Don’t give in to burnout

Have you ever felt so tired that you fear physical and/or mental collapse? Perhaps you’ve recently become easily irritable or short-fused. You find it difficult to wake-up in the morning. You even lack motivation. Maybe you’ve started to suffer from anxiety. You can’t stop checking-in to your ‘mobile-office’ aka the smart phone; a prisoner to that sound of incoming mail. You might have started to experience weight problems, you constantly feel lethargic and/or are suffering from insomnia?

If this all sounds familiar you most probably are suffering from burnout. If you want to take a quick-and-easy self-test go to: http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newTCS_08.htm 

Many professionals, managers, leaders, business owners, etc, have at some time or another experienced burnout. It is a dangerous state to get yourself in and it takes time and a lot of determination to get out of it. Burnout can seriously affect your mental and physical wellbeing. 

I’ve seen it happen time and time again in my consultancy work. Normally, it affects the high-achievers or the perfectionists. They push themselves beyond their limits without any regard to their physical or mental wellbeing. True: to achieve great things you have to push yourself beyond the normal limit, but do this too often and you will burn out. 

Rather than focusing on the signs of burnout, I think it would be of more value to MT business readers if I were to offer some useful tips on how to avoid it. 

1. Mornings vs afternoons: You are at your freshest in the morning. So tackle your toughest challenges in the morning. I always try to work at my desk in the morning (write a report, research a problem or answer an important email) and organise my meetings for the afternoon. What I also try to avoid is a day with intermittent meetings as this doesn’t allow me to get my teeth into any real work and I end up the day not concluding anything of value, which can be very tiring and frustrating. As I always say: meetings are part of work but they are not work; 

2. Leave your work at the office: Give it your all when at the office but the minute you leave, switch-off. Focus on your family, your sport, your hobby, your friends, etc, but whatever you do switch-off from work. It is impossible to be 24-hours plugged-in on an ongoing basis, reading-&-replying to emails at night and generally letting work invade your home. You can get away with this in the short term but make a habit of it and you will soon burn out; 

3. Read books: I have already written in this newspaper, on 12 February, 2015, about the benefits of ‘deep reading’, in an article entitled, ‘Why CEOs should read books’. Reading has the power to get your mind to switch-off from work by means of your stimulating imagination and intellect plus it gets you to immerse yourself in another reality. I strongly recommend you take up reading if you have a demanding and stressful job, it is one of the most powerful ways to disconnect; 

4. Long weekends: I am a strong believer in working long hours (10 hours+) between Monday-Thursday but starting the weekend early on a Friday afternoon. I find that an early start to the weekend allows me to enjoy Saturday and Sunday a lot more. Granted we can’t always do it but it should be your objective to finish early on a Friday. If you are in a managerial position of trust and responsibility, you don’t work normal hours (9am-5pm) anyway hence it should be easy for you to give it your all between Monday-Thursday in order to be in a position to finish early on a Friday afternoon. Granted you can’t always do it but at least make it your aim; 

5. Exercise plenty: I can’t emphasize enough the importance of exercise. We were designed to move and not to sit on our bums all day. You must as a bare minimum exercise at least 45 minutes per day, taking Sunday off to rest. Your body releases endorphins when you exercise and endorphins are what you need in order to fight stress and burnout. I lead a pretty hectic working week but I also exercise intensely every morning and I am sure that if I didn’t I would quickly burn out. I also would be a very unhappy 40-something-year-old. If your workplace doesn’t permit you to exercise swap it for a job that does. That is how strongly I feel about exercise; a healthy mind and body mean a more productive worker. I also consider it the be-all and end-all to happiness and physical well-being. Life isn’t worth living if you can’t exercise. 

Naturally, there is a lot more you can do. I have just skimmed the subject but I honestly think that these five tips will help you avoid burnout and enjoy work more. People frequently talk about work-life-balance. I say there is work and there is life. Keep them separate and treat them with equal importance. 

In the words of the Dalai Lama: ‘Happiness is not something ready made. It comes from your own actions.’