Learning how to get over burnout will be crucial as you move forward in your career. People are overworked in more ways than ever now. Companies are demanding so much of their employees without caring about their well being, health, or burnout.
People are going on strikes more so than ever! There was a record 346 strike locations in 2021 and that was just in 2021 alone. Most companies are making gigantic pandemic profits and are refusing to share in the profits with their employees. Employees have to be more demanding than ever.
There’s a very low unemployment rate of around 3.9% yet labor participation is lower than even below the pandemic. People are fed up with working. They were saving more money than ever and have the means to say no to more projects than ever before.
There’s no wonder that people are getting burnout in record numbers. People need to know how to get over burnout more so than ever before. This isn’t about preventing burnout nor is it about how to handle them. This is about how to get over it. You have to take meticulous steps to get over it.
When I had burnout, there was a possibility that it might be permanent. Thank goodness it wasn’t. However, for a couple of months, it lingered on. I get it. You want to go after your goals. However, people are working under some kind of limits every day. You can’t pass your limit.
What is Burnout?
Burnout is a form of exhaustion. It can be caused by numerous things such as stress, relationships, or an overwhelming amount of work swamped on top of you. You can’t control it. Sometimes, you just don’t feel it until it’s too late, either.
This is a different kind of exhaustion than from putting in long hours in the office at one time. It’s much more prevalent than that. It lasts for weeks, even months at a time. You feel it when you wake up and when you go to bed. You just can’t shake it. And the more time passes, the less it improves.
That’s what burnout is. It’s essential to know how to get over burnout because it’s a much more serious thing than one off bad days. Companies are more demanding of their employees than ever yet are refusing to pay more for their services. It’s time for employees to take back the reins and take care of ourselves.
Companies don’t care about you if you end up in the hospital. They’ll just say “cool! Thanks for letting us know!” and post the job to replace you in a second.
How to Get Over Burnout
SMASHING that social share button and posting to your favorite social media is how to get over burnout! Sharing the knowledge makes your friends get better with their work management skills. It can only be a win!
So with that said let’s get into the concrete steps!
1) Eat Well
It’s not just about eating vegetables and fruit. It’s about eating in a way that works well for you. Warren Buffett eats very badly. He doesn’t get the best nutritional content every day. Yet he is going on strong in the 9th decade of his life. When I say eat well. I mean eat well that works for you.
Don’t eat vegetables and fruit that makes you feel bad at the end of the day. Eat food that makes you feel really good. How to get over burnout is taking care of the little things so that you can tackle the big things. There’s a reason why people love to meditate these days.
They’re realizing that the little things like starting the day off right matters in life. For me personally? It’s eating any food that doesn’t make me feel like I’m overeating. I know when I’m overeating because I feel lethargic and sluggish throughout the day. Diet really matters more than you think it does.
2) Get Over Burnout by Working Out
Physical activity lets your stress out that you accumulated throughout the week. Whether we like it or not, we bottle a lot of our burdens on our shoulders. There are things we experience throughout the day that actually adds to our level of stress. That’s how to get over burnout.
By letting all that built up emotions out in an outlet. If you let it all out in the gym, thats a healthy way to cope with the demands and pressures of society. When I work out, I feel 100x times better the next day. All of my stress is lifted out of my body.
I don’t have to work out to the point where I get very jacked, either. There’s no need. I don’t want to be a professional body builder. However, working out to the point where you get your heart rate up and your blood flowing is a good workout. We don’t get that from sitting in our day jobs.
3) Nothing Heals Better than Time
Time heals all wounds. Our bodies are more resilient than we give it credit for. Our body has a great way to heal our wounds, even emotional ones. Even scars that we never thought we would ever get rid of. Physical wounds are much easier to heal than emotional wounds, sure.
However, when it comes to burnout, time really is your best friend. You don’t need to do anything clever in how to get over burnout. All you have to do is let time and your body do its thing. You do have to put in the legwork by actually eating well and doing some sort of physical exercise.
You’re going to feel bad for weeks and even months. Until one day, you wake up and realize that nothing ever really bothered you. That’s how it works. One day, you’re going to realize that all your burnout feelings are behind you. Give your body more credit than it deserves.
4) TALK TO YOUR BOSS
I can’t stress this enough. it’s in your boss’ best interest that you’re not burned out. Maybe you’re afraid you’ll be perceived as “weak”. After all, when the Goldman Sachs survey came out bashing just how bad of a workplace the company is, many company executives had no sympathy for the analysts.
Any complaining of analysts saying “I missed my grandmother’s funeral for this job’ will be countered with the boss saying “yeah? I missed my mom’s funeral for this job”. But this is beyond this. This is interfering with your ability to do the job. They’re literally losing money because you’re burned out.
You have to negotiate work with your boss. If you don’t negotiate then it’s going to create a lose-lose situation for the both of you. Which neither of you guys want. Your boss is a resource. You need to use him or her for your benefit as well just as much as they’re using you for their own benefit.
5) You have to Stop Working to Get over Burnout
If you want to know how to get over burnout, the answer is not to do more work. The answer is to do less work. You have to remove the negatives that are surrounding your life. Don’t try to power through it with more work to prove that you can do the job. Try to power through it with less work.
Companies are going to be very demanding of you. Regardless of what you have going on in your life. Therefore, unless you actually set boundaries, they’re going to assume everything is fine. It’s a shame that you have to even negotiate in the first place where they’ll end up rejecting the request.
However, if that’s not the case, then ask your boss for allotted paid time off. Ask for manager approval for more time off. Take your PTO. Take your sick days while you’re at it. Mental health is an integral part of your health. Companies are making billions of dollars from employees refusing to take their sick days.
We need to change that.
6) Compare Your Stress to When You are Normal
This is when it’s 3pm on a Saturday night. When you’re doing nothing or if you are just lounging around in the house. You should feel great and that’s how you should be at all the time. You shouldn’t be stressed out with high strung emotional feelings throughout your working days.
If you want to know how to get over burnout you have to be able to identify the problem in the first place. Your baseline stress level is how you should be at all the time. If you’re not, identify the cases in which that’s allowing you to not be at that baseline stress level.
Then remove or add solutions as necessary. It’s not normal to have a high resting heartbeat. The normal should be the same as when you’re resting as when you are working. There’s no work that’s important enough that’s going to cause your stress levels to rise. There’s just isn’t.
7) Never Neglect Sleeping Well
Do what you have to do to sleep well. Get the right pillow, get the right mattress, do whatever it takes in order to sleep well. You should get at least six hours of sleep. For me personally, I got a new $50 memory foam pillow and a $300 mattress.
They’ve been game changers to my stress level. Miracle work. I didn’t hesitate to spend money and invest in those things. I didn’t even think twice. As much as I like saving money, I like my health even more. Then I realized my eating and drinking habits were interfering with my sleep.
So then I figured out an eating schedule that will help me account for that and so that I can sleep through the night. I can’t believe I ever neglected on my sleep in the past. Ever since I made those little changes, it’s made the world of a difference for me. It boosted my productivity and I stay alert during the day.
8) Protect Your Weekends
If you want to get over burnout, you have to allocate time for yourself on the weekends. The weekends is for you and for you only. If your company tells you to work weekends for too long of a time, then ask for another day to compensate for that. Companies created weekends for their own benefit.
They realized productivity went way down without weekends and people weren’t going out to buy stuff if it weren’t for weekends. Protect your weekends. Companies gave them to employees because it was literally in their best interest to give them to us. Don’t work in a sweatshop.
Those days should be long behind us. Relax on the weekends. Watch TV, catch up on your favorite shows. I don’t care what you have to do, just protect your weekends. I use my weekends to catch up on my chores and to think about my goals going forward. It’s a necessary time that I need for myself.
9) Do Nothing
How to get over burnout? Literally do nothing. Doing a bad thing is worse than doing nothing. Too many people think they have to be doing something in order to be productive. They can’t possibly understand or think of a concept that doing nothing is a much better choice than doing something.
These days, because my job is much more manageable than before, it feels weird to do nothing on the weekends. However, when I’m stressed out, I have no choice BUT to do nothing. Otherwise, I know I’m going to spiral into burnout and not return. I love sitting on the couch and thinking about stuff.
It actually makes time go by way slower than I would like, which is something that I love for my weekends. You can just sit down on your bed and focus on your breathing to fully take advantage of the opportunity. How many days do we get an opportunity to do something like that? Not many.
Learning How to Get Over Burnout Gets More Crucial
Your health is much more important than some numbers on a spreadsheet. Or some report that doesn’t even matter to you anyway. You can’t stay working for a company for years at a time if you don’t know how to get over burnout. You need the staying power in order to keep going. That’s where your health comes into play.
There’s a health and mental health crisis going on over around the world. It’s not concentrated to just one region of the world. Taking care of ourselves matters and is more crucial to us than ever. Don’t fall victim to the narrative of the hustle culture. Even if you don’t hustle, you’re going to get there anyway.
The hustle culture took a very large toll on my body. My body is wearing out from it because I get chronic neck pains that I just can’t get rid of. I have no clue if it’s a permanent health effect, either. How short-sighted was I to only see my life as a sprint rather than a marathon?
I’m worried that my chronic neck pain is permanent and that no amount of money will be able to fix it. If it gets to that point, then all I can do is wonder what all this hard work was for. Just to get neck pains so that I could retire a few years earlier? Don’t be me and learn from my mistakes.
Your life depends on it. It’s a bigger deal than people realize. Know how to get over burnout. It’s going to seep into other aspects of your life if you don’t. Permanent health damage is not fun, trust me. I have a feeling that I do have permanent damage that’s unfixable. I regret every second of it.
How to Get Over Burnout Shortlist:
- Eat well
- Get over burnout by working out
- Nothing heals better than time
- Talk to your boss
- You have to stop working to get over burnout
- Compare your stress to when you are normal
- Never neglect sleeping well
- Protect your weekends
- Do nothing
I hope you can change the story you are telling yourself about how work and burnout have damaged you physically. You aren’t even thirty, there is no way stress can have taken that permanent of a toll on you yet. Tell yourself that you beat burn out, no small feat. And that you’ll beat this neck pain and any other physical aches and pains you have. You are young, you can fix this if you tell yourself you can. That’s who you are, a winner. Look at what you’ve done financially, how many people your age, starting where you started have achieved this much? Not many.
Thank you so much, Steve. I’m slowly warming up to the idea. I’m slowly learning that I DISLIKE complacency and will work hard to beat any obstacles that come my way, especially burnout.