'A break restores you; a pause rewires you': Ex-Zomato exec’s burnout post goes viral

A Gurugram-based professional’s reflection on burnout has struck a chord online after he shared how years of overwork taught him that true healing comes not from “a break” but from “a pause.”

In his now-viral LinkedIn post, Mridul Anand, a former Zomato employee and IIM Calcutta alumnus, wrote, “Eight years ago, I took a year off to fix my burnout. But six months after I returned, it found me again. Turns out, I’d been fixing the wrong thing.” Advertisement

Anand said his burnout had been “building for years,” driven by the belief that effort always equals growth. “If I just pushed a little harder, I’d get over it. But the overflowing calendar, the fog in my head, and the strain in my relationships finally caught up,” he wrote.

When he finally took time off, he called it a “pause” inst