Burnout!

Burnout. What a terrible situation to find yourself in. You started out doing something because you thought you'd love it/would be good at it/were born to do it/wanted to ____,_____, or ________ . Maybe you accomplished what you set out to do. Maybe you still want to continue doing it or maybe you've just stopped dead in your tracks and can't take ONE MORE SECOND of it. You're exhuasted, have no interest in an area that you used to love, can't get out of bed in the morning, dread it and/or anything connected to it.

Burnout can hit hard but there are steps you can take to prevent burnout, to energize yourself while in the midst of being burnt out yet still required to do the job that burnt you out, and ways to energize and get out of a burnout situation.

I had the great pleasure this week of doing a q&a session on a message board. The message board is for a profession that can have a high rate of burnout. Many of these people are small business owners/entrepeneurs, a role which requires inordinate amounts of work and work hours as well as intellectual involvement in the business. In short, it can be a 24/7 situation. I will add that they are an extremely smart and motivated bunch of people and I was interested to hear the kinds of issues they were dealing with and how I might be able to assist.

It was great! The questions came hard and fast and there were so many that I didn't get to finish all of them in the alloted time. As promised I answered the rest later in the day and will post them here.

Some of the issues that came up included life changes that cause burnout, behavioral habits that made it difficult to "just say no" to business requests which can lead to a work overload, ways to re-energize during the day/week/year, work-life balance when working from home, work-life balance when working from home and being primary caretaker of small children, work-life balance when work becomes a 24/7 proposition,
feelings of anxiety and the imposter syndrome when doing work that involves constant reinvention of one's self and one's craft.

I was energized when we were done and I had lots to think about, which I'll share here as I consolidate my thoughts on the issue. I'd like to thank everyone there who shared their questions and concerns and also to all of you who emailed after with thanks and kind thoughts and words. I always appreciate hearing from you!