If you find yourself struggling even with simple tasks, getting easily irritated by your coworkers, and feeling like you can’t do anything right, you may be experiencing job burnout. Work-related stress caused by burnout can hinder your productivity. The lack of recognition, setting unrealistic expectations and not meeting them, and distractions caused by multitasking are some of the risk factors leading to job burnout.
The lack of recognition from your manager can make you feel like you’re not performing well enough. When you do not feel valued for what you do for the company, you might become dissatisfied with your work. This sometimes leads to becoming disengaged, thus, losing the will and drive you have set in your work.
However, there are instances when the lack of recognition can cause employees to set unrealistic expectations — perhaps with the goal of getting the attention of the bosses. If you happen to do this, you may find yourself setting impossible deadlines and producing low-quality outputs in hopes that your manager will finally recognize your efforts. Doing so makes you obsess about proving yourself by accomplishing more tasks without realizing that you’re doing it all wrong. Because you’re so desperate to become more productive, you end up multitasking more frequently.
Studies show that multitasking reduces one’s productivity by as much as 40%. You have to understand that your brain works more efficiently if it can focus on a single task for a longer period of time, rather than doing several things at once and switching between them.
Multitasking does not only reduce your productivity but also kills your creativity and might create stress and anxiety. As a result, you will experience the three main consequences of job burnout:
- Lack of motivation
- Lack of pleasure in your job
- Lack of belief in your ability to complete tasks
In this article, we will provide you with 10 productivity hacks to help you beat job burnout.
Declutter Your Email
Seeing a cluttered inbox can make you feel lazy, especially if it’s full of tasks you need to complete. This certainly won’t help if you already feel burnt out. Therefore, decluttering your email is an important first step to keeping your enthusiasm going.
According to Tim Soulo, CMO & Product Advisor at Ahrefs, the best way to declutter your email is to “create a filter for the word unsubscribe and make sure all emails that contain it will skip your inbox and go to some special folder.” This way, you can keep your email organized by separating important emails from promotional ones. As a result, not only can you focus on your work-related emails but also make sure you wouldn’t miss anything important.
Organize Your Schedule
Oftentimes, you feel exhausted because you don’t have an organized schedule. When you’re really busy, your schedule can easily get out of control. This can add more to your stress and have a negative effect on you and your work.
The best way to organize your schedule is to prepare it a day before. Make a to-do list of what you must accomplish the next day. You can either use a planner or an application on your phone. This way, you have plenty of time to plan what you need to do to reach your goals. To-do lists do not only improve your focus but also make you more productive in the long run.
Learn When to Say “No”
Saying no is perhaps the hardest thing to do in the workplace. More often than not, you feel obligated and pressured into accepting every challenge or favor offered to you. While it’s not always a bad thing, prioritizing your ongoing tasks should always come first before you decide to take another.
Although saying “no” is hard to master, acknowledging priorities is a good start. By learning to respectfully decline, you’re learning how to prioritize better. This way, you can maximize your time by doing your high-priority tasks first. Moreover, you will not be too loaded with work. When the level of priority of your tasks is crystal clear, you can easily organize them in an effective manner and put on hold the activities and obligations that do not support the ones at the top of your list.
Choose the Middle Way
Doing your best is a good thing, but being a perfectionist to an unhealthy degree can go wrong. It causes you to spend more time on a particular task than what is necessary. This could have an impact on your other tasks, keeping you from fulfilling your objectives.
Being a perfectionist is advantageous in ways like having stronger motivation to complete tasks and the willingness to work for longer hours. However, perfectionism is strongly and consistently related to numerous detrimental work and non-work outcomes, including a higher possibility of burnout, stress, workaholism, anxiety, and depression.
Choosing the middle way, it means that you’re taking the path of moderation. If you can find the right balance between an overly easy path and an overly hard path while not compromising the quality of your work, you will be less stressed and likely to avoid burnout.
Sleep 7-9 Hours Daily
Sacrificing sleep in order to work more can become a draining cycle. A lack of sleep can leave you feeling lethargic and less creative and make it more difficult for you to stay focused on important projects.
It’s significant to realize that there’s no substitute for a good night’s rest. Getting a good night’s sleep enhances productivity significantly. Those who sleep less have substantially lower productivity and performance rates compared to those who sleep well.
Creating a boundary between work and personal life can be challenging in the beginning, but it’s an important step towards both a better sleep at night and a more consistent job performance.
Keep the End in Mind
Sometimes it’s easier to focus on the light at the end of the tunnel to get through your uninteresting tasks. Research suggests that certain emotions can help one focus better on the task at hand and boost the likelihood of completion.
According to Steven Handel, founder of The Emotion Machine, “One of the most popular and successful strategies used by individuals to help them overcome a difficult task is thinking about the positive consequences of getting to the end.” Keeping the end in mind means beginning your day with a clear vision of your desired direction and destination, and then continuing by flexing your proactive muscles to make it happen.
To help you ease your mind, you can think of how good it feels when you finish tasks. Having a positive attitude helps in keeping your enthusiasm going. Moreover, rewarding yourself after finishing a task from time to time can also be a nice way to alleviate work-related stress.
Set Goals Each Day
In order to successfully keep the end in mind, you have to set your goals each day. Setting goals is not a one-time task; it is a skill that many individuals want to master. If you want to be good at it, make it a habit to set daily goals. Every day, write down your goals, then examine and update them regularly. They are your objectives. And because they are important to you and you want to achieve them, you should give them the attention they need.
Frequently, job burnout is a result of multitasking. To help you refrain from juggling several tasks at once, you must train your mind to concentrate on single tasks. Thus, setting goals each day and knowing your desired outcome can ultimately be a game-changer for you and your job performance.
Choose the Right Digital Tools
There are plenty of options for productivity applications you can find online. But the first thing you’re going to want is a good project or task management platform. Task management tools come in many forms, like basic spreadsheets or online project management applications. At every level, task management tools help people:
- Work efficiently
- Stay organized
- Meet deadlines
Generally, task management tools address a need to organize, prioritize and visualize work. This greatly contributes to employees becoming more efficient and productive in the workplace. With the right digital tools, you can stay highly organized and can ensure the quality of your projects. Hence, keeping you from unnecessary work-related stress.
The Pomodoro Technique
Surprisingly, when it comes to the most effective productivity hacks, the Pomodoro Technique is rarely mentioned. This “hack” is completely free, does not involve the installation of any apps, and may be used on a daily basis.
The Pomodoro Technique advocates for breaking up work into several segments followed by small break intervals. This keeps your creativity ignited, and you don’t feel bored or exhausted as much.
Moreover, the Pomodoro Technique is a method of organizing your schedule in order to maximize your level of productivity. Its practice involves segmenting your day into strictly timed periods of focused work, with scheduled breaks for recharging. To get started, you’ll only need a pen, paper, and a timer. Then, you can simply follow the breakdown below:
- Choose a single task you will focus on and write it down.
- Set the timer to 25 minutes.
- Work on the task until the timer rings and put a checkmark on your paper.
- Take a 5-minute break.
- Work for another 25 minutes.
- After 3-4 work periods of 25 minutes, take a longer 20-30 minute break.
The Pomodoro Technique is structured around short breaks that are designed to keep you mentally fit and focused throughout the workday. Use this time to take a break from your seat, grab another cup of coffee, listen to music, or do whatever else you want to do to divert your attention away from your work. By doing so, you are rewarding your focus, alleviating your stress, and giving yourself a sense of achievement. You will be completely confident in your ability to focus and get back to work when the next 25-minute cycle in your productivity plan begins.
Switch Off After Work
Almost a third of workers find it difficult to switch off from work, putting them more at risk of becoming stressed or burnt out. There are reasons why it can feel hard to switch off from work. Some of the most obvious are the external factors, like always having your smartphones or gadgets with you, and some workplace cultures actively encouraging and celebrating their employees being ‘always on’. However, some internal drivers also make it difficult to switch off. This includes unhelpful beliefs, like thinking you can’t be successful if you leave work on time, perfectionism, and destructive self-criticism.
Whether it’s internal or external factors holding you back, it’s important to realize that winding down after a stressful day at work improves your mental health. The following exercises can help you successfully switch off after work:
- Create an unwinding ritual at the end of the day. It can be as simple as preparing tea or taking a warm bath. This way you can train your brain to slow down and focus on other matters aside from work.
- Schedule recovery activities. It can be doing yoga or meditation. Putting a recovery activity in your daily routine may help guard your mind from switching back to work.
- Find an activity as unlike work as possible. Steering off the course of your work can help you not think about it.
- Distract yourself. Choose an activity that fully absorbs you. This can be a hobby that you enjoy.
Ultimately, switching off after work has a lot to do with your conviction. The more willpower you exhibit to disengage from work, the more rewards you will reap. As long as you show dedication to your work during your working hours, you have every right to enjoy your free time without feeling guilty. Remember that unplugging is the key to coming back happier, stronger, and healthier the next day.
Conclusion
Job burnout is real and can negatively affect your physical and mental health. But you can beat it by following these 10 productivity hacks. With continuous practice, you will realize the benefits of being productive. You will feel good about yourself because productivity will give you purpose, help you grow, and lift your mood. All of these can give you a great sense of fulfillment and help you build a positive habit in the long run.