Burnout: Symptoms, Causes and Prevention

Burnout is a nightmarish reality for most entrepreneurs. Some call it a creativity block, others say it feels to them like standing on the edge of a cliff.

The reality though, is that burnout is real.

A lot of entrepreneurs go through it, without knowing that they’re suffering from it and as a result, they’d not know how to get rid of it and get back to being productive.

Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and creative exhaustion.

While in this state, you feel drained, overwhelmed, and constantly unable to meet up with your expectations or the expectations of others.

It can be triggered by different factors such as;

• Stress from heavy workload,
• Your personality traits, OR
• Your daily habits.

It is easy to recognise and combat burnout in its early stage when you experience these emotional symptoms:

• Mental exhaustion,
• A negative feeling towards work,
• Loss of motivation,
• Self-doubt in your accomplishments,
• Feeling like a failure, etc.

Oh, you can experience physical symptoms too, although burnouts may not always be the cause.

You might experience symptoms like

• Constant fatigue,
• Frequent headaches and body pains,
• Loss of appetite,
• Undesired change in sleep patterns, Frequent illnesses, etc.

There are more symptoms of burnout that are likely to be behavioral and affect your social life.

Symptoms like

• Refusing to take on responsibility,
• Easily angered or irritated by the presence of other people,
• Taking out your frustrations on these people,
• Procrastinating tasks at hand, etc.

When you ignore these signs, you might begin to experience symptoms of a full-blown burnout which include

• Low rate of Productivity
• Lack of Energy or enthusiasm
• Feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and resentment
• Cases of depression have been said to sometimes sprout up from burnout too

Burnouts happen slowly.

It doesn’t happen overnight or overtake you with full force at once, so it’s quite easy to fall into a state of burnout without being aware of it.

Now, whether you think you’re in the early stages of burnout or it has fully blown upon you; you don’t have to panic because burnouts are reversible.

It can take any amount of time from one day, one week, a few months, or even a year for you to heal from burnout.

It all depends on how much effect it has on you.

You might need to know some of the habits you have that set you up for burnout so that you can work towards changing them.

They include:

• Putting too much pressure on yourself
• Having too high expectations
• Being overly ambitious or over-committed to your work, etc

With habits like these, when you start experiencing burnout, you’d constantly have the urge to do more work and before you know it, BOOM! You’re feeling overwhelmed and guess what’s next?

That’s right. A burnnnnoutttt

So, to avoid this, know the habits you have that are attracting burnouts to you

Also, there are tiny differences between stress and burnout….

• Burnout is caused by excessive and prolonged stress, while stress is temporary fatigue and is easier to recover from.
• You’re always aware when you’re stressed, but you might not be aware when burnout happens.
• When you’re stressed, you only lose energy but when you’re experiencing burnout, you lose hope, motivation, ideas, and energy altogether
• Stress is unavoidable no doubt, but burning out is preventable.

So, How can you recover from burnout or better still, prevent it?

1. Reduce Your Number Of Commitments.

Henceforth, commit to not over-engaging yourself with so many tasks to carry out.

Learn to say no to what isn’t a priority when it comes to moving your business forward.

As a young entrepreneur, you may feel that nobody can carry out your tasks better than you can. Hence, you end up overworking yourself and this can lead to experiencing burnout.

Learn to outsource tasks that can be done on your behalf and focus on what can only be done by you, to reduce the amount of work you have to do.

2. Be a Little Bit More Patient With The Process.

Achieving your goals to the fullest might require that you move a bit slower than you intend to.

I understand that you have goals and deadlines to meet and there are people that you can’t afford to let down, but you need to stop rushing the process.

Always wanting to move at breathtaking speed would cripple your enthusiasm in the time to come.

You can’t rush the process – sometimes it may seem fast and sometimes it may seem slow, but in the end, you have to embrace every part of it.

3. Have Some More You Time.

Don’t be so much of a workaholic to the point where you don’t have time cut out for the things and the people that you love.

If you tend to find yourself always caught up in work unconsciously, then you can intentionally create time for yourself, your hobbies, and spending time with family and friends.

If there’s no breathing space in your daily routines, then you have to start working on creating the right for yourself that’ll ensure that you remain productive and still have the time to have some fun.

Learn to take more breaks when you work daily. You should also consider having a day off in the week where you get to do anything you want.

Creating time for yourself like this relieves stress, lightens your mood, and improves your overall health. You’d also begin to approach work with more enthusiasm.

Automatically, your level of productivity would start to pick up too.

4. Stop Setting Work Traps For Yourself.

When it comes to working, always prioritise your health. A good way to preserve your health status is by breaking your goals into smaller tasks, to avoid overworking yourself when the deadline for a certain task is near.

Stop putting yourself in a position where you have to constantly work extra hours because you don’t want to let down your boss, your team, your colleagues, or your audience.

Constantly working extra hours can eventually lead to burnout if you’re not careful.

So, How Do You Know When You’ve Recovered From A Burnout?

When you recover from burnout, you’d start to feel the opposite of how you felt before.

You’d start to feel more enthusiasm towards work, your health will improve (physically and mentally), you’ll be more emotionally stable, energetic and start to feel accomplished to an extent.

However, when you finally recover from burnout, you want to make sure that you don’t let it turn into a constant occurrence because this can slow down your journey as an entrepreneur.

Exercise regularly, drink lots of water, eat a balanced diet, practice good sleep habits and make self-care a part of your daily routine.

If you have a friend, family member, or a colleague who appears to be experiencing burnout at the moment, you can offer to listen to their difficulties and be supportive in any way possible, as a means of lightening their emotional burden; since you can’t take the stress away completely.

Have you ever had burnout without knowing what it was before now? Give your answer in the comment section below!

Share this article too, so that with our help, other people can get to know and fight burnout too!