Burnout vs boreout — which one am I experiencing? Signs and differences
by Raina Lim·May 22, 2026
I knew what burnout was. I had never heard of boreout until a therapist mentioned it and suddenly a year of my experience made sense.
Burnout: Too much demand for your available capacity. Exhaustion, emotional numbness, declining performance despite effort, physical symptoms.
Boreout: Too little meaningful engagement. Chronically understimulated. Looks like laziness but feels like slow suffocation. The work isn't hard enough to be meaningful or challenging enough to engage fully.
Symptoms of boreout I had:
- Drag out tasks that should take 30 minutes to fill the day
- Clock-watching constantly
- High anxiety about the waste of my potential despite low workload
- Procrastination not from laziness but from the absence of stakes
The treatment is different: Burnout needs rest and scope reduction. Boreout needs challenge and meaningful work. Treating boreout like burnout (taking a rest) makes it worse.