5 Ways to Avoid Business Burn Out

When you love your job and are dedicated to doing everything you can to excel at it, it’s easy to go too far. To tell yourself that you are fine, ignore signs you’re burnt out, and keep pushing until you’re so burnt out you don’t even know what to do about it anymore.

While it may feel counterintuitive to the workaholic, taking preventative measures ahead of time is the best way to avoid business burn out and stay productive and happy at your job. Below are five tips to help keep you in top shape.

1. Take Care of Your Health

It’s easy to stay glued to a desk and eat the most convenient foods. Taking care of your physical health will help take care of your mental health. Take a few minutes every couple hours to check up on your body. Go for a walk around the office. Drink some water. Stretch your muscles. Eat healthy snacks, like fruits and vegetables. Have a salad for lunch. Make time to properly exercise. Take a twenty-minute break in the middle of your day and go for a walk outside. This will get you fresh air, clean your head, and keep your body healthy. Doing these things will help you avoid having a mid-day slump, make you more productive, and help you avoid long term burn out.

2. Don’t Isolate Yourself

It’s easy to get focused on work and lose all sense of community. Set aside regular time to visit with friends or family. And don’t spend all day, every day alone and chained to your laptop. If you work at home, even doing something like going to work at a coffee shop instead can help you feel more like you have a community and are part of the world outside of your work.

3. Learn to Say No

It can be tempting to say yes to every opportunity that crosses your desk. However, if you want to have the time and energy to do the important things that really matter to you, then you need to say no. Everything you say yes to is saying no to something else–whether that’s your health or other amazing opportunities.

4. Get Organized

This is another area where it seems like it takes time out of your day so you want to avoid it, but you will do better at your job once you take a brief break and make it happen. Being disorganized can be a cause of stress and frustration. Organize your desk, your inbox, and anything else that has stressed you out. If you don’t, it will only get worse.

5. Take a Vacation. Yes, A Real One.

This is the hardest one for many people to adhere to, but it’s important. Remember that burnout is a real and serious problem, and it happens to people no matter how much they love their work. Taking a regular break away from it all will have you returning to your work refreshed, happier, and with improved job performance.

Don’t Forget To Take Care of Yourself

What these tips boil down to, is that you can’t lose yourself in your job and forget that you are a human being who needs to be taken care of. Some people say you need to remember you’re not a machine, but the truth is that machines need to be taken care of, too. You take your car in for a regular oil change. If you don’t, the old oil gunks up the engine and your car has long-term problems, sometimes this means it doesn’t work as well as it used to and sometimes the vehicle doesn’t recover. In the same way you would take care of your car, take care of yourself and avoid burn out so you can be the best version of yourself and do the things you love to do.