Am I Burning Out, or Am I Just Tired?

How to tell the difference - and what to do if it's the one you're afraid it is

It's Sunday evening and you've got that feeling again.

The one where you can't quite switch off but you also can't face switching on. You're not dreading Monday exactly. It's more like... nothing. A flatness where the excitement used to be.

You scroll your phone for twenty minutes without taking anything in. Your partner asks if you're okay. "Just tired," you say. "It's been a busy few weeks."

Except it's been a busy few months. And before that it was a busy few months. And somewhere in the back of your mind, a quiet voice is asking a question you keep pushing away:

Is this just tired? Or is something actually wrong?

This post is for the leaders who are asking that question.

Why This Question Is So Hard to Answer

Agency life normalises exhaustion. Long hours are worn as a badge of honour. Being busy means you're successful. Pushing through means you're committed.

So when you feel depleted, it's very easy to tell yourself it's just part of the job. That everyone feels like this. That you just need a holiday and you'll be fine.

Sometimes that's true. Sometimes tired is just tired and rest fixes it.

But sometimes tired is the beginning of something more serious. And the longer you ignore it, the harder it becomes to come back from.

The problem is that burnout doesn't announce itself. It creeps. By the time most people recognise it, they're already deep in it.

So let's get honest about the difference.

Tired vs Burnout: The Real Distinction

This isn't a medical diagnosis. But as someone who's worked with senior agency leaders for years and who pushed myself hard enough in my own career to know what the edge feels like here's how I distinguish them:

Tired looks like:

• You're exhausted but you know why (big project, difficult client, heavy month)

• You can still feel positive emotions about work - pride, excitement, satisfaction

• The thought of your holiday genuinely excites you

• After a good night's sleep or a long weekend, you feel meaningfully better

• You're still emotionally present with your team, even if stretched

• You can still see what you're working towards

Burnout looks like:

• The exhaustion is chronic - it doesn't shift after rest

• You feel detached from your work - going through the motions but not really there

• The things that used to excite you leave you flat

• Your patience with your team has eroded in ways that surprise you

• You find yourself fantasising about quitting not because you want to leave, but because you just want it to stop

• Small problems feel disproportionately overwhelming

• You've become cynical about the work, the clients, or the agency in ways you weren't before

• You can't remember the last time you felt genuinely good at your job

The core difference: Tired is physical depletion that rest can fix. Burnout is a deeper erosion of your relationship with work - emotional, psychological, motivational - that rest alone cannot address.

The Agency-Specific Burnout Pattern

Burnout in creative, experiential and events agencies has its own particular flavour. It usually follows a recognisable pattern.

Stage 1: The Hustle You're promoted. You're excited. You work hard because you care and because you're proving yourself. Occasional late nights feel worth it. The adrenaline of busy agency life feels like energy.

Stage 2: The Creep The workload doesn't reduce after the initial burst. The late nights become the norm. You stop leaving on time because there's always something that needs you. You start answering emails at 10pm. You take your laptop on holiday "just in case."

Stage 3: The Grind You're not enjoying it anymore but you tell yourself it's temporary. Just this pitch. Just this event. Just this client crisis. But the temporary never ends. You're running on willpower and caffeine and a faint memory of why you loved this work.

Stage 4: The Flatness This is where most people are when they first come to me. The excitement is gone. The pride is gone. You're doing the job because you can't not do the job. Your team thinks you're fine - you've gotten good at performing fine. But behind the performance, there's nothing left.

Stage 5: The Breaking Point This is where you cannot continue without something changing. It might be a physical response - illness, insomnia, anxiety that won't shift. It might be an emotional response - snapping at someone you care about, crying in a meeting, a complete inability to cope with things that used to feel manageable. Or it might be a quiet exit - you hand in your notice without a plan, just a desperate need to make it stop.

Most people reading this are in Stage 3 or 4.

If you're in Stage 5, please stop reading this and speak to someone today - a GP, a therapist, or someone you trust. This post is for the leaders who still have time to change course.

The Seven Questions to Ask Yourself Honestly

These aren't diagnostic. But they'll help you get honest with yourself about where you actually are.

1. When did you last genuinely enjoy a day at work? Not "it was fine" or "it went well." Actually enjoyed it - felt engaged, energised, satisfied. If you can't remember, that's significant.

2. How's your patience with your team? Have you noticed yourself more irritated, more short-tempered, less empathetic than you used to be? Eroding patience is one of the earliest signs that your reserves are depleted.

3. Do you dread specific things, or do you dread everything? Dreading a difficult conversation or a challenging client is normal. Dreading all of it - including things you used to love - is a different signal.

4. Are you sleeping? Not just hours, but quality. Burnout often disrupts sleep in a specific way: you're exhausted but your mind won't quieten. You wake at 3am running through your to-do list. Rest doesn't feel restful.

5. What are you doing to recover outside work? Have you stopped doing the things that used to restore you? Exercise abandoned, hobbies forgotten, relationships deprioritised, weekends spent either working or lying flat because you have nothing left. This is your nervous system sending you a message.

6. Has anything at home been affected? Your partner commenting on your absence even when you're present. Your children asking why you're always on your phone. A growing feeling of disconnection from the people you're doing all of this for. Burnout doesn't stay at work.

7. If you imagine leaving your job tomorrow, what do you feel? Relief? That's a signal. Not that you should leave but that something needs to change. When the idea of escape brings relief rather than sadness, your relationship with the work has been significantly damaged.

Why Agency Leaders Are Particularly Vulnerable

Working in creative agencies is brilliant and brutal in equal measure. The things that make it exciting are often the same things that make it exhausting.

The work is deadline-driven, client-dependent, and inherently unpredictable. You cannot always control the pace. Client demands are immediate. Events happen on specific dates whether you're ready or not. The industry runs hot.

And for senior leaders specifically, there's an additional layer: you're absorbing the stress of the entire team. Your team is stressed, so you take on more to protect them. Your clients are demanding, so you make yourself more available to contain it. Your MD wants results, so you push harder to deliver them.

You become the sponge. Everyone else's stress passes through you. And very few people are thinking about what that costs you.

Add to this the Below the Line trap - the fact that most senior agency leaders are still operating as deliverers, not leaders -and you have a perfect storm. You're doing your team's work AND your own leadership work AND absorbing everyone's stress. No wonder you're depleted.

What Burnout Is Actually Telling You

Burnout is not a sign of weakness. It's not a sign that you're not cut out for leadership. It's not a sign that you chose the wrong career.

Burnout is your body and mind telling you that your current way of working is not sustainable.

That's important information. The question is whether you're willing to listen to it.

Most leaders try to push through. They take a week off, feel temporarily better, come back to the same system and end up in the same place within a month.

The holiday didn't fix it because the holiday didn't change the system. The system is: you doing too much, for too long, without the right support, in a leadership role you weren't prepared for.

That system needs to change. Not your holiday allowance.

What Actually Helps

If you've read this far and you recognise yourself in Stage 3 or 4, here's what I've seen genuinely help:

Short-term: Protect your recovery

You cannot lead well from empty. Before you can address the system, you need to stabilise yourself:

• Non-negotiable sleep (even if it means a strict screen-off time)

• At least one thing per day that isn't about work - a walk, a meal without your phone, something physical

• Honest conversations with the people closest to you about how you're actually doing

• Stopping the performance of "fine" - at least privately

This isn't self-indulgence. This is maintenance. A car doesn't run without fuel. Neither do you.

Medium-term: Address the system

The burnout is a symptom. The system that created it is the cause. That means asking honest questions:

• Why am I doing work my team should be doing?

• Why is it not safe for me to switch off in the evenings and weekends?

• What would need to change for my workload to be sustainable?

• Where are the boundaries I'm not maintaining?

• What am I afraid would happen if I worked 45 hours instead of 60?

These questions are often uncomfortable because they point at leadership patterns that need to change, not just workload that needs to reduce.

Long-term: Get support

This is the piece most agency leaders skip because they've been so focused on supporting everyone else that asking for support themselves feels uncomfortable or indulgent.

It's neither. It's necessary.

Coaching isn't for people who are falling apart. It's for people who are serious about building something more sustainable, a way of leading that doesn't cost them their health, their relationships, and their joy in the work.

The leaders I work with who make the most dramatic transformations are often the ones who arrive most depleted. Because depletion creates readiness to change in a way that mild dissatisfaction doesn't.

The Question Worth Asking

Burnout doesn't mean your career is over. It doesn't mean you can't lead. It doesn't mean you chose the wrong path.

It means you've been leading in a way that isn't sustainable, for longer than is healthy, without the right support.

The relevant question isn't "am I burning out?"

It's: "What am I going to do about it?"

Because you have choices. You can push through and most people do, for a while. You can take a holiday and come back to the same system. Or you can decide that this is the moment you change something fundamental about how you lead and how you work.

That last option is the hardest in the short term and the most valuable in the long term.

If you're at that point, I'd love to talk.

If you're concerned you might be burning out:

Book a free 30-minute discovery call. We'll talk honestly about what you're experiencing and whether coaching might help you build something more sustainable. [Book your call]

If you're in crisis right now: Please speak to your GP or contact a mental health professional. Burnout is a serious health condition and you deserve proper support.

Suzy Malhotra Founder, The Leadership Line Leadership Coach for Creative, Experiential & Events Agencies