I understand what you went through as I have worked with distributed teams and had schedule problems like you. Thankfully, I left that job before I was truly burned out, but it definitely took its toll on my family life.

I was working a job as a manager where I went into working in the morning and had a minimum 6 hours of meetings per day. Then I’d have to get my “real work” done late in the day. This would get me home for a cold supper and a few minutes with my young daughter before she went to bed. Then it was back on the computer trying to catch up on everything. If I stayed up to late my team in India would want to have real time chats with me. If that went on too long I’d end up working with our customer in the UK.

This was going on day in and day out for close to 2 years. You can imagine this type of behaviour was negatively impacting my relationships with my wife and daughter and my physical health. It finally got to the point where I quit my job as it was literally killing me.

I’ve since moved to a large multi-national corporation where life is not perfect but at least I feel like I have control over my life again.

So to anyone who’s suffering from burn out I can tell you from experience that there is something better out there for you.

If you are not sure if you are truly burnt out, try reading “The Dip” by Seth Godin as it really helped clarify my thinking.

I totally understand as a parent to two beautiful daughters. Managing the balance between life and work is continuously difficult especially when there are sick children involved. To avoid crazy conditions I try to plan things as much as possible (within reason of course). This helps with some of it, but children have a habit of changing everything.