BRYAN, Texas (KBTX) – Many people look forward to a break during the summer, as daily life can leave them feeling exhausted.
Stephen Courtright, a management professor at Texas A&M’s Mays Business School and director of the Flippen Leadership Institute, said burnout and stress are not the same thing, and the way to fix them is completely different.
Recognizing the symptoms
Courtright said burnout has three clear symptoms. The first is emotional exhaustion.
He compared it to physical exhaustion, that feeling where the body shuts down after working outside in the heat or after a long workout. Emotional exhaustion works the same way.
Courtright said that if someone has ever dreaded walking into work so much that they sit in their car a little longer, that’s a red flag.
The other two symptoms are depersonalization, when someone stops caring about the people they serve, whether customers, clients or coworkers, and a loss of professional efficacy, a feeling that success is out of reach, no matter the effort put in.
“If you have the feeling that it makes me sick to think about going into work, so I stay in my car for a little bit longer, or I just wonder in my head, I cannot take another day of this, that’s what’s called emotional exhaustion,” Courtright said. “And that’s the first and primary symptom of burnout.”
The difference matters
Courtright said stress can make people work harder and give them energy. Someone might feel tired at the end of a week, but if they’re ready to re-engage the following week, it’s more stress than burnout.
Burnout makes it increasingly harder to give of oneself to the work. It feels like someone can’t go on anymore.
Fixes for stress can be easier, including a workout, a weekend off, time with family, meditation or religious rituals. However, Courtright said those are like band-aids on a flesh wound when it comes to burnout.
“The degree and the severity of it, the longevity of it are just much greater that a vacation is not going to fix that, or time off is not going to fix that,” Courtright said.
Texas A&M experts say knowing the difference between stress and burnout is essential.(kbtx)
Technology blurs the lines
Courtright said that in previous generations it was harder to get a hold of someone once they left work. Someone had to call the landline at home.
As technology has advanced, the traditional lines between work and home have blurred. Always being on means someone is psychologically not detached from work.
“You go home from work physically, but in your mind you’re thinking about the next big project or you get a message from a teammate or from a boss at 7 o’clock at night, or you know you have to respond to emails that night just to get ready for the next morning,” Courtright said.
What actually works
A vacation won’t fix burnout, Courtright said. Beating it requires a fundamental change in how someone and their boss approach work.
What actually works
A vacation won’t fix burnout, Courtright said. Beating it requires a fundamental change in how someone and their boss approach work.
“To fix burnout, you have to fundamentally change the way you do work, and the organization and the leaders have to fundamentally change the way that they do work in order to stop burnout or to address it when it’s happening,” Courtright said.
The real solution is firm boundaries and truly disconnecting at the end of the workday.
Leaders set the signals by how they manage their own boundaries, Courtright said. A leader may feel they’re doing employees a favor by always being available on vacations or at night for questions, but it can signal that it’s not appropriate to detach from work.
Disengaging after a workday can benefit your mental health.(kbtx)
“The research is very clear that detachment from work psychologically makes us much more productive the next day,” Courtright said. “And that role transition means everything. If we can transition ourselves out from one role to the other, then we’re likely to be better in both roles and we’re likely to feel that we have been managing those boundaries more effectively.”
Creating rituals
Courtright’s advice is to create a simple end-of-day ritual, such as a walk, listening to favorite music or a quick call to a friend; something that tells the brain work is done.
The ritual might take place during the commute, such as playing certain music or listening to a non-work-related podcast.
For remote workers, he said that ritual isn’t just helpful; it’s essential. Some individuals have reported that burnout doesn’t necessarily decrease when working from home because the lines between home and work are blurred.
Courtright said one executive he taught years ago simulated a commute by walking for the same length of time as the drive home and listening to the same music that used to signal the end of the workday.
Copyright 2026 KBTX. All rights reserved.