clear language for burnout and capacity, practices like inventory-taking become less about judgment and more about understanding. This objective perspective helps shift your approach to daily life, allowing you to make meaningful changes without feeling self-critical.

Bandwidth Bandits Aren’t Always Bad

Everything requires energy, and therefore, everything impacts your personal capacity. As we’ve discussed, burnout can occur even during some of the “best” times of your life. It’s not the quality of experiences alone but the accumulation of resource use that defines our bandwidth.

Think of your capacity like a bank account. Spending $209 on a speeding ticket takes just as much money as spending $209 on a girls’ brunch. Your bank account doesn’t care how the money is spent—it simply registers that the money is gone. Similarly, your nervous system processes energy expenditure without judgment. While it may register emotional states (joy, stress, excitement), when it comes to capacity, all it really knows is how much bandwidth you have left.

As we take inventory of our capacity, it’s important to leave space to process the thoughts and emotions surrounding where our energy is going. However, emotional impact isn’t the only factor contributing to burnout.

To better understand how everyday events are affecting our bandwidth, we can monitor the following elements:

1. Time Spent: How much time is this activity or task taking?
2. Focus: Does this require deep, intentional focus, or is it something running in the background?
3. Intensity: Does this feel high stakes or low stakes?
4. Effort: How much energy or effort is being demanded of me?
5. Emotional State: Does this activity leave me feeling more positive or more negative?
6. Connection: Does this task foster a sense of connection with others or leave me feeling isolated?

If this feels like a lot to consider, that’s because it is. Becoming more intentional about your capacity requires greater awareness of how your energy is being spent. But remember, this is an ongoing process, not a one-time assessment.

Taking inventory of your capacity is more like cooking than baking—it allows for flexibility, experimentation, and a bit of trial and error. Perfection isn’t the goal. The aim is to become more attuned to how your life experiences are impacting your bandwidth and to adjust as needed.

The Process of Taking Inventory

In the Nine to Kind Possibility Planner, there’s a worksheet called the Burnout Assessment that breaks this process down beautifully. If you have the planner, grab that page and work through it alongside this blog! If you don’t have the planner yet, don’t worry—we’ll walk you through the steps right here.

Two Ways to Approach Inventory-Taking

There are two main ways you can tackle this exercise, depending on your time and preferences:

1. Short Sprints:
   • Take inventory over a specific period (e.g., a week) to gain insight from daily life as it happens.
   • Ideal if you’re short on time or feel the need to observe how bandwidth is used in real time.
2. Extended Sessions:
   • Dedicate a larger block of time to reflect on your current state.
   • Useful if you already have a sense of your stressors and replenishing activities.

Both approaches are valid—it’s all about what works for you and your schedule.

The Burnout Assessment Exercise (Inventory-Taking):

1. List Everything Taking Up Bandwidth:
   • Write down all the activities, responsibilities, and situations that require resources.
   • This includes tasks related to work, relationships, personal care, and leisure.
   • If this feels overwhelming, group smaller tasks into broader categories (e.g., “work projects,” “family responsibilities”).
     
2. Assign Percentages:
   • Estimate what percentage of your bandwidth each task or category consumes, keeping the total to 100%.
   • If you listed smaller tasks, group them into categories and assign percentages to the categories instead.
   • Don’t aim for perfection—this is an approximation to help you understand where your energy is going.
     
3. Reflect on Your Percentages:
   • Compare how much of your capacity is spent on energy-draining versus replenishing activities.
   • Ask yourself:
     • Are any “bandwidth bandits” adding value to my life, or are they purely draining?
     • Am I underestimating or overestimating how much certain activities are affecting me?
       
4. Hold Off on Action Taking:
   • Resist the urge to jump into problem-solving mode.
   • The goal here is to gather information, not to make immediate changes.
   • Gaining clarity now will make identifying next steps much more effective later.

Taking inventory is about creating space for reflection and awareness. By assessing your bandwidth, you can gain a clearer picture of what’s contributing to your burnout and begin to strategize solutions with intention.

Identifying Influencers

When assessing burnout and capacity, it’s just as important to identify the external and internal factors influencing your bandwidth as it is to take personal responsibility. Recognizing these “burnout influencers” helps you understand how systems, environments, and personal beliefs shape your experience. This process validates the role of external forces while fostering self-compassion and clarity.

Internal Influencers

Internal influencers are tied to your personal beliefs, values, life experiences, and emotional states. Understanding them—and their purpose—helps reframe the process into something productive rather than self-defeating.

Common Internal Influencers:

• Desire to be liked: Great for networking and forming connections but can lead to overcommitting or overextending yourself.
• Drive to achieve goals: Helpful for staying motivated but may push you to take on too much, sacrificing rest or balance.
• Productivity as worth: Encourages diligence but can lead to burnout when you equate your value solely with output.

Shifting Internal Influencers:
Internal influencers often need clearer boundaries or a reassignment of roles. For example:

• If the desire to be liked leads you to accept every project, set limits by defining which opportunities truly align with your values.
• If dedication is driving overwork, prioritize discernment by regularly reviewing whether your tasks are aligned with long-term goals.

Finding the “sweet spot” for these internal drivers can free up bandwidth currently spent on unhelpful patterns.

External Influencers

We don’t live in a vacuum, and acknowledging external factors is crucial. These influences—whether direct or broad—provide the context in which burnout occurs. Identifying them isn’t about placing blame but understanding how they contribute to the load you’re carrying.

Examples of External Influencers:

• Direct influencers: Employers, family, colleagues, or specific relationships.
• Broad influencers: Societal standards, cultural expectations, or systemic barriers (e.g., inequities, lack of access to resources).

Challenges of External Influencers:
Taking stock of external factors can be emotionally taxing because they often include things outside your control. For instance:

• A demanding workplace culture may push you to work long hours.
• Societal expectations might make you feel like you’re failing if you’re not achieving certain milestones.

Despite their challenges, recognizing external influencers allows you to contextualize burnout. It validates your experience and reminds you that feeling overwhelmed isn’t a personal failing—it’s often a response to a complex web of demands.

Seeing both internal and external factors together provides a fuller picture of why you may feel burned out. You’re not imagining things—life is demanding, and identifying these influencers equips you to address burnout with intention and grace.

What To Do With That Awareness

Congratulations! You’ve gained a 360-degree view of your burnout and capacity (for now). So, what’s next? What do you do with all this newfound clarity? Here are a few ideas to help you turn your awareness into actionable, sustainable change:

1. Do Nothing (For Now)

• Give yourself permission to sit with this awareness.
• Notice any natural shifts that occur as your mind processes the new insights.
• Sometimes, simply understanding what’s draining you can lead to small, organic changes without needing to force immediate action.

2. Set Values-Based Intentions

• For each category or area you’ve assessed, write out an intention that aligns with your values.
  • Example: If family obligations take up a large chunk of bandwidth, your intention might be to “show up with love and patience while also prioritizing my boundaries.”
• Pair these intentions with specific, actionable goals.
  • Example: “I will dedicate two evenings a week to quality family time and reserve Sunday evenings for myself.”

3. Practice Acceptance and Letting Go

• Make a list of what you might need to accept as unchangeable (for now).
  • Example: “My work has busy seasons that are unavoidable.”
• Begin identifying where you can let go of unnecessary pressure, guilt, or perfectionism.
  • Example: “I can let go of the need to respond to every email immediately.”

4. Focus on What Can Be Change

• Create a list of areas that are within your control to improve.
• For each, identify your first step.
  • Example: If time management is a challenge, the first step might be blocking out focused work hours on your calendar.

5. Build an Ideal Schedule

• Use your insights to map out an ideal day or week.
  • Include time for energy-replenishing activities, intentional rest, and realistic task management.
  • Be flexible—this isn’t about perfection, but about creating a guiding framework for your time and energy.

Final Thoughts

When it comes to managing capacity, an all-or-nothing overhaul is rarely sustainable. Instead, treat your insights as a framework for making incremental, manageable changes. By taking small, intentional steps, you’ll create a more balanced relationship with your bandwidth and reduce burnout in ways that feel natural and achievable.

Remember: Progress, not perfection, is the goal.

The Nine to Kind Possibility Planner: Your Burnout Recovery Companion

Designed by a licensed therapist, the Nine to Kind Possibility Planner is more than just a planner—it’s your guide to navigating burnout and reclaiming your bandwidth. With ample space for reflection and practical tools for sustainable change, this planner helps you take stock of your life while equipping you to make meaningful, lasting improvements.

Ready to prioritize your well-being? Shop now!