How to Defeat Burnout and Stay Motivated

From Wise­bread

This is a guest post from Jef­frey Tang of The Art of Great Things.

“Do what you love.”

We’ve all heard this advice before. It’s great advice, though not many peo­ple truly take it to heart.

But some­times doing what you love isn’t enough to keep you going. Inspi­ra­tion, pas­sion, and moti­va­tion are dif­fi­cult things to hold on to. They always seem to slip away right when you need them most.

You know that feel­ing. Where you’re that close to fin­ish­ing a project, or achiev­ing a goal, or cross­ing a task off your to-do list … but you just can’t muster the energy. You’ve lost inter­est. You’re exhausted. Drained. And you don’t know why.

That’s burnout. It’s some­thing many of us are all too famil­iar with. I’d like to share with you a few ways that I fight burnout – or pre­vent it from catch­ing me in the first place.

1. Achieve in incre­ments. When you only focus on a big goal some­day, it’s easy to get burned out by the daily grind. It’s like dri­ving toward a moun­tain in the dis­tance. You can drive for hours, but the moun­tain doesn’t seem to get any closer. And spin­ning your wheels gets real tir­ing real fast.

The solu­tion is to give your­self a way to mea­sure and record every lit­tle step for­ward you take. Here’s how:

• Get a jour­nal, note­book, or cal­en­dar. Writ­ing things down is important.
• Iden­tify mile­stones on the road towards your goal.If you’re writ­ing a book, you could treat each chap­ter as one mile­stone. Or, even bet­ter, treat each 500 words or 1000 words as a milestone.
• If mile­stones aren’t obvi­ous, cre­ate them. For exam­ple, if you’re train­ing for a marathon, hold your­self to a pro­gres­sion of dis­tance. If you start out run­ning at your max­i­mum dis­tance, you’ll plateau very quickly. Instead, start at a shorter dis­tance – even if it’s very easy for you – then work your way up slowly.
• Track mile­stones in a sim­ple, visual for­mat. Think of the progress bar on a down­load. One glance tells you exactly how much progress has been made. The for­mat you choose doesn’t need to be detailed or com­pre­hen­sive. It just needs to show that you’re mov­ing for­ward day by day.
• Learn to appre­ci­ate the lit­tle accom­plish­ments. Let your­self enjoy the feel­ing of get­ting things done.

2. Train your muse. One of the biggest myths about inspi­ra­tion that it’s ran­dom. One day you’re inspired and moti­vated, the next day you’re burned out – and there’s no way around it. Or so they say.

In fact, inspi­ra­tion is just like any other skill. It may start out as unre­li­able, but it can be trained and devel­oped into some­thing you can rely on.

So how do you train your muse? The best way I’ve found is immer­sion. Sur­round your­self with things that inspire you and reflect your goals. Great com­posers lis­ten to music. Great authors read vora­ciously. Great mar­keters attend sem­i­nars. Great productivity-ists sub­scribe to Zen Habits. And so on. Immer­sion trains your mind to work effi­ciently in the ways you need it to.

The more that your inspi­ra­tion becomes a part of your life, the less likely it is to run out when you need it most. With that in mind, be cre­ative. What ways can you con­nect with your inspi­ra­tion on a daily basis?

3. Work less. Cut down on the amount of energy and time you spend work­ing. If you have sick days or vaca­tion days left, take advan­tage of them. Or, if you’re self-employed, force your­self to work fewer hours each day – even if that means turn­ing down new projects.

Work­ing less doesn’t mean you have to slack off or get less done. It does mean that you:

• Elim­i­nate unnec­es­sary tasks.
• Take strate­gic breaks.
• Stop multi-tasking.
• Seek help from other people.

4. Define suc­cess real­is­ti­cally. There’s absolutely noth­ing wrong with hav­ing big dreams and big ambi­tions. But if you’re con­stantly frus­trated by a lack of progress, it might be time to take a step back and exam­ine your goals. Are they achiev­able? Are you hold­ing your­self to a rea­son­able timeline?

Here’s a good way to do this. Get a piece of paper and write down your big, ambi­tious goal. Then write down at least 10 spe­cific, con­crete steps that will allow you to achieve that goal. Be as detailed as pos­si­ble. If you can’t come up with a series of down-to-earth steps to get you from here to your dream, that’s a sign that you need to either rede­fine your goals or rethink the way you’re pur­su­ing those goals.

5. Get more sleep. You’ve heard this before, I know. So have I. But that didn’t stop me from going against my bet­ter judg­ment and tir­ing myself out by stay­ing up late to work. Get­ting enough sleep takes a con­scious deci­sion – and, just like any good habit, takes time to develop.

One of the biggest bar­ri­ers for me in this area is pro­cras­ti­na­tion. I have a ten­dency to put things off through­out the day, then stay up later as a result. What’s keep­ing you from get­ting the rest you need?

6. Take it slow(er). The world tells us to rush things: “Get there faster. Make money quicker. Retire sooner.” And while these things aren’t nec­es­sar­ily bad, they can eas­ily get us in over our heads. If you’re feel­ing burned out and over­whelmed, it’s time to slow down.

A few ways to take your­self out of 24/7 high gear:

• Spend at least 10 min­utes a day in a quiet place, away from dis­trac­tions. Breathe.
• Put together a playlist of slow, relax­ing music. Lis­ten to it when­ever you start feel­ing frazzled.
• Take a butcher knife to your to-do list. Set a limit to the num­ber of tasks you take on each day and stick to it.
• Extend your dead­lines. Do you absolutely, pos­i­tively have to get this done now? Just remem­ber – this isn’t an excuse to procrastinate.

7. Get a sec­ond opin­ion. It’s hard to spot burnout from the inside. Your close friends and fam­ily are likely to iden­tify the signs of burnout long before you do. So lis­ten to what they’re say­ing. The next time your spouse, par­ent, or best friend tells you you’re work­ing too hard, take it seriously.

8. Set clear bound­aries. Burnout hap­pens when we allow work to over­flow its bound­aries and inter­fere with every other part of our lives. So set strong bound­aries. The clearer the bet­ter. In writ­ing, if possible.

For exam­ple, instead of say­ing: “I’ll spend at three hours every night with my fam­ily,” make it clearer: “I won’t work after 8 o’clock. That’s 100% fam­ily time.” Clear bound­aries are eas­ier to stick to and harder to ratio­nal­ize away.

Once you’ve set up your bound­aries, make them pub­lic. Let your fam­ily know that you’ve set aside time just for them. They’ll hold you account­able to your promises. Let your clients know that you’ll be unavail­able dur­ing cer­tain hours. This will reduce the temp­ta­tion to fudge on your boundaries.

9. When you’re work­ing, focus. I’ve found that con­cen­trat­ing on work is actu­ally less exhaust­ing than allow­ing your­self to be wishy-washy about it. When you decide that it’s time to work, buckle down, elim­i­nate dis­trac­tions, and do it whole­heart­edly. There’s some­thing amaz­ingly refresh­ing
about pure, sharp focus.

10. Cre­ate out­lets. If you’re a per­son of diverse inter­ests (and really, who isn’t?), it’s likely that you have sev­eral very dif­fer­ent goals and ideas bounc­ing around in your head at any given time. These ideas need out­lets. If you hold them inside, they’ll even­tu­ally start inter­fer­ing with your focus and cre­at­ing unnec­es­sary frus­tra­tion, lead­ing to burnout.

In other words, I think it’s okay – healthy, even – to start a few side projects as out­lets for cre­ative energy. Just make sure that you keep your pri­or­i­ties straight and your side projects fun. If these side projects become sources of stress, cut them out immediately.

11. Know when to power through it. This is going to sound out of place given what I’ve said above, but it’s pow­er­ful – if applied cor­rectly. Some­times the solu­tion for burnout is just to power through it. Some­times burnout can be an illu­sion. In these cases, the best choice is to refuse to use burnout as an excuse, ignore the fact that you feel burned out, and just work through it. It’s like a run­ner gain­ing her sec­ond wind and com­ing out stronger on the other side.

How­ever, just as an expe­ri­enced ath­lete knows when to push through the pain and when to pull back, you’ll need to be very care­ful how you take this par­tic­u­lar piece of advice. Until you develop a keen aware­ness of your own ten­den­cies, it’s usu­ally bet­ter to err on the side of cau­tion and pull back when you start feel­ing burned out.

12. Never accept defeat. Burnout is an obsta­cle like any other. It can hold you back for a while, but it’s not the end of the world – unless you let it defeat you.

If you have a great goal in mind, don’t give up on it, no mat­ter how apa­thetic, exhausted, or frus­trated you might feel. If every­thing I’ve said up until this point fails, do this: hold on to your dream – even if it doesn’t feel like much of a dream at the moment. Hold on to it any­way. That way, when the storm clears, your dream will still be intact, ready for another try.

Get more inspi­ra­tion from Jef­frey at his blog, The Art of Great Things.