Managers often have porous work-life boundaries, but that can send a confusing message to their teams. Employees can be left thinking they, too, should work late, answer email at all hours, and avoid taking their vacation time. To help your employees maintain their own healthy boundaries, communicate that the organization’s success is based on a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure you’ve hired enough staff, and that your staff takes turns taking time off. Remind your team that we are all human and have physical limitations; it’s important to take time to exercise and make doctors’ appointments. Redistribute work more evenly, so that to much of the burden isn’t falling on your best people. Finally, get better at setting and keeping your own boundaries. Helping your team get better about work-life balance might start with you debunking your own limiting beliefs and assumptions.

In the last 10 years, a new field of neuroscience has mapped the mental zone that can literally change the brain to quiet an overly active stress response system and simultaneously pave the way for higher brain networks to perform at optimum.

People who are suffering from burnout tend to describe the sensation in metaphors of emptiness—they’re a dry teapot over a high flame, a drained battery that can no longer hold its charge. Thirteen years, three books, and dozens of papers into [...]