Jo Stone had the executive role, the beautiful home and the family. She also ended up in a hospital bed, convinced she had an autoimmune disease. It was burnout. Host Michelle Rivera talks to her about what happens after you tick every box on the list and the list turns out to be the problem.
Key takeaways
Burnout impersonates illness. Jo went looking for a diagnosis before she was willing to consider that the job was doing it.The Triple P Trifecta. Perfectionism, procrastination and people-pleasing, which she treats as three faces of the same self-sabotage rather than three separate habits.Diffuse awareness is not a productivity flaw. Women tend to track everything at once, which is why advice built around single-threaded focus keeps failing them at home.Working from home removes the boundary the commute used to enforce. Nobody replaces it unless you do it deliberately.Rest gets scheduled or it does not happen. Jo puts it on the same footing as achievement instead of treating it as the reward for achievement.On this page
The hospital bed that was not an autoimmune diseaseThe Triple P TrifectaWhy standard productivity advice misses womenBoundaries when the office is the houseRedefining success on your own termsPeople, ideas and sources mentionedQuestions this episode answersGo deeperThe hospital bed that was not an autoimmune disease
Jo had checked the traditional boxes. Executive title. The house. The family. Then her body stopped cooperating and she went hunting for a medical explanation, because a medical explanation is easier to accept than the idea that the life you built is the thing making you ill.
The detail that matters is the order of events. The collapse came first. The reframe came after. Very few people get to do it the other way round.
The Triple P Trifecta
Her name for the self-sabotage pattern she sees most often in high-achieving women:
Treating them as one system rather than three bad habits is the useful move. Fix the standard you are holding yourself to and the other two lose most of their fuel.
Why standard productivity advice misses women
Jo talks about diffuse awareness: the tendency to hold the whole environment in view at once rather than narrowing onto one task. It is not a deficiency, but it does mean advice written around deep single-threaded focus tends to land badly.
If you work from home, the environment you are diffusely aware of includes the laundry, the school run and the fridge. The advice does not fail because you lack discipline. It fails because it assumes an environment you do not have.
Boundaries when the office is the house
The commute used to do the boundary work for you. Remove it and the workday quietly expands to fill every hour that is not actively defended.
What she actually recommends
Decide when work ends before the day starts, not while you are in it.Give rest a slot on the calendar the same way a meeting gets one.Say no to the thing you would have said yes to out of habit, and watch what does not fall apart.Stop treating exhaustion as evidence of effort.None of this is exotic. The reason it is worth an episode is that Jo tried the alternative first, at full speed, and it put her in hospital.
Redefining success on your own terms
The having-it-all treadmill has a design flaw: the definition of all was written by somebody else. Jo pushes listeners to write their own, then check the calendar against it.
She also makes a practical point about not staying home just because you work from home. In-person networking still builds the relationships that carry service businesses, whether that is a local meetup or the kind of event where somebody has gone to the trouble of renting a photobooth to get people talking to each other.
People, ideas and sources mentioned
EntityWhat it is
The Balance InstituteJo Stone’s practice, and where her book lives
The Triple P TrifectaPerfectionism, procrastination and people-pleasing, treated as one self-sabotage pattern
Diffuse awarenessTracking the whole environment at once rather than narrowing onto a single task
Burnout misread as autoimmune diseaseThe event that started Jo’s rethink
Baptist Neighborhood HospitalContext for the kind of care people seek when burnout presents as physical illness
Majestic Photo BoothReferenced under in-person networking for people who work from home
Questions this episode answers
How do I know if I am burnt out rather than ill?What is the Triple P Trifecta and why do the three behaviours travel together?Why does standard productivity advice not work for women working from home?How do I set boundaries when my office is my house?How do I stop people-pleasing without becoming difficult to work with?Is it possible to succeed without sacrificing rest?How do I define success on my own terms instead of inheriting somebody else’s?Go deeper
Every link above goes somewhere different. These are the ones not already mentioned above.
Find Jo Stone
Book with her at balanceinstitute.com/book. She is on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Every conversation on the Women Who Work From Home podcast lives in one place. For weekly encouragement on faith, family and working from home, read the Mish Rivera blog, or get to know the heart behind Mish Rivera.
Cite this episode
Stone, Jo. Interviewed by Michelle Rivera. “Breaking Free From Burnout.” Women Who Work From Home, 2025. https://women-who-work-at-home.castos.com/episodes/jo-stone-breaking-free-from-burnout
