How To Avoid Burnout

Author: Dustin Crossland

05-01-2021

Why You NEED To Avoid Burnout

Almost all of us have experienced some degree of burnout at some point in our lives, whether it was in school, a career, or life itself. What most of us don’t know is that burnout is much more than just feeling tired and unmotivated. Burnout is terrible for you physiologically. Not managing burnout can literally take years off of your life, so you can’t just “power through” if living a long life is one of your ambitions. There is certainly value to resiliency and persistence, but there’s a line where it becomes toxic for your physical and mental health.

Cortisol

Most notably, burnout comes with heightened levels of cortisol (sometimes known as the stress hormone), and cortisol is known to cause harmful inflammation that can lead to a number of life-altering diseases. Cortisol gets released when you’re feeling stressed and is part of your body’s “fight or flight” response. There’s good stress that keeps you motivated enough to make progress and aggressively chase your dreams, but burnout is a result of your stress levels entering dangerous territory where your body and mind would rather just shut down than try to survive. When you’re burned out, you have essentially used up your body's resources for survival.

Practical Ideas For Avoiding Burnout

Take A Break

The most obvious solution is to just take a break. Give your body time to recoup and come back stronger and more effective after your body recovers. Not only does your body literally need time to recover, but you also need a chance to remind yourself what you’re working for. While you’re on a break, give yourself a small taste of what you’re working toward to reignite your motivation to accomplish your goals. Establish one day per week that you dedicate to yourself, and make yourself stick to it. Doing this has been a huge help for me. I have a tendency to just push through, so it’s difficult to make myself take a personal day. I need to though, so I force myself to take a break and purposely pursue my hobbies and spend time with the people I love. You don’t have to take an expensive trip for this. Often, I spend less than $20 on my personal day. Just do something you love and see people that make your life brighter.

Plan Ahead And Stick To The Plan

Studies show that simply picturing an ambiguous future can cause stress. Your mind constantly wants to solve your problems, especially if you are purposely putting yourself under stress to accomplish your goals. You may notice that your brain just won’t let your sleep sometimes because you can’t stop thinking about something you need to do or an obstacle you need to overcome. If you put a plan in place, your brain can rest because you have set the process of problem-solving in motion. The future is no longer ambiguous because you know what you are going to do, and you know when you are going to do it. Most importantly, stick to your plan. If you don’t stick to your plan, your plan is meaningless. You will find yourself running around frantically putting out fires and you will be back to sleepless nights that sap your productive energy.

Fight Procrastination

Did you know that anticipating a bad event has been shown to be just as unpleasant as experiencing the bad event? By procrastinating on something you dread doing, you are essentially extending the period that you experience the unpleasantness associated with the task. So. Just. Do. The. Thing. If you just get the task over with, you will avoid days or weeks of unpleasantness, and you will actually get a nice little dopamine boost for accomplishing something. There are only benefits to avoiding procrastination, so fight the urge to procrastinate like your life depends on it.

Meditate

While a lot of people already knew it through personal experience, modern science is finally showing us that meditation is extremely beneficial. Not just mentally, but also physically. Meditation can help you come back down to earth and feel more grounded. It helps you slow things down and find creative solutions you would have never thought of. Meditation also helps lower cortisol levels as you let your brain leave fight or flight mode and just focus on objective reality. Many wildly successful people give meditation some credit for their immense success, including billionaire hedge fund manager Ray Dalio.

Be Kind To Yourself

If you’re reading this, you are probably already stressed from working hard toward your goals. There’s no need to give yourself self-inflicted stress on top of that. Understand that you are a human being, and humans have limitations. We can’t run constantly like a computer can. We need time to recover, and we have to consciously take care of ourselves. When you fail, use it as a learning experience, not as a chance to put yourself down. Realize that failure is a part of accomplishing great things and conquering despite failure is how you rise above everyone else that would have just quit. Give yourself encouragement, learn from your mistakes, and relish the opportunity to become an improved version of yourself. Managing your thoughts can have a massive impact on your quality of life, so learn how to recognize toxic thoughts and turn to thoughts that help you get what you want out of life.

This Is What Has Worked For Me

While I have done a lot of research related to stress and neuroscience in general, I’m not a scientist. I do, however, know what has worked for me. Many of the things that have worked for me have real scientific legitimacy, so I think they can help you as well. If you find any of these ideas for avoiding burnout useful, I would love to hear about how they impacted your life! Feel free to reach out anytime.