Things to definitely do if you want to burnout: Parts 1-5.

If you’re absolutely intent on burning out, then follow these recommendations to the letter.

1. Don’t take your full allocation of annual leave

The vast majority of organisations will allocate a number of days each year for annual leave, but how many of us get to year end and realise that we haven’t taken our allocation and either have to carry some over, or lose it?

Try and make sure that you take your full allocation to get time away from the pressures of work, connect with family and friends, destress and decompress, explore new areas and places and gain a new perspective on your life and career.

Your mind and body will thank you for it.

2. Never mind holidays. Don’t even take a break.

Research has shown that taking your lunch break is not only beneficial for you and your work, and it’s also been shown to have a positive relationship with wellbeing and productivity and that taking short breaks throughout the day can reduce and prevent stress. So creating opportunities for downtime throughout the day, where you can switch off is beneficial.

Other things which help are

• being mindful of screen fatigue, so maybe try and convert Teams/Zoom calls into phone calls if this is possible
• getting outdoors for short periods, into the garden or going for a short walk
• actually diarising thinking/planning time away from your laptop, using a notebook to capture ideas and plans
• not being tempted to eat at your desk, as this inevitably leads to catching up, answering emails etc

3. Make ‘yes’ your favourite word

How good are you at setting boundaries around what you will and won’t do? Your manager asks you to take on another piece of work, a really important piece of work, and even though you’re already struggling with your workload you immediately say ‘Yes’. It’s only afterwards when you’re trying desperately to think about how you can fit this in, that it occurs to you that you should have really said ‘No’ or at least negotiated on giving some work up to compensate.

Other things which help are

• It can feel risky saying No, especially if you’ve spent your career saying yes, but practicing and stepping into saying no can be liberating and empowering. Being able to stand behind this, using your already unmanageable workload as a reason, is also valid.
• Knowing your limits and communicating these with your manager is also helpful. They may not know or appreciate how overworked you feel, and may want to help you reduce this to a more manageable level.

4. Never outsource or delegate, and micromanage everything

What a lot of charities get wrong is the sense that outsourcing work is prohibitively expensive, and a waste of money. This is a false assumption as buying in resources can be cost effective in the long run, as an outsourced specialist will often complete the project to higher quality and more quickly than it can be done in-house. It also frees up resources to be focussed elsewhere.

If it doesn’t come naturally to you, learn how to delegate effectively, and don’t just delegate the things you don’t like doing. Your team will know.

5. Do a bit of yoga and call this your self-care

This ones a bit flippant, but there’s a lot of advice out there around wellbeing and self-care which is great, however, you can’t yoga yourself out of burnout. This may help, but taking your wellbeing and self-care seriously can also involve:

1. Understanding that self-care is more than doing a bit of yoga twice a week
2. Prioritising your wellbeing, so it’s not an afterthought or something you do ‘if I find the time’ (note to self: you’ll never find the time)
3. Learn to monitor and pay attention to how you’re feeling. Working proactively and stopping exhaustion before it takes hold is better than trying to put the fire out when it’s too late.
4. Finding 1-2 activities self-care activities which reduce stress for you (running, walking, yoga, mindfulness, reading) and deliberately cultivating these, so they are part of a mindful strategy to wellbeing rather than something you do when the mood takes you or you have a free hour.