Burnout: How To Manage and Avoid It

Burnout is not complex. It happens when the demands on your life exceed the energy levels at which you are operating.

But while it may not be complex, when you are suffering from burnout it can be hard to see a way out. It is obviously ideal to do your best to avoid it, but if you fail to, what can you do to manage it?

It is more than just stress.

You feel stressed when there is too much, when your emotions are getting on top of you, and when you are losing energy.

You feel burnt out when you are disengaging from the world, when you have little emotional reaction, and you have run out of motivation.

In many ways it is like a stress-induced depression. But while typically it is caused by stress, it’s not always so. Feeling ignored or undervalued can lead to the lack of motivation that typifies burnout.

So while stress is, simplistically, about increasing demands. Burnout is about both increasing demands and decreasing energy.

If your energy levels fall below that required by your demands, or your demands increase beyond your low level of energy you’ll burn out.

Manage burnout through change.

Change is the single most important way to manage and come out of burnout.

Once you are burnt out it can feel impossible to recover. Indeed it is impossible to push yourself out of it, so at this point the best solution is to slow down.

If you are too stressed out at work ask for time off, companies should allow this. In the UK, ask your doctor for a note to get sick leave. It is actually the most common cause of sick leave in the UK. If needs be, take holiday.

Or better yet, quit. Change your job. Change your career. However far you need to go. Both times I have been burned out I have quit my job. That is not always feasible, but you should aim to position yourself ahead of time so that it is.

But, and this is vitally important, do not just wallow at home. Go places and do things. Keep it simple if you need to, probably avoid long or complex journeys. Though getting out of the country creates a solid line between the bad days before, and the new life after.

Recovering from stress by sitting at home doing nothing is perfectly fine. But if you are burnt out this will just drive you further into a hole of zero motivation.

If you have friends or family who are not working during the day, seek them out and just go for lunch or a walk with them. Getting support, even if just someone to listen to you, is so fantastic and will greatly improve your recovery.

If there is no one to go with, still just find some fresh air and wander without aim. Sit under a tree and read an easy book. Not the internet! The internet is full of bad news, arguments and angry people. Avoid it.

This is a good start to remove that first layer of stress. Now you can begin to remove the next layer, the motivation destroyers.

Finding your motivation requires first accepting your losses. Don’t try to hold on, accept that your job doesn’t match your dream. Accept that you have moved away from your familiar community. Accept that you no longer know who you identify as.

Trying to hold on to these will take too much energy and will prevent you from reducing stress.

Once you’ve accepted these you can then look to find your new job, your new community, your new identity. And make sure you do. Don’t hide away from the world. You’ll only push yourself into a deep depression.

Learn to participate without a required contribution to get the benefits without the stresses. When you have recovered then you can begin to contribute back to those who have helped you.

Avoid burnout by increasing your energy.

The easiest way to increase your energy is to change your diet. You can’t exercise away a bad diet. It is a thousand times harder to maintain an exercise regime than a good diet. Eating healthily feels great, exercise hurts.

Cooking healthy food also gives you something easy to achieve, a great way to build up motivation. What is healthy food? There’s plenty of discussion online and recipe books you can get to help with this. But anything you make yourself is better than a takeaway. Then simply increase the proportion of vegetables in each portion. Drink water not fizzy crap. Once you’ve sorted your diet you’ll find it easier to sleep.

Sleep! Oh how sweet you are. It can not be stressed enough how important it is to maintain a consistent sleep cycle. You don’t have to get 8 hours a day, some people need more, some need less, that’s fine. I only have 6 hours a day at most. But consistency in when you go to bed and when you get up is essential.

When you go to bed, go to sleep. Don’t read on your phone or pop open your laptop. Keep your bedroom for bed related activities.

When you wake up, get up. Meditate. Have breakfast. Get active.

Not being a morning person, a lot of depression and burnout for me correlates directly with the frequency with which I lie in. Cause or effect? I’m not sure. But I change it anyway.

A large part of the benefit of exercise is simply getting out of the house, going outside, fresh air. You can get that from just walking. Once you have made a regular part of your routine then start looking towards exercise.

If you want to go jogging buy a good pair of running shoes and head out. If you haven’t done it for a while, or ever, start short, 1 kilometre is fine. If you have to walk part of it, don’t worry. Find a busy jogging spot and join the crowd.

Be accountable to someone for it. I post it to Facebook and talk with my brother about our goals. This helps both with ensuring you keep it up, and getting positive feedback from friends, a powerful motivation and self-esteem boost.

Say no.

Say no to overtime. Say no to organising an event for a friend. Say no to helping others. It is ok to say no. The more you say no, the more you will be able to say yes to the people that matter most to you.

I’m going to repeat that one. Say no.

Finally, find something creative to do. Doing creative things has amazing positive effects on your mental health.

If you feel you are not a creative person then please read this next bit carefully: you are creative. Every single human is creative. You just may have not found what you like to create.

Please don’t conflate creativity with being good at something. I love painting. I am crap at painting. I nearly failed my Art GCSE because I decided to do a watercolour for my final piece. But it’s irrelevant how well you do something. If you enjoy doing it, then do it. Eventually you’ll get better and enjoy the result of what you do as well. And if you don’t get good at some arbitrary standard, who cares.

It is the process of creating that heals.

Do not avoid pushing yourself.

With all this said, do not avoid work. The need to do work is built into our DNA.

Whether the reward for your hard work is money, bringing joy to your children or helping others, success from hard work will give you purpose, drive and energy.

Have you suffered from burnout? What caused it? How did you recover? Please share below, and feel free to send me a direct message on twitter about anything, I will always be happy to listen.

Follow me on twitter or snapchat on @lsjroberts for more discussion on life as a professional in the tech industry. You can read my previous article on the burden of learning in this industry here.