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Avoiding Burnout

“Life balance” may seem like a luxury most entrepreneurs can’t afford. After all, shouldn’t people launching their businesses be working all night and eating at their desks?

A recent article in Entrepreneur made a list of ways to avoid burnout and find balance.

Start Smart: find a simple ritual to get your days started on the right foot. Run, meditate, take the dog for a walk. It doesn’t matter what, it matters that you do this. It will kick your day off right and give you energy, clarity, and get you ready for whatever comes your way.

Understand that energy follows thought: “what you focus on grows.” That means that if you’re spending time thinking about the flaws and
the way your plans won’t work you are actually helping to make that a reality more than the alternative.

Stay away from the “how”: don’t get bogged down in the details. Instead, focus on simply planning “what’s next”. Staying concentrated and small can help you actually move forward.

Create mind space: overly busy minds keep us from clear thinking. So we have to step away and get some clarity. Take breaks every hour to shake your thoughts free from too many details. And, if you can, give yourself 15 to 20 minutes to listen to music, get out of your head or meditate.

Avoid judgment: allow yourself and your work to just be without comparison. Do whatever you need to do to eliminate negative self-talk. One of the best ways to do that? Lift others up. Be excited for the success of others and allow yourself to acknowledge that “success” isn’t a limited commodity. There’s space for all of us.

Mental Space

We all need mental space for things beyond the office. We may have children or aging parents. We may really, really enjoy sports or rooting for a team. We may have always doodled but never taken the art class we’ve always dreamed of. What if you looked at all of that differently? What if you saw that time as an investment in yourself and, by extension, your career goals? Einstein famously loved going for walks when confronted with a problem he couldn’t solve. Now if that isn’t an endorsement for getting out of the office, I don’t know what is.

Creating mental space is the first step to creating space (and time) for other things like family, exercise, travel, learning something new. When we turn our minds away from our business, we aren’t diminishing our devotion to it. We’re building up resources to serve it long-term.

 

To Your Continued Success,

 

Luis Raul Scott, Jr.