Cameron HeroldFounder of the COO Alliance & Invest In Your Leaders Training

Is Executive Burnout Actually Real? (A COO’s Clinical Confession)

5 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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1:15

A COO who once dismissed burnout as an excuse experienced severe burnout that required a three-year sabbatical and 2.5 years to recover creative spark. Recovery from serious burnout takes one to three years, far longer than a vacation. The conversation examines whether burnout is real and why acknowledging it matters.

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I at one point thought burnout was BS. I thought that it was just an excuse for like lazy people who didn't want to keep working and they're like, I'm burnt out, I need a vacation. And then I found myself going through this very long healing journey through a bunch of different things. And I just read a book on burnout after a 3-year, pretty much a 3-year sabbatical. It took me about 2 and a half years to feel like some sparks and creativity and desire to work. Like, I couldn't even go to a networking event, business events, like even supporting my friends at their— anything related to business. It was actually until I got the sparks coming back where I'm like, why did it take 2 and a half years? And I somehow like got a referral or like a recommended book on Kindle for burnout, and I'm like, let me just like check it out. And it was mind-blowing to me, the accuracy of what I had experienced and that I guess like severe burnout can take 1 to 3 years to get over. It's not just like, oh, I need a vacation for a week. So could you tell us about, from your perspective, is burnout real? What even is it? And why is it important that we have that conversation?
I didn't even realize that I was burned out very early in my career. Even this term burnout was not prevalent at that time.
However, I