What are the early warning signs of burnout that people usually ignore?

Burnout builds slowly, and the early signs are easy to reframe as personality or a busy phase. The common ones: cynicism creeping into work you used to care about, exhaustion that a weekend no longer fixes, reduced sense that anything you do matters, irritability with people who have not changed, dreading Monday from Saturday, and small tasks starting to feel disproportionately heavy. Physical signs often arrive alongside — disturbed sleep, frequent minor illness, tension headaches. The distinguishing feature versus ordinary tiredness is that rest stops restoring you.