We’ve all been there. That feeling of dread going in to work, that work mood that you just can’t shake when you get home. That foggy feeling you get when you don’t know what you’re doing when you should be doing it. Friends, that’s a clear sign of burnout. Burnout is when your mind and your body give up from the overwork and stress you’ve been feeding it for a prolonged period of time. So do your emotional, physical and mental selves a favour and work to avoid burnout before it affects your day to day. Here are my top tips for how to avoid burnout.

Avoid multitasking

If you’ve been a long time reader, you know how I feel about this one. I may seem like a broken record but I firmly believe that multitasking is a badge of honour that needs to be destroyed forever. Doing many things at once doesn’t make you productive, it doesn’t make you a harder worker, it makes you someone who’s too afraid to say no to someone even if it comes at your own expense. The more we say yes, the sooner we burnout. So do yourself a favour, do society a favour and stop multitasking!

Reprioritize/outsource

If you’re feeling like you’re burning out, perhaps it’s time to look at your workday/workweek and start reprioritizing your tasks. It could be a case where you’re putting important things off and spending too much time on tasks that don’t move the needle. Or maybe you just need to take some things off your plate entirely and outsource if you can. If you’re not in a position financially to outsource, you may have to start cutting tasks out entirely. I know this may seem like a failure on your part but look at it as you’ve just piled on too much food on your plate and you just need to put some back. You’re not a failure, you’re just looking out for yourself and that should be applauded

Think about ways to make difficult tasks easier

If there’s a task you have that’s causing you stress, takes up too much time and  is too important to outsource or take off your plate, then it may be time to start looking at solutions that make your more difficult tasks easier. Are you overcomplicating it? Are you adding in too many bells and whistles? Ask yourself this about your task at hand: “this would be a whole lot easier if….” and work to get your task to that point.

Reinforce boundaries

You could be feeling burnout because you’re focusing less on your priorities and your tasks and more on tasks for other people. Communicate clearly what your work hours are. Or take things one step further and communicate your boundaries in your email signature. If you only check emails twice a day, say it in your signature. Say you are unreachable after 5pm. The clearer you are with your boundaries with people who break them the more likely they are to respect them. More importantly however, is that YOU must respect your boundaries and resist bending them.

Make mental health a priority

Sometimes we don’t realize we’re burnt out until it’s too late. You may already be experiencing advanced symptoms that you’ve been ignoring. If that’s the case no amount of boundary setting or priority setting will help. You will need to reset your mind and your body. This means taking a few days off if you need it. Take up meditation or yoga. Not your cup of tea? Then try doing something that makes you happy. Something that if done for a few hours allows you to not think about work or all the things you need to do. This shouldn’t wait until it’s too late. It’s important to implement mental health strategies regularly into your life. Set up a monthly massage, work out every morning. If need be schedule this mental health break into your calendar regularly

Burnout can come in hard and it can come in fast. But if we can can figure out how to avoid burnout and work to prevent it from happening in the first place we can become more aware of our limits and our limitations and hopefully avoid it becoming an issue. Once it comes, it’s much harder to turn around than if we try to avoid it in the first place