How to Avoid Burnout

The world has changed in the last 18 months … The modern way is to develop the ability to ‘dial it up’ and or ‘dial it down’ on demand. This week, we spoke to Sam Griffiths of Build Your Minimum about the simple steps we can take to avoid burning out.

Burnout has always been a problem in the business world, especially when you are the one running the show. But the massive social upheavals, financial worries and isolation of the past two and half years have put such a huge burden on every, single one of us, that there has been a huge surge in people experiencing burnout.

There seem to be a lot of self-help books about on stress and dealing with it, but when we’re already fighting what seems like a losing battle in terms of having enough time to get everything done, when can we find the time to read them?

Health, stress, burnout and performance coach, Sam Griffiths has a decade of experience in helping people deal with burnout. He joined us to give us some tips on avoiding burnout and finding the joy in our work and our personal lives again.

“When I work with business people, the two things that I look at when I’m trying to help someone is how much energy they have and how they’re managing that energy.

And then the space and time that they have to work on, how they’re growing the business and how they’re looking after themselves.”

Looking after ourselves is a huge part of avoiding burnout. And it doesn’t always mean meditation, a hot bath and a balanced diet. We also need to pursue our personal interests to improve our creativity and focus at work, whilst also giving us some of the important mental respite that we all need and refilling our energy levels.

“I get a lot of people come to me feeling fatigue, things like that, and the things that they really enjoy: Reading; playing guitar; going for walks; yoga; drawing; painting; listening to music, all of these types of activities and being in business and being very time poor, what can naturally happen as we sideline those activities to the late evening or to the weekend or to when we’re on holiday because we don’t have time.

But actually, those activities in short spurts of 30 minutes are a great way to renew our energy and give us that kind of headspace and time to think.”

Other small changes like a change in environment, reframing our expectations and journaling to give us perspective on what seem like impassable obstacles are all part of Sam’s advice on how we can climb out from under that stress and avoid burn out.