A Creative's Guide To Avoiding Burnout | 129

Burnout. We’ve all heard of people going through this, maybe you’ve experienced it yourself. Today I’m here to give you the strategies I use to avoid burnout as a creative entrepreneur.

What Does Burnout Look Like?

To prevent burnout, we first need to understand the early warning signs. Seeing these creep in can indicate that we need to cut back and realign with our goals.

Here are some signs to spot early so that you can prevent a major burnout.

• Constant tiredness despite sleeping enough
• A drop in motivation
• Trouble sleeping
• Feelings of doubt and helplessness
• A looming sense of failure

Understanding the Three Types of Burnout

In Ali Abdaal’s Feel Good Productivity, he covers three types of burnouts we can experience:

Overexertion: This happens when you do more than you need to.

It's crucial to focus on what really matters to your goals and cut out the fluff that fills up your day but doesn't advance your objectives.

Exhaustion – This is the burnout from not resting enough.

Creativity thrives not just in doing but also in resting. Balancing your work and rest periods is essential to keeping your mind and body refreshed and ready to create.

Misalignment – If what you're doing day-to-day doesn't align with your broader vision, it can lead to frustration and burnout.

It's important to ensure that your efforts are pushing you towards future you want.

My Approach to Avoiding Burnout

It probably won’t surprise you that my approach focuses on avoiding these 3 types of burnout before they happen. The question is how.

It starts with my big picture vision and goals. I know where I want to go. I have dreams and aspirations like everyone else. And I have clear goals that support that vision.

I can break down goals into a daily and weekly standard of things I need to do.

One of my big picture goals is to create the best training for creative entrepreneurs out there. This can be broken down into smaller goals and tasks I work on every day.

This newsletter, for example, is part of my weekly standard. I have to write it every week so that I can help more creatives.

Finding time to write it can be hard, so I plan everything in my calendar on Sunday night.

That way I know exactly what needs to get done and more importantly, when something will get done.

My calendar gets filled with time slots of what I’m going to do and when.

I make sure that most things in my calendar align with my vision so I can avoid misalignment burnout.

Each day and at the end of the week I’ll audit myself and see how I was feeling that day. How was my energy? Am I resting enough? Do I have room for more work or should I cut back?

This constant review of my mental and physical health gives me a daily update on whether I’m headed towards burnout or whether I’m thriving. This way, I’ll avoid both overexertion and exhaustion burnout.

Daily journaling, using a calendar, and weekly reviews are not easy to do. They’re hard and they take time. But you know what’s harder? Burning out. The beauty of it is that we get to choose our hard. Choose wisely.