Until it happened to her, Fleur Marks thought burnout was an inevitable side effect of success. When she conducted Zoom calls from a hospital bed, wearing a blazer over her gown, she congratulated herself on her work ethic. She knew a leader had to be ‘on’ 24/7 to be considered extraordinary.

It took the collapse of her health for Marks to finally realise she was not only burnt out, she was an overachiever: a personality type that meant she’d been at higher risk of a crash all along. Relentlessly pursuing excellence, while being everything to everybody, had stretched the corporate high-flyer too thin.

It’s a scenario small and medium business owners also know well. Beyond Blue estimates 89 per cent experience burnout some of the time. A third feel that way ‘often or always.’ “With small business owners, there’s so much more care and heart and willingness for it to be successful, so they can’t often switch off,” she says. “Unless they have very clear boundaries, they could easily fall into the trap of overachieving.”

Now a small business owner herself, the high impact mindset coach is sharing hard-won lessons in her book, The Overachiever’s Reset, to teach people how to reframe success and strive for impact over output.

The Five P-Words That Lead Overachievers To Burnout

Although workplace mental health hazards are talked about more than ever, Marks says the lack of a clear definition can make burnout hard to recognise. Leaders may see it in others but not themselves.

Overachievers, in particular, often misdiagnose the symptoms as busyness and stress. They look at their to-do lists with feelings of hopelessness or overwhelm, are reactive but rarely proactive, and consider everything urgent, yet fail to view these as red flags.

“It’s that feeling of not having any spaciousness to think,” she explains. “You fall into burnout when you lose clarity and you’re operating in a system where you feel like you can never catch up.”

Marks was primed for burnout by a career in advertising and communications, where ‘work hard, play hard’ was the mantra and timezones dictated her lifestyle. “I had to be on for London at night, New York in the morning, and then my Asian countries during the day,” she recalls. “I thought that was what it took to be extraordinary and I never questioned the cost on me.”

It was only after her body shut down that she identified warning signs of overachieving she calls the 5 Ps: perfecting, pleasing, performing, proving and pushing through. “They say pleasing and perfectionism are the two wings of burnout,” Marks notes, but all five can be dangerous.

Perfectionism is not just striving to be better, it’s believing one’s best is never enough. People-pleasing manifests as never saying no, while proving is the constant desire to demonstrate worth and feel needed. Performing is appearing flawless in the face of an alternate reality, and pushing through means postponing wellness to ‘when things calm down,’ while ignoring the inevitable exhaustion.

“Those are the five common traps, and you might tick all of them, and it’s okay,” Marks says to fellow small business owners, noting that this checklist approach is an effective tool for self-diagnosis when insight fails. “When you figure that you’ve fallen into that way of behaving, be kind to yourself and ask ‘Knowing that this cost is too high, what can I do differently? What does good look like for me now?’”

A New Mindset Comes With A New Definition Of Success

An overachiever’s reset requires more than an ice bath, massage or any other optimisation tips advocated by the $70 billion wellness industry, Marks argues, citing her own experience. “No green juices were going to save me,” she says. She had to dig deeper and confront ingrained insecurities that told her nothing she ever did was good enough. “That was my operating system, that drove my behaviours, which then resulted in costs to me,” she explains.

The solution, she believes, is a mindset overhaul. For SME owners, this begins with separating their identity from their business, since overachieving traits can be hard to avoid when life and work are intertwined. “You almost feel like your value is based on how well your business is going. Your enoughness is based on business success,” she says. “But, actually it’s not who you are. It’s a part of who you are.”

A pause is crucial to catching and challenging unhelpful thinking patterns. “What’s the story you’re telling yourself as you work the whole weekend, or as you do something you know is going to cost you personally?” she asks.

Linked to this is reimagining what success looks like, since too many entrepreneurs rely on a societal or social media definition that doesn’t match their values or circumstances. “In my case, I had to redefine my definition of success that included me, not excluded me, and I had to think about what I really wanted,” Marks recalls. It was harder than she thought, because she’d spent her career prioritising other people’s expectations above her own, but it works.

“What it allows you to do is to turn down some of the noise and the demands on you,” she says. Aligning success with values and impact can make it easier to focus. “Some of the other stuff that pops up or comes along unexpectedly, you can just sense check, and go, ‘Does this get me closer to what matters to me, or what I think success is this year?’ And if it doesn’t, let it go.”

Consistency Is Key To Eliminate High-Stress Habits

Changing mindsets and eliminating overachieving habits takes discipline rather than willpower, Marks argues. “Discipline involves things you believe you can stick to, but also the things that you know allow you to operate at your best,” she explains. For her, this means scheduling three 10-minute breaks per day to ensure her brain operates at optimum level, and not drinking alcohol during the week.

“Also, if I don’t plan my week, the week takes over,” she says. “I need to be really disciplined about where I am putting my energy, my time, and how am I setting myself up for success, even if it’s a massive week.” She recommends business owners tailor routines to their own circumstances, for example, going to the gym at 8am rather than 5am if it better suits their physiology.

Preventative measures may need to be factored in during peak times. “If you know that you’re going to have a big week, take care of yourself. Order food in or take 10 minute breaks. Make it something that’s going to stick,” she suggests. But she reiterates that these high-pressure periods should be the exception not the norm, declaring that instead of being a high achiever or high performer, the goal should be to become a high-impact leader.

“High performers are very much about outcomes and the pressure cooker, whereas a high-impact leader is about being very intentional. It’s about what do I need to deliver and what does good look like in creating impact,” she says.

Marks believes shedding overachieving tendencies should be regarded as a work in progress, and the odd wobble can be forgiven. The key is to set up a practice of constantly checking and regulating. “Every day is an opportunity to reset,” she says. “You don’t have to do this perfectly. Just check in with what’s really going on and ask is it worth it, or am I enough already just as I am?”