How Simply Allowing Time To ‘Wind-Down’ Can Be So Effective For People At Risk Of Burning Out
It’s horrible feeling overwhelmed and burnt out – you know working endlessly isn’t sustainable but you feel stuck on the hamster wheel.
I had a coaching call with a new client last week who is feeling like this.
He runs a business, he’s having building work done on his home and he’s training for a marathon. A lot to be juggling by anyone’s standards. But crazy as the workload is – he’s used to it.
What he’s struggling with most at the moment is switching off, relaxing and allowing himself time when he isn’t always on the go.
To help him see the issue with what he’s currently doing we talked about how a laptop responds to being overworked.
When we have a million tabs open and programmes all running at the same time the laptop will begin to overheat and often the fan will kick in.
But when we close the laptop, that heat doesn’t immediately disappear – it takes time to cool down.
He’s operating at full capacity all day and expecting to go to bed, immediately fall asleep and have a restful night’s sleep.
With no time time to wind-down everything is still running in the background.
It’s little wonder he’s not getting a good night’s sleep. But it’s also affecting his health, his relationships, his performance at work and he’s starting to feel burnt out.
So what can he do about it?
From that call we agreed two things he WILL DO:
- Sleep with his phone out his bedroom which will help give him breathing space from work and endless emails and texts.
- 45 minutes before bed he’ll set a reminder to begin winding down and as part of that will put his phone away.
These are two steps in the right direction towards slowing down and breaking that habit of always being go go go!
If you’re starting to feel burnt out too, what would be the small one or two changes you could make that will help you?