Avoiding Burnout In Your Business
Embarking on the entrepreneurial journey has taught me invaluable lessons about the importance of managing time effectively and prioritizing self-care. It would be at the beginning of 2022 where I decided to completely unplug from my business and take a gap year. Recognizing that burnout doesn’t just look like some of the physical symptoms we come to know, but extends into the mental, emotional and spiritual realms as well.
Physical burnout can manifest in various ways, and its symptoms can range from mild to severe. Some common signs of physical burnout include:
Fatigue: Feeling excessively tired even after rest or sleep is a hallmark of physical burnout. This fatigue may not improve with adequate rest and can persist over an extended period.
Decreased Performance: Physical burnout often leads to a decline in physical performance, whether it's in sports, exercise routines, or everyday tasks. You may find it challenging to maintain the same level of performance as before.
Increased Illness: A weakened immune system is a common consequence of physical burnout. You may find yourself falling ill more frequently or taking longer to recover from illnesses or injuries.
Chronic Muscle Aches and Pains: Continuous stress on the body without proper rest can lead to chronic muscle aches and pains. These may occur even without engaging in intense physical activity.
Insomnia or Disrupted Sleep Patterns: Physical burnout can disrupt your sleep patterns, leading to difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or experiencing restful sleep. This can further exacerbate feelings of fatigue and exhaustion.
Changes in Appetite: Some individuals experiencing physical burnout may notice changes in their appetite, such as increased cravings for unhealthy foods or a loss of appetite altogether.
Increased Resting Heart Rate: A consistently elevated resting heart rate can be a sign of physical burnout. This can indicate that your body is constantly under stress, even during periods of rest.
Decreased Motivation: Physical burnout can sap your motivation and enthusiasm for activities you once enjoyed. You may find it difficult to muster the energy to engage in physical activities or even daily tasks.
Persistent Injuries: Chronic overuse injuries that don't seem to heal despite adequate rest and treatment can be a sign of physical burnout. These injuries may flare up repeatedly or take much longer to heal than usual.
Emotional Symptoms: While physical burnout primarily affects the body, it can also impact your emotional well-being. You may experience mood swings, irritability, or feelings of depression and anxiety
It wasn’t that I out of nowhere started feeling the physical symptoms above. It was more years of people pleasing and lacking the ability to say no to things that didn’t truly light me up, but societal pressures led me to energetically say yes to things that began to no longer feel good over time. This eventually led to the physical burnout I eventually started experiencing. That’s why I’d love to explore some practical strategies and real-world examples of how to avoid the burnout I came to experience in my life to help fellow entrepreneurs avoid the high demands of business ownership while maintaining a healthy work-life balance.
Choose Energetically Aligned Marketing Strategies
When I first started my business, I hired an Instagram coach to really bootstrap the launch of my business. I didn’t want to be that person spinning for months on end trying to find my first client, so I felt like making the initial investment to hire a business coach would help me catapult my business early. And it did. However, I truly feel that the biggest reason why I got burned out was because I energetically said yes to things I didn’t really want to doubt and felt like I HAD to do for the sake of growth and success. Despite my coach being an Instagram coach, I knew going into it that I didn’t like Instagram as a platform because I am not someone who likes to show up very often and detail my life as often as the platform requires. I already had a YouTube channel before working with her and a blog, but because of the nature of her work, she focused on growing on Instagram instead so I went with that. Instead of hiring a coach who was succeeding at using the platforms I really wanted to use, I instead decided to go another route that would reap me greater success but at the cost of what energetically would’ve felt good. In the end, running my business on more shortlived social media platforms energetically had me feeling resentment for my business over time and didn’t feel fun.
I didn’t like having to go on stories every day or posting reels (which eventually has become the main way to grow a business now on those types of platforms). But I did it anyway and saw lots of success until I got to a point where I realized running my business in this type of capacity was burning me out. I was so scared to pull the plug because I invested so much time into Instagram already, but when I realized that the majority of my clients weren’t coming from Instagram but workshops and podcast collabs, I quickly realized I had to pivot and change my strategy. However, by that time I had already developed a mysterious illness called Beneign Fasculation Syndrome where my body starts to randomly twitch and my muscles spasm. This forced me to put a pause in my business for a good year, focus back on my health, and reevaluate how I wanted to show up in my business in a more aligned and sustainable way that would feel good.
The moral of the story here is to choose marketing strategies that feel good to you. There are so many different marketing strategies to implement as a way to grow your business and they all work. It just depends on how much you’re willing to work at it and if it’s something that feels good to you. Whether it’s the good old-fashioned referral way or through blowing up on TikTok - neither strategy is wrong. Just ensure you will energetically, emotionally, and mentally be able to keep up with those platforms’ demands as your business grows without taking the fun out of it. If you naturally love using Instagram for personal reasons, then you might also love using it for your business as well too. For myself, I’ve gone back to the humbling beginning of my YouTube channel and blog and rather find ways to grow my business through those channels for the long-term my consistency has gone through the roof and the results are surely to come because of it. Minus the resentment and the burnout that would ensue.
Eliminate Distractions and Set Boundaries
As an entrepreneur, I've learned the significance of setting boundaries and minimizing distractions to maximize productivity. For instance, I carve out dedicated work hours during which interruptions are minimized, allowing me to focus on high-priority tasks without distractions. And what’s the best way to do this? A calendar. Quite that simple, but a digital one. Having a calendar that can be synced to your phone and computer will do wonders in keeping your upcoming plans and tasks organized. The last thing you want to do is be stressed about missing an important deadline because you had things stored in your mind instead of on a digital notepad.
Our brains have a limited ability in being able to store so much information at a given time, so failing to write (or type) things down would increase your chances of forgetting said task. In this way, having a calendar eliminates the potential for you to forget important stuff that needs to get done and actually will help you to become more efficient. Most calendars have the ability for you to set alarms that signal when an upcoming task or important event is approaching. This way you can set it and forget it, and use that brain space for other important things.
Not to mention, having a calendar gives you a bird’s eye view of how much you need to get done and what needs to be spilled over into another day or week. It eventually will help you to figure out what should be delegated and what can’t. Even sharing your calendar with family and friends can help improve your relationships, when people know that the reason why you can’t see them is because of how busy your schedule is looking but also to be proactive in planning a time to meet when things aren’t looking so hectic. Additionally, using focus training apps like Pomofocus.io can help you to schedule tasks but also take much-needed mental breaks every so often as you get things done.
Research has shown that procrastination has little to do with laziness or lack of self-control. Rather, we put things off to avoid negative feelings of the unrealism of tackling a huge project ahead of us. It's uncomfortable to feel the pressure of getting something really important done in a relatively short amount of time, especially with a task one you may not be sure how to even do or one that involves a lot of uncertainty. So, in addition to having a calendar using time-focused apps might help you to break down your tasks into smaller chunks to make them seem more achievable. Which in turn will help you to get even more done, within a shorter amount of time.
Scheduling Time for Yourself: The Key to Self-Care
To piggyback off of the idea of having a calendar, as much as you need to block out time for work-related tasks, you should also be blocking off time or leaving space open to care for yourself. Prioritizing self-care amidst a busy schedule is crucial for maintaining mental and emotional well-being. You don’t have to fill in every part of your day with work. That of course, is the opposite of avoiding burnout, and if anything will draw you even closer to it. Drawing from my own self-care routine, I make sure to schedule chunks of time in the morning and evening for activities that bring me joy and relaxation, such as meditation, journaling, and reading. I don’t do any work until after 9 am and try to shut down by 7 pm every day.
Implementing these boundaries around work and self, are important and have led to increased happiness and satisfaction. The only challenging part is sticking to it. You can create a calendar and completely ignore it. So we need to make sure that we’re honoring the boundaries set in place for your overall benefit and well-being. Prioritizing self-care activities during these blocked-off times, allows me to recharge and rejuvenate, ultimately enhancing my overall productivity and well-being in the long run. I also try to have 2 full days off from doing any work. Realistically, however, this may not always happen. So flexibility will be important when scheduling time for yourself too. If there is a busy week, and I don’t get as much time to myself, I try my best to extend it and make up for it in the upcoming week and move some things around in my calendar to honor the time for myself without the need to grow resentful.
Slowing down is never easy, in a world that increasingly tells us to speed up and achieve success at whatever the cost. The responsibility lies on you to decide whether you will fall for the illusion of having limited time, and know that everything you are working towards will come to fruition and that you don’t need to burn yourself out to see success. As an entrepreneur, the blessing is that you work for yourself so you don’t have to answer to someone else’s schedule to make a paycheque. Don’t waste the privileges you get from being able to work when you want, and at your leisure by grinding yourself to the ground. Your business can only be successful and healthy when you’re successfully healthy.
Prioritize Tasks and Set Realistic Goals
Now to dive a bit deeper into the project management side of things from a goals perspective. Effective time management begins with prioritizing tasks and setting realistic goals aligned with long-term objectives. As mentioned before, if we set our goals too big we risk procrastinating or not starting altogether. So simple solution to his? Break down your goals into smaller chunks and celebrate small victories along the way. Sometimes we think we might get something done within a short amount of time, but humans rarely predict how long it will take us to get something done right. Most likely, plan for a task to take longer than you expect. An hour? Give it two hours. Especially, if you’ve never done the task before because you’d have no prior experience to compare the data off of.
Not only do we break down our goals, but we also need to know what should be prioritized. Sometimes we feel like EVERYTHING is important and needs to be done right away, but this is often not the case. There is a method called the Eisenhower Matrix (see image below), that describes how to prioritize tasks from high to low importance and urgency. Some things are important but don’t need to be done right away, and those things can be shifted down your to-do list or calendar. Some things are urgent but not important, like doing laundry. These tasks can be delegated. So prior to starting any task in your calendar, do an audit of what actually needs to be done now and what can be done at a later time or doesn’t have to be done at all.
By allocating specific time blocks for high-priority tasks and delegating less urgent responsibilities, I’ve had great wins with avoiding potential future burnout and maintaining a sense of accomplishment as I work towards my objectives. Some easy examples of how I’ve done this is, simply shifting things down in my calendar to ordering meal deliveries to save me time for having to cook. As an entrepreneur your time is money so eventually learning how to delegate will be a very important skill to have to buy back your time towards getting the urgent and important things done without compromising the other important things that need to be done but aren’t urgent. Some of these ideas cost money, but some don’t cost a thing. We’ll explore more of this in the next section.
The most important thing to take away from prioritization techniques is that not everything is important and/or urgent. Before you even add a task to your calendar, really ask whether it’s important. If not, don’t even bother adding it to your calendar altogether. How do you know what’s important? Based on the near immediate consequence of not taking said action it could severely jeopardize your potential for earning an income or relationships. Setting your laundry day back is not going to kill you, but not getting an important document to a client on time might breed a negative discord and trust. Weighing the pros against the cons will help to make a stronger decision as to whether something is important or not.
Remember: If everything is important, nothing will get done.
Delegating Tasks: Time-Saving Strategies
Now this is where true CEO’s shine. Delegation, delegation, delegation. It really is a vital skill for entrepreneurs, allowing them to focus on high-priority tasks while outsourcing others. We recognize that we are just one person, so we can’t do everything, all the time, all at once. That is where we gain the courage to ask for help and seek support. At some point, every business that actually ends up growing and scaling in its operations will require a team. Whether that’s a virtual assistant or a large corporation with employees for different departments - a successful business is never a one-man show.
When business owners first think of delegating, they first think that they need to have a certain amount of money before they can do so. However, I think investing in a virtual assistant before having the necessary funds could potentially further help grow your business if you know exactly what needs outsourcing to do so. Hiring an assistant or just growing your team can help you free up time for more important business wants and needs. I know for myself as a coach, if I could have someone edit my YouTube videos every week that could help me focus less on editing and more on just showing up and reviewing the necessary analytics to grow my channel even more.
Also think about outsourcing personal tasks as well, outside of your business. Everyday chores like cooking and cleaning, can take away time from not only your business but time for family and self. In my first year of business, I decided to try out some meal delivery companies that would pre-cook healthy meals and deliver them to my house. In this way, I was able to remove the decision fatigue of what to cook for that week and also not have to spend hours in the kitchen. The great thing about this too is that when I budgeted out the costs, it would’ve cost me exactly what I would’ve spent on groceries for me anyway. Sometimes we think outsourcing and hiring out will cost us money, but making some simple tweaks to our budget may have you realize you can be doing more with your money and gaining much more value from these small investments.
However, you don’t always have to spend money to outsource and get things done. Outside of delegating tasks such as laundry and meal delivery to free up time for more important business tasks you could always ask family and friends for help. This is something that we do not always feel comfortable doing, because even for myself, I’ve always felt like a burden. However, it doesn’t hurt to ask and see who may have the time to help you on working towards certain goals. Many people volunteer to help because they may improve upon certain skills or just want to serve purposefully in some way for someone that they love. Then even outside of asking close networks, research tools and services that may be free and could help achieve your tasks for you. For example, I use tools like ChatGPT to help brainstorm content ideas as well as convert YouTube videos into blog posts like these. I would not be able to do this without saving AI tools like ChatGPT cutting my time to write a blog post almost in more than half the time. Ans the great thing about it? It costs zero dollars.
So, by identifying tasks that can be delegated effectively, entrepreneurs can streamline their workflow and increase productivity through both paid and free avenues worth exploring. As my favorite new saying goes, if you want to get there fast go alone… but if you want to get by farther go together. Delegation always wins, because our time is already so limited. So if you can find creative ways to buy back your time, the less you’ll feel burnt out and the more of that time can go back into nurturing yourself and the people around you.
Investing in Tools and Resources for Efficiency
In today's digital age, leveraging technology is essential for optimizing productivity and efficiency. I briefly spoke about tools like ChatGPT for helping me delegate certain content creation tasks for my business, but let me list out some tools in more detail regarding creating systems and prioritizing our goals. Some of these tools include social media schedulers and AI-powered assistants to streamline workflow and automate repetitive tasks. By leveraging technology effectively, entrepreneurs can maximize productivity and achieve their goals more efficiently.
Acuity Scheduling - My fav online meeting scheduler. It’s quite the investment and was recently bought by Squarespace, but it has everything I need and more than what Calendly provides. I can create multiple calendars where I fill out my availability based on the type of calls I offer. I can also create discount codes and coupons for certain calls. The great thing about this platform though, about creating systems is that it syncs to my Gmail calendar and blocks off events and meetings both ways. Clients won’t be able to schedule calls with me where it’s blocked off in my calendar, without me manually having to go in and make this request.
Notion - Just the ultimate note-taking app and project management dashboard for your business. Especially, as a small business owner with smaller teams, Notion does the job. This is where I keep my content calendar, to help me ideate when certain content will go out for my biz. Notion also recently came out with its own calendar, which now also syncs with the Gmail calendar so both systems can speak to each other.
Gmail Calendar - The calendar I call home. This is where my business lives, and without it, I would be a hot mess. My Gmail calendar helps me be accountable for what days I have to do certain work for my business as well as planning out time for workshops, meetings, and personal events. It’s always linked to my phone as well (as an app) so I can never miss anything. I will get a notification within Gmail and my Notion a couple of days before an important deadline or event, and can always go in and keep tabs or change things around at any time.
ChatGPT - Nuff said about this one, but to repeat briefly… cuts down my content creation time in half.
Opus.pro - I use this platform to create small clips from larger YouTube videos, to repurpose for my YouTube shorts and Pinterest pins. It’s part of my strategy to get more views on both these social networks over time.
Buffer - The main scheduling tool that I use primarily for my Pinterest. I would love for Opus.pro to eventually allow for scheduling clips on Pinterest through their platform. Once they do, I can easily repurpose my clips at the same time for both platforms instead of manually having to re-upload clips as Pinterest pins. However, I would still need this app for my static blog post pins and also they are the cheaper option compared to Tailwind.
Tailwind - I would love to make Tailwind my primary scheduling app but I can get away with scheduling my Pinterest content for way cheaper with Buffer. I do, however, use Tailwind for their community purpose as a way to grow my Pinterest page even faster and to separate the type of content I post onto Pinterest from Buffer. Buffer is strictly for my blogs, while I’ll be using Tailwind to schedule out quotes and affirmations since that does well on my channel and might do well if posted in some of the communities I’m a part of on Tailwind.
Managing Stress and Practicing Self-Care
Stress management and self-care are essential aspects of maintaining overall well-being as an entrepreneur. I discuss various stress management techniques and self-care practices, such as taking regular breaks and practicing mindfulness. By prioritizing self-care and managing stress effectively, entrepreneurs can enhance their resilience and navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship more successfully.
Here are some self-care activities to explore as a way to minimize and reduce stress:
Meditation
Going for a walk
Journaling
Playing with a pet
Reading a Book
Chatting with a friend
Solo dates - dinner, museum, hike
Spa (or those beauty appointments)
Salt baths
Lighting a candle
Listening to music
Cuddles with partner (or some good ole sex)
Dancing
Playing an instrument
Going to the gym
and pretty much anything else that helps you to relax and feels good
In conclusion, mastering time management and prioritizing self-care are essential for thriving as an entrepreneur. By implementing practical strategies and prioritizing well-being, you can achieve sustainable success while maintaining a healthy work-life balance. Remember, success is not just about working hard—it's also about taking care of yourself along the way.
So here's to avoiding burnout and prioritizing boundaries around your well-being on your entrepreneurial journey! Comment below if you found this blog post to be helpful and if you want additional help on managing your time around your business or wealth building goals, look for more ways to work with me below 💗
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