As we kickoff the new year, I’m working to promote my own mental wellness and increase productivity by focusing on burnout prevention.
Like many of you, I rolled into Christmas feeling exhausted and a little burned out, but over the last few weeks, I’ve had time to rest, spend time with my family, and recharge my batteries.
I’m excited and ready to go, but I know burnout is lurking around the corner if I don’t actively work to manage it.
That leaves me asking the question, “What can I do to prevent burnout in 2020?” I’ve put together a bit of a plan and I want to share it with you today.
5 Steps to Burnout Prevention
I’ve identified 5 Steps to Burnout Prevention - If you haven’t had a chance to read my previous post, The Four Signs of Burnout, you may want to take a minute to do that to help you catch up on the causes of burnout, its impact, and determine how it may be currently impacting you.
1. Release Your Attachments
This ties back to identity, which I’ve discussed here. If my identity and worth is tied to my role as an entrepreneur, then CONTROL becomes very important to me.
I will need to control my company’s vision and its implementation, growth, outcomes, hiring, etc. The list goes on and on.
Since I don’t want my identity to be wrapped up in my company, I have the freedom to relinquish control and prevent burnout. I can:
- Surround myself with talented people and let them thrive.
- Develop a system free of hierarchy so that others can play a role in decision making. Eliminating hierarchy also allows me to ask anyone on my team for advice!
- Seek advice from friends and mentors without fearing what they will think of me.
2. Workload Management
When it comes to managing my workload, I like to take a bit of a Goldilock’s approach. If I’m underloaded, I will have too little to do (or more often for entrepreneurs, too little of the work that I love), and it will cause me to become bored, tired, and burned out.
Conversely, if I’m overloaded, I’ll have too much to do and begin to feel anxious, exhausted, and burned out.
But if I can take on a workload that is just right, or in my Optimal zone, I’ll consistently find myself working in zones of flow and I will drastically reduce my burnout risk.
The added benefits include that I will be way more productive, more creative, motivated, and inspired. I’ll be doing work that I love and that will have a dramatic impact on myself, my company, and my family. Win. Win. Win.
What does the Optimal zone look like for you?
What tasks bring out your creativity and which ones leave you exhausted, anxious, bored, or frustrated?
When thinking about my workload, I find it helpful to break down my tasks by category so I can identify which ones put me in the Optimal zone and which ones leave me feeling underloaded or overloaded.
When I’ve identified the problem areas, I can more effectively plan a path that will help me to spend more time doing work that brings out my best and makes me less susceptible to burnout.
3. Active Anxiety Management
Since prolonged stress leads to exhaustion, which leads to burnout, managing my stress and anxiety is key to burnout prevention.
Rather than wait for it to build up until it demands my attention, I plan to take a proactive approach to managing my anxiety by getting my Weekly 140.
What is the Weekly 140? Simply put, its 140 minutes of wellbeing enhancers per week - just 20 minutes per day.
For me, I’ve found these things can include exercising, grabbing coffee (I prefer tea) with a friend, spending time in nature, prayer, reading, and naps. Others also find meditation, journaling, and yoga to be helpful practices.
For the Weekly 140 to be truly effective, I need to be dialed into the current cause of my anxiety. If I’m exhausted from too many meetings or sitting behind my laptop, exercise, time in nature, or wrestling around with my sons may be the most effective ways to reduce my anxiety.
However, if it is racing thoughts or neglected emotions that are keeping me from sleeping, it may not be something active that I need. In those situations, spending time in prayer, journaling, taking a nap, or talking to my wife or a friend will help to calm my mind.
Here’s the thing about the Weekly 140 - what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. I can’t give you a schedule for how to spend this time. In fact, I can’t even do that for myself because what I need will change daily or weekly.
What I can do is plan my Weekly 140 into my schedule and try to anticipate how I will need to spend that time. I’ll just need to be flexible in case I need to mix things up to better care for myself during the week.
I encourage you to incorporate the Weekly 140 into your week as part of your anxiety management and burnout prevention routine.
4. Wellbeing Community
I want to surround myself with a community that is committed to promoting wellness on all fronts.
As entrepreneurs, it is so easy to feel isolated but we can combat that by filling our lives with a community of people who are willing to promote wellness, especially when it comes to openly sharing about our fear, anxiety, and burnout.
This one is a bit of a vision for the future.
I am working to develop this type of supportive community as a component of the Unleashed Startup. If you’re interested in getting in on the front end of that, let me know!
5. Values & Alignment
Whether you are just getting started, growing a team, or looking to scale, defining your values and aligning yourself and your team to them is absolutely essential.
Your values determine where you are going and how you are going to get there.
At the Unleashed Startup, we’re in the early stages and we’re currently a team of two (my wife and I). It would be easy to neglect defining our values and assume we’re on the same page, but we know how important values are for our own wellness and that of our company.
Therefore, we’re going to lean into our values.
In 2020, we’re going to:
- Clearly state our values
- Execute them with consistency and integrity
- When we don’t execute them, we’ll demonstrate vulnerability and take responsibility
- When conflicts arise, our values will anchor our decision making.
What Does 2020 Hold For You?
So there you have it, my 5 Steps to Burnout Prevention for the new year. This certainly doesn’t intend to be a comprehensive list of ways to prevent burnout. They are simply the things that I believe will be most helpful to me in the year ahead.
If I can do these 5 things on a consistent basis, I truly believe I’ll be better able to prevent burnout, and it is my hope that they will do the same for you.
Are you willing to give them a try as you jump back in to a new year?