In the past few years, much emphasis has been put on employees’ work-life balance. This has seen a significant shift from traditional work hours that romanticized long work hours and constant availability to new employee-centered work environments. But what about the entrepreneurs?
According to a 2022 study, almost half of small entrepreneurs in the U.S. had experienced burnout in the past year. As an entrepreneur, your job is characterized by long hours, tough decisions, and little sleep, which may lead to burnout. Even the lonely world at the top can take its toll on you.
This article explores ways to avoid or escape burnout. But before we dive in, what is entrepreneurial burnout?
What is burnout?
It’s easy to confuse burnout with fatigue or stress. Stress happens when you are overwhelmed by demands and pressures, and your body reacts with more alertness, a faster heartbeat, and a burst of energy. Once you sort out the issues causing your stress, this feeling dissipates.
However, burnout occurs when you experience prolonged bouts of stress. It is far more detrimental because it drains energy and motivation, causes emotional roller coasters, and damages relationships and mental well-being. Escaping burnout is more complex than avoiding it, so nurturing your well-being and relationships is essential as you build your business.
7 tips to keep yourself from getting burned out
1. Stop multitasking
You may feel more productive when sending those emails during meetings or making phone calls while doing paperwork, but multitasking undermines your performance and increases your stress. Instead of multitasking, experts recommend forming a to-do list with the demanding tasks on top and the easier and automatic ones at the bottom. This way, as the day (or schedule) progresses, you’ve completed the most stressful tasks.
2. Make time for yourself and set meaningful boundaries
As an entrepreneur, you must consult stakeholders, interact with clients, keep your staff productive, and ensure everything runs smoothly in your business network. Getting caught up in this hustle and bustle is so easy that you forget about yourself. Take some time off to care for yourself, participate in your hobbies, exercise, or meditate. Even if you love what you’re doing, it’s essential to take time away from it, recharge, and explore things outside your business. This means you also have to learn to say no and have a threshold of how many business opportunities you can handle.
3. Delegate tasks
One of the simplest ways for an entrepreneur to transition from burnout to balance is to trust other people with their assigned tasks. Trying to do it alone may ultimately lead to nothing — it’s a trap. So, let people do what they do best.
4. Recognize the symptoms of burnout
As mentioned, it’s better to avoid burnout before finding yourself in an uphill battle. Symptoms of burnout include insomnia, fatigue, irritability, high blood pressure, prolonged stress, and sadness. Burnout is not just a feeling but a state where you feel detached from your work and hobbies, incapable of accomplishing tasks, and emptiness. Recognizing the symptoms will help you avoid this bottomless pit of despair and disconnectedness, which usually ruins the same business you are trying so hard to keep afloat.
5. Embrace failure when it comes
Big and small failures are part of being human in every business. One entrepreneur who rode the waves of failure to success is Gustave Eiffel, the French engineer behind the iconic Eiffel Tower. Throughout the tower’s construction, he faced several setbacks and public criticism, and even after completing it, he had to fight tirelessly to prevent its demolition. So, it’s not the highs and lows of life that matter but your ability to remain steadfast when you’re at the height of your success and resilient when hard times hit.
6. Maintain your relationships
A healthy relationship with your staff, stakeholders, and family is crucial in maintaining or restoring balance. Let your loved ones know what’s happening in your life and learn how they are faring. This will give you time to remind yourself why you are doing what you are doing and decrease your chance of experiencing burnout.
7. Don’t get too hung up about the future
Every business has a future goal, but keep the future from being overshadowed by the present. You can make educated guesses about the future and how it will affect your business, but you can never predict the future. Planning for the future is excellent, but you have to take consistent and actionable actions toward your goals in the present. Sometimes, you must do something without knowing how the future will turn out.
Everyone is different
Amid people’s clamor for work-life balance, some renowned entrepreneurs believe progress is impossible without extreme sacrifice. It’s easy to feel the need to wear overwork and long work hours like a badge of honor, but remember that everyone has unique challenges and circumstances. So as you strive to build your business, ensure these three things are at the core of your being: balance, self-awareness, and self-care.
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