Burnout – bad for your tires, bad for your health
My top 7 tips for avoiding burnout and stress is a post I’ve wanted to write for a while. I decided to finally get on with it and write this post after completing The Danger of The Hustle – Burnout is Real. Burnout is a topic that I know all too well and I want to share some tips so you can avoid becoming familiar too.
Before we get into the how let’s look at the what and the why:
What is burnout?
Burnout is a feeling of emotional and physical exhaustion. It often appears when we are exposed to stress for a long period of time. Usually, burnout is linked to the workplace, but it can just as easily appear at home. In fact, for many people, home life can be far more stressful than work.
Burnout symptoms
- Feeling tired most of the time
- No enthusiasm, and negativity toward achieving your goal
- Being agitated or angry
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Procrastinating
Although we can all relate to the above symptoms from time to time, if we start to display them more frequently then it may be a sign that we are approaching burnout.
Why is burnout so bad?
When we are in a state of burnout, everything in life becomes that much harder. Getting through a day at work can be a momentous task, and sitting through your kid’s talk on giraffe neck length can feel like you are stuck in an endless loop.
The levels of lethargy and procrastination we can achieve at times of burnout are huge. Productivity becomes a thing of the past and we sort of coast for a while. Although coast has a nice ring to it, so I’ll say unproductively bumble through life for a while instead.
How do you avoid burnout?
Here are my top 7 tips for avoiding burnout and stress before it happens:
Take regular breaks
The easiest and quickest change we can make to help avoid burnout is to take regular breaks. Taking a break gives us a chance to relax a little and take stock of where we are and what we are doing. When we come back from a 5 – 10 minute break we can focus more on the task at hand.
When taking a break, it is a good idea to think of and do something completely different from what we are working on. Go for a quick walk, chat with friends, or read a book. Something that takes your mind away from work.
The Pomodoro technique may be worth trying if you are finding it hard to schedule breaks.
Avoid social media
Not all advice is good advice and not all motivation is good motivation. In the age of social media, we are surrounded by ‘successful’ people. Everyone and their dog – laterally their dog – has social media, and don’t they all look so successful?
Comparing ourselves to others is often a great way to feel inadequate. Seeing others talk about how they are crushing it and working 16 hours a day is demoralising to the majority of us. Even if watching these people motivates us in the first instance, we will quickly discover that emulating what these people claim to do is not sustainable. And then we scorn ourselves for not being as good, motivated, or as committed as them.
Please remember that anyone can post almost anything on social media. I could post that I work from 6 am to 6 pm 7 days a week with a 10-minute lunch because I’m not a quitter and that’s what you need to do to be successful and you would do it too if you were truly committed. But is it true? Of course not! But I could post it. That is obviously an extreme example, but people do cherry-pick the best of their lives and post about it. Believe me, their kids are just as annoying as ours, and they have all the same worries as us that their project isn’t going anywhere and they are in over their heads.
Give yourself a break and avoid social media for a bit. I think you’ll find it will refresh you.
Plan out the day
Planning out our day can have a positive effect on our stress levels. Taking stock in the morning of what we have to achieve, we can find ways to be more productive with how we spend our time. We can schedule time for the more important and pressing tasks to ensure they don’t surprise us later.
By planning, we can also decide early on if we are likely to be able to complete everything. Noticing early if we are too short on time will enable us to ask for help and delegate tasks.
It can be hard to think clearly when we are focused on the job at hand. Something as simple as delegating a task might not enter our minds unless we give ourselves a moment to really think about what we need to do.
This post – The Ultimate Daily Todo List Strategy for Productivity – may help you with planning out your day.
Set limits – and stick to them!
Oh, this is a good one! Setting limits stops us from overworking. It may sound counterproductive and stressful to set a limit and stop working when something has to be done, but I argue that it is far less productive and far more stressful when we work long past our productive period and when our work quality is declining and when the next task is calling and when you feel your free time disappearing and … just no. Set a time limit to stop working on the task and stick to it. If you aren’t finished then restructure your day, delegate or come back to it tomorrow. Working past your limit is counter-productive and stressful.
Sleep – the ultimate daily break
There is no better break we can give ourselves than a good night’s sleep. And I do mean a good night’s sleep, and not a power nap or 4-hour shut-eye.
Sleep is a stress buster and motivation booster. A good night’s sleep will prepare us for the day ahead and let our subconscious do its thing.
Sticking to a night-time routine and keeping a set bedtime will help us with a good night’s sleep. Sleeping is so important that it really deserves its own post … watch this space.
Learn to delegate/ask for help
What better way to free up time in your day than to delegate a task to someone else. We are not superheroes – we can’t do everything at once, or at least not well. It’s stressful to see your todo list increase while your productivity decreases, so ask for help.
It can be hard to ask for help. It may even feel like a weakness. But we all need to lean on others from time to time. Imagine how good it will feel to not worry about that task, or when we can focus more clearly on what we are doing. We will likely find that by not dividing our attention, we finish before we expected.
Ask yourself how you are doing, and listen
When was the last time you asked yourself how you were doing? It’s so easy to fall into a routine and just get on with life. Stopping and asking yourself how you are may just allow you to realise that you are not as well as you thought. It’s better to realise you are showing signs of stress before you reach the stage of full-blown burnout. It gives you time to take steps to avoid burnout before you are hamstrung by its crippling effects.
There we have it – my top 7 tips for avoiding burnout and stress. I hope you have taken something from this post and that you implement these tips in your life. Burnout is horrible but avoidable if you look after yourself and take action.
That’s all for now
Iain McClafferty – The Five Year Mortgage
