The Chain of Life: Why Logistics Professionals Burn Out Faster Than Others

In this episode of Rozmowy Logistyków, Adam Sobolewski talks with Iwona Bobrowska-Budny of Kirov & Partners about overload and professional burnout in logistics. Drawing on experience managing supply chains at organizations with billion-złoty revenues, they discuss where this industry's particular burden comes from and how to deal with it.

A DOUBLE LOAD: THE HEAD AND PHYSICAL SPACE AT ONCE

A logistics professional's work requires managing two dimensions simultaneously: intense intellectual effort (planning, calculating, forecasting) and the physical, end-to-end reality in which goods and people actually move. Unlike a mistake in a financial spreadsheet, which stays "in Excel," a logistics mistake has immediate, tangible consequences — a jammed-up distribution center, trucks standing without a load, goods in the wrong place. This double load on the nervous system — mental preparation and physical oversight at the same time — wears down the psyche faster than in one-dimensional professions.

THE "PSYCHOLOGICAL RESILIENCE MATERIAL" STARTS LOWER TODAY

The concept of a "battery" at the start of the workday: before the pandemic, most people started the day with a fuller reserve of psychological energy. Today, between poor sleep, financial anxiety (rising loan installments), and geopolitical uncertainty, many people start with a battery already charged to only 70-80%. Layer on the specifics of the logistics profession — supply chain has become one of the most frequently repeated keywords in listed companies' board commentary to analysts over the past five years, alongside digitalization, AI, and interest rates — and the pressure on this function has genuinely increased.

FALSE COPING STRATEGIES FOR STRESS

A 2022 survey found that over 60% of Poles report having techniques for coping with stress — but among the most commonly cited were cigarettes, alcohol, and extreme sport (marathons, triathlons), which can become another source of physical strain rather than recovery. Genuine recovery requires something simpler and less impressive: over six hours of effective sleep (not time spent in bed), low-intensity movement (a jog-walk, an easy swim — something that lets you breathe freely, not an adrenaline sprint), and basic hygiene around food and hydration.

THE TENSION YOU DON'T FEEL

Chronic tension can be invisible to the person carrying it — it only shows up when someone touches your shoulder and says "God, you're so tense." Left undischarged, it leads to sudden "crashes": abrupt injuries (e.g. to the spine) that are the physical result of long-suppressed tension, along with anxiety states, professional burnout, and depression.

EVERYONE RECHARGES WITH SOMETHING DIFFERENT

A model of life needs (based partly on the Reiss Motivation Profile and PCM research) shows that different people "recharge their battery" with completely different things: family and time spent together (not household logistics — cleaning and ferrying people around), solitude (a need that's hard to reconcile for someone on a leadership team who has to be constantly available to their team), physical activity, or even something as simple as regular, mindful eating. The key step is identifying your own source of recovery — only then can you consciously put it in the calendar as a non-negotiable "first hour of the day for yourself."

CHRONICALLY POSTPONING RECOVERY ENDS AT A WALL

Treating warning signs ("I'll finish this spreadsheet, even at the cost of sleep") as a one-off exception can be harmless once, but repeated systematically it's like driving a car with the low-fuel light that came on long ago. People fall into two groups: those who haven't yet hit the wall (and often don't even know it exists), and those who have already hit it and are building new habits to avoid doing so a second time. The key question to ask yourself: how much do I genuinely feel I have influence over my life, instead of being purely reactive to what's happening around me?