| The first step is to figure out what's actually causing you to burn out, which sounds easy but is usually a lot trickier because you need to be far away enough from it to see things objectively. I recommend starting a journal and writing down all the things you think are causing the burn out, especially when you are feeling overwhelmed. Some areas to think about: - Your expectations: where do they come from? - Habits and routines: are they healthy? According to you or others? After about a few weeks or a month of doing this, I recommend going to a park or somewhere quiet you don't usually go (or maybe, never have been) and reading over what you've written. The point of this is to get you out of your default setting where you might fall into a positive feedback loop where you can't imagine other possibilities or where you automatically shutdown any kind of solution proposal. Start by prioritizing one issue to work on, and start recording your progress on that thing and see where it takes you. When that gets better, take on the next thing, etc. Small, incremental improvements. This applies to anything you think is a problem: sleep, exercise, job satisfaction, etc. Something to realize here is that you want to make as much progress on things you can control at the time, and you won't always be able to effectively tackle certain problems with your current self or tools. It's sort of like those games where you get stuck in an area because you haven't done the pre-requisites nobody told you about yet. It's OK to give up on something you're making no progress on (as long as you tried everything and kept track of it) and do something else you can make progress on. |