Prevent Small Business Burnout
Entrepreneurs often have a hard time balancing their work hours and can often create business burnout. You work when you can. Doing everything you can to build your business. What ever it takes right? After six months, a year or more running on always thinking business can run you right into business burnout. So what can you do to prevent business burnout for yourself
1. Schedule non-business into your schedule. Teach yourself to put the most important things into your schedule and plan it out ahead of time. Put in time for you, your family and friends into your calendar so you can be human and not a working robot.
Your small business goes nowhere without you. If you do not take care of yourself, you will not be able to take care of your business and clients.
2. On a weekly basis schedule yourself one to two “stop early nights”. These are evenings when you finish up working earlier than regular and go spend time with friends, family or do something for yourself. Plan a girl’s night out, special dinner with your family, take a bath, go to a movie, read a non-business related book or go to bed early. Walk away from the need to do business every waking moment left in your day.
When our kids were young we had Family Night every Tuesday. We went out to dinner, played board games, cards and talked to each other. When people wanted to schedule things with me and wanted me to work with them on a Tuesday I would decline and tell them that it was Family Night and they would have to pick something else. Occasionally, I had to be out of town and we would reschedule family night for that week only. This was important time put into my schedule to raise kids who felt important and loved. We still have a lot of great times with our kids now that they are all over 18 years old.
3. Every three months (quarterly) take two to three days and get away from business and unplug. Have a family outing, go somewhere on your own, lay in bed all weekend and watch old movies. Whatever you do, let go of business for a couple days and enjoy life on your terms. This helps your brain rejuvenate and reset which allows you to be open to what comes next in your business. That problem you have been trying to solve might have an easy solution after you take a good break. If something creative pops into your head write it down or put it into a notes app in your phone to come back to when you are back to work.
In corporations vacation was created for employees to go away from work and rest and rejuvenate. Coming back to the office with a freshness and in a more relaxed state often helped the business. Unfortunately, this has changed over the years with employees stuffing tiring family vacations into a short window of time or opting to take the pay and continue to work during their vacation. This has created an over tired employee and less productivity for the company. Rest, rejuvenate and recharge so you and your business wins.
4. Get help in your business. There are many ways to get help in your business that supports you in preventing business burnout. One of the reasons I share about delegating is to help clients see how valuable it is to have others do the things in business that hold you back from doing what you love and the reason you started your business in the first place. There are so many thing that happen in business and too often business owners are bogged down by all the things that have to be done to make a business successful and that keeps them from having fun and truly doing what they started their business to do. Burnout comes when we try to do it all on our own. There are many ways to get help without it having to cost a lot of money so don’t use that as an excuse to not get the help you deserve to prevent business burnout!
By allowing yourself to take time out from your growing business you set yourself up to win and not burnout from the overwhelm of growing and making the money you want for long term success. It also sets the boundaries in place that support strong long term relationships with your friends and family and gives you the space to truly give your business the best of you. Getting help also allows you to create the necessary time away and trust your business will still be blossoming when you step back in. Remember, when you are leading a healthy life with your friends and family you can grow a healthy business too.
Of course you can always bring in an experienced business consultant to help you create a plan to prevent business burnout. I wonder who you know that could help you with this?
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