Burnout: How to Achieve Better Work-life Balance
Flax’s burnout prevention tips include creating a “focus mode” on your phone to only see important notifications
Burnout: How to Achieve Better Work-life Balance
Gabriela Flax, 28, had a “dream” product management job that eventually left her suffering migraines, panic attacks and constant exhaustion.
She was to realise that she was suffering from burnout.
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“The ‘boring list’ is for people who have just acknowledged burnout — it’s a mental reprieve,” Flax, a Baltimore native living in London, told SWNS.
It’s going to be tough, but it’s about focusing on small changes that can be made to your daily life.
Flax’s burnout prevention tips include creating a “focus mode” on your phone to only see important notifications and having a clean basket as well as a dirty basket for laundry.
Flax explained:
Everyone has a dirty wash basket, but we don’t often have a clean basket.
Most of us have a clean chair, but anything that creates chaos through mess makes us feel worse.
The clean basket allows you to keep the space tidy, but if you don’t want to open your closet because of decision fatigue — don’t bother with it, go to the clean basket, you know it’s clean. No decision needed.
Flax also recommends buying several sets of the same outfit to reduce decision fatigue.
Get three versions of an indoor set and three of an outdoor set.
What I find with implementing a ‘capsule wardrobe’ is people stick with it long after burnout.
She also suggests creating a group chat with “need-to-know” people who can help out with errands or childcare; buying an automatic dog food bowl; and using paper plates to lessen the burden of cleanup.
Burnout: How to Achieve Better Work-life Balance
Flax noted of disposable plates:
When I started sharing that tip people were saying it wasn’t environmentally friendly. My view is, you cannot save the planet if you can’t save yourself.
After getting out of burnout you then have the capacity to give back to causes you are passionate about.
There were days when I would forgo eating as I didn’t want to wash the dishes. Get yourself paper plates, and the dishes can be out of mind for a while.
Flax says her burnout got so bad that she would refuse to nap or let herself watch TV as it “wasn’t productive.”
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Burnout is when your brain is in direct conflict with what your body truly needs. Sometimes we let the need for success interrupt with the very need to rest.
Flax adds that:
For me, it was about learning tactics and removing things from life that were causing me more stress and then looking inside to see what was holding me stuck from a mental perspective.
She said she stopped drinking alcohol in her mid-20s, which lessened the “brain fog,” and she created her “boring list.”
It’s not a cure to burnout, but these are things you can do in the early stages to let some steam out.
She reasoned:
It allows someone to win back bite-size pieces of energy and put it into their reserves.
Flax’s boring list:
- Buy sets of outfits
- Create a phone focus mode
- Use paper plates and disposable cutlery
- Create a group chat with “need-to-know” people
- Make a clean laundry basket as well as a dirty one
- Add your favorite dish on food delivery apps
- Remove middle sheet from bed
- Buy a 10-pack of identical socks
- Take pictures of items in the supermarket to help with the next shop
- Buy an automatic dog food bowl
Source | NY Post
