I didn’t even realize it at the time, but chronic stress and burnout plagued my life. For years, I felt constantly exhausted, but like I was never doing enough. Especially being an entrepreneur and owning my own business, I felt like I was constantly treading water–always having so much to do, but never feeling like I had the time (or energy) to do it all. I knew I had to prioritize my health (that is my job, after all), so made sure to fit in a workout, grocery shopping/cooking for healthy foods, and getting 8 hours of sleep as much as possible. I did all the “self-care” things they said I should, and yet I was still feeling so uninspired, exhausted, and burnt out–so why?

It wasn’t until about a year ago when I totally rearranged the way I thought about work–and my entire life in general–that everything else changed too. After making huge shifts, I feel like I tapped into a superpower we’re not supposed to know we had–I’m getting more done in less time, and feeling more inspired and in tune than ever, while still making more time to actually enjoy my life and feeling more overall joy. You’ve heard before that work-life balance is important and that not having enough is what causes burnout. Well maybe that’s partly true, but I think that advice is really just fluff. The reason we feel chronic stress, exhaustion, and just so over it has much more to do with how we’re balancing our energies than how we’re balancing our time. Here are the two real reasons why you’re feeling burnt out, and what to do about it.

1.Toxic productivity is so deeply engrained

By now you might have heard that productivity is not always the incredible virtue we’re made to believe. Toxic productivity is the feeling of always needing to do something, and never feeling like you’re doing enough; when being productive feels like an addiction–AKA you prioritize productivity over genuine fulfillment of life and you don’t have a balance. Maybe you always feel like you should be doing something, whether it’s work or chores, or maybe you only allow yourself to do something “meaningless” like watch TV if you’re simultaneously doing something “productive” like a face mask or folding laundry. But toxic productivity doesn’t just show up in the way we do adulting. The way we think of self-care is just a shinier version of toxic productivity: always feeling like we need to be doing more or improving ourselves. So even if you’re cooking healthy foods and have a 10-step nighttime routine, it might be adding to your burnout instead of recharging you.

When you experience this toxic productivity mindset, you are not able to reset and recharge, constantly draining yourself instead of feeling fulfilled, inspired, and energized. You’re also manifesting lack because you’re an energetic match for hard work, suffering, anxieties, and feeling like there's not enough time–not an energetic match for abundance, creativity, and fulfillment. In other words, you're causing chronic stress and burnout, instead of tapping into your full creative, powerful, and even productive potential. Success is not about the amount of time you put into something–it’s about balancing the energies of your life so the time that you do put into work are powerful, intentional, creative, and inspiring. For me, everything changed when I focused on feeling instead of outcome–instead of putting “things to check off the list” as the priority of my day (work tasks, chores, a workout, etc.), my priorities became feeling joy and having fun. And ironically (although not surprisingly), my work and health were both better because of it.

Affirmations to heal from toxic productivity:

My worth is not determined by what I do; I am worthy of existence because I am alive
My only purpose on earth is the same as flowers; to simply exist, be unique, and be beautiful.
Who I am and what I believe attracts success to me, not time or effort.
Even if I do nothing today, I am an energetic match to receive abundance.
Rest and joy are the most productive ways I could spend my time because they help me gain clarity, creativity, abundance, and energy

Check out more affirmations to heal from toxic productivity here.

2. You expect to have the same level of productivity every day

Your body is not the same week to week, or day to day–stop expecting to work like it is. Women are experiencing burnout more often than men for many reasons (read: gender pay gap, sexual assault at work, the expectation to work like you don’t have kids and parent like you don’t have a job), but a key reason is that we are working against our bodies to get things done, instead of working with them to create, brainstorm, inspire, and work with our full potential. As Alisa Vitti explains in her book In the Flo, “Corporate culture is set up to optimize performance for male biological rhythms, not the female infradian rhythm." So you are used to the 9-5 structure and having meetings on the same days of the week, but guess what: that daily or weekly system was created for the circadian rhythm, not for our dominate infradian rhythm that rules every part of our bodies.

PSA: Your body is meant to be different every single day. We are cyclical beings–we can have it all, but not all at once. Your body is optimized for performance in different areas at different points of your cycle, thanks to changes in hormones, so we’re designed to adjust our workflow through our cycles, not day-by-day or week-to-week. When we force our bodies to present, network, or perform tasks when it’s optimized to do the opposite, we’re draining our bodies of energy (burnout) and also missing out on our full potential (better work in less time). Don’t believe that your cycle plays that much of a role in how you work? Here are some brief descriptions I learned from Alisa Vitti:

work/energy optimization by cycle phases:

Follicular

As estrogen rises, it boosts the brain's working memory capability. Schedule your most mentally challenging assignments. Hormonal levels also spark creativity, so start new projects or engage in brainstorming sessions with coworkers.

Ovulatory

Estrogen increases synaptic connection, which boosts communication skills. Schedule key conversations, important meetings, and check-ins with your team. You won’t feel drained by social connection or hard conversations during this time–you will actually feel invigorated. You’ll also feel pleasantly surprised with how clearly you speak when presenting or how you get your point across during meeting–it’s less likely to feel like effort and more natural.

Luteal

As the corpus luteum expands and then is reabsorbed, energy begins to turn inward. You'll have the desire to get things done, making this the ideal time for administrative tasks. The particular ration of estrogen to progesterone makes you more detail- oriented, so put together your data reports, edit marketing content, and organize files on your computer. Again, if you force yourself to do those administrative tasks during another phase like follicular phase when your brain is wired to think in creativity and big picture, it will take you a lot more time and energy to get the same tasks done than it would in the luteal phase.

Menstrual

The communication between right and left hemispheres of your brain is more powerful than any other time, making your intuition and ability to analyze at its strongest. Evaluate the past month, review your monthly planner to notice patterns, analyze data, meet with your manager about career goals. For years, I felt like my body held me back at work (I felt like my period was sabotaging me because I felt so lazy–hello, toxic productivity), but we need to get over the cultural conditioning that has led us to believe our hormones have a negative impact on our capabilities at work. In fact, ancient matriarchal civilizations would have menstruating women be the sole decision makers because they believed they were most in tune (which science proves is true, based on brain scans). Forcing yourself into other kinds of tasks instead of tapping into your full reflective and intuitive power during this phase will continue to lead to burnout, chronic stress, and even uncertainty and unhappiness in your career.

Read more about how the cycle affects the brain here.