Coping with Burnout
Every so often, burnout rears its ugly head. For me, it usually happens most often when I’m trying to cram too much into too small of a space of time. But it can also happen when my day job gets particularly hectic, leaving me feeling drained and unable to do anything more when I get home or log off from my work laptop on days I work from home.
The best solution I’ve found for burnout is to acknowledge that I’m human, give myself a break, and do something relaxing like watching TV or movies (or YouTube videos) or playing a game.
Sometimes, though, burnout is a longer term, more systemic thing. This doesn’t happen to me as often, but it can when I’m working on a project that turns out to be more work than I anticipated for whatever reason. In those cases, I often need to reevaluate the project causing me the problems and determine if there’s a way to make it less onerous or if I should put that project on the back-burner and come back to it later, when I’m in a different headspace. Sometimes, giving myself a break from something specific is all it takes to clear up the burnout, and I can move forward with other projects instead.
And some projects ultimately have to be entirely abandoned because they are the sort that cause problems every time I bring them back into my schedule. The number of abandoned novels I have is somewhat ridiculous, but those are the projects I most often burn out on, which is why I only take on novel-length projects now if I’m REALLY excited about them.
While not everyone faces these same causes of burnout, hopefully some of my solutions will be useful if you find yourself burning out.
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