Updated: July 16th, 2019
As entrepreneurs, it’s impossible to avoid burnout. Everyone on your team has a burnout cycle, including yourself.
And here’s the thing – you either outrun your burnout, or the burnout runs you – and you can crash your company in the process.
No entrepreneur in the world is immune to burnout. In fact, no human is immune to burnout. Nobody.
Every self-help guru, every billionaire entrepreneur, every meditation guru… we ALL burn out.
So, what can we do to recover from it?
Here’s the short answer: Vision and Visualization.
The best way to break through burnouts is to build a vision (any vision) on how your future could be and visualize it frequently.
One of the biggest reasons why entrepreneurs burnout is because they lack vision.
That’s when we feel stuck. And when we feel stuck, we feel an amplified weight of the daily responsibilities of life.
Now, here’s the long answer:
Awareness, Evaluation, Improvement, Discipline
This is the right way and the right sequence to do it if you’re willing to play the long game, which you should be.
Step 1: Awareness.
Let’s just acknowledge that we all have burnouts and that it’s okay to have burnouts. So forgive yourself and the others on your team for having burnouts. It’s important that you and your team is willing to accept and embrace this part of the human condition. The sooner you embrace it, the sooner you can get through it!
Step 2: Evaluation.
Start with monitoring how you feel every day and pinpoint the moments when you feel burnt out.
No one said it’s going to be easy. You will need the self-discipline to get yourself out of burnout.
My favorite mobile app which makes it simple to keep track of emotions is Daylio. https://daylio.webflow.io/
If you are really serious about evaluating burnouts, you should do a clustered evaluation.
Here is a diagram that shows my personal evaluation clusters :
These are the clusters that work the best for me. When I start to feel burnout coming on, I use the above clusters to see which ones are causing the burnout. This is very vital for setting yourself up for the next step.
Step 3: Improvement.
This is where you use the short form answer I’ve given above – Vision and Visualization.
By far, the best way to get out of burnouts is to build a vision on how your future could be and visualize it frequently.
There are so many other things that you could do to improve your burnout cycle, but this is by far the most efficient one… and it’s FREE!
Entrepreneur published a great article on how to get clarity on your vision:
“The simple truth is that in order to move from meager growth to exponential growth, you’ve got to think big. Allow yourself to envision a time in the not-so-distant future — say three years — where your company and your life are flowing and thriving in exactly the way you want.” – Entrepreneur
Step 4: Discipline.
This is the hardest step, but it is your direct path toward freedom.
I strongly believe that fighting burnout is a perpetual one and it’s all about creating the discipline to prevent previous burnouts and being ready for new ones.
It’s important to understand the why of all of your burnouts, so you can create a database of burnout cycles that will help prevent future ones from happening so you don’t revert back to your detrimental habits.
Different people deal with burnouts in different ways. The smallest things like talking to a loved one, catching up with an old friend or even playing with your pets can help. It’s all about finding what works for YOU.
Be selfish and find out the best process to help yourself.
The person who cares the most about you always has to be you.
Remember, the goal is not to eliminate burnouts. That’s a fool’s errand as burnouts cannot be fully eliminated.
The goal is to reduce their occurrence and have the right framework to get out of it as quickly as possible.
