🎄 Advent Calendar Day 19: Postcard from the other side of burnout

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Day 19 of the 2025 SaasJet Advent Calendar

Postcard (We Never Sent) from the Other Side: I’m Back, and I Still Have No Idea What’s Going On 🏖️📩

We’ve all been there. You reach the point where your brain feels like a browser with 47 tabs open, three of them are playing music you can't find, and the fan is whirring so loud it’s a fire hazard. Then, you finally do it. You take the "Strategic Recovery Break."

I’m writing this postcard from the "Other Side." I’ve returned from the land of naps and silence, and I have some notes for the Community.

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The Strategy: We call it "Self-Care." But let’s be honest: in the corporate world, it’s often a "Strategic Reboot." We treat ourselves like an unresponsive Jira board–refresh, clear cache, and hope the errors disappear.

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The Reality: The "Post-Burnout" Fog

There’s a specific irony to coming back from a break. We expect to return like a superhero, ready to clear the backlog in a single bound. Instead, we return feeling like a tourist in our own documentation.

1. The Pillow Gratitude: My pillow deserves a promotion. It provided more support this week than any "synergy-driven" meeting ever could.

2. The Laptop Truce: My MacBook and I have reached a peace treaty. I promised not to touch its keyboard with "anxiety-sweat hands" for at least 48 hours.

3. The Confusion: Is it just me, or does everyone speak a new language after you’ve been away for a week? "The sprint is in a pivot because the stakeholder shifted the KPI alignment." Right. Cool. I'll just sit here and blink for a bit.

Surviving the Return (A Survival Strategy)

When you’re returning from burnout, your biggest fear is the avalanche of missed tasks. To avoid burning out all over again by your very first Tuesday, you need more than just coffee—you need structure.

I’ve realized that you shouldn't try to read all 1,000 Slack messages. It’s better to look at the data. For instance, the SLA Time and Report app for Jira is my personal lifesaver when I'm in "What on earth is happening?!" mode.

• Reports instead of panic: Instead of guessing which ticket is the most important, I open an SLA report. It clearly shows which tasks are already "on fire" and which ones can wait while I try to remember my email password.

• Controlling time, not emotions: You can see the actual Time, allowing you to understand exactly where the process stalled while you were away. This helps you avoid grabbing everything at once and instead act with surgical precision.

It’s the bridge between the "I’m overwhelmed" state and the "Okay, I see which fire needs to be put out first" state.

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Today’s postcard

So here it is – the postcard we never sent:

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💌 Advent Calendar note

Burnout isn't solved by one postcard or one long weekend. It’s a cycle of learning when to close the laptop and when to thank the pillow. If you're back today and feeling lost—welcome to the club. We don't know what's going on either, but at least we're well-rested.

If this postcard felt uncomfortably familiar, you’re not alone.
And you’re not broken.
Sometimes the most professional thing you can do… is rest – and come back ready to make work a little more human.

How do you handle the "Day 1 Fog" after a break? Share your best (or funniest) survival tips in the comments!