In one of my previous blogs, I discussed how best to avoid the threat of burnout in your career. However, sometimes you do the best you can, but cannot avoid burnout. Burning out can be debilitating to your career and personal life, because you are unable to complete the responsibilities you have. If you are currently burned out, you likely feel completely unable to do anything and find it impossible to focus on accomplishing what you know you need to get done. Once burnout happens, you need to take a slightly different approach to fixing it than the steps required for avoiding it.
Take a step back
Once you’ve already experienced burnout, it’s time to take a step back. You might still be trying to push through and get work done, but this mentality only makes the burnout worse for you in the end. Tell yourself it’s time to acknowledge that you’re burned out and take some time off of work. Use sick days or even take a few vacation days if you need to, just so you can step away from your obligations and start recovering from burnout.
Evaluate your priorities
After you’ve taken time off from everything you have to do, it’s time to sit down and seriously consider the situation. First, what caused you to burnout? You need to identify the cause so you can take steps to change it. Once you know why you burned out and what you did wrong, learn to re-evaluate your priorities and what you actually need to focus on in your life. Learn to say no and create a workload you can manage.
Get healthy again
Once you’ve burned out, it’s likely that your health isn’t as good as it could be. To properly recover from burnout, you’re going to want to make your health and well-being a priority. Plan to regularly exercise and make healthy eating choices. You’ll be less likely to experience burnout again if your body is functioning the best it can and you’re taking care of it.
Create a support system
One of the most important steps you can take to recover and prevent burnout is creating a strong support system you know you can go to if you start feeling burnout creeping back. You may already have a semblance of one in place, but it’s time to get serious about talking to the people closest to you regarding what you need help with. If you sincerely do not feel comfortable opening up to anyone, consider finding a therapist you can meet with regularly. Having a neutral party that you can talk things out with will do wonders for you well-being.
Set boundaries
Finally, it’s time for you to set some boundaries when it comes to work and your personal life. Create a deadline for when you need to stop doing work for the night, whether it’s when you leave your office or a few hours after you get home. The best way to avoid burnout is to actually giving yourself time to move away from work and having boundaries between work and home can help you do that.