I’m burning out! Navigating and Healing from Entrepreneur Burnout

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Entrepreneur burnout is not something a lot of people publicly talk about. I’ve raised my eyebrows several times when people suggested that I should take a vacation. They say, “Go away for a while. Take time off. You can always restart when you come back recovered”.

Entrepreneur life is great, but the burnout is no fun. When you start something that you love, you work on it until you drop. Every day is an adventure and every day is a challenge. You become a workaholic and after a while things start taking a toll on you. How do you bounce back? How much resilience can you have?

When you start noticing hints of burn out, exhaustion, dark circles around eyes, losing weight without trying, irritability, mental fog, falling sick often, lack of sleep… This is when you need to start taking action. However strong you think you are and how we were successful you are, you are a superwoman, but still, only human.

When you start practicing self-care early in your career, you don’t burn out that bad. Here are a few things you can do to stay resilient, recover faster and deliver with double whammy!

Bring clarity into your business.

Define goals clearly. Put them in writing. One reason you never see much in results is you start off without knowing what it is that you really want. Your goals are too abstract, “making my business successful” is not a goal. Here’s my previous article about having a clear marketing strategy. So, once you create smart goals, it’s easier to apply chunks into tasks into your every day schedule.

Separate personal time from work time.

Entrepreneurs who run their businesses from home sometimes start taking their families for granted. Sketching out a 9-to-5 schedule at home is not the easiest. You start off with wanting to finish any incomplete tasks after dinner or when everyone goes to bed. The that encroachment into your personal time keeps expanding. If you are disciplined enough to not work during personal time, that takes care of half your problems.

Delegate whatever you can.

Delegate some duties to your staff or outsource some of your tasks that can be easily done without your micromanagement. A lot of my clients have said they don’t feel the burn out anymore since my agency took over their admin and marketing tasks. Not delegating, doing all by myself is one main main reason for entrepreneur burnout,Outsourcing to agencies or having freelancers provide services are two good ways to delegate tasks if you don’t want to have employees.

Eliminate or reduce stress

meditate diya selvaLook deep within and identify the root cause of what is causing you stress. Burnout in business happens to be one of the leading causes of depression and anxiety in Canada and US. Mostly always it starts with stress and mental exhaustion. Take breaks to relax. Working without food, neglecting relationships and feeling guilty of not having completed tasks cause a lot of negative energy in and around you.

Take time to exercise and meditate.

Yoga decreases stress significantly. If you cannot commit yourself to daily kickboxing class, take a YouTube group session of high intensity workout. Going out for a run or going to the gym 3 to 4 times a week produces endorphins necessary to improve ability to sleep and reduce stress. Check out this awesome community site for free resources on meditation and relaxing techniques.

Meditation is very powerful, it helps you plan your day, sharpens your mind and brain, lowers heart rate and decreases blood pressure, so altogether it’s a fantastic way to reduce stress. Adding a few breathing exercises for five minutes a day can do miracles.

Treat personal commitments as meetings.

A gorgeous lady I used to work with, once said she cannot see me during a certain time I was available to meet, because she had a prior meeting she was committed to. And later she said the meeting was with her grandmother who she visits only on Tuesdays. I had assumed that it was a business meeting. It made a huge impact on me because commitments are not only for work but also the people in our lives.

“Running a start-up is like chewing glass and staring into the abyss. After a while you stop staring, but the glass chewing never ends” said Elon musk. yes, starting and running a business is a tremendously stressful affair. But if you think that taking breaks will hurt your business, know this, not taking care of yourself will burn you down thoroughly and that will definitely destroy you and your business.

And after I have said so much, I think it is not such a bad idea after all to take vacations periodically. I’d say a week every quarter is a great idea. Everyone needs this time to reconnect with the outside world, recharge and restart.

 

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