11 Simple Ways To Avoid Burnout
Mar/100
Are you exhausted, annoyed, and ready to throw in the towel on something that once made you leap out of bed with joy every morning? I know that feeling well. It’s one I suffered from often in the past and still encounter occasionally. It typically signals an impending burnout.
Not the type of burnout you get from dropping your 93 Honda Civic into 3rd gear at 6,000 rpm’s. The type of burnout that makes you avoid work, question the value of your existence, and eat large quantities of Oreo cookies while watching bad television.
How can you avoid burnout and stay in a productive rhythm? Here are 11 ways you can start safeguarding your life against burnout:
1. Schedule regular social activities
Remember when you used to spend time with people you were neither working with nor sleeping with? You watched movies, ate meals, played games, and went on trips. You were active and you had fun!
You can regain some of that emotional fulfillment by contacting some of your old pals and scheduling regular activities. It doesn’t need to be anything crazy. Sure, rafting in Alaska would be fun but a monthly brunch with people you don’t see every day will do just fine. The point of this exercise is to expand your social horizon and crush the feeling that you’re stuck doing the same thing every day.
2. Follow a fitness plan
Why we give up exercise in order to sit in a chair and work for an extra hour at a lower level of intensity is beyond me. I used to do it myself. I dealt with stress by eating and worked instead of working out. The result? Not only did I burn out but I got really chubby, too!
If you want to avoid burnout, resurrect that New Year’s Resolution and figure out what it takes to get you exercising on a regular basis. Apart from all the physical benefits of exercise, you’ll enjoy the mental satisfaction of knowing that you’re taking good care of yourself again.
3. Pursue a hobby
Pick a hobby that has little or nothing to do with what you spend most of your week doing and pursue it with passion! A hobby that uses an entirely different skill set can provide your heart and mind with a satisfying break from the weekly grind and set you on a good path for increased productivity.
You probably won’t even need to worry about picking a new hobby out. The one you abandoned when you sold your soul to the work week is waiting for you to return. Shine up those golf clubs, get out the fishing gear, or buy a new pair of boxing gloves and get moving!
4. Volunteer
Nothing brightens the soul or warms the senses like giving to another for no reason other than to give. If you’re feeling run down by life, I implore you to seek out somebody less fortunate than yourself and work to help them.
Reach out to your local soup kitchen or professional organization and ask for referrals to local places that need your help. They’ll be glad to get you started and you’ll soon forget about badly you thought you had it!
5. Write a manifesto
Have you forgotten what you want out of life? It’s easy to lose track of time and even easier to forget about what makes us glad to be alive. What can you do to bring back that focus? Take a day or perhaps an entire weekend and write a manifesto, a declaration of purpose, for yourself.
The process will give you focus as you put your intentions into writing. You’ll also discover that stepping back and looking at your life as a whole has a way of putting the stresses of the moment into perspective.
6. Ask for help
This is a tough one, especially if you’re a resourceful I’ll-do-it-on-my-own type of person like me. But it’s worth the time it takes to ask for help making sense of something that’s been dragging you down. It’s worth the embarrassment of admitting that you can’t do something on your own to really get help.
Whether your struggle is with a particular part of a project or with something general, like time management, asking for help will get you to a solution faster than you could ever hope to alone. If you want to avoid burnout, you’ll need to swallow your pride on occasion and reach out for help.
7. Make others laugh
Humor keeps us sane even through the most stressful of circumstances. Laughter is fun and a great way to reduce stress. Even better, finding ways to make others laugh doesn’t just reduce stress for all involved. It allows you to begin viewing yourself as a source of fun and laughter in your social or work group.
You’ll find it hard to be glum and entertain unhappy thoughts when the people around you are excited and happy to be near you. There’s no need to be a genius comedian. Start out by learning a few good jokes and add as you go!
8. Make an escape list
An “escape list” is a list of everything you’d need to do in order to escape a situation that’s driving you nuts. In a work context, your escape list might include things like turning in a final presentation or asking for a raise. It might also include smaller things like submitting your resume to a new opportunity or drafting a letter of resignation!
You might never follow up on the items in your escape list but the process of writing one will help clarify in your mind that you are not truly stuck. You have options. Perhaps not the best or most fun options, but you are certainly not stuck.
9. Embrace a morning ritual
Are you starting your day on the wrong foot by waking up late, rushing about, and skipping out the door at the last minute? Try slowing down your morning instead. Set your alarm a few minutes earlier than usual and spend the “extra” time sitting in a sunny spot in your living room with a cup of coffee and a good book.
As you slowly add more to your morning, you’ll develop a fierce attachment to “your” time. Why? Because you’ve chosen to start your day with a focus on taking care of yourself instead of busting out of bed like a bomb squad.
10. Stop making excuses
Is everything that’s dragging you down right now because of something your boss, partner, friend, or client did? Getting caught up in how much everybody else is screwing up will put you on the fast track to gray hair and a stupendous burnout.
The fix? Accept responsibility for your part of the problems that plague you. Then start digging your way out. Once you’ve given up on blaming others you’ll start seeing more of the good in your life and the sordid claws of desperate solitary thought will no longer draw you down.
11. Be accountable
Accountability is something we’re all familiar with but rarely put into useful practice. You can use accountability to drive your personal development and avoid burnout. The trick is find somebody you can trust to give the down and dirty on what you’re trying to do and how you’re moving forward.
For best results, have your accountability partner NOT be a relative or somebody you’re dating. They typically won’t have the capacity for objective review of your progress. People who love you will often make excuses for you and you want to avoid excuses at all costs.
“Accountability breeds response-ability.” ~Stephen R Covey
Avoiding burnout is a matter of constant vigilance and regular maintenance. What are you doing to avoid burnout? Do you have any tips to add? I’m glad for your thoughts!
Seth Simonds is an editor here at Lifehack.org. Have a lifehacking tip and want to be featured in a future article? Follow @lifehackorg on Twitter, say hello, and we’ll go from there.
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
9 Ways To Handle Interruptions Like A Pro
Mar/100
Are you easily distracted? I bet you are. If I told you this link led to a list of funny pics of deranged kittens, you’d likely click through and quickly forget our conversation.
That won’t happen this time!
Interruptions do the most damage when we allow their appearance to affect us long after we’ve returned to our initial task. This can happen for a few reasons:
- We treat any break in our work flow like it’s a fracture in the final product.
- We resent our seeming inability to avoid distractions and end up treating their appearance as a personal weakness.
- We view distractions as a change in our journey instead of just another bend in the river.
What can you do about it?
1. Embrace Your Fear
You are not, contrary to what your mother may have told you, different from the rest of us. We all get distracted. We all get annoyed when a productive moment is interrupted. We all get fed up when scheduled events don’t go as planned. If you allow trepidation to sneak into your mind at the prospect of distractions, you’ll cripple your productive abilities.
Fearing distractions also fosters resentment against the ones doing the distracting. Recognize that you will be distracted sometimes and accept those distractions as opportunities to improve. You can’t stop distractions but you can keep them from taking over your day. This is your time!
2. Plan For Interruptions
Effective planning is a cornerstone of the productive lifestyle. Planning for interruptions might seem impossible. Does it to you? Here’s an easy visualization that will help you get started with your planning:
Start each work session by drawing a few squares on a small piece of scrap paper. These represent distractions that will almost certainly pop up. As you encounter and conquer distractions, put a check mark in the appropriate box. After awhile you’ll be able to do this in your head. Sounds easy, right? An expected distraction has no power over your day. You still have control.
3. Delegate And Postpone
Once you’ve identified an interruption as something that needs attention and not just a nascent longing to goof off, try to postpone your involvement. The brute way of doing this is to shout out, “I don’t have time right now. Don’t bother me!”
The classy option is a bit more involved. Take a moment to understand what the distraction involves. Is somebody dying? Is there a deadline you’ve forgotten? Is there a networking opportunity here? If it turns out that you’re not facing an emergency, postpone your involvement and delegate as much of the detail work to somebody with available resources.
4. Attack Procrastination
It’s safe to say that most of us welcome far more distractions than we should. Why? Because we’re chronic procrastinators and distractions offer us a way to slack off without being overtly lazy. The simplest way to attack procrastination is to synthesize urgency with truncated deadlines. If it normally takes you 3 hours to do something, hit the bathroom, grab a glass of water, set a timer for 90 minutes, and tear into your work! This won’t work for every project but it’s a lot of fun when it does!
5. Split Your Day Into Targets
Distractions are most dangerous to the person working without short-term goals. You can keep yourself out of the danger zone by setting targets throughout your day. You’ll probably only need to do this for tasks you really don’t want to complete. For example:
- Send uncomfortable email by 9am
- Complete meeting agenda by 12pm
- Say pleasant thing to annoying boss by 2pm
The power in this process is that you now have time-sensitive targets to steer toward once you’ve escaped distractions. That 8:45am phone conversation that might have gone on for an hour? Nixed by the email deadline. Crops dying on Farmville at 11am? Overruled by the meeting agenda!
6. Limit Inputs
The more you limit channels people can use to distract you, the less likely it is that you’ll be distracted. It takes strength of character to ignore social media and your ever-friendly smartphone. It takes trust in the people who work for you to step away from the rush of business and crunch numbers in the back room. It’s hard to disconnect because we often feel a tinge of irrelevance when we step out of the rush.
Do it. Your results will be proof that it was worth the effort.
7. Batch Outputs
Responding to emails in batches and scheduling a block of time to make phone calls can seem like a dreary way to do business but it’s a highly effective way to keep distractions at arms length. Batching is even more effective in minimizing the collateral damage caused by Twitter and other social networks if you jump in without a set time frame.
To get started, make a list of the things you must do every day to maintain good communication in your business and throughout your social networks. Give each tool or action it’s own time slot and allow a bit of margin at the end. You won’t get the momentary social high of constant real-time interactions but the long-term benefits will make up for your loss.
8. Communicate Your Schedule To Others
When it comes to managing people-based distractions, communication is key. Need to finish a project? Let the people in your work group know that you’ll be off-limits until a certain time. Trying to finish a freelance project in a houseful of kids? Let them know that unless somebody is dying or the house is burning down, you’ll murder a kitten if they interrupt you.
Obviously, if you haven’t taken the time to create a realistic schedule for yourself, sharing that schedule won’t help as much.
9. Begin With The Main Point
When you encounter a distraction, get to the heart of it immediately. Your “get to the point” style may go over badly with some people who prefer to give back story before sharing their main point. Apologize for any possible rudeness and ask for the main point anyway.
Once you know the main point you can ask for supporting information and make a smart decision about what to do before getting back to work.
Getting back to work is what you were about to do, wasn’t it?
If you’ve found a particular tip or trick helpful in your quest to beat distractions, I hope you’ll take a moment to share it!
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. ~Thomas Edison
Seth Simonds is an editor here at Lifehack.org. Get even more tips by following Lifehack on Twitter or subscribing via RSS.
I’m an editor here at Stepcase Lifehack. I know the value of long walks, good books, joyful repartee, and a well-made martini. Say hello in the comments here, find me on my blog or hit me up for a follow on Twitter.
How To Make Relations Between The Husband And The Wife Better?
Mar/100
Psychologists say that in a life is given nothing by gift. And if to speak about personal relations they demand feed, and different relations require different feed. It is known that, anyhow, but all relations endure crisis sooner or later, and those efforts, which it is necessary to direct to overcome the next stage, also happen different. How to keep a good fellowship with the husband, there are cases when relations in families develop without any problems.
According to psychologists, there are certain universal methods, which will help to keep the passion relation throughout several years. It is much easier to women to keep passion, therefore, as well as possible these means approach for men. They help in all cases, and they should not be abused, because second half can suspect you in insincerity. And then, the sharpness of sensations can be gone if you apply them constantly.
Harmonious and a good relationship with the husband it is possible to keep only in the event that the man and the woman feel love and respect to each other. And if there are not such feelings, any even the universal methods, will not help to kindle passion. Let’s consider councils.
1. It is necessary to learn to tell each other compliments that it were not simply compliments, these warm words should be told absolutely sincerely and tenderly. After all, probably, is there something in your half what you admire? Or is it possible your like his (her) eyes, legs? If your heart is beaten faster when your spouse walks in a beautiful, amazing dress, so tell her about it. And the man always can be praised for courage, for his care, tenderness, for successes in work. Praise your beloved more, after all he has deserved these words, there are never superfluous compliments. And these pleasant words can make a miracle, your half will feel happy, will relax, and you wanted exactly this.
2. It is very pleasant to satisfy the request of the spouse. If your spouse asks you to pay attention, to listen to him or to put on some dress, which he asks, it is not necessary to refuse, be respectful to requests of the partner. And if he has satisfied your request, always praise him for it.
3. Try to surprise each other. You have lived together not one year and know everything about each other? Do your evenings pass similar? In this case you should make for your loving person a romantic supper with candles. If your spouse has come from work tired, prepare a fragrant and weakening bath for him, light candles, switch on his favorite music. Please your loving person with his favorite ice cream or tasty delicacy. If to buy a small gift, it can cheer up both of you, and not to be mistaken with a gift choice, it is necessary to take an interest in advance and being guided by his tastes to prepare a surprise for your partner.
Sometimes it is so easy to make your partner happy, you just need desire for it!
It is almost impossible to escape the cases when you face the how to get your ex back situation. The biggest problem here is that people think too strong about how to get your ex back, instead of putting this whole story in another way. It is not about how to get your ex back, really. This is about how to make it exciting again.
Social And Online Dating Sites
Mar/100
Online dating has been popular among the singles for more than thirteen years. Online sites proved to be reliable and work diligently to bring up the people together. The entire process of online dating has become very simple and a lot of stigmas that were attached with dating have been removed. However, nowadays there appeared a social work that is even more popular in comparison with the dating sites.
Social network is a special place that provides you with a possibility to hook up, find the people who think the same and make friends. You also have a possibility to discuss different topics with other people. Recently, the social network has been used for creating romantic relationships. So, probably you are wondering how possibly online dating has been replaced with a social network.
Even though all of the members of online dating site share a common agenda and as a result the dating process becomes transparent and fairly direct. Besides, there are so many services that are available for all of the users. However, in reality the situation is not like that. Members are only provided with a possibility to create an impressive profile and mention in it the general information. After that they have to wait for the responses that in many cases are not positive at all. As a result the dating process is not as satisfactory and standard as it is described.
The situation with the social networks is different because in that case people join it to communicate with some friends and just have some fun. This network helps to socialize and spend more quality time with other people. While we are socializing we exchange our thoughts and ideas and as a result find our soul mates. Socializing in the social network does not require extra efforts and communication is very enjoyable and natural.
If to compare the features of the profiles that are available on the dating sites and on social network, it has to be mentioned that dating sites contain a lot of incorrect information. The reason for that is that since they are looking for the match they want to seem perfect and as a result a lot of characteristics and circumstances are exaggerated. What is more, sometimes there are also fake profiles that are posted as a part of the marketing tactics.
Social networks in their turns are devoid of that because friendship is a chief interest of the members. That is why almost all of the profiles are accurate and genuine. What is more, dating has also become very important aspect of the social networking that is why you have an opportunity to check the profiles of all of the members.
All types of people from all over the world are getting into online dating. The market is full of propositions for men dating younger women, for dating women seeking men – all possible variations here. If you are interested the site with direct and explicit shortcut to the married women seeking men – please go here, but be advised that this can be for the audience that is fully matured and one needs to be over 18.
P.S. There is one thing which people (for some reason) often forget. They forget that we live in the world where info makes life easier.
Due to this if you are properly armed with the knowledge in your topic you can rest assured that you will always find the way out from any bad situation. So, please make sure to visit this blog on a regular basis or – the easiest way to take care of it – sign up to its RSS feed. Thus you will have your hand on the pulse of the freshest info updates here. Blogs can be helpful, you just need to know how to use them.
Surveys Online – Free Money
Mar/100
Where can the students find really free money? As you know, almost all students have some financial problems in their college or university studies. Many of them can have scholarships, federal and educational private loans in order to help them when they study. However, it is not unusual to find that almost all of them work in their free time when they also study in college. You will find that most of them have low money and struggle to make ends meet. As a rule, the free money can be a good benefit for all students . So, we want to help you if you are a student with a few easy tips where you can find the free money.
The surveys online are one of the methods where you can earn money easy and instantly. If you have a computer and an Internet connection or your hostel is an area with enough good connection for your work, then you can very simple use of this method. So, make sure that you can register for the paid surveys which present on the net.
You can find that some surveys online will pay in a form of free stuff and gifts which you maybe do not want. There is a formality which you will have to do before you can be in this process and get free cash. Some survey companies will sign up for research tasks which will be selected on the base of your profile. You will find that you can be eligible for surveys if you give your profile which each company look for. Every survey can take almost twenty or thirty minutes of your time. As soon as you finish the survey online, money will be sent into your own account. Many companies prefer to have some students as they fit the profile of groups for surveys online and also they are free. You will have a right for free cash for students through the surveys which run on the Internet.
There are a huge number of the best websites and survey companies which are on the net, but you must know that not all of them are legal. So, be more careful, you must better research the survey company that you register with and find how and when you get paid. Well, this process is very easy! You can register with more survey companies online. Some of these companies will send you the free samples of product which you can get and use it. Then you need complete an survey about this product. Their questionnaire will ask you about this product and also about your feelings after it. So, if you choose a good and right website, you won’t just get paid for your work, but also you will also receive the free samples of different products which are great.
Looking for a place where you can get some freebies? Then make sure to visit this freebies site.
And a final piece of advice – today the online technologies give you a really unique chance to choose exactly what you require for the best price on the market. Funny, but most of the people don’t use this opportunity. In real life it means that you should use all the tools of today to get the information that you need.
Search Google or other search engines. Visit social networks and have a look on the accounts that are relevant to your topic. Go to the niche forums and join the discussion. All this will help you to build up a true vision of this market. Thus, giving you a real chance to make a smart and nicely balanced decision.
And also sign up to the RSS feed on this blog, because we will do the best to keep updating this blog with new publications about free samples and how to get the best of them.