HOW TO OVERCOME BURNOUT AND STAY MOTIVATED.

8 straight hours of sleep, 3 cups of coffee, and you still feel tired like you’ve been up all night. Yes, I know you saw yourself in this sentence.

But keep calm because luckily (I mean – unfortunately) you’re not the only one to go through a similar situation in your everyday life. I’m writing this article, not only based on research and scientific data but also inspired by situations I’ve lived through. And I still live it… sometimes.

Burnout syndrome has been talked about for a long time, including, on January 1, 2022, the World Health Organization formalized Burnout Syndrome as a work-related illness.

The origin of Burnout is related to sources of stress inherent to their activities, whether professional or personal. These sources of stress can be greater competitiveness in the workplace, inadequate pressure (overload of tasks or changes in working hours), the practice of intense activities subject to risks, poor work environment among colleagues, as well as personal issues.

That said, it is important to maintain a balance between professional and personal life to prevent burnout from occurring.

How to overcome burnout:

There are several ways to overcome Burnout depending on your source of stress, however, I’m going to introduce you to some general changes that you can incorporate into your daily routine that will help you reduce or even eliminate stress from any type of source.

1 – Have effective sleep

Sleep has been scientifically proven to be the main cause of Burnout. This is because most people neglect sleep because they think they can still be “productive” without it. But calm down again, this does not mean that if you sleep more hours, you will wake up full of energy.

An effective sleep depends solely and exclusively on your chronotype (each individual’s natural predisposition to feel energy spikes or fatigue, according to the time of day), that is, the effectiveness of your sleep will depend on what time of the day you sleep.

This means that there is no point in going to bed at 9 pm and waking up at 5 am if you are a night person, or going to bed at 8 am and waking up at 4 pm if you are a day person.

Find out your chronotype so you’ll know when you’ll have energy and when you won’t and schedule your bedtimes based on it.

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Personally, I am more productive at night and, because of that, I delegate my most important tasks to the schedule between 10 pm and 5 am.

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2 – Review Your Schedule

I would like to start by saying that productivity is not related to how many tasks you do.

“You will never breathe while your schedule is choked with tasks.” – Believe it or not, I just made up this phrase!

Review all your scheduled tasks and cancel the ones that aren’t really important.

3 – Meditate

Several studies have confirmed that meditation has long-term positive effects on our psychological well-being, reduces anxiety, stress, and other mental disorders. So adding meditation, no matter how short, to your routine is a great idea to free your mind from any toxic thoughts and feelings.

4 – Take a break

Breaks are, without a shadow of a doubt, one of the most efficient ways to relieve stress. Unlike meditation, you can use your break to focus on other tasks like reading a book or listening to a podcast while tidying up your house.

During this break, it is important that you are away from your work area and relax.

5 – Make time for yourself

Sometimes, with so much going on and so many tasks to solve in your work, we end up forgetting about ourselves. That’s why I only put 3 tasks in my schedule.

Whether it’s 30 minutes playing video games, 10 minutes reading a book, 20 minutes chatting with someone you like, or even spending time alone, making time for yourself makes you psychologically disconnect from your work and have control over your physical and mental health.

There are many other ways to overcome Burnout such as exercising, talking to a therapist, even changing jobs. As I said before, the ideal way for you to overcome your Burnout will depend on your sources of stress. In this article, I have based myself only on general practices that are sure to help you in any stressful situation.