Using Your Planner to Overcome Burnout
Can you remember the last time you felt stress-free? Maybe it was a quiet moment on a recent vacation or a lazy Saturday when you soaked up time doing something you love. Most of us are carrying around a load of stress. And while we’ve been told feeling stressed all the time is a normal part of life, chronic stress is not. If you’ve been feeling stress and exhaustion everyday, you may be headed for burnout. You might already be burned out. In Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s book, “Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle”, they define burnout as three components:
1.) Emotional exhaustion (when you’ve cared too much for too long);
2.) Depersonalization (feeling depleted of empathy and compassion); and
3.) A decreased sense of accomplishment (feeling nothing you do will make a difference).
Today we’re taking a look at stress and burnout and how we can utilize our planners and notebooks to avoid reaching those breaking points.
Focus & Prioritize
Think about how you structure your day. What are your sticking points? Can you see patterns forming in your day? For instance, when you are most productive? When do you have the hardest time focusing and finishing tasks? Think about these parts of your day and plan your focused work time accordingly. Prioritize your most important tasks each day. When we feel overwhelmed it can help to choose the three most important tasks of the day and make a plan for completing them. Take a look at our productivity post for tips on how to arrange your schedule to help you work through your priority list.
Manage Your Time
Think about your ideal day. What does it look and feel like? How can you structure your day to most align with your ideal day? It can help to write out your ideal schedule and use it as a guide for planning your week and day to day tasks. Use your daily and weekly planner pages to map out your structure and give it a try. Chances are you’ll need to make some tweaks and adjustments to find what works best.
Delegate
As you are writing out the structure of your ideal day, identify your sticking points. When are you overwhelmed and where could you use some help? It is so hard for us to ask for help or to accept help when it is offered. But the phrase ‘it takes a village’ applies to so many aspects of our lives. We need and thrive in communities. Find your cheering squad and support team. If you need help, ask and delegate tasks. Let go of controlling every aspect of things (and the eventual spiral and burnout). Place an online order for groceries, consolidate errands, take advantage of child care at the gym or the friend’s offer to drop off dinner. Let go of the little things and focus on the main priorities. Allow your partner or friend to support you by being vulnerable with them and sharing what is causing you stress.
Stress Relief
Which activities bring you joy? What are your favorite ways to relax? Carve out windows of relaxation when you can. Keep a list in your planner of your favorite ways to unwind and choose from the list daily to inspire moments of rest and time to recharge your batteries. Schedule breaks into your day. If you are working in an office or from home, take a break every 90 minutes or so. Step away from your desk and go on a short walk. Or do something creative or try some mindful breathing. Drink some water and come back refreshed. If you’re a stay at home parent, carve out quiet moments when you can sit down and recharge.
Rest
Most of us are lacking some serious sleep! We know the importance of sleep and yet it’s one of the first things we leave off the priority list. Shoot for 7-8 hours of sleep a night and adjust your schedule accordingly. Parents of newborns are probably reading this with a laugh and eyeroll! When you can, prioritize a good night’s rest.
Pep Talk
It might sound a little hokey and awkward but sometimes we need to give ourselves a boost. What words inspire you? You can collect these in the pages of your planner or journal. Post them around your home. If you’re feeling down or stressed remember you can always begin again. We don’t even need to wait for a new day or morning. If the first half of your day was a mess, pause and breathe and start again. Your afternoon can go differently.
Listening to Your Inner Voice
Listen to that inner voice or feeling in your gut. Those instincts tend to lead us in the right direction. Trust what you’re feeling and give yourself room to explore these feelings. Utilize your notebook to journal your thoughts and work through what you are feeling. Be kind to your inner self.
Give Up Balance, Find Peace
How many times have we heard about work life balance? That somehow everything will work out if we can just achieve that delicate balance of effortlessly doing it all? It might be time we give up the idea of the perfect work life balance and accept that some parts of our lives are bound to feel off balance at times. Different aspects of life are going to take up more of our mental and physical energy at various times and that’s okay! Find your peace in the unbalanced life. Accept that things will ebb and flow. There will be busy times that feel more chaotic and quieter times that feel more peaceful and balanced. Find your gratitude everyday. Use your planner to jot down everyday moments of joy and peace (even on the stressful, chaotic days).