6 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Avoid a Burnout

We’ve all experienced a burnout at some point in our careers. As an entrepreneur, it can be very problematic when it comes to your own business. It affects your mental state, your work, your mood and essentially, your business. Not to mention, the people around you.

Experiencing a burnout is when you feel emotionally & physically overwhelmed, to the point that you need a break in order to keep functioning. It’s easy to fall into the trap of a burnout, but can be difficult to overcome.

We’ve got 6 simple hacks which can help overcome a burnout.

Keep to Schedule

As an entrepreneur running your own business, time is of the essence. You might feel like you have to be on the go 24/7 to keep on top of things, but this is one of the main reasons people experience burnout. It sounds like a good idea being available all the time, but it’s not practical.

It’s important to set a normal schedule and plan your days accordingly. Prioritise the important tasks and allocated times, to organise your day better. It’s all about time management.

Remember, your mental health is the number one priority. As entrepreneurs, we need to be able to stop, rest and spend time with loved ones. Recharge your batteries and tackle tasks with a fresh mindset. 

You can be on-call for emergencies only, but allow your employees to handle the day-to-day tasks too. If you don’t have employees, time management is a key skill to embed into your schedule.

Employ Amazing People

If your business has employees, you’d understand the importance of hiring good people. Having a trustworthy group of employees that understand the vision of the company, that care for the company and treat it as their own, is key when it comes to delegating tasks to them. 

Hiring people that do their job effectively, allows you to focus on the more important tasks you’re faced with as a business owner. Plus, you’ll feel a lot less stressed because the workload is being shared out amongst your employees.

As a startup founder, sometimes you can’t afford to employ full time staff. One alternative is outsourcing tasks, such as HR or development. This applies to outsourcing teams as well. If you outsource projects to an external team, you want to make sure you’re delegating these projects to the right people.

Plan Your Tasks

A bit different to keeping to schedule, which we mentioned earlier. Keeping to schedule is about scheduling the hours in your day, whereas planning your tasks is organising what you’re doing in your day. 

The plan doesn’t have to be incredibly detailed, but more of a guide to get you ready for the day/week ahead. You’ll be surprised at how productive you’ll be if you stick to a well thought out plan. Plus, you’ll know exactly what you need to be doing at each period of the day, meaning you can identify the best times to take a break to avoid burnouts.

Allocate Catch-up Time

Even when we stick to schedules, important tasks might crop up out of nowhere which need to be addressed as soon as possible. This means that we’ll fall behind and catch-up on certain things. Not to worry, this is normal.

Making sure you have a dedicated day or time to catch-up on things is very important. The last thing you need is to fall behind to a point where you’re becoming overwhelmed. This isn’t productive and can certainly make you become more stressed and burnout.

Give yourself a day here and there to focus on catching-up, making sure you dont book any appointments on those days. Taking the time out to catch-up will help you get back on track and on top of important projects.

Have you got a pile of business cards that you need to catch-up on and start contacting? Use the Contapp app to transform those printed business cards into digital profiles. Manage them digitally, contact them via Contapp, organise people into custom groups, filter & and search by keywords. All from the convenience of your fingertips.

Get Some Sleep

We love sleep. Sleep is good for the body and the mind. It’s no surprise that having a lot of sleep will boost productivity. The more tired we become during the day, the slower we become, resulting in more mistakes being made. Something we don’t want whilst running a business, so get some rest!

If we get 8hrs of sleep (recommended amount) and wake up earlier, we have more of the day to get tasks done. Even if it’s not sleep, being able to relax will certainly help avoiding a burnout. Rest, relax and recharge.

Just Let It Go

Things will fail, things will go wrong and some things won’t go how you expected it to go. The fact of the matter is that life throws us some obstacles, we just need to get over them. 

If your best employee decides to leave, let it go. If a project falls through, let it go. There’s no point in overthinking things because that will cause serious burnout and you’ll become increasingly stressed. 

So how do we get over that? Simply let it go and understand that opportunities are always around the corner. Think of all the positives happening and put the negatives to one side. Don’t let every obstacle be the end of the world for you. Understand that life is full of ups and downs, make peace with it and change what you can control. 

What tips can you share to avoid a burnout at work?