It’s 11 at night and she’s reading the same report for the third time. She has never missed a deadline, and she isn’t planning to miss this one.
She told her husband things would calm down after Q3. Q3 finished two weeks ago.
In the UAE, stress rose to 84% in Cigna’s latest health study, and 89% of men and 79% of women work more than 40 hours a week. (Cigna International Health Study, October 2025)
Dubai rewards people who keep going, and most of them would name it as their best quality in an interview. Hardly anyone checks what it’s costing while the deadlines are still being met.
At The American Wellness Center in Dubai Healthcare City, our Psychology Department works with plenty of people who are still meeting every deadline and can’t work out why they’re this tired.
When pushing stops working
There comes a point where the extra hour stops producing anything. You stay until 9 to finish what you used to finish by 6.
The World Health Organization describes burnout as the result of chronic workplace stress that hasn’t been managed. (WHO, ICD-11)
In practice you’re tired on Monday morning after a full weekend off. Work you used to care about gets a shrug now, and you’re slower at things you used to do without thinking.
Never giving up is the habit everyone praises in you, and it’s usually the one that hides burnout longest. People who quit easily find out much sooner.
WHO is specific that burnout belongs to work. When the flatness has moved into your weekends, your marriage and the things you used to look forward to, it may be low mood instead.
If that sounds closer, depression and mood support therapy starts by working out which one it is.
Rest belongs to the work
Most people treat rest as something they get once the work is done. For anyone who keeps going, the work is never done, so the rest never comes.
In a six month trial across 141 organisations, 2,896 employees moved to a four day week with no cut in pay. They worked about 5 fewer hours a week, and burnout fell. (Nature Human Behaviour, July 2025)
People who cut 8 hours or more saw the biggest drop, and better sleep and less fatigue explained part of it. The companies chose to take part, so the result may be a little generous.
Very few people in Dubai are about to get a four day week. What one person can usually manage is smaller: a time the laptop shuts, and annual leave that gets taken instead of carried into next year.
Some people never get to the rest because everything they do runs on the 2am crunch. They’ve heard since school that they lack discipline, and they’ve worked twice as hard to make up for it.
Sometimes that pattern turns out to be ADHD that nobody picked up. Therapy for adult ADHD works on time blindness and finishing tasks, which twenty years of willpower haven’t fixed.
Goals worth keeping
A review in Nature Human Behaviour pooled 235 studies on what people do when a goal stops being reachable. Letting go of it was linked to less depression, anxiety and stress. (Nature Human Behaviour, November 2025)
Letting go alone didn’t raise wellbeing, though. That came when people took up a new goal in its place.
So the choice is rarely between grinding on and giving up. Most of the time the goal needs adjusting, and a few questions help:
- Would you set this goal again today, knowing what it has cost
- Is the deadline real, or one you gave yourself
- What would good enough look like
- Who is this goal for
The last one usually takes longest to answer. When the honest answer is your father, or people back home, the problem usually sits underneath the goal.
If your sense of being good enough rises and falls with one target, self-esteem and identity support works on the perfectionism behind it.
Still going, at a different pace
She’ll probably finish the report tonight. People like her usually do.
It’s December she should be thinking about, and whether Q4 ends the way Q3 did.
Persistence is still worth having. It works better with a time to stop and a goal she’d still choose today.
The psychologists at The American Wellness Center in Dubai Healthcare City see a lot of people who are very good at keeping going and much worse at stopping.
Book a first session whenever it suits you. It doesn’t have to wait until after Q4.
