How To Deal With Burnout

Burnout is when you're not excited to do your favorite things.

It is when you're mind is in too many places at once.

Too many goals, not enough time and energy.

The thought of doing anything really is too much.

I've been there and I'm confident you've been there too.

Initially I wanted this newsletter to go deep and present something I call the "Burnout Matrix". But I'm still not great at holding attention and you'd get bored. So let's just quickly get to what are the reasons for burnout and how to avoid it.

There are bunch of reasons. Too many actually. Ranging from external to existential.

Here's an uncategorized list of examples:

Keep in mind that only experiencing 1 of these might not cause a burnout. It usually takes a few of them to do that.

Each one of us can handle a different number of these. It all depends on resilience of the individual.

Even though you could try to solve all of the reasons individually (and you probably eventually should), it will take some time.

The first step is going to be realizing that burnout is real. But you probably wouldn't be reading this if you thought otherwise.

During the last few years I discovered there are certain "rules" that have the biggest impact on keeping burnout at bay. At least for me.

I found that it is very important to work on things you enjoy long-term.

If you keep working on something you don't care about, you might not experience burnout, but you will for sure be miserable.

It's okay to work for "lower pay" if you're new to a field (or a business). But only short-term.

With time you want to either:

Look for leverage and increase the value you're providing to your clients, customers or company.

This is will eventually lead to making more.

(Arguably the most important one)

Flow is a state of mind where worries disappear, time becomes irrelevant and enjoyment is maximized.

If you know, you know. If you don't, I'd recommend a book called "Flow" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.

Figure out what activities allow you to access the flow state and try to reverse engineer them. Find the best way to get into it.

Don't worry. I won't leave you hanging.

Flow is usually accessed when your skill is roughly the same as the difficulty of the task at hand. But not too difficult to cause anxiety and stress. And obviously not so easy that it makes you bored.

No amount of life hacks will fix the damage bad sleep does to you. Rest is simply important.

You don't go to the gym 24/7 and expect to see great results. You go hit your planned weights, then rest and recover.

Treat your work like working out. Set an amount of hours, work without distraction, and then stop. Go do whatever you want to do to recharge (I recommend walking and working out).

I'm gonna be honest. I wasn't really sure if I should include this but f*ck it.

Let's quickly run through things you can do when you actually get burned out.

There's a bunch more but you can find that on the internet. Remember, it's okay to burnout and take time off. No matter what the sigma bros on Twitter say.

Thank you for reading.

-Joni

BTW
If you need clarity on your freelancing journey or you are simply looking for someone to hold you hand, I do 1-on-1 coaching.

Just reply to this email or message me on X/Twitter.