Ten Strategies to Help Combat Burnout

As the energy of new year’s resolutions starts to fade I’m sure that you, like me, are starting to get a little daunted by all of the things that you want to accomplish this year. But, rather than giving up, I think this is a good time to take a moment and come up with some strategies that will help up stay on track. Here are ten of mine, and I hope that at least some of the mare of use to you as well.

Now that it’s possible to have access to work emails 24/7, more and more folks are keeping their phones on them at all times, even using them in bed as both alarm clocks and ways to keep working at every conscious moment.

In addition to creeping into more and more of your time, all of that blue light that phone screens emit messes with your body’s natural rhythms, which makes it harder for people to fall asleep. I suggest setting a specific time to set your alarm for the next day, and then dedicating yourself to not using the phone or a computer after that, to give you some time to decompress and for your brain to get ready for sleep.

Human beings are both creatures of habit and can be remarkably flexible when we need to. For folks like myself, who have several jobs all of which require a lot of independent work free from the guidance of a boss, there’s a big temptation to not have a set routine.

For me, at least, this usually means to me trying to fit too many things into a single day, leaving me feeling tired, but unaccomplished. To fight this, I highly recommend keeping a steady routine, especially when it comes to the basics like eating and sleeping.

Keeping in mind my thoughts on taking a tech detox, know that it’s generally important to keep boundaries. Can you be fully present, for example, at the dinner table with your partner when you’re also texting a colleague about a project? And, for that matter, are you responding in a way that will actually help?

I think the answer is no to both of those, and thus I try to maintain strict boundaries on my time: work when you’re at work and be a part of your family when it’s family time.

Caffeine is a wonderful tool, and I am, at this point in my writing day, a thermos of coffee deep. With that said, there are hard, physical limits to how much we can do on little sleep. As several studies have shown over the last century, the longer you try to put off sleep, the worse you’ll perform intellectually and physically.

An adult human being needs eight hours a night of sleep for optimal performance, and if we want to do what we want in 2022, we’re going to need as much optimal performance as we can get.

For a lot of us, whether we’re working from home or back to the office in person, winter means spending a lot of time indoors. You spend your morning inside, drive to work with the windows up to keep the cold out, spend all day in an office, etc. After a while of that, it’s understandable that you’ll feel like the walls are closing in on you.

Take the time to get outside, even if it’s cold, to get some fresh air so that you don’t feel trapped: it’ll help you stay focused.

Routine, as I mentioned before, is important as a structure to make the most out of your days. But, after a while, things can start to feel more than a little stale. When that starts happening, plan something of a getaway.

It doesn’t have to be international, or even outside of your town. I’d recommend picking a day you have off and doing something as simple as going to a cafe you haven’t been to before. It’ll help keep you sane and like there’s some variety in your life beyond the day-to-day grind.

Above all, you have an obligation to take care of yourself, and, to sue an old adage, it’s impossible to pour from an empty glass. Especially for folks who work in jobs where a lot of people depend on you, it’s easy to fall into the trap of spending all of your time and effort doing things for the people you care about.

It’s great to care about and for others, but, at the end of the day, if you neglect yourself for too long, you won’t be able to show up for the others when it really counts.

Despite being creatures of habit, human beings do also need some variety to keep life fun and interesting. Given how easy it can be to learn new things in the 21st century, I think it can be super helpful to pick up a new hobby.

For me, getting more into cooking as the world went into lockdown took my mind off of things a little bit, and it also gave me something to do that was productive, fun, and took my entire focus. I highly recommend that you do something similar that you haven’t done before.

Are you having trouble sleeping and finding yourself growing restless without a good reason as to why? It could well be that your body and mind are craving some healthy levels of exercise. Several decades of studies clearly show that, in addition to medical benefits, exercise is good for your mind as well.

With Work From Home being the way forward for a lot of people and businesses, I’ve noticed that, especially among my younger colleagues, work, play, and sleep all happen in the same room. I’d assume that this will lead to a lot of the feelings of cabin fever that many of us are struggling with, and thus, I think it’s a good idea to try to carve out spaces to separate activities or times of the day.

I hope you find some of this useful as we all move forward with the important things in our lives in 2022 and beyond.