Have you been so exhausted from chronic stress due to excess workload that it overwhelms you and completely exceeds your management capacity? This is you being burned out. I will show you 7 ways to prevent burnout, even within your busy daily schedule. The feeling of fatigue in one’s career or immediately after a completed project is rampant and I wish to help you handle it once and for all.
When you feel fed up and have negative vibes or start feeling less productive in the middle of a project, most of the time what you need to do is just stop and rest. Also, try to know your breaking point, and don’t be swayed into exceeding your limits. Often, you can be so busy and occupied that you forget to give yourself a break. Taking a break in between work hours is paramount.
It does not matter if you work for a company, from home as a freelancer, or as an entrepreneur. There is a certainty that you will get to a point in your business life when you get exhausted and overwhelmed. There is a need to find a space within your busy schedule to rest and refresh yourself to avoid burnout. But before we dive into these 7 ways to prevent burnout, know for free that your productivity will certainly reduce once you are burned out.
What Does It Mean To Burnout?
From the English Dictionary, the word burnout is defined as “The experience of long exhaustion and diminished interest, especially in one’s career”. For instance, a career mother who switches between office duties and home chores will, in no time, get exhausted and break down. But if she implements these 7 ways to prevent burnout, she’ll be more productive, energetic, and happy.
7 Proven Ways To Prevent Burnout
These are 7 ways to prevent burnout. Which will help you solve those feelings of frustration and irritability. Also, they will increase your self-confidence and help you build a positive mindset for whatever you are doing.
1. Identify The Source and Cause of Your Stress
An established format for solving any problem is to identify the source or cause of the problem before attempting to solve it. Identifying the cause of your fatigue helps you know where you should be having control over your life. You can find the source of your stress by consciously taking note of what always gets you all weak and tired, it’s called ‘finding the stressor’.
Find out what quenches your zeal to do more work and what leaves you mentally drained and confused. Though this might seem insignificant, if you are going to solve a problem, why not start from the root? Knowing what response made you all weak and tired is the first step among my 7 ways to prevent burnout. When you pay attention to what activity or response aroused a stress response in you, you can know how to properly manage your time effectively.
- Take A Break and Breathe
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Being under pressure will always lead to burnout. It might be from your boss or the demands of some customers, which will force you to keep working beyond your working hours. Working long hours without rest or time to breathe often leads to burnout.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, one technique was initiated to help keep the productivity of the healthcare providers, who were working around the clock, at its maximum level. That is the breathing technique. This technique was used to experiment on healthcare professionals. Results showed that the participants of the exercise/experiment had an improved level of confidence, satisfaction, and intentional living and were not burned out even after long work hours.
Whenever you are stressed and fatigued and don’t feel like continuing, it’s time to try taking a walk away from the scenario of all the chaos, and just taking a deep breath (inhaling and exhaling). Recommendably, count your inhales and exhales up to 10 each while your hand rests on your stomach. Taking time to breathe is essential for those with high blood pressure. Breathing allows their blood pressure to be regulated, calms their body systems, and prevents burnout.
3. Manage your proactiveness
Are you a good-hearted individual who always gets his hands dirty in a bid to get all things done, even if it is not your obligation to handle them? Then you need to either reduce or manage your proactiveness. Know for free that wanting to be everywhere at once does not solve all life’s issues. You will just end up overburdening your body beyond its limits.
About 120,000 people die every year due to unattended work-related stress, hence the name ‘The Silent Killer’. There are no quick fixes to stress, so you need to manage how you spend your energy. Don’t be a workaholic or a procrastinator either, because either of these makes your body work beyond its elasticity or work under pressure. Managing your proactiveness helps you gain control and allows you to choose how you spend your energy.
4. Always Practice Time Management
As we previously said, being a workaholic is a hectic job on its own. It makes you focus on handling a lot of things without having your time under control. And still, in the end, you bear the heat of being burned out. One of the 7 ways to prevent burnout is by scheduling all you want to do and trying to work within that time frame.
Don’t procrastinate or shift what you need to do at that point to another time. Try to meet the target within your set time. One thing procrastination and a lack of time management do is keep you behind schedule 97% of the time. Hence, time management prevents you from working under a certain level of pressure. It is vital to know that time management is one of the 7 ways to prevent burnout.
5. Be Conscious of Your Health
Here is where a lot of folks get it all wrong, thinking they were built to just keep working like robots. In the series ‘Peaky Blinders’, Thomas Shelby its protagonist always repeats this phrase ‘There is no rest for me here on earth, perhaps in the next’ When he developed a tumor in his brain, Life took a different turn for him. Your health is paramount, so be alert to know when your body needs rest the most.
If you don’t pick a day to allow your body to rest, your body will pick it for you. Being conscious of your health status helps in your holistic pursuit of success. Experts say ‘health is wealth’ and I also add that good health is a treasure. These 7 ways to prevent burnout can help you keep your body lively and productive if you take note of when you are strong enough to work or not.
6. Place Boundaries and Limits
One of the 7 ways to prevent burnout is by placing limits on what you accept, what you reject, and what your life is guided by. There are dos and don’ts that should not be tampered with. Have a category called the non-negotiable, that no matter how much cash you stand to gain at the end, you can’t still trespass beyond that limit.
A more definite approach to this is to place boundaries and remain disciplined in keeping them. You can’t maintain a constant and productive life if you are easily drawn into any unscheduled activity. Necessary or unnecessary activities, just have limits.
Have limits and let those around you know your boundaries, which you can’t exceed, so they don’t demand too much from you. Placing boundaries in your life, however, does not mean you can’t be flexible when the need arises.
7. Explore and Have a fun time
Taking a vacation or an excursion when you are overwhelmed by a busy schedule is vital. Always add to your monthly plan a date to take yourself out and have some fun. Sometimes all you need is a break to relax by staying away from work-related factors. Go out on an excursion alone or with family and friends.
Most times, strenuous engagements and stressful activities without any time to chill will cause burnout. Having fun and relaxing prevents mental retardation, fatigue, memory loss, concentration issues, and sleeplessness.
Final Words
Burnout signs are not the same for all individuals, they differ from person to person and so the approach will differ for everyone. In some cases, burnout affects people emotionally and behaviorally. Either way, burnout can be prevented, controlled, and treated, which is the purpose of this article. I hope you follow these 7 ways to prevent burnout and live a more fulfilling life today.
