You need more distance between yourself and the job. If you’re burning out it means you’re overly engaged. You can’t burn out over something you don’t care about, and it’s really easy to burn out over something that means the world to you. The key is to find a healthy medium, which for neurodivergent folks can be difficult. Many of us find jobs because when we’re on, we’re really on, and we get a fuck ton more done because that’s our natural state about things we enjoy. This will get you positions and money and raises but it will also consume your life your free time and your mental health.

For some ND folks I’ve found they do best when blocking time- time for really in the zone, hyper focused, work work. They get the sense of accomplishment from finishing things and enjoy that feeling, but need to realize that this can’t be 8 hours every day. They need to block time to do other things. It could be literally stepping away from work, mentally checking out, blocking time to build connections or chat with coworkers, take a walk, or whatever. Adjust the blocks as necessary to ensure you’re not drained after work or feel like you’re burning out. For other ND folks it’s enough to simply say that they need to spend less time working each day. It depends a bit on the field and the position but most people are lucky if they get one or two hours of productive in the zone work per day. Most of the time people are on autopilot or avoiding work by chatting by the water cooler or browsing their website of choice.

The next step is setting boundaries. Work has a start and stop time. Don’t answer emails, phone calls, or do work outside of those boundaries. Unless you actually want to go to the work social events, you don’t have to, and if you decide you need to do it in order to maintain your social status you should treat it like work and do less other work less during the next time you’re at work. The more you allow work and life to comingle, the more you’re opening the door to burnout because you’re eliminating a space you have to retreat from work and recover.

Once those are under control, you can work on creating a healthy distance from the outcome of your work. What I mean by that is that you’re there because someone is paying you. You may have an interest in what you’re doing (and for many fields I deeply hope you do) but ultimately you’re not in charge and you have to be okay with things happening not exactly to plan or the way you want them to. I will absolutely tell my boss the best way to do something if they ask, but I also have to be completely okay with it happening a different way and this requires a certain distance from my work. This same distance will help protect you when new management comes in and flips the entire script. You’re not there to ensure the company puts out the best product, you’re there to do things the way the person above you decides to do them. You can tell them they’re doing it wrong, why it has always been done this way, and all of the reasons why the new way will be worse (and even remind them of such when it fails and they reverse course), but you should only be doing this while being completely willing to do it the new way they’re proposing and that’s a lot easier when you care a little less about the outcome. If you’re unwilling to make that compromise, which is a perfectly valid way to want to work, you’re going to burn out from time to time unless you get lucky and land a job at one of the very few places that gets you.