Master the Pomodoro technique to combat mental fatigue and burnout

WE ARE officially living in “The Great Exhaustion”. If you woke up today already tired, staring at a mountain of unread e-mails with a sense of quiet dread, you are far from alone.

- VUYILE MADWANTSI

Driven by the blurred boundaries of hybrid work, inflation and relentless digital connectivity, recent data reveals that a staggering 76% of people experience some form of burnout.

It’s no longer just a bad week at the office; it is a global mental health crisis.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in South Africa, which consistently ranks as one of the most mentally distressed and overburdened populations in the world.

According to the Global Mental State of the World Report, South Africa ranked a harrowing 69th out of 71 countries for mental health, reporting the highest percentage of “distressed or struggling” individuals at 35%.

A toxic cocktail of compounding financial pressures, a 32.7% unemployment rate, and relentless workplace burnout has turned daily chronic stress into background noise for the average citizen.

But what is this doing to our bodies?

To understand why you can’t focus, you have to understand cognition, the brain-based skills, like thinking and reasoning, that we use to perform every single task in our lives.