I experienced many of the warning signs:

The list is so long you could wonder how come I didn’t see it coming. But I wasn’t listening to the cues at that time, I bought into the misconceived belief that listening to yourself was a selfish behaviour.  Ah, but how can I serve others if I’m down & resourceless myself?

Does this ring any bells?

Late 2020, a survey of 1,000 adults in the UK suggests 22% of us have experienced job related burnout, with a slightly higher prevalence amongst men. That’s about 12 million people just for the UK!

Let’s talk about performance, now.

Burnout, which can be summarised in 3 words :

This deadly combo doesn’t combine - at all - with sustained high performance. It decimates performance and the worst part of it is that, when you reach that tipping point (of burnout exhaustion), it takes a lot of time & dedication to rebuild your resources.

So here are 3 tips for avoiding burnout:

Be ruthless about recovery. Take recovery as seriously as you take your work. To avoid physical exhaustion, all roads lead to.. s-l-e-e-p. Thanks to Arianna Huffington, sleep deprivation isn’t cool anymore.

Fight disengagement with curiosity, and schedule time to do and learn about what interests you. Don’t let events just happen: if you don’t make your wellbeing a priority, you’ll end up following someone else’s priority.

Prevent pessimism by controlling your thoughts. Scientists have now looked into this and identified the best practice to nurture positive feelings is gratitude.

American National Geographic photographer, Steve Uzzell, nailed it when he said,

It's time to dispel the myth and reclaim your focus.

Ever find yourself juggling a video call, urgent emails, and an important task simultaneously? The reality is that multitasking undermines results. University professor Clifford Nass's research revealed that high multitaskers were outperformed on every measure. They convinced themselves they were efficient, but the truth was, their approach made them subpar in every task.

Since your brain is a task-switcher (more on this in this blog), not a multitasker, align your tasks in sequence. Organise your priorities to enhance efficiency and productivity. Sometimes, the simplest strategies yield the most significant results!

It’s very hard to allow yourself to be fully ‘off’ when you don’t feel you’ve done your job for the day. And today’s workplace doesn’t allow that naturally: we often feel we’ve got more on our plate at the end of the day than when we started.

Research shows, as we could expect, that insufficient reward is just as much of a contributor to burnout as overworking is.

Create your sense of reward by setting a few clear, specific goals for the day: make them a priority, and check them off your list. The simple action of ticking the box floods your body with dopamine, known as the feel-good hormone.

Stay safe with 🤜 energy + engagement + optimism! 🤛 The world looks better that way.