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If your study sessions feel heavier, your focus is slipping, or your motivation is fading, you might be brushing up against GMAT burnout. The good news is, it’s manageable with the right approach. So, what exactly is GMAT burnout, and how can you prevent it before it tanks your progress?
Quick Answer
GMAT burnout happens when test prep becomes overwhelming, leading to fatigue, low motivation, and declining performance. To avoid burnout, pace your study plan, take regular breaks, practice stress management, and adjust your prep when needed. With the right mindset and structure, you can stay motivated and perform at your best on test day. Keep reading to learn how to recognize, prevent, and overcome GMAT burnout.
Here are the topics we’ll cover:
- What Is GMAT Burnout?
- Signs You Might Be Experiencing GMAT Burnout
- How GMAT Burnout Affects Performance
- Common Causes of GMAT Burnout
- Strategies to Prevent GMAT Burnout
- How to Recover from GMAT Burnout
- Key Takeaways
- Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- What Is GMAT Burnout?
- What’s Next?
To start, let’s talk about what GMAT burnout is — and what it’s not.
What Is GMAT Burnout?
When we’re working toward an important goal such as the GMAT, it’s normal to sometimes feel stressed or tired. After all, GMAT prep takes a lot of time and effort! However, GMAT study burnout is more than simply feeling tired after a late-night prep session now and then.
So, what’s the difference between typical prep fatigue and GMAT burnout? While normal study fatigue comes and goes, GMAT burnout builds up over time and lasts longer. It’s the feeling of being overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted, which, along with growing detachment or pessimism toward your prep, leads to low motivation, poor concentration, and declining performance.
Think you might be experiencing GMAT burnout? Next, let’s talk about the signs to watch for.
KEY FACT:
It’s normal to sometimes feel stressed or tired during GMAT prep.
Signs You Might Be Experiencing GMAT Burnout
Here are some signs that you might be experiencing GMAT burnout:
- Sleep problems: Practice questions run through your brain on a loop, making it difficult to fall asleep. And, when you do manage to get enough sleep, somehow you still feel unmotivated and foggy the next day.
- Dread/anxiety related to prep: There’s a knot in your stomach before you even sit down at your desk. On top of that, you feel pessimistic about your progress even when you have a productive prep day. As a result, you find yourself procrastinating and skipping study sessions.
- Lack of focus and declining practice test scores: You read and reread RC passages without understanding what you just read. Or, you mix up Quant formulas and strategies you used to know well. Your attention span is short, and your practice test scores are declining.
Taken alone and infrequently, these signs are not necessarily worrisome. In fact, they’re pretty common! However, if you’re noticing them consistently, you may be experiencing burnout. Next, we’ll go over how that could affect your performance.
KEY FACT:
Consistent anxiety and pessimism about your study sessions are signs of GMAT burnout.
How GMAT Burnout Affects Performance
Here are a few aspects of GMAT burnout and how they can affect your performance:
Sleep Deprivation
If you’re losing sleep due to GMAT burnout, your score could be affected. Sleep deprivation has a negative effect on cognitive endurance, concentration, and alertness, all of which we need for tough GMAT questions that often require multi-step thinking and precision. Ideally, we should be getting 7–9 hours of sleep per night. In fact, high-quality, consistent sleep is associated with higher test scores. GMAT success stories rarely begin with “I took a GMAT test when I was tired.”
Stress and Anxiety
When we’re stressed, we’re unfocused, which can lead to misreading questions. On test day, this lack of focus can cause us to spend too long on certain questions and speed through others, wasting precious test time and missing important details.
Procrastination
The last thing we want to do is hit the books when we’re feeling burned out! As a result, we end up putting off our study sessions. Procrastination can start a cycle that leads to even more burnout. Procrastination makes us fall behind, which leads to stress, which leads to sleep deprivation, and so on. Not only that, but when it comes to preparing for the GMAT, time is a precious resource we can’t afford to waste.
KEY FACT:
Not getting enough sleep, stress, and procrastination are aspects of GMAT burnout that can affect your score.
Next, let’s look at some common causes of GMAT burnout.
Common Causes of GMAT Burnout
GMAT study burnout doesn’t show up overnight. So, what pushes typical study pressure over the edge into burnout? Here are some common causes:
- Time Pressure — Heavy academic demands and limited time are an incredibly stressful combo! The pressure of feeling your GMAT exam day closing in can easily lead to feeling overwhelmed and pessimistic. If you’re not managing your prep properly with a solid GMAT study plan, you can begin to feel hopeless about fitting in all you need to learn.
- Perfectionism — A common trait of high achievers is perfectionism, especially self-critical perfectionism. It’s easy to be hard on yourself when preparing for what feels like a high-stakes event such as the GMAT. GMAT prep is challenging, and if we’re not careful, we can take the normal setbacks that come with learning new material personally.
- Overworking Yourself — If you feel that you’re not progressing fast enough, tacking on more prep hours must be the answer, right? Not necessarily! Marathon study days stacked on top of work or classes can backfire. Without real breaks and recovery, mental fatigue sets in, leading to less productive study sessions, more mistakes, and burnout.
- Isolation — Low social support is a major driver of burnout. Feeling isolated can magnify normal learning speed bumps, making every missed question seem more important than it is.
KEY FACT:
Time pressure and overwork are major drivers of GMAT burnout.
Let’s move on to strategies we can use for preventing GMAT burnout.
Strategies to Prevent GMAT Burnout
How can you avoid GMAT fatigue and burnout before they start? Here are some solid tips for preventing GMAT study burnout:
Tip #1: Give Yourself Enough Prep Time
If possible, give yourself a large prep window. Knowing that you have enough time to conquer difficult subjects is a key feature of GMAT prep stress management and makes studying feel more manageable. Therefore, plan ahead and schedule your GMAT exam day strategically. Give yourself more time than you think you’ll need. Also, don’t forget to factor in time for a GMAT retake. This makes test day feel less “make or break.” Your day-to-day prep will feel more relaxed, and when test day arrives, you’ll feel confident and ready.
Tip #2: Find Community
Joining a study group and getting support from a community is one of the surest ways to protect your GMAT prep mental health. Tens of thousands of people take the GMAT each year, so there’s no need to go it alone. So, find an online GMAT club or local meetup group to study — and commiserate — with. Naturally, it’s much easier to stay positive while studying for the GMAT when you realize that the Quant formulas you’re struggling with are giving others the same trouble! Along with joining a GMAT community, talk to friends or family who have taken the GMAT. Hearing from people who have been in your shoes helps keep things in perspective.
TTP PRO TIP:
Join a GMAT study group to keep your GMAT journey in perspective.
Tip #3: Work with a GMAT Instructor
Taking live classes with a tutor is another great way to combat prep isolation. A good instructor can address your specific questions and give you immediate feedback, heading off potential issues before they lead to burnout.
Tip #4: Take Regular Study Breaks
Frequent GMAT study breaks help to ward off burnout by keeping you fresh and lowering stress. Also, part of GMAT study energy management is being mindful of your body’s signals, like hunger, thirst, and fatigue. Sometimes, we can get so wrapped up in study sessions that we forget to take time to refuel and hydrate. Before we know it, we’re tired and hungry — less than ideal conditions for learning, staying positive, and avoiding burnout.
Prevent GMAT exhaustion by building strategic breaks into each study session. Try scheduling your breaks using the Pomodoro technique. This method breaks study time into manageable segments of 25 minutes followed by 5-minute breaks. These mini-resets lower overall stress load and keep frustration from snowballing into burnout. Not only that, but just knowing that a break is coming is a huge mental buffer that makes studying feel less daunting.
Tip #5: Take Time Off
To prevent GMAT exhaustion, both physical and mental, taking a day off now and then is a key GMAT burnout strategy. It’s wise to manage stress before you become overwhelmed. To do this, build in days when you can dive into a hobby, hang out with friends, or spend time with family. However, be careful not to let a 1-day break stretch into a week! A day off here and there is fine, but more than that can cause a loss of momentum that leads to learning loss.
TTP PRO TIP:
Incorporate study breaks and occasional days off to maintain your motivation and prevent burnout.
Now, let’s talk GMAT burnout recovery.
How to Recover from GMAT Burnout
If you’re already feeling the effects of GMAT burnout, don’t worry! There are strategies you can use to reset and recharge.
Prioritize Rest and Recovery
Dealing with GMAT burnout begins with rest and recovery. So, what does that entail? Well, one of the best ways to overcome GMAT prep fatigue is to prioritize consistent, healthy sleep. Specifically, aim for 7 to 9 hours of quality sleep per night. Turn down the lights in the evening and stop caffeinated drinks a good 6 hours before bedtime to make falling asleep easier. When you’re rested and alert, everything else feels more manageable.
TTP PRO TIP:
Recharge by prioritizing 7–9 hours of healthy sleep per night.
Adjust Your Prep
Burnout recovery includes adjusting your prep when necessary. If you’re feeling burned out, for a week, try building in shorter study sessions. For example, instead of a 2-hour block, cap sessions at 45–60 minutes with 5–10-minute breaks. Be aware of your state of mind from day to day. On particularly busy and stressful days, even a light, 30-minute prep session is helpful for staying in the groove and keeping momentum. In addition, maintain your GMAT test prep self-care by setting clear start and stop times so your off-hours are guilt-free.
Protect Your Mental Health
It’s in our best interest to be gentle with ourselves during GMAT prep. Mental health is not something to be taken lightly! Learn to recognize negative self-talk. If you find yourself thinking, “Shouldn’t I be learning this stuff more quickly?” or “Maybe I’m just not cut out for this,” stop and reframe. Replace harsh self-talk with positive affirmations. Think, “Progress over perfection,” and “Mistakes are data I can learn from.” Also, shield yourself from unhelpful comparisons in online forums. At times, hearing success stories is helpful, but it can be demotivating when we’re going through a rough patch. Overcoming GMAT stress and burnout includes being selective about the content you consume.
TTP PRO TIP:
Reframe negative self-talk and avoid comparing your progress to others.
Rebuild Motivation and Call on Support
When we’re in the throes of GMAT burnout, we can lose sight of the bigger purpose behind all this effort. When that happens, it’s good to zoom out and refocus on our goals. A useful GMAT prep motivation tip is to remember why you’re taking the GMAT. Reconnect with your “why” in one sentence and put it where you study. For example, “I’m taking the GMAT to earn admission to (Target School) so I can pivot from engineering to product management and advance my career.” Or, “I’m taking the GMAT to become the first MBA in my family so I can open doors for those who come after me.”
Along with the above, talk to friends and family who are rooting you on. Being reminded of your support system will help to recharge your GMAT prep battery.
TTP PRO TIP:
Write your one-sentence “why” to refocus on your goals and rebuild your motivation.
Key Takeaways
- Feeling stressed and unmotivated now and then when prepping for the GMAT is perfectly normal.
- GMAT burnout often stems from time pressure, overwork, and isolation.
- If you’re having trouble sleeping and focusing and find that you are dreading your study sessions, you might be experiencing GMAT burnout.
- Sleep deprivation, stress and anxiety, and procrastination are aspects of GMAT burnout that can affect your score.
- Head off GMAT burnout by incorporating study breaks and occasional days off.
- Join a GMAT study group to gain perspective and maintain your motivation.
- Reframe negative self-talk and adjust your prep to stay positive and remain motivated.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is GMAT burnout?
GMAT burnout is the persistent feeling of being overwhelmed and emotionally exhausted by your GMAT prep. It can cause you to feel pessimistic about your progress and make you feel unmotivated, leading to poor concentration and declining performance.
How do I know if I’m burned out from studying for the GMAT?
If you’re feeling anxious and losing sleep, noticing declining practice test performance, and avoiding your study sessions, you might be experiencing GMAT burnout.
How can I avoid GMAT burnout?
Schedule your test date to allow for plenty of prep time. Join a GMAT study group to connect with others who can relate to GMAT ups and downs. Work with a GMAT instructor and take live classes so you can receive immediate feedback and head off small issues before they snowball. Maintain your mental health and motivation with regular study breaks and time off.
How much rest should I take when recovering from GMAT burnout?
Give yourself a day off now and then to recharge and reset if you’re feeling burned out. Be cautious with taking too much time off, as doing so can lead to learning loss.
What’s Next?
Want more tips for managing the emotional side of your GMAT prep? Check out our article on how to eliminate GMAT anxiety.
The GMAT is a lengthy exam that requires mental stamina. Watch this video for tips on how to increase your mental endurance on GMAT test day.
