Real Question: How Do You Know When You’re Heading Toward Burnout?

And how to avoid it in the future.

Photo licensed by author from Adobe Stock

I’ve been feeling low-level, chronic burnout for weeks and weeks now. I mostly ignored it and was trying to push through, putting pressure on myself to reach a certain milestone before an arbitrary date.

Despite feeling that deep mental tiredness of burnout, I still didn’t want to take time off.

But because I was tired, uncreative, and unfocused, I was getting very little done during my workday. (My three “most important” tasks have been on my to-do list for at least 4 weeks! ouch.)

That led to working frequently in the evenings. That, of course, meant I was more tired and getting even less done during my days, so then I even added in weekend work. Gah.

This ridiculous feedback loop sucks me in more often than I’d like to admit, even though I know better. Tell me you do this, too.

Even after I saw myself yelling at the cat for purring too loudly, it still took me a few days to recognize that I need a true break and a couple more days to remember how easy it actually is for me to do that…and how minuscule the consequences are for my business.

Then I got annoyed with myself for not recognizing my burnout sooner.