Employee takes 3 weeks of PTO, returns to work feeling as burnt out as he did before the vacation: 'My motivation for work is basically gone.'

It takes more than three weeks to heal from burnout.

If you've ever experienced burnout, you know that it's not something you can quickly overcome. It has become a catch-all term for feeling tired from work, but that's not what burnout is at all. It's a state of exhaustion that you just can't shake. It can't be healed by taking a weekend trip to Fire Island, or even a week-long trip to California. It can take years and a complete shift in your routine to feel like you've truly recovered from burnout, and most of us don't have years' worth of savings to take time off work and heal. 

You can heal from burnout while working, but you have to change either your job or decrease the amount of work you're doing every day. If you willingly choose to work 12-hour days, even though your job doesn't demand that from you, you have to accept that you're not going to get as much work done in an 8-hour workday, and you need to be okay with that. You have to become comfortable with the idea of disappointing your boss, even though that might make you both uncomfortable. Otherwise, you're going to keep grinding until your body literally starts shutting down from stress and exhaustion. 

If you have to work 12-hour workdays because you'll get fired otherwise, it's a lot more difficult to find the energy to apply for new jobs when you are exhausted. But if you have to do it for three months to escape from a horrible environment, it will be worth it. You can finally relax when you get a job that lets you leave at 5 instead of forcing you to work a bunch of unpaid overtime.