5 Things I Did to Stop Feeling Burned Out All the Time
Keep reading this post to learn:
⋒ What burnout is and how we get there
⋒ My story with burnout and how it inspired the foundations of Hustle Sanely
⋒ 5 things that I started going in my life that helped me kick burnout to the curb for good
Y’all know I like to keep it real with ya so I want to start the blog post by telling you a little bit about my own journey with burnout.
I’ve been an overachiever as long as I can remember.
As a little girl, I drove myself into the ground striving for straight As and being the best in any sports I did.
In high school, I carried that into signing up for allll the extracurricular activities and feeling like I had to hold leadership positions in all of them.
In college, it turned into taking the reins for all group projects and working multiple jobs while juggling my full-time course load.
And then after college, it looked like diving head first into entrepreneurship, working 60+ hour weeks without batting an eye.
I found my worth and identity in striving, performing, and achieving. I thought that if I wasn’t giving more than my all and being seen as successful that I wouldn’t be loved.
By the time I was in my mid-20s, I was exhausted. Not just tired but exhausted to my very core. It didn’t matter how much sleep I got or how well I was eating or any of that… because I wasn’t physically tired. I was emotionally tapped out.
But I kept pushing because that’s all I knew how to do. I didn’t know how to operate at a sustainable pace because I never had before. Overdrive and being stretched too thin was my normal. So anything else felt foreign and uncomfortable.
It wasn’t until 2019 or 2020 that things started to shift for me. Y’all have probably heard me tell this story before but in case you haven’t, I was sitting on the couch with my husband, Adam. Hustle Sanely was a baby business, a year or 2 old, and Adam was still working at his 9-5 so the only quality time we had together was in the evenings and on the weekends.
Well, it was a weeknight and we were supposed to be spending quality time together, watching a movie or something, and I thought, “Hmm since we’re just watching TV, I’m gonna grab my laptop and answer a few emails, too.” And here’s the kicker, I thought that me answering emails at 9 pm would help me feel “ahead” for the next day – even though I was already mentally tired and really needing to spend quality time with my husband.
I closed my laptop after like an hour (because if you’re a recovering workaholic like me, you know a “few emails” after hours usually spirals into way more) and Adam looked at me and said, “Jess, I feel like I get the leftover crumbs of you at the end of the day.”
That was my wake-up call.
My burnout was no longer just affecting me. It was seeping into other relationships in my life.
After that conversation with Adam, I knew something had to change. Shortly after, I read a book that changed my life – The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry by John Mark Comer – and inspired The 5 Keys to Hustling Sanely framework that is now the foundation of how I structure my life and all that I teach as a peaceful productivity coach.
Y’all know I shoot ya straight. My burnout ran DEEP. I didn’t decide I didn’t want to be burned out any more and wake up the next day or week or month feeling fresh.
Getting out of the burnout cycle took a good year/year and half of me unlearning deeply ingrained habits and relearning new habits that promoted me living a peacefully productive life.
That’s the thing about the Hustle Sanely Planning System - it’s not a quick fix. It helps you dig deep, get to the root(s) of why you feel stretched thin, exhausted, and overwhelmed and slowly/sustainably implement changes for less stress and more peace. Hustling Sanely is a long game.
Now that you’ve got some context on my background as a recovering workaholic/overachiever, here are 5 things that I did to help me get out of the burnout cycle:
5 Things I Did To Stop Feeling Burned Out All The Time
01: Investing time in a hobby
Real talk – when I was in my hustle culture days, I thought hobbies were a silly waste of time. If something didn’t directly correlate to a goal I was pursuing or wasn’t making me money, I wrote it off as not worth my time. Even just saying that out loud now pains me a little bit, lol.
There is actually quite a bit of research that goes into the benefits of practicing hobbies.
This is from an article on Mercy Health’s blog:
“Hobbies also provide us with an opportunity to be mindful. Mindfulness is being aware of the present moment while acknowledging and accepting your feelings, thoughts and bodily sensations. The focus that many hobbies demand lends itself to mindfulness. “Being present in the moment is a great way to distract our minds from our busy lives. It helps fight mental and physical fatigue, which is crucial for our mental health,” Dr. Famina says.
Another benefit of hobbies is the promotion of creativity and self-expression. Any creative process can be very therapeutic for the mind, whether it is drawing, sculpture, quilting or writing. It generates a sense of accomplishment and reward, which boosts our self-esteem and creates positive emotions.
Hobbies also help eliminate feelings of loneliness, which is a major factor that contributes to depression. When we attend group exercise, play team sports, join dance sessions or participate in art classes, for example, we meet new people with similar interests. This allows us to make social connections and new friends.”
If you follow me on Instagram, you probably know that my main hobby is reading fiction. I was a big reader growing up but I gave up reading fiction during my hustle culture days because I thought it was a waste of time. I legit only read personal and professional development.
In 2021, Adam and I went to Hawaii to celebrate my 30th birthday (a year late because covid, lol) and I bought myself a Kindle to take with me. I downloaded Beach Read and It Ends with Us to read on my trip and y’all I FLEW through each book. I got so much joy from reading and I hadn’t felt that excited about doing something just for fun in like a decade.
Since then, reading for fun has become such a huge part of who I am.
Reading relaxes me, mentally and physically. Like I can feel my nervous system chilling out when I’m reading.
And a chill nervous system makes me a better wife, mom, friend, all the things. Reading makes me so happy and that joy spills over into all areas of my life.
As a recovering workaholic, having a hobby helps hold me accountable to not have the urge or desire to overwork – because I’m excited to spend my time practicing my hobby!
So that’s the first thing I did to help me escape the burnout cycle – I found a hobby that suited me and practiced it regularly.
02: Using a system to keep random tasks from floating around in my brain
Okay, so this one was a game-changer for me.
Part of the reason I was so burned out all of my young adult life was because I was trying to keep track of my tasks and to-dos in my mind. Like I tried to mentally organize my life and I wondered why my brain felt so fried all the time. HELLO if there are 1,000 tabs constantly open in your brain and you’re trying to recall one thing from another of course you’re gonna crash. That’s a recipe for mental overload which leads to mental exhaustion.
I needed a system that helped me keep my life tasks organized outside of my brain and where I checked in with them regularly so things didn’t fall through the cracks or get lost in a random document somewhere.
I personally use 3 tools to help me plan and organize my whole life:
– Google cal: I use Google Calendar as a placeholder for scheduled events and recurring tasks (both for work and for my personal life) - so kind of like digital sticky notes.
– Notion: I use Notion as a digital filing cabinet for my life lists. Think brain dumps.
– Peacefully Productive Planner: I use my weekly planner to create a game plan for each specific week that makes sure I’m prioritizing my mental health and relationships as I pursue my goals. My weekly planner is my ride or die, lol. It’s my “working plan” for each week.
I sit down every week for a Weekly Planning Meeting (part of The Hustle Sanely Planning System) and use these tools to help me keep all of my tasks organized and to create a game plan for getting them done without feeling overwhelmed or spread too thin.
I have a whole podcast episode that talks about how I use my go-to planning tools together to organize my whole life that you can listen to here as well if this is something you want to dive more into!
I don’t think there is such thing as the perfect planning system – I think there is a perfect planning system for each person and for each season of life. Your perfect planning system is one that you’ll actually use, lol.
03: Planning my week with my well-being at the forefront
I use my weekly Peacefully Productive Planner to help me plan my weeks with my well-being in mind!
Hustle Sanely 5 or HS5 is my ride-or-die for helping me make sure that I am pursuing my goals while prioritizing my mental health and the important relationships in my life. If you’re new around here and you’ve never heard of HS5, here’s a quick rundown:
Think of Hustle Sanely 5™ (HS5) as your daily action steps to live a peacefully productive life.
HS5 is a list of 5 intentional habits that the Hustle Sanely community does every day to help us release overwhelm and focus our best time & energy on things that align with our goals so we make consistent progress while prioritizing our mental health and important relationships.
Habit 1: Complete your Focus 3.
Habit 2: Move for 30 minutes.
Habit 3: Tidy for 15 minutes.
Habit 4: Say or do one kind thing for yourself.
Habit 5: Say or do one kind thing for someone else.
And as I’m sure you can guess, our planners have a dedicated space to plan out your HS5 each day. Now yes, I do plan out my daily HS5 but keep in mind that HS5 is less about doing and more about being. It’s a daily routine that holds you accountable for showing up for yourself and the people in your life in a way that makes sense for whatever season you’re in.
When I sit down to plan my weeks in my planner, I use the HS5 planning areas to brainstorm how I’m gonna be kind to myself each day, how I’m gonna show up for the people I love each day, and I use the intentional rest section to plan out how I’m going to rest that week given what is on my schedule.
Planning my week with these things at the forefront keeps me from burning out. Because I don’t get stuck in the mindset of feeling like I have to earn my rest or self-care. Resting and self-care are normal parts of my week, which obviously helps prevent me from feeling burned out.
04: Taking a day completely off social media every week
I started what I call “Social Media-Free Sundays” months ago – and to be honest, when I started it, I planned on only doing it for a month as a kind of reset from too much scrolling.
Turns out after a month of taking a full day off of social media every week, I felt like a new woman and decided to continue the routine indefinitely, lol.
I know that taking a day off every week might not sound like much but doing this has done wonders for my mental health.
Think about it – we are consuming almost all day, every day. With all the time spent consuming, when do we truly have time to process and decompress? We don’t.
The constant state of scrolling put my brain in overdrive.
Having a day that puts a wrench in that constant state of scrolling has been so healing for me in ways I didn’t expect. I didn’t realize how burned out scrolling every day had made me. As someone who creates content online for work, it’s really tough for me to scroll just for fun. My brain always goes to work when I’m scrolling – whether it’s hearing an audio I want to make a reel to or seeing a post that inspires one that I want to make…my brain is never just chilling when I scroll. It’s subconsciously consuming with the purpose of planning my future content.
So taking an entire day every week off of social media has been so life-giving and helped me escape the burnout cycle.
05: Getting really comfy setting boundaries
Burnout happens when there is no margin in our lives. No margin often happens as a result of saying yes to all the things, all the time.
And you know what the solution is for that? Setting boundaries.
I’m not gonna sit here and lie to you and say that setting boundaries is fun or easy but I will tell you that it does get easier with practice and it’s almost always worth the seemingly uncomfy conversations.
Boundaries help us protect our priorities. And I’m guessing that your mental health and overall well-being are priorities, yes? So that means that you have to say no to some things so you can say yes to other things.
You might feel guilty or bad or whatever in the moment when you’re delivering a boundary BUT think about the long-term feelings that are going to occur once the boundary is set. You’ll feel peace and relief.
I’m okay with a moment of feeling uncomfortable knowing that I’m setting myself up to be comfortable in the long-term.
And listen, sometimes the boundaries that we need to set aren’t just with other people but with ourselves as well!
Boundaries that you might need to put in place with yourself could be:
~ Honoring your budget
~ Honoring your work hours
~ Limiting your caffeine intake
If you need more help when it comes to setting boundaries, check out episode 59, episode 89, and episode 165 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast!
Alright, friends, that is what I’ve got for you today – 5 things I did to stop feeling burned out all the time.
As always, what I share isn’t meant to be a chain – these are tools that you can add to your toolbox to try to help you, too. Some will work for you and some might not. Some will work in certain seasons and not in others. It’s all about finding what supports you well in the current season that you’re in…that’s how we Hustle Sanely!
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