Do you throw yourself behind every project you tackle? Are you the person who wrings out blood, sweat, and tears from your clothing at the end of the day? Do you have so much passion in your veins that it fuels you to work harder than anyone else? You push, you churn, you bust, you break, and you keep going, maybe for days at a time or maybe for weeks.
It’s exhausting, but you don’t want to stop because it feels good! Success feels good, and when you tick another item off your list, it energizes you to keep going! The problem is, you may not notice just how fatigued you are under all that zeal.
Also try: 30 Day Challenge Learn to Love Your Body
The most likely reason for that fatigue is burnout.
Burnout can be defined in many ways, but in this case, it’s characterized by a lack of engagement with your work, a loss of direction, or issues with focusing and concentrating. Often, it is accompanied by a feeling of detachment and hopelessness that can be difficult to navigate, especially when you’re already struggling with fatigue.
Burnout is much more than the exhaustion you feel after a worthwhile day at the “mines”, if you feel that sense of exhaustion regularly and you feel like your life is being enveloped by a thick fog, burnout might be the battle you’ve been unknowingly fighting.
The scary thing about burnout is the way it can creep up completely unnoticed. You may notice a lack of focus, or you may pick up on the fact that you’re feeling more tired. Unfortunately, many people are buried deep beneath the weight of their burnout before they realize there’s a serious problem, which is why it’s so important to keep a tight-knit group of friends who aren’t afraid to broach difficult conversations.
With the goal of preventing burnout in mind, we’ve put our heads together to come up with a list of hints and tips to help you live a healthy, happy life, free of burnout! This isn’t a one-and-done situation; keeping burnout at bay is a lifelong commitment, and it starts with establishing a healthy lifestyle.
There’s always room to grow in this life, but you won’t get the best of yourself until you put some controls in place to help prevent burnout. A big part of recovering or preventing burnout altogether is getting to know yourself so you have a clear baseline on how you feel normally.
That way, when the symptoms of burnout start creeping in, you notice them quicker. It might sound ridiculous to organize your life around potential triggers, but ultimately, it’s all about knowing when to hit the pause button, take a step back, and assess the situation through clearer eyes.
Stress in the workplace can be debilitating, especially if your job follows you home and there’s no break from the overwhelming stress work causes you. The same is true of stress at home- when you do rest, if your home life is causing you stress?
Whatever the source, when stress piles up, it leaves you as physically exhausted as it does emotionally exhausted. It’s more common than you realize, but it varies because we’re all different people, everyone has different triggers and responsibilities. However, if you feel like you’re always drained, you should pay closer attention to these tips! Because you have some work to do.
It doesn’t matter what the source of your stress is; these suggestions should still help you stay on top of burnout.
35 Ways To Prevent Burnout
1. Recognize the Early Signs
It’s much easier to deal with your stress levels if you learn the early signs of burnout. Here’s the thing: burnout looks different for everyone, so it’s important that you know yourearly warning signs! The typical signs of burnout include irritability, mood swings, physical exhaustion, an increase in anxiety, and disinterest in hobbies.
The symptoms probably seem achingly familiar, and that’s because they’re also the signs of depression, which can make burnout difficult to identify. That’s why you need to know your baseline and have a greater understanding of how you react to stress and what situations tend to put more pressure on you.
If you’re experiencing these symptoms and you have no idea whether you’re dealing with burnout or depression, a consultation with a licensed therapist may be your best place to start. A therapist can help you discern between the symptoms you’re facing and figure out what’s driving them.
2. Workload Management
One of the largest tasks on the burnout prevention suggest list is this one. Learning how to manage your workload might not seem like an overly complicated task, but you have to factor in everyone else. In addition to managing your workload, you also have to manage your boss’s expectations and potentially combat colleague distractions. If it were easy, workplace burnout wouldn’t be a conversation!
There’s always a handful of people who work harder, are better at their jobs, or are more efficient. Unfortunately, becoming important at work can be a disaster for workload management. Bosses tend to heap more work on those reliable people and don’t notice them drowning while they’re colleagues coast. So, learn to prioritize your workload by order of importance, learn how to say no when your plate is full, and learn how to delegate to people who are better suited to certain tasks.
You just need to come up with a workload management tool that works best for you and stick to it. Consistency is key, and that’s true with every suggestion for personal development.
3. Take a Mental Break
You turn your laptop off, you power down your PC, and sometimes, you have to let your phone battery die and fully recharge. Your brain is your body’s supercomputer, and while sleep is the key source of energy for your brain, you need to take regular mental breaks to refresh, too.
What is a mental break? Well, a mental break can take any form you prefer. However, the definition is simply to disconnect, and they should be frequent and scientific research backs a regular break! Take your mental break according to your job and situation.
For example, if you sit behind a desk all day, you should incorporate movement into your mental break. However, if you’re on your feet all day, you may benefit from a mental break that includes hydration and a seat. If you can work in some meditation at the same time, we have the only positive example of multitasking.
4. Practice Self-Care
Self-care is at the root of everything because your ability to care for yourself has a direct impact on how you treat your body and mind. If you’re approaching burnout, you have not been practicing self-care. Or, you started practicing self-care without doing all the other work around beating burnout.
Either way, you have needs, and self-care is simply the act of ensuring you meet those needs. Are you getting enough sleep? Are you eating a healthy, balanced diet? Do you drink enough water? Are you taking multivitamins to make up for what your diet might have missed? Are you taking time out to enjoy your hobbies? Do you spend enough time with yourself? Are you speaking to yourself positively? Is your budget balanced? Self-care looks different for everyone, but don’t be afraid to experiment with different options to see what works best for you.
5. Establish Clear Boundaries
This shouldn’t come as a surprise because the prior suggestions were building to this moment. You already put some of the building blocks in place for this, so it won’t be as difficult as you think. Boundaries are powerful, and the key to setting and maintaining clear boundaries is understanding what is and isn’t a boundary.
A boundary is not something you impose on someone else, though many people believe it is. Rather, a boundary is something you do. It’s not a demand on someone else; it isn’t a command, it’s you changing what you will or won’t do.
It’s you establishing what you will or won’t accept from others. Boundaries are about you, and the reason that many people struggle with establishing boundaries is that they think it’s about other people.
So, what is a real-world example of a good boundary?
“No, I can’t do overtime” is you establishing that you can only work the hours you agreed to work when you were hired. It doesn’t matter if you have worked overtime every day for months. You don’t have to keep doing it if you can’t or don’t want to. If you’re constantly exhausted because you’re working an extra hour or two every day, STOP!
What is a real-world example of a bad boundary? “If you don’t see a therapist, I’m leaving.”
You can ask a partner to go to therapy, but you can’t force them to go. Therapy is a more effective tool when the participant chooses to be there; they will get much more out of the experience if they’re willing. While this does include I’m leaving, that isn’t an action that constitutes a boundary that revolves around you. You’re trying to leverage your reaction to a demand you’re imposing. That isn’t a boundary.
This isn’t to say you can’t ask your partner to go to therapy, but you can’t demand they go to therapy or threaten to leave. It won’t end well for either party, and it will only foment resentment.
The point is that a boundary is more about you than it is about someone else, so it’s you saying no to extra hours at work, additional responsibilities, plans with friends, dates, etc.
6. Enjoy Private Time
Everyone deserves privacy, but it can be tougher to find it as an adult. You have colleagues at work, you have a partner, children, or roommates at home, and you shouldn’t feel guilty for wanting time away from all of them! That’s normal!
Everyone deserves privacy! You should be able to take a half-hour timeout without an interrogation, and as long as you’re affording your partner (children or roommates) the same respect, there’s no reason you can’t make this work.
Whether you meditate, journal, or read, it’s important to find time to enjoy privacy without distractions. How you choose to spend that time is entirely up to you. Maybe you want to watch the baseball highlights on mute, perhaps you just want to listen to your favorite artist’s new album, or you prefer a long walk in nature. A little privacy can go a long way; it gives you mental space, allows you to process your feelings, and find clarity.
7. Get Regular Exercise
Everyone with mental health struggles has heard advice about exercise and how it is incredible at making you feel better. That’s easy to say, but when you’re in the midst of a mental health struggle, dragging yourself out to exercise is impossible. Well, it isn’t impossible, but it can feel that way. Like any of these suggestions, putting them into practice when you’re well is the key to preventing burnout. Your healthy routine is well-established, so when difficulties come, you’re always benefiting from the physical boost that comes from exercise, along with the mental health and cognitive function benefits. Research shows that exercise is a significant stress reducer, and stress is the leading cause of burnout, so exercise is a great way to combat the symptoms of burnout.
8. Update Your Skills
One way to avoid burnout at work is to keep your skills up-to-date and update other skills as changes come. Change is inevitable in every industry, and if you’ve ever watched it unfold, you’ve seen older colleagues struggle to adapt, and it’s because they are so bedded into the old way that they can’t even see the benefit of the new way. Don’t put yourself in this position! Be enthusiastic about process changes because they’re a learning opportunity, and it won’t take long for them to become second nature.
9. Practice a Hobby
You’re a busy person, but that doesn’t mean you can’t find time for a hobby. A hobby can be any activity that relaxes you or absorbs your attention without you noticing how much time has passed.
Whether you’re a puzzler, Lego builder, gardener, baker, poet, writer, pianist, or a claymation enthusiast, find a hobby that works for you and make sure you set time aside to practice it.
10. Banish Negative Self-Talk
If you see yourself in a negative light, it’s time to tune into your inner dialogue and listen to the way you speak to yourself. There’s a pretty good chance you’re fueling negative self-talk that’s making you feel negatively about yourself.
You’re such an idiot.
Why do you mess everything up?
You think he was flirting with you?
You aren’t capable of better.
The more you speak down to yourself this way, the more likely you are to struggle with feelings of burnout. How can you battle burnout and stress when you’re constantly telling yourself you can’t handle the basics of life? Negative self-talk sets you up for failure.
11. Use Positive Affirmations
You’re already working on banishing negative self-talk, but the next part of that task is replacing the negative self-talk with positive affirmations. It should begin at the start of your day. Write up a few positive affirmations that speak directly to your struggles and recite them to yourself in the mirror to start your day on a positive note. You can repeat them as you need to throughout the day to reduce stress and increase confidence.
12. Practice Mindfulness
You have probably heard the term mindfulness in conjunction with meditation. Meditation is the most famous form of mindfulness, but it isn’t the only option. Mindfulness is essentially focusing on the present.
By rooting you in the present, you are better equipped to handle high-stress situations calmly and more objectively. Eating, walking, praying, reading, hiking, washing the dishes… You can do anything mindfully if you walk into your task with the intention to practice mindfulness.
13. Meditate
Meditation is a powerful enough tool against burnout that it deserves its own paragraph. You don’t need to go to a class to meditate, but a quick search of the internet should uncover a host of guided meditation videos and audio clips. So, if you’re brand new to meditation or you’ve tried it before and struggled, you might want to start with a guided exercise. However, meditation is simple. It’s about clearing your mind of negative thoughts, relaxing, and grounding yourself in the moment, which is a great way to combat acute and chronic stress.
14. Sleep Hygiene
If you wake up feeling just as exhausted as you did when you went to bed, then you need to improve your sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene is basically just the routine you follow around bedtime. So, when we discuss sleep hygiene, we are talking about all of the factors surrounding your sleep habits.
You should follow the same routine every time in the run-up to bedtime, including turning all your screens off at least one hour before bed. Your routine is up to you; the key is to create a relaxing hour or two so you’re ready for bed. Sleep hygiene also includes factors like room temperature, bedding, light, sound, etc.
15. Journal
Journaling is a great activity to help you sift through your deepest desires and thoughts. Adults start dismissing children’s dreams earlier than most realize, and it’s the flippant comments like be more realistic that are usually the final nail in the coffin. Your child expresses an interest in being an author, and you should buy them a word processor, not tell them to choose a more realistic career.
They don’t have to become an author, to justify their interest in writing; it might be their lifelong hobby. But we start projecting onto children early, and it happened to you, too. It might have disconnected you from a hobby, a friend, or a career path. Journaling is your opportunity to uncover the secrets or interests you have hidden away from view for fear of judgment. It’s also a really great way to figure out what’s driving your stress problem.
16. Laugh
Laughter might not be a literal medicine, but it is great for your mood and stress levels. So, it is a form of medicine. According to research from Fairleigh Dickinson University, laughing and smiling have the power to improve your mood instantly and reduce stress.
Now you don’t have to feel guilty about buying tickets for a stand-up comic. Don’t worry, you can enjoy the benefits of laughter without spending money, just pop a sitcom on or call your funniest friend and use the magic word to set them off on 20 minutes of free entertainment.
17. Practice Breathing Exercises
Breathing exercises are an excellent tool in the battle against stress, and the key here is consistency, so stick with it even when you’re adamant it doesn’t work for you! The thing about burnout is you don’t get there overnight.
To reach burnout, you have missed a lot of signs and symptoms over the course of weeks or months. A breathing exercise is a simple way to calm yourself down when the overwhelm starts to creep in. You can’t manage burnout until you’ve learned handy tools for managing everyday stress, and breathing exercises are excellent.
18. Remember to Relax
The older you get, the trickier your memory can be, and brain fog is a serious problem for women of a certain age. Perimenopause, menopause, migraines, and periods all come with brain fog! So, women trying to figure out what’s going on have an even more challenging time figuring out whether they’re depressed, burning out, or perimenopausal! With all that going on, it’s really easy to forget to relax, so, wait for it, schedule your relaxation.
You can set a reminder on your phone, set an alarm, or write it on your calendar. Whatever it takes to make sure you relax! Here’s the thing. When you’re super stressed out, it’s easy to sit down and stare at a wall to lose time. While you probably need the rest, you end up beating yourself up over wasting time. So, when everything is well, write up a big list of activities that relax you so you can glance at it and pick something to do when you’re struggling.
19. Spend Time With Friends
Friends will never be friends forever if you don’t pour into them. Like plants, your friendships require food, water, and sun! So, keep in text touch with your friends and if you can’t find time to meet up in person, try a coffee or lunch over video chat. It’s not just tough to find time on your end; it’s trying to find a time when you’re both free at the same time. It gets even tougher when there’s more than two people involved. A standing monthly date might be a great way to beat the calendar.
20. Learn to Reframe
You can’t banish stress from your life altogether because it’s impossible. Unfortunately, you can only control how you react to stressful situations, but you can’t stop stress from occurring in your life. You need a paycheck to live, and even people who love the work they do experience work stress.
You have to live in society as a person, and participating in society can be stressful because other people can be difficult! That’s stressful! So, even at the most basic level, you have to deal with stress. It’s so normal it no longer registers as stress, but it’s still part of the pile on that’s leading you toward burnout.
What you need to do in stressful situations is reframe.
There’s nothing more frustrating than sayings like there’s always a silver lining or everything happens for a reason, but they are true, and the more you hold onto them during stressful times, the quicker you tend to recover from setbacks.
21. Strike a Balance
You are one person, and as one person, you can only do one thing at one time or be in one place at one time. So, when it’s time to work, your focus should be on that. Leave your home life at the front door and give your job your focus so you produce the level of work you’re capable of. When the clock ticks over to finishing time, your focus should be on your personal life. Leave your work life at the office and give your partner, children, hobbies, or whatever your attention.
The same is true when it’s time to hang out with your friends or family members. Put your phone in your purse, zip it up, and sling it over your chair. Pick up the remote, point it at the television, and turn it off while you’re catching up with pals. Stack your phones in the middle of the table when you meet someone for a coffee, drink, or meal.
Work is work. Life is life. The better you are at keeping them separate, the less likely you are to battle burnout.
22. Meal Plan
There are different levels of meal planning, but nobody here is going to tell you to dedicate your Sunday to cooking a week of meals. We’ve grown too complacent when it comes to food.
Fast food is convenient, and there are so many different options to choose from that you could probably eat out for a couple of months without ever repeating cuisines. It isn’t just unhealthy, it’s not a great financial decision. If you think eating out is cheaper than cooking at home, you probably need to start with a cooking class. If you are just too tired to cook when you get home, join the club. It’s tough!
Meal planning can help.
It means sitting down and working out which meals you’ll eat that week, writing a shopping list for everything you need, and then shopping for your list. It’s simple. It’s about thinking ahead to ensure you have all the ingredients you need all week.
It’s great for managing your stress, and when the menu for the week is on the fridge for everyone to see, there are no excuses. Everyone can chip in and help with prep.
23. Get Out in Nature
Does it feel stuffy in here? Is it too warm? Is the air too thick? Does it feel too thick to breathe the air in here to anyone else? You know what it’s like when the walls feel like they’re closing in on you and everything is starting to get too much, so if you feel it coming, you need to detach from the situation quickly.
The quickest way to snap out of a burnout spiral is to get out in nature. No, you don’t need to keep a tent and a sleeping bag in the trunk for emergency camping in case you need to run out of work halfway through your shift. It means escaping the office and breathing some fresh air! Enjoy a bit of vitamin D directly from the source, breathe that fresh air, walk around the block, and decompress.
24. When You Need Help, Ask for Help
If you’ve been through a burnout before, there are probably lessons you learned and hold onto. One of the most frequent post-burnout thoughts we encounter is the recognition that you’re allowed to ask for help.
If you need help, ask for help, and you will get help. If you need help and you don’t ask for help, you won’t get help. It’s as simple as that, but when you’re already stressed out and bending under the pressure of burnout, asking for help might seem like weakness. It isn’t. Recognizing that you need help is a sign of your strength.
If your schedule is overwhelming you, speak up. It might be that your boss can move things around to give you some breathing space on a project or that your spouse can pick up more slack. We often fall into a routine and keep going even when the routine no longer works. So, it’s really about being more aware and making changes quickly.
25. Digital Detox
You don’t need anyone to tell you unplugging from the internet is a must for your mental health. You may need a reminder of the dangers of screen fatigue. It can drain the spirit from your body and suck the life force right out of you.
This is especially true if you spend your workday on a screen because chances are you go home to even more screens. So, yes, unplug from the internet once in a while. However, this is recommending something much more radical, which is disconnecting from screens for a period of time every day. The easiest way to introduce this idea to your daily life is to plan a short screen break between tasks.
At work, you might not be able to take five minutes between tasks, but you can definitely time your trips for coffee and bathroom breaks to get a couple of minutes away from a screen. At home, you’re going to confuse your streaming service by taking a break between episodes, and not just because you need a screen break, the extra time to think about whether you want to watch another episode will do you good.
26. Cut Caffeine
We’ve spent so long joking about coffee online that caffeine became a personality for some people. Coffee is delicious! We love novelty beverages, and chain coffee shops found a way to bring those two things together in a way that has kept us trapped in a chokehold for the last three decades. Here’s the thing; if you’re casually drinking a can of cola with dinner, you’re consuming so much caffeine that you may be single-handedly fueling your burnout.
Caffeine is a sleep killer, and while everyone’s caffeine sensitivity is different, start by cutting caffeine out entirely after 2 pm. If that improves your sleep hygiene, great. If it doesn’t, move your caffeine cut-off until noon. You can still enjoy a cola with dinner; all the big brands sell a caffeine-free option.
You can still drink tea and coffee at night; they make decaf for a reason. If you were to commit to just one of these 35 suggestions, start with this one. You’ll see a difference within a week, but you may be unprepared for how much better you feel after a month. The key is to tie this in with your sleep hygiene and set a consistent bedtime and morning alarm.
27. Limit Alcohol
Nobody is here to lecture you about the recommended daily allowance for alcohol or shame you for buying wine based on the ABV. Rather, the key here is to review your alcohol intake and limit it. If you enjoy three glasses of wine on Friday night, cut back to two. If you drink a glass of wine with dinner every night, try half a glass of wine.
Alcohol can fuel stress because not only does it contribute to sleep issues, but it’s also a depressant, so it’s a double whammy. It’s easy to turn to alcohol to soothe yourself after a bad day, especially if you already enjoy a drink after work. It just leads to two drinks or three drinks. Take a more thoughtful approach to your alcohol intake and consider the way it has influenced your life.
28. Drink a Glass of Water
We touched on how the symptoms of burnout are similar to so many other things our bodies experience. So, one of the most effective ways to buy yourself some time with your body is to drink a glass of water. If you feel like eating junk food, don’t. Have a glass of water and see how you feel in 15 minutes. Often, you’re thirsty.
Usually, you’re exhausted. Your body is telling you to rest, but it’s not bedtime, so you decide it’s telling you to eat. Water buys you time to figure out what signals your body is actually sending you, rather than the signal you decided to act on.
29. Morning Rituals
Routines can be a great sidekick in the battle against burnout because morning rituals help you start your day on a positive note, which helps keep stress at bay. Establish the morning routine that works for you, as long as everyone gets out of the house on time, fully fed, bathed, clothed, and hair brushed, fine. As long as nobody is running out the door with an untucked shirt and a missing shoe (or stressed out in general).
30. Lists
There are pros and cons to lists, and it’s up to you to determine whether they will help you manage stress or contribute to your stress. If you’re someone who writes a to-do list, never ticks anything off, but continues to add to it, to-do lists might be more stressful. If you’re someone who ticks off lists and uses them to keep track of things, they could be your key to beating burnout. You can use lists to keep yourself on track at work, in the grocery store, and at home with chores.
31. Downtime
You can’t beat burnout by booking one vacation a year and looking forward to it. You don’t have enough time to recover from your burnout, so you need to schedule regular downtime to deal with your stress instead of just briefly relieving some pressure. You don’t have to leave town to get the full benefit of time off work. Turn every break into a staycation that energizes you.
32. Step by Step
If something stresses you out, the best way to handle it is by breaking it down into smaller steps. We’ll use a marathon as an example. You don’t decide to run a marathon and go out and do it. You have to build up to it, and before you get to the point of running a marathon, you need to run regularly and practice with shorter runs before working up to a half-marathon and eventually, a full marathon. You can break down most tasks or situations into steps.
33. Plan
Sometimes, burnout is due to a fear of the unknown. You’re pushing yourself to chase these different things, but you don’t know when it’s going to happen or if it will happen, and it can be overwhelming. To combat that, sit down and lay out your wants, wishes, fears, desires, and ambitions for your life, for the future. You put that into a one, two, or five-year plan, and the steps you will take to achieve it, and then you follow through.
34. Clear Your Desk
At the end of every day, tidy up your desk in preparation for tomorrow. You want to walk into work and have a fresh start, and you can’t have that unless you take care of it at the end of every day before you head home.
35. Cancel It
Pay attention to the moments your stress increases, notice when activities leave you exhausted, and habits leave you feeling lousy. If it makes you feel bad or exhausts you, cancel it. Unless it’s the job that pays your rent, you can walk away from most things. If it is your job that’s fueling your stress and contributing to burnout, put these suggestions into action and decide whether it’s time to start a job search or retrain.
Final Thoughts
Many of these suggestions are “common sense” suggestions, but when you’re battling chronic stress and trying to stave off burnout, “common sense” is hard to come by. Your cognitive function is out of whack, and that makes everything seem so much bigger and scarier than it really is because your body and brain are very aware that they’re not up to the battle.
Instead, it sends more panicked fight or flight signals because it knows there is danger, but it just doesn’t know why. So, you may frown at some of these tips, but when you take an active role in your overall wellness, working on these basic “common sense” suggestions while everything is good, will help you deal with the bad when it comes.
