Avoid burnout before it’s too late. The only way that you lose in the pursuit of your goals is if you quit. No one else can make you lose but yourself and if you are burning out, you will lose because of you. Avoiding burnout is more than just taking additional vacation time here and there. It’s about being stress free.
It was demoralizing when I worked 50 – 60+ hours a week during busy season in banking. It wasn’t about the sheer number of hours that I was working but about the intensity of the hours that I was working. Something had to be finished every hour.
On top of that, there were constant interruptions throughout the day. The brainpower it took to switch from the momentum I built up to someone else asking me for something was very expensive. Although I still finished all of my work was done, it was causing me to burn out slowly but surely.
They broke my spirits by the time that I left two years later. There was no more willpower and passion to go to work and finish the day out. It was demoralizing. What I hadn’t realized was that it wasn’t just me. All of my coworkers felt the exact same way. Add in a terrible boss and it was a recipe for a toxic workplace.
I wish I realized that I was on the way to burning out. I wish someone told me on what steps I could take to avoid burnout. After having experienced it, below are the 10 ways that you can do so, so that you can continue crushing your goals.
How to Avoid Burnout
One way to avoid burnout is to SMASH that social share button and share it to your favorite social media. For the almighty Google algorithm! Your friends should know how to prevent burnout as well so that they can continue crushing their goals too.
There’s a reason why Wall Street has been offering bonuses to avoid its employees from leaving from burnout. Burnout is more prevalent these days than ever. It could be because of the invention of technology that allows people to work 24 by 7 by 365. Although technology made our lives better, it’s made aspects of our lives worse as well.
Instead of leaving the game because of burnout, it’s better to stay in it and manage the consistent daily stresses to keep going. Quitting and failing is not an option. I’ve quit too early before and it only gave me temporary relief, not permanent relief.
1) Negotiate Work With Your Boss
One Thursday afternoon, my boss asked me to do work and finish by either the business day’s end or by the day’s end. I was already jammed with another work that took priority that I estimated would take until night to finish. Normally, I would stay even later to finish the work he requested.
However, this time, I flat out told him no. That either he was going to do it himself or the work wasn’t going to get done. I don’t mind staying till late in order to finish out a task. However, when I stay out too late, that’s when it becomes a problem.
I set a hard boundary with him. Every time that you receive work, think about the work that you are currently doing. Evaluate whether you can take on more. Otherwise, they are overloading you with more work and cause you to break. The exception is when you are in investment banking.
When you are in investment banking, negotiating work isn’t possible. Either you have to finish the work or they will replace you with another person who is dying to take your spot. Employees really don’t have power in investment banking. It’s impossible to avoid burnout.
2) Take Consecutive Vacation Days
Instead of taking vacations one day a week for five weeks straight, take all of them at once. One day off a week really won’t feel like much of a vacation. You won’t even notice that you even took a day off. Instead of taking short breaks that you don’t even notice, take longer breaks that you actually notice. It’ll actually make a meaningful impact to your life.
Starting from October 2018, I took every single Monday off. While it was nice not having any work during Mondays, it still didn’t benefit me as much if I had just taken two consecutive weeks off. The second step to avoid burnout is that you need to completely disconnect from work.
If you even have a slight thought about work during vacation days, then you defeated the purpose of a vacation. You’re supposed to completely unplug and not think about work. Not about your boss and certainly not about that report you have to write. You’re supposed to utterly and completely disconnect.
3) Completely Disconnect from Work on Weekends
Aside from thinking about work during vacation time, you have to completely disconnect from work on weekends as well. I used to think about work quite frequently during weekends and would experience a burning sensation in my heart. It would physically pain and hurt me to think about work.
To avoid burnout, even if it’ll make you less productive, you need to completely not think about work. Find passion work on the weekends you can devote time to. These days, my blog takes up so much time that I don’t even think about anything else during the weekends.
Blogging isn’t work for me, I’m having so much fun writing articles and helping my readers out with their finances. On Monday, I do feel that I have to play catch up with my W-2 job. However, that’s completely OK. That’s what they pay me to do. I don’t mind being stressed on the days they pay me to be stressed.
I mind if I’m stressed on the days they don’t pay me to be stressed.
4) Quality Sleep to Avoid Burnout
Quality sleep is one of the most underrated ways to avoid burnout. In the hustle and workaholic culture in the United States, Americans look down on sleep. One day, I told my coworker that I had a fantastic weekend. They asked me what I did. I said I slept and I truthfully meant that sleep was what made my weekend so fantastic.
They laughed, they thought I was joking. People don’t take sleep seriously. My parents laugh at how proud I am of the amount of sleep I get. People believe that sleep is for the defeated or the lazy. Jeff Bezos makes sure to get 8 hours of quality sleep a day. As a result, he gets more things done than almost anyone else in the world.
If you only sleep 5 – 7 hours a day, you’re on the path to burnout. It’s one thing if your genetic material allows you to only sleep that much a day. However, most people don’t have those genes.
5) Exercise
Healthy body means a healthy life. When you regularly get your heartbeat up and get quality exercise throughout the week, you’re on the right path to avoid burnout. Every week, you should be doing 30 minutes to an hour of exercise that challenges your body. At a minimum.
You’re not going to get ripped but you will maintain a healthy body. Our greatest weapon in life is our health because we can’t do anything without it. Your day to day mental clarity will skyrocket if you exercise and release all the stress and tension in your body. Exercise is not to gain muscle, it’s to release the pent up stress you build up throughout the day.
Your stamina increases as a result as well. You finish more things without needing extra breaks throughout the day. It’s worth it to exercise solely for that reason as well.
6) Meditate Helps to Avoid Burnout
Mindfulness is the buzzword of the decade. Don’t practice meditating to avoid burnout but to strengthen your mental health. These days, I find 10 minutes a day to meditate. It may not sound like much but it makes a huge difference at the end of the week.
Let your thoughts come and go. On a daily basis, we cling to thoughts that we have because we have to remember them. Our thoughts are supposed to go wild and crazy by jumping around in our head. The first rule of meditating is to never fight those thoughts. Instead, let them just come and go.
Instead of tightly holding on to thoughts throughout the day, let them come and go.
Stress ruins our mental clarity. Continuous meditation helps you on the stressful days and help you avoid burnout. As Novak Djokovic, the best tennis player in the world, said in his interviews, meditation is the biggest reason why he plays so well.
In stressful situations, his resilience comes from his mind. It works the same way in our stressful situations as well.
7) Recognize Inefficiencies When Working
One way that you can increase productivity and get more work done in less time is to bunch up your similar work into one. Instead of trying to finish the entire task at once, bunch up similar work then move up from there. Let me give you an example.
One report that I have to finish is quite menial. I have to calculate 10 percentage differences from 10 different documents, meaning one calculation per document. Then I have to present the 10 calculations to five separate word documents, two calculations per word document.
I could calculate one percentage difference, write it in one word document, then calculate the second percentage difference, and write it in the same word document.
However, what I do is calculate the 10 percentage differences at once then input the information in the 5 respective word documents. By bunching up the work based on similarities, I save the time it takes to mentally switch from one document to another. I save about 30 minutes to an hour by employing this method.
Thirty minutes makes a huge difference, especially if it means finishing work either at 8:00pm or 7:30pm. It matters.
8) Do What Makes You Happy
Continuously focusing on work is a surefire way for you to burnout. In order to avoid burnout, you need to find activities and hobbies that bring you permanent joy. One hobby could be to socialize with friends you haven’t seen in a while. Or it could be to attend a concert on the weekend.
Whatever it may be, find the activities that bring you the most happiness and do it. It is difficult to do them on the week days. In which case, you do those joy-bringing activities on the weekends where you have the most free time.
Life can’t be all work and you need to have hobbies outside of work. We spend our life in thirds. One third to sleep, one third to work, and one third to do what you want. Make the most of that last one third.
9) Don’t Think Work-Life Balance, Think Life
Instead of looking at it like there has to be a balance between work and life all the time, change your mindset and just think life. If you need to work, then you need to work. On some weeks, work will become especially bad to where you will want to pull your hair out.
Those weeks happen and there’s really no way around it. Instead of thinking that there has to be a 50/50 balance, accept that some weeks it will be 70% work 30% life. Not expecting a perfect 50/50 balance all the time is an excellent way to avoid burnout.
It will never be a 50/50 split all the time. Some days it’ll be 80/20 and other days it’ll be 20/80 when slow season comes around. Therefore, change your mindset and accept that work is a part of life and just do it.
10) Set Boundaries With Family and Friends
Even if you love your friends and family, some days you just want some alone time. It doesn’t matter whether you are an introvert or an extrovert. You just want to spend time with yourself by yourself. If your parents call, just tell them today’s not a good time to talk and return their phone calls a couple of days later.
Family and friends can be a source of joy but they can also be a source of resentment if you just want to spend alone time. To avoid burnout, you sometimes want to ignore everyone else but yourself. That’s perfectly normal and understandable.
Therefore, you need to set boundaries with them from time to time. The ones who love you will understand. When my mom calls me after I haven’t talked to her in a while, I just cut her off and say I need some time to myself. No exceptions. Then I hang up after 20 seconds or so. Boundaries have kept me intact and our relationship stronger.
Avoid Burnout Like the Plague
The only way that you lose at achieving your goals is if you get wiped out. Unless they ring that bell, you haven’t lost. You’re still fighting and very much in the ring. Therefore, it is all the more important for you to avoid burnout. If you lose because the other side was too good, then that’s fine.
However, you don’t want to lose because you gave up. You may just be very close to reaching your coveted goals. On the cusp of making a major breakthrough. It would be a shame to quit just before you are about to make a major breakthrough. The times that I did give up, I was right on the edge and path to success.
When I quit my high stress banking job because of a bad boss, guess when they replaced the boss with a good one? The very last day of my job. I can’t make this stuff up. They literally switched bosses the last day of my job. I quit digging just when I was about to strike some major gold.
Even though I regret leaving, especially since the pay was good. I left because of a bad boss and that problem was solved. While I don’t think about the move frequently, I do wish I had stayed. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t make the most of my job right now. The company pays me very well.
I’ve successfully increased my net worth to the point where I have FU money. If I stayed at my job because I looked to avoid burnout, I would have been at a better spot financially. However, I’m still happy with where I am today. It’s good enough for me.
How to Avoid Burnout List:
- Negotiate work with your boss
- Take consecutive vacations
- Completely disconnect from work on weekends
- Quality sleep
- Exercise
- Meditate
- Recognize Inefficiencies When Working
- Do what makes you happy
- Don’t think work-life balance, think life
- Set boundaries with family and friends
