A month or so ago, a friend of mine told me she noticed that my energy had been decreasing over the past couple of months. The truth is, I’d been losing steam for over 6 months at that point.
I wasn’t sleeping very well, and to be honest I was making decisions that weren’t in my best interest or that of my business.
There was no real pause in my life. I was hopping from one project to the next without stopping to celebrate any milestones or consider other events that would affect my bandwidth to take on new things.
I was headed for burnout with no end in sight until I intentionally had to put a stop to it.
Unfortunately, my story is a really common one for many business owners. Burnout is the big bad wolf lurking just below the surface for many successful people. But it doesn’t mean that we can’t do anything to stop it.
Why we miss the signs of burnout
You believe it’s a requirement
Burnout is easy to miss because you feel like you need to continue working even when you’re exhausted in order to compete in your industry. You compare yourself to people at completely different stages of their business and fail to recognize and honor your secret sauce — the thing that makes you and your business unique.
You set unrealistic expectations
You set unrealistic expectations for your capacity. You’ve been told that you need to spend 100 hours a week building your business and, well, there are only 168, which doesn’t leave a lot of time for rest and sleep. The finish line for success is unrealistically far away from where you are now and, if you’re honest, that line keeps moving farther and farther with every new project.
You’ve given up your personal life
You’ve lost your identity outside your business and your emotions heavily depend on whether your business is successful or not. You’re on top of the world when your business is performing well and you feel like a complete failure when it doesn’t.
How does burnout affect you?
Physical Signs
When you’re experiencing burnout, there are a few physical signs that alert you. Your immune system takes a hit and you become more susceptible to illness. Your body also shows more signs of pain and discomfort as it attempts to accommodate the high-stress environment that you put yourself in.
You also don’t quite know how to turn your brain off. Your brain has gotten into the habit of overworking and now doesn’t know what to think about when it’s not thinking about work.
Mental Signs
When you’re experiencing burnout, you’ll notice yourself making decisions without thinking them through, because you don’t have the strength to hold fast to your boundaries. Then you resent yourself and the person who originally asked you in the first place.
Burnout shows up in how you serve your clients. You start cutting corners in your process or you don’t have as much patience as you did before.
You find that the more hours you put in, the less quality work you get out, which frustrates you even more.
Emotional Signs
With burnout, emotionally, you’re more isolated and you socialize less. You don’t feel as connected to your family, friends, or support system, which is unfortunate because that’s usually when you need people the most.
How to avoid and recover from burnout
Constrain your time at work
It’s been widely studied that productivity diminishes after about 50 hours of work. Companies are experimenting with 6-hour workdays (which puts people at about 30 hours per week in a traditional work week), or 4 day work weeks where they work four 10-hour days. The point is, sure you could work 100 hours a week, but half of them would be a wash anyway.
Daniel Pink studied and shared about understanding when you’re most productive in his book “When” which is a personal favorite of mine. He shares that not all hours are the same, and treating them all like they’re the same is a surefire way to not reach your goals and also feel terrible about yourself.
Prioritize the other facets of your life
Before you had a business, you were a whole person. When your whole identity is in your business, it’s easy to let your emotions be affected by how it’s doing at any given time and to believe the lie that your business needs more from you in order to succeed.
Part of the reason I named my business Virtuous You is from a character described in the Bible. She’s the Virtuous Woman and she’s described as this amazing wife, hero of a mother, leader, and trusted pillar of the community. And she can be all of those things because she knows when to say yes and when to say no.
Virtuous You is my way of saluting all the women out there that own their multiple facets and don’t feel like they have to give up one part of themselves for another.
They don’t have to give up their family for the business or the other way around. They understand the seasons they’re in and keep their purpose at the forefront. Success for each Virtuous Woman is going to look different because their priorities are different.
So my people aren’t just “boss babes”, they’re moms, wives, career professionals, competitive athletes, musicians, writers, bread bakers. They are all these things. And they need time to develop all these facets as needed. They recognize that a change in season may change how they flex in each facet and determine what success looks like in each season.
So take a step back and determine who you are outside your business. What other hats do you wear that matter to you? How much time do you devote to making sure those other needs in your life are adequately met?
Ruthlessly remove takes from your plate
Michael Hyatt goes into more detail about what to do with to-do list items on your plate that you’re not uniquely suited for. In short, they can be eliminated, automated, or delegated.
First, you have to be very clear on what task you are truly supposed to take on based on the role you play in your company, and the tasks where you can be replaced.
Once you’ve whittled down your task list to the ones you can’t take off, list them in order of priority and allot time to working on them.
What I’m doing to guard myself against burnout
Focus on my mission and core values
I reminded myself of what success in my business looks like – I’m not one for the income thresholds, although I support getting paid in alignment with the level of impact you provide. I’m more concerned about the number of lives I truly impact and helping them build their community, and not just hit some arbitrary sales goal.
Reminding myself of this fact caused me to change some of the messaging in what I offer so that my intentions are clear and I’m attracting people who feel the same way.
Identify my priorities
I had to recognize that my worth isn’t in my achievements and that I have value regardless of all the things I’ve accomplished. I say to myself: I am multifaceted and multidimensional. There’s more to me than my work and business. I prioritize the things that fill me up, like my relationship with God, my husband, family, and friends.
I intentionally set aside time for something to do for joy – whether it’s cooking, reading a novel (not a business book for education), or training for a 5K.
Create your own plan to battle burnout
The final question I’ll leave you with is – are you headed for burnout, in the thick of it, or trying to recover from it? If so, come up with a plan to put the right guardrails that will protect your whole being.
If you’re headed for burnout, don’t be afraid to ruthlessly whittle down your responsibilities. If you’re in the thick of it, don’t be afraid to hit the “time out” button and find the space you need to recover. If you’re recovering, don’t let guilt get in the way of your recovery so you can come back even stronger as the best version of yourself.