Sometimes I am less than honest with myself about how much I can get done. Truthfully, I tend to overschedule and often have to bring myself down to more realistic goals. Why? Because I was brought up with the idea of busy equals good. No matter how bad you wanna stop, being busy is a marker for how important you are in life. Unfortunately, this idea has led to a great deal of burnout in my life.
1. If you are having trouble doing the stuff that needs to be done because you’re busy doing other things, you may be courting burnout.
2. If things that previously were a joy become a chore, you may be courting burnout.
3. If the only thing you really wanna do is sleep, you may be courting burnout.
All of these things have happened to me at one time or another. Often, I have two or more symptoms at the same time and I need to be cognizant of the fact I am about to hit the proverbial wall. The best way I’ve found to stop from getting burned out is to make sure you are doing something, every day or every other day, which is not tied to your productivity. In my case, it’s attempting to watch something without expectation of having to dissect to understand where it is going or what the director/author/whatever was trying to do. For those of you who have writer brain like I do, you understand how hard this is. To just watch or read for pure enjoyment.
Whatever it is you feel you need to do in order to keep from getting burned out, you should do it and do it often. Schedule it into your life. Do not let the specter of fear which comes with not doing something deemed important cause you to burn yourself out.