Conquering Burnout

[00:00:00] Hey you. I'm talking to you. Are you running on empty? What if burnout isn't a personal failing, but a sign that you're overlooking something really important?  

, we talk about burnout as if it's inevitable and it's not, and its impact is huge. If you get burned out, typically recovering from that takes a while. Your energy, your motivation, your creativity will frequently be sapped. So instead of burning out. I encourage you to understand what is and isn't inevitable and how to adjust and course correct long before burnout ever becomes a problem.

 Today I'm gonna present some ways that I found can be helpful to recognize the early stages of burnout, the, the triggers for you, the root causes, and give you some suggestions for strategies to prevent and recover. 

I admit I used to not have an understanding of burnout. I've always had a lot of energy and a lot of enthusiasm, and I [00:01:00] could go, go, go often a lot farther and faster than many of the folks that I interacted with, and I, I just didn't get it. I, I could. I didn't need as much sleep as people and I really didn't like they've done studies now that show that some people don't need as much sleep.

Like I just didn't need as much sleep. It was easy for me to figure out what I needed to do, and I, I understand now that the, that there was some natural advantages that I had and, and some. Ways of approaching it that were unique and helpful. And then when I did actually hit burnout, because of course I just ignored all of the warning signs and everything anyone ever said about what it would take, man, was that humbling.

And it took a long time to recover from because I was so used to just pushing myself past all the [00:02:00] objections. That the process of rebuilding my energy and my focus and restoring my motivation, I sabotaged it. I would, I'd, I'd start to feel better and I'd be like, all right, I'm better.

I'm back. I'm done with this being slow stuff. And I'd run it full tilt again into whatever project I was on and fall over. And the thing about it was that I had to really reframe and. And, and actually understand that it wasn't a weakness. And burnout is a really, I shouldn't say burnout, but the, the ability to go, go, go.

There are times when it's great because there are situations where you want to, and most of the time when we go, go, go, we're doing it unconsciously. We're doing it because we think we're supposed to, we're doing it because that's the way things are done. We're doing it because workaholism is an accepted addiction in American [00:03:00] culture. We're not actually doing it because we are super committed and, and fired up about the project or the product or whatever it is that we're working on. It's actually kind of a gift to understand that. That being like, and because it took me so long to get there, it took me, it took me so long to recover that I become very fierce about it now.

I because I never wanna go there again, that really sucked as, as hard as it is to slow down. It is worse to have to recover. Some of the things that I think are really helpful to look at is doing weekly reviews or quarterly reviews

And noticing if there are things that you used to love that you sort of dread.  

 Step one is learning how to recognize burnout in yourself. And let's start with you. Let's, let's not try to apply this to anybody else yet so some of the signs and symptoms that are pretty well documented are emotional exhaustion. If you just can't really feel anything, you feel kind of numb or you're just by [00:04:00] default kind of tired. Cynicism, having a generally negative outlook and just not really believing anybody's gonna be there for you, or anything's gonna get done, or you have to do it all yourself. And decrease performance, that inability to meet your own standards or even sometimes other people's. Maybe ask yourself right now, like on a scale of one to 10, how energized do you feel and is that typical or is, is this moment an exception?  

After you get a sense of what your signs and symptoms are

 Look into some of the underlying causes now. I'm not going to do a super deep dive into the neuroscience. There's a really great book called Burnout. I'll put it in the show notes and I'll link to it in my website. I have a little book recommendation carousel, and I will touch on quickly what they talk about, which is that

 if your nervous system is overloaded [00:05:00] with stress or the thing that those feelings that dysregulation, in addition to noticing that it's happening, there are things you have to do to deal with it. And exercise is actually a really great way. If you spend 10 to 15 minutes a day doing some moderate exercise, that helps your body cycle through some of that that dysregulation, however, that's a maintenance , that will help burn through it, but it won't burn through the backlog. So if you're in a situation where you are constantly piling it onto yourself and that's not gonna fix it, you do have to address what you can in the circumstance and.

 Things in the circumstance that can really create, that are a feeling that you don't have control. Something that I see a lot in businesses, entrepreneurs, is feeling a sense of having a responsibility without the authority to enact it. And this can come from a lot of things. Sometimes it comes from people who just won't give you [00:06:00] that.

And I'm gonna leave those aside 'cause that's a totally different tact. A lot of times it comes either from a lack of clarity. In your part or the, the client or the collaborator that you're working with, or lack of understanding what needs to happen. And so if you are feeling like you have responsibilities without authority,

sit down and write out what that authority would look like and, and bring it to that person and ask them, tell them, these are the things that I think would be right for me to take on and see what happens. A lot of times the conflicts that we have with people are in our mind and when we speak with them about what we want, we may not get things the way we think they're supposed to be.

Usually we can improve them and oftentimes the mutual discovery process leads to something even better. Another thing beyond overwork that can overwork is kind of the baseline I'm gonna suggest and then insufficient recognition.

 I think we all need to feel a little bit of a sense of being seen and if we feel like that's [00:07:00] being overlooked or somebody's subtly or not so subtly taking credit or simply just taking what we do for granted, that can start to feel unrewarding. And I learned a long time ago, I don't really care about credit, but I learned that if I don't make sure that I get some credit for the things that I do, people won't think of me to do them in the future, 'cause they won't know that I did it.

 Another big one is values misalignment. And that's tricky. There are times when we take work with people or in situations that we need to. And I personally am never gonna judge anybody for doing what they need to do to survive.

And being aware of it and, and internally creating some sense of control around, these are the things that I will do or I won't do, or this is, this is what I need to have in the bank or in terms of clients, in order to separate myself from this situation. So that you have clarity about how long and under what conditions are gonna create that [00:08:00] for you.  

And now some, some potential solutions or tactics. One thing is make sure you're scheduling some recharge time and really, I'm even gonna go a step back and say, get clear on what recharges you. I have a colleague and a friend who's a professional photographer and she loves taking pictures. However, when she was doing professional photography all day, every day, some days, the idea of taking a picture was really unappealing to her.

She was a little burned out. And she realized that it was incredibly important for her to take time with her camera doing things just because she loved them. And it's a funny thing, right? That for her, the recharge day was taking pictures. And taking them of things and in places and ways that reminded her of the joy she had in that.

 I think is really critical to understand that we use words like self-care and recharge. [00:09:00] And to get really clear on that's about what recharges you. Like I'm not gonna. Go take pictures. It's not gonna necessarily recharge me the way that it did her, but sometimes it feels counterintuitive.

Like the way to recharge your excitement for taking pictures when you feel burned out is to take more pictures. That might not be true for you. It was absolutely true for her. So take a minute and think about the last couple times that you felt just really recharge. What were you doing? What happened?

Who were you interacting with? What were the conditions for that? I know for me a real luxury is having unstructured time that I don't have to make decisions in. 'cause my time is very structured and I frequently make a lot of decisions. So recharging for me is maybe my more traditional, sit in a hammock, go to the beach get your toes done, or something like that.

However, that's not gonna be true for everybody. Some people recharging is gonna be cleaning the house, and as long as that legitimately is what makes you feel recharged, you actually have more energy when you're done. I say go for it. 

And on the flip [00:10:00] side, in addition to finding things that do recharge, you identify one task that drains your energy and find a way to delegate, automate, or eliminate it. , you can even refine a task. I used to do this podcast as a video podcast the first year that I did it.

I just live streamed. And there were some benefits to that and I realized I didn't love that. And I was talking to a friend of mine and he said, well, it's your podcast. You don't have to live stream it. And I was like, you're right. I can go back to doing audio only. And it just completely transformed it from being an occasional drain

 To something I, I've come back to really enjoy and find to be very rejuvenating. Identify a task or identify an approach that you can change so that what you're doing is energy positive. Just one thing.

This episode, I started out with a question, what if burnout is a sign that you're overlooking something really important? And what if that's something important is you? How do you handle the care and [00:11:00] feeding of you as an entrepreneur and as a person living a life? I really encourage you to learn to recognize the signs that the resource of you needs, care and feeding, address those root causes and implement holistic solutions to recover from and prevent burnout. I highly recommend preventing it. It's really a much easier thing to do than to recover. 

Thanks for joining me this week. Take a step towards conquering burnout by scheduling some recharge time. And or delegating or removing something draining. Next week, Dr. Astra joins me to share her inspiring journey from diplomat to award-winning author.

We'll talk about her transformative approach that empowers individuals and communities to achieve their limitless potential and challenge the status quo. Thank you for tuning in to business as unusual. Remember, in this ever evolving world of modern business, it's not about fitting in. It's about standing out.

See you next time. Stay [00:12:00] curious, stay innovative, and always keep it unusual.