5 Signs You’re Burned Out (and what to do about them)
What is burnout?
According to helpguide.org, burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. If you feel constantly swamped, you are probably experiencing burnout. Burnout is caused by feeling:
- Overwhelmed
- Emotionally drained
- Unable to keep up with life’s continuous demands.
The negative effects of burnout spill over into every area of life — including your home, work, and social life. Burnout can also cause long-term changes to your body and can even mess with your immune system. It’s so important to deal with burnout right away… it’s not something to be brushed off or accepted as your new normal. To me, the best way to describe burnout is living a life without harmony. An unbalanced life where your energy output severely outweighs your energy input.
One thing I didn’t know – there are actually 3 different types of burnout. Knowing the different types helps us identify what’s going on so that we can really pinpoint a solution.
The 3 types of burnout:
Overload Burnout:
This happens when you work harder and harder, becoming frantic in your pursuit of success. If you experience this, you may be willing to risk your health and personal life to feel successful in your job/role.
Under-challenged Burnout:
This happens when you feel under-appreciated and bored in your job/role. Maybe your job/role doesn’t provide learning opportunities or have room for professional growth. If you feel under-challenged, you may distance yourself from your job/role, become cynical, and avoid responsibilities.
Neglect Burnout:
This happens when you feel helpless. If things aren’t going right, you may believe you’re incompetent or unable to keep up with your responsibilities. Such burnout can be closely connected to imposter syndrome, a psychological pattern in which you doubt your skills, talents, or accomplishments.
What are some signs of burnout?
01. Neglecting your needs/sedentary habits
02. Overworking because you feel behind and you’re trying to catch up
03. Setting unrealistic goals
04. Inability to make decisions
05. Detachment or feeling alone in the world
What are some practical action steps you can take to help relieve burnout?
You know that we are all about tactical and concrete advice here in the Hustle Sanely community. So here are three steps that you can follow to help relieve burnout.
01. Assess what you’re doing right now so you can pinpoint stress triggers.
This helps us get to the root of what factors pushed us to the edge of burnout. How did we end up where we are? Taking the time to audit where you currently are empowers you to create a plan to get where you want to be.
So what’s the best way to assess where you are right now? I like to do something called the Stress Triggers exercise.
You basically just brain dump things that are stressing you out so you can dig in a little deeper into each one. So get a piece of paper and create 2 columns.
In the left column, write down what is causing stress in your life right now.
Maybe it’s not getting your workouts in, not having set work hours and feeling like you‘re always on the clock, or having a hard time being present during date nights because your to-do list is on your mind.
In the right column, write how you’re going to address it using the ditch it, delegate it, or do it differently method.
Ditch it: Something you have no control over or that isn’t serving your current season so you’ve got to let it go (ask yourself, “Is this worth the attention I’m giving it right now?)
Example: You want to launch a new course in your business but you find out you’re pregnant. Circle Ditch It. Plan of action: Move the course launch date to next year.
Delegate it: Ask for help by passing this task off to someone else for this season
Example: You are stressed about getting to work on time because of having to take the kids to school every day. Circle Delegate It. Plan of action: Asking your mother-in-law to take the kids to school.
Do it differently: Something you can’t get rid of right now but that needs attention for how it’s currently done
Example: You are stressed out about not getting your workouts in. Circle Do It Differently. Plan of action: join a group fitness gym to lessen the mental capacity required for workouts.
And don’t feel like you have to sit down and do this all at once. It can be difficult to sit and stare at a blank piece of paper and try to think about all the things stressing you out. So instead, jot them down as they pop up in life.
02. Define your priorities for this season, including decluttering your plate.
The first part of this is taking responsibility. We allow things to make their way onto our schedules - they don’t just magically appear. When you take ownership of your schedule and what you allow on it, you empower yourself to get rid of what no longer needs to be there. Now obviously, you can’t just ditch all of your responsibilities - that’s not what I’m saying here. But you can prioritize them and you can realistically look at everything and decide what is not going to fit on your plate right now.
To be honest, sometimes this sucks because it means having to feel like you’re letting others down and that can be hard if you’re used to living your life like a people pleaser.
Some examples of things you might have to clear from your plate in this season:
- Limiting extracurriculars.
Maybe right now, your kid is in 3 different activities at once: piano, soccer, and horseback riding, which means you are driving to and from practices and games and recitals 6 days a week. You know that’s not sustainable for you. So instead of having your kid enrolled in 3 things at once, set a boundary and clear your plate to let them do 1 extracurricular activity at a time. Sure, they might be bummed at first, because they’re not used to having to choose just one, but that short period of them being upset and you explaining to them why you, as a family, will only be focusing on one activity in this season is going to be so worth it when you’re only driving to games, practices, and recitals 2-3 times a week rather than 6, for example. We gotta think long game, here. Explain to your kid what capacity means and what you want to do with the extra time not spent at games, practices, etc. (like having family dinners together, you visiting with your friends, your kiddo getting to spend more time with their cousins…you get it)
- Instead of volunteering at your church once a week, you choose to volunteer once a month in this season.
Here’s the truth - you are only one person. You cannot do everything well without burning out. Burnout happens when we spread ourselves too thin, ignoring our capacities. So instead of thinking about decluttering your plate as letting people down, reframe that and think about it as supporting yourself to show up as the best version of yourself for the people in your life. When you’re operating from a place of peace and rest, as opposed to stress and burnout, you are the best version of you, period.
03. Audit your workflow and make sure you have margin and self-care built into your life.
Now that you’ve done the legwork of weeding out what doesn’t need to be on your plate anymore, you can create a new workflow to accommodate your true priorities. When I say workflow, I just mean how you structure your days and allocate your energy.
Y’all have heard me talk about weekly skeletons time and time again – like I legit have a workshop dedicated to helping you build a weekly schedule that reflects your priorities and weaves in self-care and margin.
As a society, we are so used to filling our schedules to the freaking brim. But that’s when burnout happens…when we have ourselves booked with to-dos from the moment we wake up until the moment we go to sleep.
I’ve said this before but it’s worth saying again – we are human beings, not human doings. We have to rewrite how we view productivity.
I challenge and encourage you to spend some time building a weekly schedule outline that truly supports you, including having time to rest, take care of yourself, and just be.
Stop constantly saying, “After next week, life will be more chill and I’ll have time for [insert a priority you’re neglecting here].” (Note: Life never chills unless you change something 🥴)
Now can we talk about self-care for a sec?
I will be the first to tell you that I used to be the person who hardcore rolled their eyes at the phrase “self-care” because I associated self-care with bubble baths, face masks, and weekend-long getaways at the beach.
Then I learned how to self-care the Hustle Sanely way and the game changed.
Now I’m all about what the Hustle Sanely community likes to call self-care sprinkles – aka weaving realistic self-care practices in your daily life.
Self-care isn’t meant to be a last-ditch emergency effort to reset when you’re already on the brink of burnout.
Self-care should be something that is regular in your life. I read this quote about self-care on everydayhealth.com and I want to share it with you:
“Self-care is not synonymous with self-indulgence or being selfish. Self-care means taking care of yourself so that you can be healthy, you can be well, you can do your job, you can help and care for others, and you can do all the things you need to and want to accomplish in a day.”
Stop thinking about self-care as these big grand events and start thinking of ways that you can sprinkle self-care into your daily life. That could look like:
- Leaving for work 20 minutes early so that you’re ahead of rush hour traffic, taking your journal with you to work and spending the first 15 minutes of your day there journaling and sipping on coffee.
- Buying one of those mugs that keeps your coffee warm so you can enjoy hot coffee even while you chase your toddler around.
- Going on a 10-minute walk after work to help you transition from work life to home life. Self-care is whatever refreshes and supports you. So again, step 3 is to audit your workflow and make sure you have margin and self-care built into your life.
I hope you feel more supported after reading this. So many people struggle with burnout, but there are ways to relieve that feeling. ✨
If you need help building a schedule, the How to Plan a Peacefully Productive Week Workshop is only $49!
I walk you through all the juicy details of my 6-step process for creating your very own weekly skeleton.
(Hint: weekly skeleton = your secret weapon for planning a peacefully productive week)
If you enjoyed this blog post, tune into Episode 135 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to dive deeper into this topic:
