Thriving Without Burnout: Strategies That Work for You & Your Business

Burnout is a hot topic these days - and rightfully so! In Gallup polls, employee engagement is on the decline, and a majority of employees feel burned out at least some of the time.

Women entrepreneurs aren’t immune to burn out - we may even be more susceptible due to the sheer number of roles and responsibilities we have, combined with operating mainly on our own and within a lot of uncertainty.

The symptoms of burnout include depletion or exhaustion, cynicism, feeling mentally distant, and reduced professional efficacy. Any of these conditions impacts our ability to think strategically, creatively, and to be the full person we want to be for ourselves, our communities, and our families and friends.

So, let’s make a pact to work on prevention in addition to treating the symptoms.

(Real Talk: statistically speaking, the majority of us might already be on the burnout train and if that is the case, recovery is key! This blog post from the RMWBC Blog, “Recognizing and Overcoming Burnout: A Guide for Montana's Women Business Owners,” is a great resource to start with if that is the case.)

Photo by Inspa Makers on Unsplash

Knowledge is Power. Understand Causes of Burnout

Understanding what causes burnout can help us design our work life to reduce burnout risk. Some of the leading causes of burnout are:

• Unrealistic expectations related to time, workload, and success
• Misalignment with purpose
• Isolation or lack of support

These factors lead to steady levels of stress and feeling overwhelmed. Long-term prevention means managing your time wisely, prioritizing activities that align with your life and business purpose, and making time for rest, play, and connecting with others.

Designing and Refining Business Operations

Intentionally designing and refining systems at work cuts out unnecessary stress and frustration, saves time (so you can take a walk or catch up with a friend!), and aligns operations with your business mission and culture.

Step 1: Recognize an improvement opportunity

The first step is recognizing opportunities for system improvements. This can be as easy as noticing when you regularly feel annoyed, overwhelmed or frustrated with a set of tasks.  Instead of squashing the feeling, lean into it and get curious about what exactly is going on that makes you want to run and hide.

If you’re ready to take a comprehensive look at your business, you can rank the following factors on a scale from low to high contentment or efficacy. You can do this individually if you're a solopreneur, or as a team. Low scores indicate areas where system improvements can be made.

• How clear is your organization’s purpose, and how well does it align with your own purpose? Does this work fulfill you?
• Fun & Creativity. How often do you have a little light-hearted fun at work and the space to invite creativity?
• Reasonable workload. How effectively can you manage your workload within the confines of your work hours?
• Clear expectations and goals. How clear are you on what you’re working towards and what is expected of you?
• Honest, constructive feedback. How often do you request, receive, and provide constructive feedback? What is your organization’s feedback culture like?
• Personal time is celebrated. How often do you take time off, completely unplugged from work? How well does your organizational culture support employees’ personal time?
• Inviting Workspace. Your surroundings matter. How energized do you feel at your desk? In your office space?
• How well do you follow through on your commitments? How well do your team members follow through on theirs? How is accountability handled at your organization?

Step 2: Diagnose

Once you know what you want to improve, take 15 minutes to pinpoint what the problem is. Reflect on what is making that task or activity particularly stressful, frustrating, etc.

It helps to ask yourself “why?” five times so you can uncover multiple factors leading to that feeling.

• Why does this make me feel ____?
• And why is that?
• And why is that?
• And why is that?
• And why is that?

Step 3: Design

This is the fun part! Now you can be creative. You’ve got your problem figured out, now it's time to think about your goal for the particular thing you are working on and how you want it to feel. 

Then decide on what you will do to improve the system and achieve those goals. Write down what needs to be done and schedule it in your calendar.

Step 4: Reflect and refine

After you’ve tried your new process, take a few minutes to reflect on how it went. Are there tweaks you’d like to make?

Making a habit of reflecting on and refining your business systems helps you seamlessly engage in continuous improvement and optimize for time, energy, and purpose.

I wrote about my favorite framework that helps me turn my reflections into action in this blog post: “Improve your effectiveness in just 15 minutes with 3 questions.”

Managing Your Time and Energy

Productivity practices, or work habits, influence where you put your energy and focus day in and day out. These habits can work against you or they can work for you. The more you find what works for you, the more you can work with ease.

Setting boundaries

Many discussions about boundaries revolve around setting them with others and involve conflict situations. But the truth is there’s a lot of work to do in setting boundaries with ourselves.

In reality, we are often our biggest boundary-crossers. It’s easy to ignore our own needs, set too high of expectations on ourselves, or to keep saying yes. Yet it’s these lack of boundaries that are most likely affecting your productivity, and in the end, your business and mental health.

When you boil it down, honoring boundaries is a practice of coming to understand your preferences. Honoring your preferences is a protective factor against burnout. Boundaries can help you find more fulfillment and joy, and they can help you understand what you need to focus, be creative, and get things done.

You can use the same steps for designing and refining business systems for designing and refining boundaries.

1. Recognize when a boundary is needed. Here are some common clues: you feel resentful, hesitant, overwhelmed, drained, like you “should” do something, rather than wanting to, anxious.
2. Diagnose why you are feeling that way. Use the 5 why exercise if you need some prompts.
3. Design (or determine) the boundary you need to uphold.

Once you’ve decided on the boundary, commit to honoring it. Write it down, tell it to someone, and defend it. If your boundary will impact the work of others, have an open discussion about everyone’s needs and how they can be met.

Adjusting your mindset

Some mindsets or perspectives work against productivity. Here are a few of the top ones. If any of them click with you, make a commitment to work on it.

Perfectionism: If you often polish your work in isolation, fear rework or avoid making a mistake at all costs, this sets up impossible expectations. Instead, try working in iterations, getting feedback and constantly improving each time. 

Busyness: Being busy is not the same as being productive. Many times it means you are focusing on lots of disparate little tasks instead of the big important ones. Instead, try prioritizing one or two things to get done in a day and protect chunks of time to work on them.

Saying yes and doing too much: If you default to saying yes, you may be prioritizing others’ work over your own and wasting precious energy on less important things. Instead, find a way to gracefully and graciously say no or lead with a “let me think about it” response that gives you time to decide if the request aligns with what you’re working on.

Viewing rest and downtime as a weakness: The truth is, our minds need a break. Rest, play, and quiet reflection actually recharge your mind and energy. If you feel guilty when taking a break, turn the thought around. You aren’t “not working,” you are recharging to come back and do your best work.

Planning rituals

Your energy and focus are the biggest drivers of productivity and you make many decisions about where to steer those throughout each day, week, and month.

A regular practice of setting monthly goals and prioritizing weekly work helps to right-size your workload and keeps your work aligned on high-impact projects.

Reflecting on what went well each week and what could be improved helps you hone in on what boosts your productivity, what drains you, and what to watch out for.

These practices help you zoom in to your highest use of energy and focus - think of working smarter, not harder.

I created an outline of my planning practices to help others get a jumpstart on their own. You can check it out here: https://workwithkgconsulting.myflodesk.com/productivity.

There’s no shortage of productivity hacks out there on the internet to help you get work done when you need an extra boost. Here are a few of the ones I’ve found most impactful:

• If I’m procrastinating too much, I start doing the Pomodoro technique, where I work for 20 minutes then take a 5 minute break then repeat. It feels more manageable to get started that way
• Break overwhelming projects into clear, bite-sized tasks
• Start the day with an easy win. The momentum will help you the rest of the day
• Only respond to email during specific timeframes. Log out of email outside of those times
• Schedule brain breaks
• Schedule blocks of time to get good, focused, “deep” work done
• Turn off notifications to decrease interruptions

Considering Your Team

If you are leading a team, as manager you are the biggest influencer of burnout for employees. You can create a positive culture by modeling the actions discussed in this post, setting clear expectations, providing constructive feedback and support, encouraging vacation time, and engaging in authentic conversations about workload and well-being.

Photo by Evie Martinez on Unsplash

Take it one step at a time

You already have a lot on your plate and if you try to overfill it with prevention strategies you’ll do more harm than good.

So where to start? Whichever idea struck a chord or where you have the most energy and enthusiasm for is always a good place to start.

The important thing is to start somewhere and to start small. Keep racking up small wins and soon you’ll turn around and realize you’ve come a lot further than you realized.

Preventing burnout is not something you will ever fully achieve - it’s a journey to discover what helps you get your best and most meaningful work done.

There will be ups and downs and your needs will evolve as you and your business evolve, so it’s best to just enjoy the journey and pause to smell the flowers.