How to avoid burnout and keep your sanity

I sometimes feel like an iPhone. You get to Friday, plug in for some relaxation only to unplug at 60% before rejoining the hamster wheel. So how can you deal with burnout?

Here are my top tips

1. Don’t over promise

Keeping clients happy is the number one priority for any consultant. But this shouldn’t lead you to over promising on delivery and leaving yourself working ridiculous hours to deliver. Think carefully on a Friday about promising to deliver something on Monday. That’s your weekend gone.

2. Prioritise and kill your workload

Like any backlog, prioritise the work you have. In a busy week anything that’s not a priority gets the chop. It often doesn’t even rejoin the queue at a later date. A lot of the work you think needs your attention actually doesn’t. Think about Angela Merkel. She’s often criticised for not jumping on top of things and delivering a solution instantly. She explains that most things go away or at least transform themselves in time. I’ve lost count of the amount of hours I’ve spent writing documents only for the goal posts to move a few days later. I’m not suggesting you take leave of work, but I am suggesting you take time to think through what will or could change when you’re doing your prioritisation. And remember prioritisation does require that you kill some things entirely. There’s a rewarding power in just saying no.

3. Embrace technology

Do you really need to type out all those post it notes? In 2017 you don’t! There’s an app to take care of that and plenty of other tedious work. You can take a photo of your post it notes and have technology simply transfer them into text.

4. Embrace old school

Yes a pen and paper still have their place. Sometimes you’re trying to describe a methodology or complex technology and a diagram is all your client needs. Draw it up on paper first, take a photo and share it with your client. It saves an extraordinary amount of time. If they’re happy you can clean it up or simply move on to the next task.

5. Done is better than perfect.

The hardest one for perfectionists. It’s up to you to decide what your definition of done is. Knowing when to call time on a piece of work is hard but you’ll be grateful when you realise you’re saving hundreds of hours a year. A good way to get into this habit is to forecast how long a task should take. Like building a house, your forecast will probably be over optimistic but it will give you a reference point to help decide when you might be over doing your perfecting.

6. Track your hours, review and kill

Use a hourly tracking tool. If nothing else it will help you fully assess what you spend your time doing. I used to moan a lot about burnout and incorrectly thought it was due to client demands and expectations. On reflection a lot of time was lost through inefficient working.

7. Be fanatical about health breaks

The one thing that prevents burnout is making room for workout. Whether it’s just a walk or a session down the gym it’s so important. I’ve decided that between now and Christmas, health comes first and meetings will only happen after I’ve hit the daily session on my turbo trainer.

Avoiding burnout is hard but essential if you’re to still love your job and have that work life balance that makes it all worthwhile.