Being a digital entrepreneur has its advantages, and in most cases, online creators will agree that the advantages outweigh the drawbacks. But when you're in charge of every element of running your own successful business, it's common to occasionally get stressed out and a little overwhelmed. In order to maintain your creativity the joy you have in your work and your business, it's important to find a work life balance. But that's obviously easier said than done. However, by trying and implementing a variety of simple strategies, you can vastly improve your chances of finding that elusive equilibrium. In this video, we're gonna walk through a few creative and simple strategies we've learned from creators of teachable and hopefully they can help you as well. proper rest and planning are essential to managing and replenishing your creativity, which is a finite resource research indicates that three out of four small business owners feel the impacts of burnout, and millennials experience burnout at a rate of 94%. If you've experienced burnout, we don't have to tell you the variety of negative effects it can have on your life, your mental health and your business, from ceasing your content creation to falling short of your goals, and most importantly, just not having fun anymore. So how do you deal with burnout when you're a small business owner or entrepreneur who relies on your creativity and mental health to grow and scale your business? Let's explore five effective ways to diminish and prevent burnout. As we know burnout can have a significant impact on our physical and mental health equally, and obviously, our physical and mental health plays a role in our creativity and our ability to love the work we're doing. However, often in challenging times when we're racing to launch a product or chasing our goals. It's easy to neglect the basics. Therefore, it's important to make a practice of asking yourself some simple self care questions. And seriously considering the answers. Are we getting enough sleep? Do we engage in simple physical activities regularly? If nothing else, to give your mind a break and just focus on how your body feels? Are we eating well, and do we feel nourished in whatever way that means to you? Have we taken time out for ourselves whether that means taking a 30 minute nap because you're tired or doing a five minute meditation to start your day. And if you're a creative entrepreneur likeliness is you started your business doing something that you love doing? Well have you taken time lately to do that thing just because you love it and not considering the implications it has on your business. When you are making a living off of doing something you love, it is so easy to fall into the trap of tying it integrally with the success of your business. So it takes some time occasionally to dive into the things you love doing just because you love doing them. And often you'll uncover something that will serve your business in the long run. Once again, though, these aren't things you just do here and there. If you can make a practice of the things that work for you, you will be creating a sustainable system for yourself that can help maintain your mental and physical health. Okay, this is a difficult one regardless of whether you're an entrepreneur or just a human on Earth, but knowing what your boundaries are and when and how to establish them is going to have a huge impact on building space for your mental and physical health to thrive. The absence of clear boundaries for yourself and those you work with can make it really difficult to know when work begins and when it ends. So developing the muscle that allows you to identify and communicate your boundaries to others and yourself will allow you to create a beautiful space where you can not only utilize your creativity, but also recharge and reevaluate all of the many things you have to offer. The journey to understand and establish your own boundaries is incredibly personal, and it will take a while but here's some very practical tools you can start to utilize to establish boundaries between you and your business. Set up strict office hours and adhere to them as you would working for an employer. This is especially difficult for an online creative entrepreneur who has your full calendar at your disposal. But establishing these working hours will at least allow you to identify when you're stepping out of them. And take a moment to consider if that time is okay for you creating physical boundaries around where you work and where you play can be a powerful tool in enabling you to know where your mind is at. So whether it's designating a specific room to be your office or committing not to work in your bedrooms, whatever you can establish in your given situation. Our environment has a significant impact on our mentality. So being aware of that can again at least help you identify what it is affecting your physical and mental health in the moment at least try and plan your vacation of rest days ahead of time so that you can schedule all of your other tasks accordingly, but also equally give yourself a break when you need it. If you're feeling absolutely overwhelmed and the burnout is creeping up from the floor. Take the day off. One of the number one advantages of being a creative entrepreneur who works for yourself is you are your own boss. So if you the employee comes to you the boss and says, I am overwhelmed, I can't do this right now, can I take the day off and come back strong and ready tomorrow? Give yourself that time be a good boss and say yes to yourself. You also have to learn to say no, and how to prioritize putting your energy and time into the things that will have the greatest impact on your business where you're at. At the moment, we see beginning entrepreneurs and creators struggle with this a lot. You put hours, days and months into designing a logo, having a URL for your website, all of these things that feel absolutely critical to the identity of your business. But are they actually what you need to focus on? Do you know the purpose of your business? Do you know who you want to help and how you're going to help them? And more importantly, can you communicate that to everyone, always ask yourself is what I'm working on right now going to produce the results I need for the next step in growing my business, let that guide you. And don't be afraid to drop something you've been working on. If you identify that it's just not going to serve your goals at the moment. Now in many cases, the self help gurus or mental health professionals will say that having a hobby and a passion project is a really important part of maintaining mental health and avoiding burnout. But in many cases, like I mentioned earlier, we creative entrepreneurs have taken those hobbies and the things we're passionate about, and turn them into our business. So it seems a little counterproductive to say you need a new hobby or a new passion when the whole point is to make money doing what you love. However, like I mentioned earlier, we think it's very important to find a space and a way to do that thing you love, but only for the reason that you love doing it creating an environment where you can remember why and how you started doing that thing in the first place. Usually, because in the discovery, you felt empowerment, you felt fascination, you felt drive either from the competition, or the beauty of the thing itself. And that's what made you want to do it. That's why you work at it. That's why you put hours into the process because you simply love the process of doing that thing, not necessarily because it's tied to a result. So whatever framing or tools, you need to set aside time to do the thing you love, just because you love doing it. Make that a serious practice, turn the cameras off, don't take notes, stop thinking about how this could be the viral video that really grows your audience. Just give yourself the permission to take a little bit of time to be purely infatuated and fascinated and deeply in love with this thing that gives back to you everything you give to it. When you are fully engaged in something and acting only in the service of the process of creativity, it will give back to you in ways that no business ever can. So whether it's an act of giving yourself permission, or simply setting aside the time and discipline to do this regularly. Don't underestimate the impact it can have on your physical and mental health. Now this is another one that's easier said than done and very personal and how you interpret it and integrate it into your life. But don't force it when your mental and physical health aren't in a good place. likeliness is you're not going to be producing the quality of work that you're capable of. A lot of people perform well under stress when it comes to raw output. But ask yourself if the quality of that output is really up to par with what you know you're able to achieve. It's easy in today's fast paced world to think that you perform well under stress based on the pure amount of output. But it's important to ask yourself about the quality of that work. Is it any good? And if it's good? Could it be a lot better? What are you truly capable of? And how are you setting yourself up to achieve your utmost excellence time and time again? Now let me clarify when I say utmost excellence, I don't mean perfection, I don't mean that everything is absolutely just the way you want it, I simply mean that you're doing the best with the time you're given are you creating an environment where you can show up fully yourself and offer everything you have to that moment. Sometimes this means allowing yourself to produce garbage for a while throw spaghetti against a wall, let yourself out poor so you find out what it is you truly want to do in the moment. But don't just assume that because you can work harder and drink more coffee and type more words and make more content that you are producing high quality work that will represent you not just now but many years into the future. So prioritizing quality and the consistency of quality content is how you're going to grow your business and develop an audience of loyal followers that not only care about your products but you as well. This will help you develop content that is worthy of your time and your community. The last tip we can give to help maintain your physical and mental health is to document your process and your progress. This is both true in your business. And personally on the business side, when you're facing a daunting list of to do's, it's important to establish a system where you understand the details of what you need to do, and how to prioritize them to serve your goals, writing this down and organizing it in some way or another is critical to understanding how you can move forward effectively, there are endless solutions out there for productivity management. And so it really depends on you and how you function to search, explore, try different things and give yourself a break. If a certain system isn't working, it doesn't mean you failed, you may need to try a different system to be able to accomplish everything you want. We will say one system we've heard work for many successful creators is taking a more time block approach to their tasks, rather than working on a task for as long as it takes to accomplish it. So take your calendar and give yourself 30 minutes a day to make content an hour every day to reply to emails, do whatever you can within that amount of time and then move on to the next thing. Not only will this help give you an overview of the tasks you have to do within a week or a month, but it also works as a powerful tool to battle your perfectionism. Usually, when you're just set out to achieve a task regardless of the amount of time, you will reach a point of diminishing returns where you are hacking away at things that are good enough, hoping you're making them perfect. But working in a vacuum not knowing if you're actually making anything better. On top of this, after a few weeks or months of this kind of organizing your schedule, you'll have a much better idea of how long it takes to actually accomplish a task based on your past experience. So maybe this works for you. Maybe it doesn't. But many creators, we talked to have established some form of this and found success within this structure. Now when it comes to documenting the personal side of your process and progress. It's a bit of a cliche, but some form of journaling can turn out to be really powerful. If you don't already journal regularly, you're probably scoffing a little bit with that dear diary sentence in mind. But it doesn't have to work like that. Really all the journaling process has to be is setting aside five to 10 minutes to just write your thoughts down. What are you thinking about in the moment? We do this constantly throughout our day? What are we doing? What do we want to do? How do we feel about it, putting those thoughts on paper in a way where you can peek back at who you were and what you were thinking versus who you are now and what you're thinking now is an invaluable way to gain perspective on your process and your progress. It's also a form of getting a little distance from yourself and creating a dialogue with that process and progress. Too often creative entrepreneurs and people in general get trapped in their own head totally stuck in a vacuum. Creating the means to have perspective on our process. And progress is how we break this barrier a little bit and give ourselves a break gained some confidence for the growth we've had. And also be able to track the things we've wanted to do but haven't and put ourselves on track to accomplish those things in the near future. So if you have inhibitions about journaling, or you journal every so often but want to do it more, put it in your calendar, make it a practice research says it takes 21 days to develop a habit. Do it put 21 days of journaling on your calendar and see how you feel after that. Because once you're effectively documenting your business and personal growth and goals, you'll have the means and perspective to know if burnout is right on the horizon. Or if you're creating sustainable systems in your life and business that will allow you to thrive for years to come. So if you're looking for ways to avoid burnout, just remember, well, you probably can't. Now I don't mean to say that it's inevitable or that everyone is destined to experience it. But just like anything in life, there's going to be highs and lows and experiencing the lows is how we learn what it's like to get there, how we know that we don't want to be there, and how we get the drive to make sure we don't get there. Again, though equally as important as establishing the systems that can help you maintain your mental and physical health and avoid burnout is to give yourself a break if and when it does happen. It doesn't mean you failed. It doesn't mean you're not cut out to do this equally. So the fact that so many people experience burnout at some point in their life, whether they're their own boss or not, should give you some level of commiseration that we're all in this together. Life is beautiful and there's a lot of love and opportunity to create and play and make good money. But it's also hard so if it wasn't obvious by now everything we talked about in this video is about being You know, where establishing the systems and tools that it takes to be aware of how you feel what you're doing, if it's serving you, are you having fun? Is it working towards a goal in a life that you actually want to be living awareness in itself may not be the end goal, but it is absolutely critical to making good decisions. So even if you do burn out, give yourself the time to feel what that's like not just existing in the sense of failure, but recognizing that your burnout is a product of a process, and that you can change that process and improve it over time. Also, if you have a sense of forgiveness, and allow yourself the opportunity to be aware in those moments, it'll likely help you move faster out of burnout and accept it as a part of life that we can take little steps towards to prevent in the future. So look, these things are complicated, and there is no one size fits all solution. So regardless of if you are a creative entrepreneur, or you just happen to find this video on your own, let us know in the comments. We want to know what works for you. What enriches your life and how do you develop the tools to be aware of where you're at and track that you're working towards the person you want to be. The only way we're all kind of succeed as individuals and creators is by sharing these discoveries with each other. As always, thank you so much for watching. Have a wonderful day, and we'll see you soon.
