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Most people have experienced feeling stressed at work. For entrepreneurs, this stress is often particularly intense and relentless. Life as an entrepreneur brings with it an immense load of responsibility. You’re in charge of making all the decisions, and the future success of your company rests solely in your hands. There’s no doubt that life as an entrepreneur can bring huge amounts of stress. For many entrepreneurs, experiencing a degree of stress is expected. However, understanding the difference between a manageable level of stress and the risk of burning out is crucial.
What is Entrepreneurial Burnout?
Enrtrepreneurial burnout is a term you may have heard of, but making yourself familiar with its warning signs is a must to avoid becoming a victim. Burnout is a term that the World Health Organization directly relates to occupational stress and is specifically work-related.
Entrepreneurial burnout occurs after being under prolonged, constant stress. If your working life is causing you stress, and you don’t take steps to actively manage it, this can cause you to experience chronic stress. Ignoring the signs of chronic stress can often lead to burnout.
Chronic stress can cause a major issue in your daily life but is usually confined to dealing with aspects of work. For example, during the working day, you may feel stressed by the amount of tasks you have to work on. However, once these tasks are completed, your stress levels will likely start to drop.
Entrepreneurial burnout can cause a wide range of different symptoms, these include:
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Having trouble sleeping
- Procrastinating over tasks and struggling to focus on one thing at a time
- Feeling constantly exhausted
- Becoming detached from your loved ones
- Feeling anxious about your business and the tasks you need to complete
- Becoming short-tempered and easily frustrated
How to Avoid Entrepreneurial Burnout
There are many different symptoms of entrepreneurial burnout. Lots of these can creep up on you gradually, making them pretty tough to spot at first. So, taking steps to avoid entrepreneurial burnout in the first place is the best thing to do. Here are some of the ways you can prevent the stress of being an entrepreneur developing into burnout:
Take Regular Breaks
Taking regular breaks and setting clear boundaries on the starting and finishing time of your working day can seem counter-intuitive when your workload is huge. However, you’re far more likely to get lots more done if you take breaks at work and work consistent hours with a set start and finishing time.
When you schedule breaks into your working day, you give yourself the opportunity to relax, recharge, and return to the office feeling refreshed and ready to work, which is guaranteed to make you more productive.
Maintain Outside Interests
Being an entrepreneur is often all-consuming. When you have a business idea that you’re desperate to get off the ground fast, it’s natural that it dominates your thoughts. However, abandoning all of your outside interests to focus solely on your startup can be a big mistake.
Ensuring you continue to maintain a social life and hobbies outside of your business interests is vital to keep a balance in your life. When everything you do revolves around work, it can be impossible to escape feeling stressed and overwhelmed.
Making time to enjoy active hobbies, such as hitting the gym is vital to maintain your overall health. Choosing relaxing hobbies that help you to switch off and unwind, such as playing an online pool game, can also be help you control your stress levels.
Make a Plan for Your Day
Procrastination and low productivity levels are key symptoms of burnout. So, if you notice that you’re spending many hours at work, without getting much done, it’s a good idea to take action. Planning ahead and setting out a structure for your day can be a really useful way to ease your stress levels.
When you know exactly what you’re going to be doing when you arrive at work in the morning, it means you don’t need to waste valuable time feeling overwhelmed and unsure what to tackle first. Setting a realistic to-do list for the day, and scheduling in time for breaks in between, can help you to be more productive, while preventing your stress levels escalating.
Experiencing burnout as an entrepreneur can take a major toll on your personal and professional life. However, being alert to the signs of burnout and actively taking steps to manage your stress will help you avoid the devastating impact of burnout.