Five Kind, Yet Firm Strategies for Burnout
A collection of small skills to flex when you’re burnt out.
In this post, are strategies to support with burnout. This is not the first post to be written on the topic, still burnout prevails.
Burnout is incredibly common women focused on accomplishment. It’s a vulnerable and risky place and when we’re in the heat of it, we can’t easily see what we can do to for ourselves.
Here are five strategies to consider, each of which are further broken down into small skills you can practice today. Don’t confuse small with insignificant. Small shifts are powerful, especially if practiced over time.
As you read, I encourage you to do so with intention. Which of these five practices might serve you?
Strategy #1: Decide What’s Enough.
Your to do list is never ending. A talent for seeing possibility + your keen eye for improvement creates work for a 1000 humans. Even if you moved heaven and earth today and have done all the things, your bias for action keeps you tethered to the work. You’re tired and you don’t want to lose momentum.
The Practice: Guard Your Whitespace Fiercely
The business and life you are building promises whitespace. Is it for Tuesday afternoon yoga or a spacious Monday morning start to the week? Maybe you want to play hooky on Thursday afternoons? Carve out a slice of whitespace now.
Flex the skill muscle of fiercely guarding The Whitespace.
Any Internal Voice that creeps up suggesting more to do, needs to be gently and firmly reminded of your other priorities. Expect the Internal Voice to disagree, be ultra-convincing and tireless. Greet her with respect and say “No work for now, I’ve done enough.” Whitespace creates relief from burnout.
Strategy #2: Know What It Means to Be Consistent.
You yearn to be consistent at what’s most important and this gnaws at your integrity. You’re inconsistent at working out. You’re inconsistent at posting on social media. You’re inconsistent at emailing your subscribers. You’re inconsistent at [FILL IN THE BLANK]. And you’re exhausted but want to change this.
The Practice: Define Consistent Enough
Pick one important business building practice and determine what “consistent” means. Maybe it’s writing a 1000 word blog post once a week. Then, given the season you’re in, define what it means to be consistent “enough”. What if you wrote a blog post twice a month to start? Could this be enough?
Flex the skill muscle of affirming Consistent Enough.
Imagine yourself six months from now looking back and seeing 12 blog posts that were written at a two week interval instead of every week. Take the long view and affirm the value of consistent enough as more, not less.
Strategy #3: Allow Support
You’re head down and alone in the trenches. While you know you’re not alone in this business or life you’re building, it often feels this way. No one really “gets it”. You’re not trying to keep people at a distance but when it comes to the work it’s just you. You’re on the treadmill and don’t know how to get off or ask for help.
The Practice: Micro Delegation
You’re right, no one fully understands AND the belief it’s all up to you leaves zero room for scaling, growth and rest. Encourage yourself to find one tiny task that your eleven year old son could do. Could he refill your water bottle twice a day? Tomorrow, name a micro task that your bestie could help with. Could she share your Instagram post in her stories?
Flex the skill muscle of believing your people want to support you.
You know you go the distance for others so allow for a more abundant view of others. Get curious about how the belief of “it’s all up to me” supports the vision of your business. Now also get curious about how that same belief will limit the vision.
Strategy #4: Choose Mastery
You feel like an imposter. It’s not that you lack confidence… you do know a lot, but sometimes you wonder if you know enough to lead your business and serve your clients. You want to run this business and serve clients with full assurance. There is so much to learn and so much experience to gain, how can I rest now?
The Practice: Feed Your Passion
When you’re passionate about your craft and serving people well, you will always be attuned to what more you can do for them and what more you can learn to serve them. It’s time to start feeding the Voice of “I am passionate about my craft” and release the lies of insufficiency.
Flex the skill muscle of fueling your passion with focus.
Pick ONE thing to further your mastery and allow yourself to be nourished. The pursuit of mastery invites you to put your heart into one thing. Practically, this means taking ONE course, or reading ONE book, or having ONE mentor or serving the ONE client in front of you now.
Strategy #5: Create an Idea Net
You easily add more to your plate. So many ideas, so little time. When inspiration strikes the energy kicks in along a desire to bring it to immediate fruition. Juicy new ideas beg you to take action now and leave the boring stuff for later. You love feeling the energy for the new but wish it would also be there for all the rest.
The Practice: Say Yes, But Later
Honor your ability to come up with ideas by writing them down and assuring yourself you’ll revisit the ideas later. Create a way to easily capture these ideas (e.g. a special notebook on your desk, an app on your phone, a document on your desktop) and put them there as they arise.
Flex the skill muscle of honoring you AND the idea.
Saying yes to your ideas is great. but “later” honors the woman who conceived it. You can trust yourself to come up with more brilliance, but your capacity to carry it all out relies on how well you are resourced on the inside. Set up a net to hold your precious ideas and revisit them monthly or quarterly. But not today.
Is it time to check your tires?
When you’re experiencing burnout it’s the equivalent of driving a car with threadbare tires. Nothing is wrong with the car (you), but the tires need to be changed if the car is to stay on the road. Pick one of the practices above, and give yourself the tune up you need so urgently
Burnout doesn’t improve without attention and commitment to your own needs. I’m curious to know which of these strategies feel useful for now, or later! Or perhaps there is a colleague who is struggling — give her some strategies to try so she doesn’t have to come up with them on her own.
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