Balanced Ambition: Thriving Without Burnout
- Jun 7
- 2 min read
By Dr. Ben Garrett
I am Dr. Ben Garrett, Owner and Counsellor at Vedder Counselling. I have over 16 years of experience in mental health counselling within government agencies and another 8 years in private practice.
How can professionals optimize energy, not just time?
Most professionals try to fit more into their day, but very few pay attention to how demanding each task actually is. In practice, this is where things start to break down. Not all work requires the same level of thinking, yet people move between high-focus work and low-effort tasks without much structure.
When I work with clients, I often find the issue is not lack of time, but misused energy. Once they begin grouping cognitively demanding work into specific parts of the day (e.g., when they are naturally more alert) their output improves without needing to work longer hours. It is a shift from managing time to managing capacity.
A simple but commonly effective change might also be making a “to-do” list where you tick off each item throughout the day. It feels good to look back at your accomplishments throughout the day, giving you more energy.
What are the most overlooked drivers of fatigue?
One of the biggest contributors to fatigue is unrecognized cognitive load and the other one is emotional suppression. Cognitive load includes constant task-switching, unfinished decisions, and having too many things sitting in the background. People often describe feeling tired without understanding why, and this is usually part of it.
I have seen this with clients who carry multiple unresolved tasks throughout the day. Even when they are not actively working on them, those tasks are still taking up mental space.
Over time, that creates a steady drain on attention and energy.
The other factor is emotional suppression. When people push aside stress, frustration, or uncertainty to “keep going,” it comes at a cost. That effort builds up and often shows up later as fatigue or reduced focus. That’s where counselling can help. With times of high challenge, you need high support.
Sometimes even taking a moment of your day to do some sort of meditation or mindfulness activity can help. You might feel like it is taking up your time but the mental clarity and can give you can drive your performance better.
How does mental recovery impact long-term performance?
Mental recovery is what allows performance to be sustained. Without it, people can push through for a period of time, but it is not stable. Eventually, focus drops, decision-making becomes harder, and stress tolerance decreases.
I worked with a professional who kept a consistently heavy workload but had no real breaks built into his day. He saw rest as something to earn, not something to use. Over time, his performance became uneven. When we introduced short, deliberate recovery periods and clearer boundaries around work, his consistency improved.
Recovery gives the mind a chance to reset.
It is not just about stopping work, but stepping away from cognitive demand before fatigue builds too far.
Sustainable performance comes from that balance. This means having periods of focused effort followed by real recovery. Without that, people tend to rely on willpower, and that only carries them so far.
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