How to Work Hard and Not to Burn Out

You want to be great. The vast majority of ordinary business people, however, live with never-ending ordinary complaints about how hard they work but how little they gain.

What they have in common is this: they get their hands on powerful information like that in this article and waste their time and energy in the non-creative activity of finding all the ways it can’t and doesn’t apply to them. Fortunately, my clients, and I believe you too, are people who think in very opposite ways. They get out of the box they find themselves in and implement the tried-and-true winning strategies, and therefore win in their lives and business.

The price of negligence is often very high. Pay attention to the next five steps that show you how to work hard without burning out.

1) Take More Responsibility

As a successful and high-achieving person, without a doubt, you already have plenty of high level responsibilities. Most probably you also get frustrated when something needs to be done or could be improved and no one wants to take that task, so you take it. Or you feel that it’s easier and quicker to do something yourself, instead of instructing someone else do the work.

So why am I suggesting you to take MORE responsibility?

If you consider yourself a hard-working and ambitious person, you easily forget to take responsibility for your own personal boundaries. You forget to take the responsibility of considering whether you are the right person to do the work. As a result of this, your best is diluted by numerous tasks that are not aligned with your values or strengths, meaning your own strategic work is less likely to get done on the level you could do it. Too often, many of these weakly considered responsibilities are such that you have limited control over them, leaking out your personal power.

Take more responsibility about things in your business and life that you CAN control. As Marcus Aurelius said: “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”

Implement positive focus on things you have control over, and you will feel more powerful.

2) Give Others Their Freedom

Other people can take care of themselves. It is THEIR responsibility as adult people… and also their right. It’s not your duty or obligation to worry how someone might react to your choices or thoughts or feelings.

I am not saying not to care about others, nor am I encouraging you to be rude or unprofessional in any way. What I am saying is that no matter how much you care, the other person always chooses his or her ways to think and feel inr their own experiences and situations. You can’t do it for another. It’s the other person’s right and responsibility. Your right and duty is to take full responsibility for your own thinking and reactions to your own experience in a situation.

By giving others their freedom to be responsible for themselves, you’ll start noticing that people around you begin to open up because you are not trying to control them like you used to. Additionally, when you free yourself from your imaginary responsibility of thinking other people’s possible thoughts, emotions and reactions, you’ll shed a lot of inner heaviness and free tons of mental and emotional space. Giving you more resources to work and not to burn out.

3) Don’t Act Like a Super-Human

Many high achievers attempt to work like  machines or something other than 100% human origin.

If you underestimate the impact of what you do, you are prone to accept more responsibilities and commitments you can handle. This furthermore supports your conclusion that you must work even harder to get something done, because the unproductive business blinds you from seeing the truth of the situation.

Saying “yes” to everything is a sign of a poor understanding of your own priorities, a lack of a sophisticated time estimation  to do everything you have promised to do, and shows an inadequate understanding of the importance of personal boundaries for the quality of your life. Because you are reading this, for sure you are in a leadership position. You have a great opportunity to set an example of not over-committing before understanding whether you can realistically do what you said you’d do, and make decisions based on that.

4) Sweat and Rest

Your body is designed for physical work. If your body doesn’t get the physical work it requires, it increases the level of stress and anxiety you are experiencing.

Think of animals in the cages of old zoos. They don’t get to move around like they were born to. You have seen what it does to these animals. You have the freedom to choose to go for a brisk walk or a run, or do almost any kind of sports of your own choice.

If you can’t use 2% of your daily time to maintain the health of the only body you have for this life, do you have a life?

And much as your body needs physical work, it also requires rest; different kinds of “rest’ than sitting in in front of the computer, working and in meetings for hours on end. Rest means sleeping in a proper bed (not snoozing on a couch).

While rest is critical for the body, the importance of quality sleep for the brain is becoming even more obvious the better we understand sleep.

For a while — during the short history of the working environment getting worse — it was thought that sleep was a kind of inactivity, and was dismissed as a waste of time. The truth about sleep, however, is quite the opposite: our brain is highly active during sleep, running functions that cannot be performed in the awake state. These functions are directly related to our abilities to think strategically and logically, make decisions, memorize, and our ability to feel and control emotions.

While research continues to reveal more about the vital role sleep plays in our every waking moment, it also has a key role in our physical well-being. Chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to health issues from weight gain to diabetes, to significantly increased risk of heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease.

To sum up… your physical, mental and emotional well-being is a foundational part of your success. Add sweat and rest, and you will feel happier and stronger – guaranteed!

5) What’s the Point?

If what you do for your profession is not aligned with your own values, your talents and ambitions, and you operate from an unauthentic identity, you are wasting your precious time and energy.

When the genuine core characteristics that make you feel good about you can be expressed in all areas of your life, including your relationships and business, you are at your best and will create great results.

Sometimes we end-up doing things don’t make sense anymore. In such a situation, pause and ask yourself what is the point and purpose of what you are doing and how does it contribute to your desired goals. If you can’t answer your question in a satisfying manner, track backwards to see where you strayed from your purpose. A small course correction might be all what is required.  On the other hand, sometimes you and the situation might have changed, and therefore the project has lost its value and it’s better to terminate it than to invest more in it.

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