🎨 Burnout Prevention: Simple Steps to Avoid It from Crushing Your Life

At a Glance:

• Burnout - funny word we are scared of
• 7 tips on managing your career to avoid burnout
• Personal stories and tools you can apply in your own life

Burnout – it feels like a relatively new word in our dictionary, yet it has unfortunately become very popular nowadays.

We let burnout seep into our professional world, allowing it to get comfortable and spread around. It doesn’t ask for permission; it just shows up and crushes our reality. Why? Because we don’t believe it can happen to us. It’s this theoretical concept that lives around us, but come on, it’s not going to happen to you, right? Wake up! You aren’t prone to these types of things. No-one is.

I’ve spent approximately 10 years in consulting and haven’t experienced burnout. Why? Looking back, I know why and understand that I actively prevented it from happening. But my actions weren’t conscious, at least not at that time.

Despite working on tough and difficult projects, always facing many challenges, and sometimes working crazy long hours, I always liked my job.

However, last year in my current role, I felt it creeping in. I lost the joy in daily activities, got bored, and knew I had to make some changes to prevent that boredom from staying with me for longer and letting burnout in (as they are kind of friends).

Rule 1: Do What You Love

Make sure you choose to do things that you like and that give you positive energy. Yes, it is simple. You can control your life and impact your work. If you don’t believe this, it’s a matter of self-confidence (I wrote about building self-confidence here).

Take control of your job or business and maximize the things you like.

Be vocal about what you want to work on.

• Be proactive and ask your manager to get involved in those things.
• Suggest new initiatives and lead them.

This will not only allow you to do things you love but also help build your personal brand at work.

But what if you don’t know what you like?

That’s another problem.

1. Create an Excel file or Google Sheet on your computer.
2. Name a column: ‘Things I Enjoyed.’
3. Each day for a couple of weeks, write down every single thing at work that made you happier, smile, or feel proud.
   1. This can be a meeting with a peer, a client meeting, working on project X, doing analysis Y, writing an article – anything from tiny things to big ones.
4. If you can’t force a habit to do it during the day, at least take 10 minutes at the end of the workday to think about it and note positive things from the day that you remember.
5. For some people, it is much better to do this when you feel emotions as it is more accurate.
6. Choose what feels right for you.
7. At the end of that period, go through your list and categorize it in the next column.
   1. Create buckets of things that make you happy.

This will give you a better idea of the things you should maximize at your work. Simultaneously, you can run the same exercise focusing on things that drain your energy, so you know what to maximize and what to avoid.

Rule 2: Do It with People You Like and Admire

A Harvard Study on Adult Development led by Dr. Robert Waldinger concluded that the key to a long and happy life is positive relationships. Prioritize them at work too.

Make sure you work with great people, people you like and enjoy spending time with. Don’t only focus on your peers but ensure your manager is someone you truly want to work with. If not, this might be a signal for you to either change your job or team to work with someone else.

Surround yourself with people you admire who are better than you! In the end, we become an average of the five people we spend the most time with. Remember, according to research, sitting close to top performers improves your own performance. This works on the negative side as well, so choose your close coworkers wisely.

Rule 3: Seek Variety in What You Do

It’s easy to burn out in consulting. Many people did. Long hours, tight deadlines, high expectations, and sometimes repetitive work. My secret weapon was diversity in my projects.

I started in financial audit, doing many difficult but interesting projects. After 2.5 years, I moved to consulting and worked for a year in forensic services. Then I moved to transaction services. Here, I ensured I had a variety of projects that I liked and some additional responsibilities that kept me enjoying what I did.

From a time perspective, I realized those changes and constant new roles helped me avoid burnout. But I wasn’t making them consciously. At that time, it was more the opportunities that came to me, but I think I subconsciously attracted those opportunities by being curious and always wanting to do new things.

So yes – you can impact your work, and you should do it actively and intentionally. The more variety, the less boredom, and more brain stimulation through experiencing new things.

Rule 4: Always Grow and Develop New Skills

A personal development plan is not something your company will give you. This is something you need to think through and make your own plan – focused on what you want to achieve in life long-term.

If you leave this to the company you work for, you will get a development plan focused on their goals – where the company needs you to be in a few years, which might not be aligned with your needs and vision.

A personal development plan should be your plan for your future. It has to be something you think about regularly and seek ways of growth.

Knowing how you see your future will allow you to plan the skills you need to develop or improve. With that knowledge, you can go to your manager and present your plan, seeking the company’s support in its realization.

If you have your own business, then simply remember to leave space for growth and development. Prioritize it. It should be non-negotiable as this will keep you in the business. People who stay in the same place are replaced by those who grow.

Rule 5: Take Regular Breaks

I’m not only talking about holidays – I assume this is an obvious thing.

But by breaks, I also mean daily breaks. Plan your work so you can have proper meals, not eating lunch in a rush at your desk. A power walk during the day is a great idea. It will recharge your energy and let you rest your mind.

Take proper care of yourself when you travel. You can find travel tips in one of my previous newsletters (check it here; this is a member exclusive edition so you need to long in/subscribe to see it).

Have you heard of Stefan Sagmeister's brilliant idea of using sabbaticals? Stefan Sagmeister is a New York graphic designer who shuts down his studio every 7 years for 1 year and takes a sabbatical. So instead of waiting 50 years to retire, he uses this as a form of regular and earlier retirement – taking a gap year over the time you work and shortening your actual retirement.

You can watch the whole TED talk here.

Rule 6: Have Boundaries and Stick to Them

Looking around and observing people close to me – my friends, coworkers, or even analyzing how things worked at previous companies I worked at – I notice one recurring pattern.

Boundaries between work and life always exist. But, make sure you set them yourself, according to your non-negotiables. If you don’t, someone else will set those boundaries for you, and you might not like it. It’s a million times harder to change things you let other people get used to (e.g., you answer your emails while being on holiday) than to set and communicate clear boundaries.

You can spot this by seeing different people at the same level in one organization – some working crazy hours and always being available, saying this is expected of them and that they cannot do otherwise. Others have clear boundaries and stick to them. Which way do you want to live and work?

It’s my key principle: owning my boundaries, communicating them openly, and reacting if other people do not respect them. This also means that I encourage my team to set their boundaries and respect them. Leading by example and supporting others in doing the same is key to making that approach work in a bigger organization.

Rule 7: Work Is Just an Addition to Your Life, Not Life an Addition to Your Career

Make sure you treat this one seriously! You need to have a purposeful life outside of work. If work is everything, then naturally you get obsessed with it and stick to it no matter what. You are afraid to change or lose it. Have a great life outside of your job, make sure you truly live, and your career will explode anyway.

I hope I inspired you to make some changes in your day-to-day work/life and reduce your burnout risk.

For me, putting these thoughts in writing also helped me think clearer about my current role, the things I do at Life Creators, and what I want to achieve in both areas. And definitely, avoiding burnout is a top priority.