Performance Without Burnout Starts With Discernment, Not Hustle
- Mar 6
- 3 min read
By Lena McDearmid
Founder and CEO of Wryver
Early in my career, I used to joke that my job description was “firefighter.” Give me the dumpster fires, the chaotic projects, the things no one wanted to touch, and I would happily drive straight into the crash. I still love untangling messy systems and finding clarity inside uncertainty. That instinct made me a strong operator, and it still does.
It also, at times, pushed me toward burnout.
I don’t want to pretend burnout never showed up on teams I led, or that I somehow cracked a perfect formula. It did. What changed over time was my ability to notice the signals sooner and my willingness to name them. People still
choose their own paths, but I became far more aware of my own patterns and more intentional about adjusting before exhaustion became normal or, worse, rewarded.
I’m good at pattern recognition, and I’ve learned to say things out loud earlier than I used to. Once something has a name, it stops being invisible. That shift, noticing patterns and naming them in real time, made it possible to intervene sooner rather than explaining burnout after the fact.
The system I’ve found that supports performance without burnout is about discernment, not working less. Knowing when your involvement truly creates value, and when it quietly gets in the way.
For a long time, I stayed involved too long. I inserted myself into problems other people needed to learn how to solve. I showed up because I could help, not because I was the best person to help. The harder truth was this: when leaders are always present, they can unintentionally take away opportunities for others to build confidence, capability, and ownership.
Protecting my energy now starts with self-awareness and boundaries. I’m open with my teams about my tendencies, especially my instinct to fix. Naming those patterns creates shared accountability. It also makes it easier to step back without guilt or confusion.
There’s a common belief that if people “need you” in every meeting, that’s a sign of importance or strong leadership. I’ve come to see it differently. When leaders are required everywhere, it’s often a signal that something in the system is off. The team may be understaffed. Decision rights may be unclear. Work may need to be rebalanced or redesigned. Being indispensable to every conversation doesn’t scale, and it isn’t sustainable.
Research supports this. McKinsey & Company has found that the average knowledge worker spends more than half their working hours in meetings, email, and internal coordination rather than deep, outcome-producing work. Excessive collaboration time correlates with lower decision quality and slower execution. People are busy, but progress slows.
One simple exercise I often suggest is to look at your calendar honestly. When most of your time is consumed by updates, conversations, and presentations, it’s easy to mistake visibility for productivity. Feeling needed can feel like value at first, but over time it can quietly turn into a handcuff, something you helped create and now feel responsible for maintaining.
This connects to another belief worth challenging: that busyness equals value. Responding instantly, staying perpetually online, or over-functioning beyond your role doesn’t make you a high performer. It often makes you exhausted, reactive, and less strategic.
Performance isn’t rigid, and it isn’t constant. It’s knowing when to step in, when to step back, and trusting that what’s sustainable will outperform what’s frantic, even if it looks quieter from the outside.
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