7 steps to avoid a burnout culture

A lot of us talk about how we feel we’re in a state of constant of busyness, even those of us who eliminate some craziness from our lives by working from a home office. It’s almost as if something is going around, pressing us like machines to do more, acquire more and be more.

How does one make time for the things that matter most? Things like creative outlets, volunteering in your community, learning to play ukulele, checking off the big bucket list travel… the list goes on.

Related: Are you busy right now?

Minimizing this “busyness” syndrome of modern life lets us open the door to what matters most and allows us to feel simply more relaxed and in control.

Time sucks—activities that waste time with little value or benefit—are at the heart of what makes us feel we have no time left for the important things.

Awareness is key, so the best way to start a new path to ultimate time optimization is by looking for the time-sucking activities in your life. Once you do that, you start to take back your precious moments by getting intentional about how you schedule your day so you can use your brain power in ways that feel more meaningful. Not sure how to get started? Here are some tips:

1. Journal your time.

Have you stepped back and looked at ways you may be spending your time frivolously? Writing down how you spend your time for five or seven days, much like you would with a food journal, will open your eyes to opportunities. After about a week, you’ll have a good picture of where it makes sense to cut yourself free of a few time sucks.

2. Watch your “transition rituals.”

Time you spend at your desk getting situated after arriving in the morning, returning from a meeting, lunch or other appointment elsewhere. You might be chatting with your cubicle neighbor, checking your phone, looking at social media or doing any number of activities not related to work that let your brain reorient to the work environment.

Most of us who spend the day at a desk have this habit, although it’s not something that really gets talked about all that much.

“So how can you get a grip on it?” asked Laura Vanderkam in her Fast Company post. Vanderkam has authored several time management books.

“The first step is to be aware of it,” she said. Vanderkam suggests setting daily priorities to use as your reference for filling this time instead. “Your brain won’t need the same processing time,” to get back into the work groove.

3. Email should not rule your life.

Because most of us receive so many emails daily, if we’re not being methodical about checking our inbox, we’re wasting time. Roughly one-quarter of an office worker’s day is spent on email. “Email has become the bane of the 21st century workers’ existence,” according to Harvard Business Review. The article, by a firm that consults with organizations on how to save time, suggests following these practices:

• Turn off notifications and instead check your email hourly
• Use the search functionality with search operators to re-find emails
• Set up just two email folders and use shortcuts to archive emails there
• Avoid processing irrelevant or less important emails individually

Some recommendations might sound sort of radical: React to almost all of your emails only once a day. Instead of responding throughout the day, only respond to truly urgent messages and hold the rest until the end of the day or morning or whatever daily time you designate for processing email. But when you think about it, these unintuitive practices seems quite logical and are worth a try.

4. Make the most of “the power of now.”

Whether you have big ambitious, lifetime goals or simply want to accomplish your day-to-day tasks, setting daily goals is key. Whether you write them down or use an app, creating goals is proven to drive success.

Most people, however, “work in a very unstructured and unfocused way on a day-to-day basis. This leads to frustration, procrastination and a lack of progress,” performance coach Jari Roomer wrote on Medium. He noted that daily goals need to be specific and realistic, and must include your ‘why.’” They also should be visual instead of being tucked away in a journal, where they’ll be forgotten, he said.

5. Prioritize your priorities by putting them on your calendar.

Sure, most of us put something on our calendar we don’t want to miss — such as kids’ orthodontic appointments, dinner dates, work meetings and deadlines. But how many of us are religious about scheduling time on our calendar for other priorities — time to do our work, learn a skill or read a book? It’s probably not an ingrained habit for most of us.

Not only does time-blocking allow you to look back and remember what you did with your time but it makes you feel more in control of your priorities. Without time-blocking, “you are more likely to plan your work to accommodate others’ schedules and others (when you’re sharing calendars) are able to check that your work schedule works for them,” according to an article from Harvard Business Review.

6. Put down your phone.

This goes for all of your other electronics. And don’t pick any of them right back up. The need to step away from the devices goes without saying for most of us. Research indicates constantly checking our devices harms our brains. Finding an effective way to break the habit is challenging. Especially considering the irony that googling “smartphone addiction” delivers 29.7 million hits. Those kind of results will keep any internet enthusiast glued to a screen for who knows how long.

The web, regardless of the device, has the allure so many of us can’t resist. Ways to reduce your nonessential use of electronic devices include: Scheduling 10- to 15-minute sessions throughout your day to use your device. Remember to set an alert so you know when time is up. Turn off notifications on your phone. Move distracting, senseless apps off of your home screen. Instead, put apps on your homescreen that enhance your life—such as those for reading a book, learning a new language or listening to music. Consider deleting all but one social media platform from your mobile devices and only access others from a laptop. You may want an app that helps you control your use.

7. Say “no” more often.

Sometimes we overlook the degree to which we are saying “yes,” leading to a big time suck. Whether work, home, family, church or other settings, most of us likely have been confronted with a stream of requests. And because most of us want to share our talents, make a difference and be helpful, it’s easy to fall in line and accept. However, most of us working folk with families and homes likely would be better off declining those requests more often. Learn the “gentle art of saying no” so you’ll be better prepared next time the ask comes along.

Addressing “time poverty”

The sense of having no time is so widespread, it’s being studied. Busyness—a direct driver of burn out—is more than an annoying truth of modern life and, in fact, has emerged as a significant health concern, according to a report, The Cult of Busy, by Johns Hopkins Health Review.

Researchers found that “people believed they would have more time in the future to pursue things that matter—like vacations, hobbies, or learning something new. Their research shows, however, that this magic time never materializes because humans continue to fill their days with other obligations once existing ones are complete.”

“If you look at the ingredients of a satisfying life, what our data show is that people are short changing themselves in the areas that may be most important,” the article continued. “The lesson is that you have to be intentional in carving out the time you want for the things that you want.”

Melissa Goff is senior manager at Liveops.