Personal leadership · Every phase
Stress and recovery
You know the difference between stress that comes with the job and stress that won't go away, and you build recovery into your day.
Worth reading first: Where do you start with working healthily?
Does this sound familiar?
- On the sofa I'll just have a quick look at my email. I won't reply, honestly.
- I've got a holiday in three weeks, I'll recharge then.
- I'm already tired when I start, even after a weekend.
- I eat lunch at my screen, so at least I've got something done.
- I lie awake at night worrying about a client or a colleague.
Who it's for, and when
For anyone with a full diary, and especially for anyone who's still busy with work in the evening. It matters in every phase, but founders in Searching and Proving run the biggest risk: at that stage the business lives in your head, and there's nobody to take over if you stop.
Self-test
Four questions about the past two weeks. It's a signal, not a diagnosis. The result tells you whether stress and recovery are your area to work on, and what your first step is.
How often did you manage to properly leave work alone in your free time, in your head as well?
How did you usually feel at the start of your working day?
How often did you get up during the day and step away from your screen?
Did you notice signs such as poor sleep, irritability, worrying or trouble concentrating?
The model
Stress in itself isn't bad. A deadline, a tough conversation or a busy week creates tension, and that's a normal reaction: your body gets ready to perform. It goes wrong when that tension doesn't come down any more. If a new effort keeps arriving before you've recovered, it builds up. Then tiredness and tension turn into symptoms that stay.
So the subject is recovery, more than stress. And recovering takes more than being physically away from work: you also have to switch off from it in your head. If you read your email on the sofa, you're not recovering, even if you don't reply. Even the expectation that you're reachable costs energy.
Recovery mostly happens during an ordinary day. Short breaks of a few minutes have been shown to give you more energy and less fatigue. A holiday helps too, but the effect is gone about a week after you're back at work. If you save up your recovery for the summer, you're tired eleven months a year.
About one in five employees in the Netherlands has burnout symptoms (2025). If symptoms like tiredness, poor sleep, worrying or irritability last longer than a few weeks, see your GP or the company doctor (bedrijfsarts). In the Netherlands you can book an appointment with the company doctor without your employer's permission, even before you're off sick. If you have dark thoughts or are thinking about death, call your GP the same day, or 113 (0800-0113), the Dutch suicide prevention line.
Meijman and Mulder, the effort-recovery model (1998). Sonnentag and Fritz on recovery experiences (2007), and the meta-analysis by Bennett, Bakker and Field (2018). Albulescu et al. on short breaks (PLOS ONE, 2022). De Bloom et al. on holidays (2009). Burnout symptoms: the Netherlands Working Conditions Survey (NEA) 2025, via the RIVM monitor. The Dutch GP guideline on overstrain and burnout (NHG-Standaard Overspanning en burn-out).
Switching off
Stopping work in your head. The strongest link with less fatigue. What helps: a fixed finishing time, a list for tomorrow, notifications off.
Relaxing
Something that asks little of you: walking, cooking, music. It lets the tension come down, and it doesn't have to be useful.
Mastering something else
Sport, an instrument, a course. It takes effort, but a different effort from your work, and that's why it helps you recover.
Choosing for yourself
Spending your free time the way you want, not the way you should. It has the strongest link with how much energy you have.
Pitfalls
Only taking breaks if they pay off
A short break doesn't always make you more productive. It does give you more energy and less tiredness, and that's reason enough.
Pushing on until it passes
If you're tired when you start, even after a weekend, ordinary rest no longer helps you recover. A week off won't fix that. Talk about it, and call the company doctor.
Watch and read
Psychiatrist and stress researcher Christiaan Vinkers (Amsterdam UMC) explains in five minutes what stress does in your body, and when it tips over. In Dutch.
Watch on YouTubePsychologist Guy Winch on going over work in your free time, and how to switch off from it in your head.
Watch on YouTubeVinkers on the difference between short-term and long-term stress, and why recovery is the real subject. In Dutch.
Watch on YouTubeTo go further
A lecture by the researcher who put burnout on the map as a concept, including the role of the work itself. An hour, for anyone who wants the full story.
Watch on YouTubeRead
In de ban van burn-out. Over de grenzen van stress
Christiaan Vinkers · 2022 · ISBN 9789044651089
A Dutch psychiatrist and stress researcher, down to earth and critical of the idea of burnout. He looks mostly at how people get there: who gets overloaded, and when. In Dutch.
View the bookApply it
- 1
1. Close your working day
Two minutes at the end of the day: what's still open, and when will you pick it up? Then your head doesn't have to hold on to it. Close the laptop afterwards.
- 2
2. Set a time when you stop being reachable
Choose a time after which you don't open work email or work chat, and turn notifications off from then on. If you're a manager: tell your team they don't need to reply in the evening, and don't send anything after that time yourself. Use scheduled send.
- 3
3. Plan your breaks
Five minutes away from your screen twice a day, and lunch away from your desk. Put them in your calendar as reminders; on a busy day they're the first thing you'll forget.
- 4
4. Talk about it
If you've noticed for a few weeks that it isn't easing off, tell someone: a colleague, your manager, someone at home. Support from the people around you is linked to less exhaustion.
Examples
Closing the day in two minutes
Open: quote for Van Dijk, tomorrow at 9am. Open: call the supplier back, Thursday. Waiting on: approval from Sanne. Done for today.
An agreement in the team
An agency of thirty people agrees: after six o'clock and at weekends, nobody replies to email or chat unless 'urgent' is in the subject. The director now schedules his evening emails to go out on Monday at 8am. The work is the same; the evenings are calmer.
Do this in your own business
Everything up to here is free. What you fill in for your own business, you keep in Boldcaster.
- You assign the lesson to your team and see who has done it.
- The quiz counts towards your progress, and you see which lesson comes next.
Four weeks free. You'll land straight in this lesson.
Quiz
6 situations. You need 5 of 6 right. You can try again at any time.
1.A colleague says: 'Stress is bad, so I have to make sure I'm never under any pressure.' What's true?
2.You're tired, and your holiday is three weeks away. What helps most?
3.In the evening on the sofa you have a quick look at your email, but you don't reply. Does that cost you anything?
4.Why take a short break twice a day?
5.After a hard day you're torn: stay on the sofa or go to football training. What does the research say?
6.An employee has been tired at the start of the day for weeks and is sleeping badly, but isn't ill. What can he do?
Nothing is saved here. In the app, the quiz counts towards your progress.
Read next
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