Do you believe all the hype about burnout already reaching epidemic proportions? If not, you should. Whether you realize it or not, you may be burning yourself out and causing damage to others. Try incorporating some of these behaviors in your daily routine for better business and personal health.
Working smarter, not harder
Your work ethic dictates exactly what kind of worker and leader you are. What you allow is what your team will model. Meaning, if you allow yourself to always stay focused on your work and not build a solid vision of good for your team, they will become workaholics with poor quality results. Create a rhythm of quality work with realistic time frames (leave your work at work).
Human work > paperwork
I have always been a firm believer in showing, not telling. You can speak until you are blue in the face, but you won’t get the performance you seek by merely talking. Put more time into developing employees and exemplifying good behaviors, rather than developing employees through meetings. How does one do that? Instead of holding a three hour meeting on how to increase business, hold daily five minute meetings with those that need it. This shows that you genuinely care for them by wanting to help them progress individually, which will create an amazing ROI for your business.
Set it and forget it
Set yourself and your team small daily goals. This will allow for distractions, which will occur. Nothing too difficult, but not too easily attainable. The point of these daily goals is to keep productive without staying completely occupied. It also makes failure a lot more welcoming as it is only a daily goal, which can be readjusted much easier than a long-term goal.
A moment of stagnation
If you believe you must never stop to avoid falling behind and becoming stagnant in your career, you are actually hurting yourself. I’ve learned this the hard way. Not necessarily because of burnout, which it does lead to, but it causes you to lose focus of what truly matters. If you take the time to slow down and appreciate what you have done and are doing, you open yourself to more direct and honest feedback. Who knows, the feedback you could receive may lead you to an entirely different career direction!