I have had the privilege to fully work from home for the past 2 years and even though I thought this was my final blow to burn out, I was amazed at how much more I could get exhausted.
I tried napping to calm down but anxiety would haunt me in bed and remind me of the hundreds of things I must accomplish on my to-do list and then I would end up not catching sleep.
I tried many tips like taking walks, playing with my kids and doing nothing; these seemed to work but didn’t fully do it for me until I zeroed down to these four bits of advice and now I call myself a free woman.
Here are the four.
Create two to-do lists
I bet everyone knows and owns a to-do-list but what usually gets in the way of the list not getting done is clutter.
By clutter I mean, the many non-important, less urgent things that fill you’re to do list on a daily. These make your list look crowded and spark an imagination in your mind that says, “I have a lot to do”
They make your mind feel overwhelmed before you even start working on tasks and yet had you written what you really need to get done, it would be a clean sheet with 3-5 vital tasks
The best way to deal with clutter is to keep it on a separate list.
Here is exactly how I do it.
Sundays are when I create my week-long to-do-list.
I generate a list of urgent to-do’s which I call, my master list and another one that has stuff I need to complete within the week but that is not so urgent.
Depending on how urgent each task is, I assign them a week day, time and where to go on my two lists.
Of course, new tasks come up throughout the week such as emails to respond to or an urgent meeting, all I do is keep adding them either on the master list or to do list per their importance.
Get your mind used to a routine
Although many of us think that a routine should enslave us and act as a standby guard, it doesn’t have to. Here is how a routine naturally works.
Let’s say every morning after your morning ritual, if you’re like me, your morning ritual goes like-prayers, exercise, a shower then breakfast you know that the next thing is to sit on your computer or head out for work. Your mind and body will get used to that.
So instead of you pushing yourself to start work, your nerves will keep sending messages to your brain to start.
And we all know per our biology teacher back in school that the brain is literally controlled by the nervous system.
Make the best use of technology
I could go all day listing the various apps that can incredibly do half of the things you don’t need to do.
From apps like 15five that track your teams work so that you don’t spend hours sending out emails to each of them; to apps like Camcard that store your business cards and those that automate your email and social media-there is surely no reason to burn-out doing certain tasks.
Recently I embarked on building some new websites for my upcoming businesses. It’s quite an overwhelming task because you must hunt through several search engines to find information about what web hosting service will work best for each website. But one of my personal favorite tool in doing this job has been HRANK. It’s a clever and free tool that constantly analyses over 300 web hosting providers to check their usability, price, uptime, experience, history and other factors which saves me plenty of time that I could have wasted digging into Google to find out about the best hosting plan for each site I am building.
An app here and a robot there can hugely save your behind from burnout.
Reward yourself
We are not very different from pets when it comes to our love for
treats. A dog or cat learns faster if they are rewarded with treats every after
they’ve done something. It’s the same with humans. When you know that at the
end of the day, your reward for finishing that report that had been proving a
nightmare is to sit down at your favorite restaurant for a hot crisp dinner,
then your most likely going to work objectively looking forward to the reward.