About This Episode

In today’s episode, I’ll be sharing a journal entry that I wrote on the 18th of June, 2019. This is back when I was living in Japan, and in 2019 it is actually the second year of my PhD study. And that time, I felt really burnt out because of studying and so many deadlines and trying these new routines with my kids in a foreign country, and it was a tough time for me. And so, this is what I wrote in that… (listen to the full episode on the podcast)

There are there main symptoms of burnout:

1) Emotional exhaustion, feeling exhausted physically and psychologically.

2) Start seeing people as burdens.

3) Loss of ability to focus.

This episode is specifically for you who have been taking the steps and have been consistently doing all the good things, all the great jobs to pursue after the life you want, but sometimes you feel like it seems like it is not working right. So this is for you if you may be experiencing these symptoms of emotional exhaustion.

There are several ways to combat burnout:

1) Physical improvements in your life.

That is improving your sleep, proper nutrition and exercise. It is essential to make sleep a priority if you don’t have enough sleep and want to do these great things, but at the end of the day, you are not well-rested and are not ready to be totally engaged with life that you want to go after.

So, it doesn’t make sense; you have to recharge yourself first, so make sleep a priority. Make sure you have eight hours of sleep a day. If you cannot do it throughout the night, maybe because you have little kids who wake up several times at night, you can schedule nap time during the day so that you can at least get another extra 30 minutes of sleep.

Then, readjust what you are eating, and making sure that you put in more nutritious food, vegetables and protein and low down on your simple carbs intakes such as bread and rice. This really helps me to recharge and be more energised in the long term.

And also improving your exercise. So, as I always mentioned that you have to move your body. Even though I’m not the kind of person who likes naturally is inclined to sweat all day. You know, I make it a habit to move more each day so that I could be energized. You can start slow and increase your intensity when things feel a little bit too easy.

2) Restructure your work habits.

What this means is that to make some adjustments. For example, even though the deadline is further away, making sure that you make progress on the project every week even though the deadline is further in the future, but sometimes this project that you are responsible for might consume your attention now.

So what you can do is make progress on some of the projects by either brainstorming the ideas or sit down and researching what I need to get done on that. So, by tracking the progress. You know that you are on the right track and will eventually make progress on it.

3) Diversifying your life outside the office.

And, of course, do things that are fun and permissible in Islam. You can try to take up new classes to try new hobbies. Or go into nature. Try to diversify the things you want to do because we don’t know which of these activities will recharge us again. Maybe you can try painting class, boxing class or learning a new language.

These all are activities that might recharge you. You can try. And as for me, I really love attending Hot Yoga classes, where we do this yoga in a boiling room, like a sauna heated by hot stone floorings. It was a great way for me to recharge back when I was in Japan.

4) Know when you really need to go away.

It is okay to go away; it is okay to take a break. It is okay to say that, “No, I just want to take a rest for these two days, these three days or ever, a week, a month”. You can take a break from your work; you can adjust how you pursue your goals; you can take a break for a while. So put that thing aside for a while.

Sometimes this break helps you to recharge and rethink the vision that you have in your life, so instead of just mindlessly pursuing doing whatever things that people ask you to do and being reactive to it, you can take a moment and really think about the reaction that you want to provide in each interaction that you have so whether or not it brings you closer to the goals that you want, or it’s pushing you away from that.

You know, all of this is all about looking at your personality, how much control you have, and whether you have a hard time delegating and handing some of your work to others. Sometimes, you feel burnt out because you are having a hard time delegating your tasks and really finding helps on things that you know others can perform better.

So if you are in control of what you do and you are, you have this opportunity you can delegate to others. Try to delegate things that you know others can perform better. And then, it is also helpful for you to envision your perfect work environment and then take small, realistic steps to bring your reality closer to what you’re picturing.

If you can’t envision your perfect working life, you cannot go there. So start with envisioning what you want to have more in your work environment and start to take a small step that is realistic so that you can bring reality closer to what you are picturing.

My last piece of advice is that people can fundamentally love their job and know they’re in the right field. Still, they might be just overwork and thus causing them to burn out and starting to hate their job and not wanting to do that anymore, so really this podcast episode is an invitation for you guys to take that step back and really look at what are you dealing with, actually.

In conclusion, identify activities that replenish your energy and focus on those activities in your off-hours. And remember that it must be something you want to do and not something you think you should do.

If you like this episode, check out this next: “How to Implement Daily Self-Care”.

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