It’s certainly challenging times still for many, both in the business world and in people’s personal life, with ever-changing circumstances and uncertainties.
Stresses are often high, and many business owners are burnt out and tired with the added pressures.
In 2021 burnout was listed by The World Health Organisation as an “occupational phenomenon”. It’s a result of chronic workplace stress and arises when we experience heightened levels of stress for an extended period of time; it takes a major toll on your physical and mental health.
The WHO lists burnout symptoms as:
“feelings of exhaustion, increased mental distance or negative feelings towards one’s job, and reduced professional efficacy”.
Our physical, mental and emotional wellbeings are clearly critical to us as people in business if we are to continue growing our business. Our business’ financial wellbeing depends on our personal wellbeing and that of our team.
Here are my 6 top tips to avoid burnout in business
Change your mindset around stress.
Kelly McGonigal’s book ‘The Upside of Stress; Why Stress is Good for You (and How to Get Good at it)’ is a book we read in our book club. It’s well worth a read to find out more about the impact of our individual stress mindset on our ability to avoid burnout.
Research has shown that people who have a mindset that stress is harmful are more likely to experience stress that debilitates performance and productivity, depletes health and vitality and leads to burnout.
On the other hand, people with a mindset that stress is enhancing have been found to experience stress as enhancing performance and productivity, improving health and vitality and are more likely to view stressful situations as a challenge, not an overwhelming problem.
How you manage your time is how you manage yourself.
Set yourself realistic goals for the week ahead (for the next quarter if you can) and list out all the activities that need to be done to achieve those goals.
Delegate where you can, making sure that the person or people to whom you delegate know exactly how you need it doing and when it needs to be done by.
(BEWARE: poor communication here will inevitably lead to frustration and more stress when the job’s not done how you wanted it!)
Everything else needs to go into your diary in a way that gives you a clear structure for your day. Be sure to put in the most important tasks first and be realistic about how long it will take you to complete it. Smaller, less important activities can be fitted around the critical jobs.
Most importantly, get into a rhythm and stick to this diary!
Make time in your diary for short breaks with a longer one at lunchtime. I like to have a ten minute walk around outside between my Zoom meetings but it could just be that you go and fetch yourself a glass of water to rehydrate, or close your eyes and do some deep breathing for 5 minutes.
It’s really important that we take some form of exercise every day.
The benefits of regular exercise are well-known and well documented but in particular exercise lifts your mood and gives you energy. It also increases our physical fitness and reduces the risk of chronic health problems.
We typically spend too much time sitting still which is not good for us. So be sure to include exercise time in your daily diary – and stick to it! I do mine early, first thing in the morning, to make sure nothing crops up to get in the way.
If we work from home, it can feel hard sometimes to separate our personal and business lives. Even if we don’t work from home, it’s still likely that we’re checking in on things using our phones.
To avoid burnout, we need to set up boundaries and be able to switch off from business. A great way to do that is to find a creative hobby.
Getting creative is also a fun way to get the right-hand side of our brains engaged which is a part of our brain more and more neglected these days. Make it fun!
Being in business can be tough and lonely at times. Sometimes it feels like there’s no-one to talk to about the challenges and ups and downs. But keeping all your stress to yourself is downright dangerous – and unnecessary.
Get professional help, reach out to a good friend, join a group of like-minded people and build relationships.
If you need some help getting more balance in your business, please do get in touch.
