Taking Rest

It is important to take breaks and rest. We live in a very go-go-go, never stop culture and burnout is a common occurrence. It’s very easy to fall into that mindset that you are only productive if you are actively doing something and creating, but that often leads to increased stress and unrealistic expectations. Many different things can also push you towards this stress, and they may be things you have to engage with – taking care of family, doing schoolwork, doing your job requirements, being in a leadership position for a group – but there are still ways to manage your workload and find ways to take the rest you need.

First, it’s important to actively push back against hustle culture. Working at 100% all the time WILL drive you into burnout. Suffering from burnout will make you care less because you don’t have the energy to do the work, you’ll feel drained in things that normally are easy or bring you joy and can also affect other aspects of your life like having the drive to be with your social circles or getting good sleep. Find ways to have a work-life balance that you can support. That can look like not replying to emails or calls outside of your work hours or having blocks on your calendar to have planned working time that cannot be filled in with meetings without you actively agreeing to it. If people ask questions, or if there is pushback, let them know that this time is for you to be able to then focus on the larger task.

If you aren’t able to directly push back because you have a high stress job or are a parent juggling not only your own day to day but your children’s as well, ask for help. It can be incredibly hard, but people are sometimes accidentally selfish of other people’s issues until it is brought to them. Find people you trust and ask them for help, see if they can either share the workload, or if they can help you prioritize what needs to be done more urgently so you can focus on just one thing. Asking for help may also look like seeing what programs or resources are available to you to help with financial struggles, or daycare needs, or mental health support. Like I said it can be incredibly hard asking for help, but not being able to delegate the stress you may be feeling will only compound that stress more and you’ll have less ability to do what you want, or need, to do.

Being self-aware about your mood and energy levels can also help you prevent or notice that you are experiencing burnout. Routines are wonderful because they minimize the amount of thought we have to do, but sometimes they can also hide patterns that are draining us more than we realize. See if a part of your routine (and by that I mean your at home routine, a routine with your job, or with your friends) has been feeling harder and harder to do, or you don’t feel good about doing it. These could be signs that something is adding more to your plate and you either need to change it up, or see what part is causing the shift and address it. This could look like an uncomfortable conversation around boundaries with a coworker or family member, or assessing what parts of your routine do you actually need to do what you need to do and what are maybe rules that you made up somewhere along the way. Letting go of those extra rules can help you reassess and focus on the task and not on the details of how to get there.

Another thing that you can do is disconnect when you can. Put down your phone, unplug from media, and just be in the moment with people (or pets!) you enjoy being around. You can also enjoy time outside, read a book, or workout. Let your brain process the built up stress in the background so that when you go back to whatever it is you have to do you have the capacity to do it. This could even be done in short bursts if the thing causing stress is a need that has to be done, or has a hard deadline. Take 5 or 10 minutes, talk the problem out with someone else (or even just talk out loud at nothing). Do what you can to get the stress and energy out of your system and then go back to it.

So take that break. Enjoy your rest. Take your time and enforce your boundaries. The work waiting won’t seem as dreadful after.