Thoughtful Thursday // Lessons From Burnout

"Have you ever experienced a season of burnout? What did you learn?"

I think this is a very interesting question but also rather vague. Because I've certainly felt overwhelmed and stressed, but is that burnout? Is there just one definition or does burnout look different for different people? That's why this is a discussion!

I looked up a definition of burnout and found this:
Burnout is a state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion caused by excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands.

Based on this definition, I'm not sure I've ever actually reached burnout, but I can see that I've gotten close. I can think of two examples in particular.

Social Media "Burnout"
In The-Year-That-Changed-Everything (a.k.a 2020), I got lost in social media. In my quest to find answers and stay informed, I got overwhelmed. Even the "good" stuff was too much and at the end of the year, I unfollowed or muted a ton of accounts and deleted the app off of my phone for the month of January. That was the first time I ever took a month off and it's become the best way to start each year.

I thought I had a good enough handle on social media to turn on notifications and be on a few times a day and that did NOT turn out well. I learned several things:

• I need to severely limit my time on Instagram. Most days I go on once, usually in the morning, to post and interact. I also take Saturdays and Sundays off and I don't allow notifications.
• Sometimes ignorance is bliss. Knowing things but being unable to do anything about it, at least for me, causes stress. In a lot of cases, knowledge is not power but a burden. So I needed to get out of the news spaces.
• Take a break and get away whenever you need. Yes, I'm trying to run a business (or two) and I want to build an engaged tribe of followers, but I can't serve people well if I'm overwhelmed.

Scheduling "Burnout"
Last year, in the fall, I had the busiest two months of my life. I seriously can't remember a time when I was so busy. We were starting our family business and doing all sorts of craft shows and farmers markets and I was trying to set up the website... it was a LOT. Life was consumed with this one thing and I vividly remember getting a text from a girl I used to mentor saying she wanted to hang out and I had to tell her, "I'd love that! But it will have to be in November."

Let me tell you, I HATED sending that text. I hated that I had no margin and couldn't fit another thing into my life. (Full transparency here - my capacity is much lower than many others and my need for margin is large in order to be the best version of myself.) I remember thinking, "I cannot and will not let this be my life. This is a season but it can only be a season." Because if I don't have room for people and I don't have room for life to happen, then something is wrong with my life and my priorities.

The biggest lesson I learned was that I don't like running from thing to thing. I don't like a life with each day packed to the gills and never feeling like I have enough time to do the things that I need to do. I need room to breathe, I need room for people, and I need room for life to happen. You never know when you'll need to drop everything for a day or a week to deal with [fill in the blank]. I want a life that won't completely fall apart if I have to go down to bare minimum for a time.



I think burnout might look different for each of us based on our capacities and I wonder how many of us life in a low level of burnout all the time. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and any lessons you've learned from seasons of burnout. It's sad that we experience them but if we can use them to help others learn, then at least there is good from the bad.