Keep These 2 Things To Remove Burnout

When You’re At Your Limit, How Do You Make Room To Create?

Today we'll dive into the first C of overcoming burnout - Capacity. This is about giving you the space you need to meet your goals.

When you’re burned out, it can often feel like you are in a room that’s closing in on you. that the workload, the expectations, the pressure are all getting larger while you’re shrinking in comparison. This C  was created to put a stop to that feeling and build that buffer between yourself and whatever is causing you burnout.

As we’re stated before, there are 3 things you can possibly change: you, your situation, and your relationship with the situation. This is about starting with you. Building more ability within yourself to manage more, and manage better.

OK, so how do we create capacity when we’re at our limit? The 2 things to keep when you want to remove burnout are Structure and Active Recovery. 

A lot of people talk about boundaries, but I prefer to frame it  as structure. The reason is boundaries generally take a negative premise - “here is what I am keeping out, or keeping away from me.” Structure for me is more about what we are creating space for, and when, than it is about keeping anything out. 

Active Recovery is  about those capacity building habits that give our body and our mind a true and complete break from the situation causing your burnout.

OK, Let’s talk about Active Recovery. The first thing to know is there are two types of stress: psychological vs physiological. 

Psychological stress is what we most often refer to as stress in our day to day contexts. Psychological stress is the stress caused by emotional factors such as anxiety and worry that impact our mental health.

Physiological stress is the impact on your physical body by the activities that you engage in. An obvious example of this is an injury caused by putting undue stress on a joint. However, what is more relevant to our conversation here is the physical effect on your brain. Extended periods of engagement in your brain require time and space to recover. Just like if you worked out your body for an extended period of time, you would need to give your muscles a break to build themselves back, your brain is no different.

What does this mean? Even if you love what you do, and you are completely autonomous in everything you engage with, you still need Active Recovery. This type of recovery is not just for psychological stress (though it helps tremendously), it’s for physiological stress, which is inevitable when pursuing a life of high achievement. 

So what does Active Recovery look like? Active Recovery is the time you take to recharge after a period of mental engagement.  This should happen no matter how draining or inspiring the work session was just to refresh yourself.  This should include as little stress and visual stimulation as possible. So, no, vegging out on the couch watching shows or sports doesn’t count.  Here's what does count:

• nature immersion

• mindfulness

• sound bath/treatment

• walking 

• silent time

• sensory deprivation

• uplifting socializing 

Let’s start with structure. This is the more yang component of creating capacity. Making your life have clearly defined edges. One of the key ways that we can do this is with our calendar and time. We’re going to make some decisions on the non-negotiables for a happy life and we're going to create time to dedicate to them. 

The first non-negotiable to consider is  physical activity. That can be weight lifting, that can be walking, running, pilates, biking, pickleball, etc. It doesn’t actually matter, you just HAVE to make space for some sort of physically activity. Its effects on the brain are undeniable: we are built to move.

Number 2 is silent time. Silent time means info in no info out. This can be meditation time, it can be mindfulness time, it can be staring at a blank wall. In a world of overstimulation we need to schedule breaks to understand our own thoughts, feelings, beliefs.

Third is work, which we’ll put into two buckets. Iit’s important to keep these distinct: we have our talking about the work time - meetings, zooms, lunches, etc. Then we have our time doing the work. We keep them distinct because to do each efficiently, we are accessing different modes of our brain. Your talking about the work time can have a lot more randomity to it, however your doing the work time should be in blocks of 2-4 hours of uninterrupted time. This is the time to unlock your Flow State. (we’ll discuss this in depth another time)

Next you need an outlet.  This is a creative expression of some kind. time to just play. it can be a pottery class, sketching at home, writing poetry or songs, it could be building legos. it doesn’t matter at all as long as you feel free to create and you’re working not to judge yourself for what you create. 

Yes,  I know you don’t think you have time to, but I'm telling you, you have to. if you’re really strapped for time, start with 15 min, but make it non-negotiable, un-encroached upon time. it doesn’t even need to be every day, it can be 3X a week. But whenever you have it scheduled you have to stick to it. 

Beyond the neurological benefits of letting your mind play, there are the psychological benefits of sending the signal to yourself that you matter too. that your life is more than the work you do. that your desires, interests and the things that bring you joy are non-negotiable as well.

Then you fill in your other responsibilities for the day. Are you a parent and need time with your kids? Do you have a spiritual or religious practice that requires your devotion?  What is your active recovery activity routine of choice and how much time do you need for that?

All of us need time for uplifting social connection. Notice I said uplifting - if you and your friends are just getting together talking about how burned out you are, or wallowing in your cynicism together, that’s not going to be any good for anybody.

Everybody also needs to set aside time to eat (and possibly make) nutritious meals. This is not the forum to tell you what to eat or where to get your food from, but know that eating foods that support your health rather than combat it is non-negotiable.

Once you have all the things you need to do throughout the day or week. build out your schedule and protect that space like it matters. If it's your work block, make sure nothing interrupts you. If it’s your time with your kids, be completely present and embodied in those moments. Slowly you’ll start to establish balance in your life. The reason is we’ve embedded Flow Science into every piece of this program. So, not only are you making more time for all 360º of who you are and what you need, you’re also getting more efficient with your work.

Thanks for reading, next week we'll take a deeper look at CODE - tying our work back to our purpose and values.