LoCo Leaders Share 10 Ways to Battle Burnout and Stay Productive
Strong leadership is the best way to ensure your business, group, or organization succeeds. Providing the time, patience, and communication that it takes to be a good leader is crucial to help your team flourish. Continuing to learn and striving to be a better leader will help you reach your goals faster. We’ve reached out to a few local leaders to share their tips on battling burnout and staying productive.
Haley LaBatt CTA | Visitors Bureau Director
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
It’s important to make time for yourself. It can be so easy to get lost in work and family that we can often forget about caring for ourselves. Taking the time to practice a hobby is a great way to prevent burnout. My hobby is Yoga. I love practicing Yoga. It allows me to take the time to focus on myself, let go of what I cannot control and focus on what I can in that moment. I believe living an active lifestyle is a great way to make sure you can stay productive.
Lydia Hess
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
I am a big productivity nerd! I have a million ideas catalogued over a lifetime of productivity research, but here are just a few of my suggestions:
I am a committed list-maker and I strongly believe a daily to-do list is the easiest way to stay productive. I still keep a weekly planner so I can write down my to-dos but I am also a big fan of Todoist.
If you have something to do that will take you less than 2 minutes to complete, just do it!
I think it’s important to take time and reflect. At the end of every day, I write down three things I accomplished that day. It can be work-related, or it can be simple things like “I took my dog for a walk” or “I made something new for dinner.”
As for burnout, I recommend picking up a hobby that’s completely separate from your work and making time for it at least once a week. For me, I love biking on our amazing bike trail and I spend plenty of time in my garden making sure everybody’s growing!
Ryan Berry
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
I make myself disconnect from my work. Almost every evening, as well as parts of the weekend, I lock my phones up to force myself not to check them. It is easy to get caught up in constantly checking emails, texts, social media and other items on your phone. I find that forcing myself to separate it allows me to be more productive when I do work.
Adam Rammel
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
Ask any successful person and they have made a sacrifice in one way or another in order to get to where they wanted to be. Balance is one of the toughest things to figure out for me (and a lot of other entrepreneurs), but I am trying to get better at this every day, especially with young kids at home. Putting the phone and laptop away to spend time with friends and family on evenings and weekends is a great way to battle burnout. But it is not always possible. I find that I am the most productive in the mornings, so I try to schedule my calls and meetings in the AM when I have the most brain power and creativity.
Amber Fagan
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
Staying productive while in the office, I tend to make a cup of coffee or a tea, or drink a bai just to refresh. I enjoy mints or chocolates while working, or I fill my office diffuser with refreshing peppermint. All this can be done while still working so I feel like I got a break, but I really never stopped working. Then to regroup when I'm home, I have nightly dinners with my husband, Mike and my twin boys, Ethan and Austin. I enjoy boat rides with friends, golf cart rides around my neighborhood, and supporting all our local businesses.
Teri Frymyer
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
There are so many websites available to the public with home decorating ideas, financial information, gardening suggestions and more. These sites are a nice escape from the day-to-day "routine" yet still interesting and helpful to the real estate agent.
Ben Vollrath
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
The biggest thing for me is taking time away from work to refresh. On a daily basis, this means ALWAYS leaving work in time for dinner with my family. When I get home I also intentionally leave my cell phone in another room for a couple of hours so I can be fully present with my wife and kids. Getting good sleep makes a big difference too. When at work, I try to get up and moving every hour. Just getting up from my desk seems to help me be more productive!
Jason Duff
How do you battle burnout and stay productive? Burnout can kill passion and energy, and it happens easier than most may think. Even if you are super passionate about your job or what you do, constant pressure, stress, and even a lack of success can really drag a person down. Sometimes it can be helpful to just disconnect for a little while – turn off the phone for a day, exercise, and get your mind right. Also, picking up a good book on the field or profession you are in can get you re-inspired with creative ideas.
Brittany Saxton
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
Battling burn out and staying productive for me is just working on something fun and creative. I like reading and searching for new ideas on how we can adapt to do something fun and change it up. I try to make a point to stay true to my “Why”- staying in love with my brand and what it really means to me. I usually go into work on Mondays and try to remember to be in awe of what we have created.
Lindsey McGlone
Owner | Elle A. Design
How do you battle burnout and stay productive?
Creative block and burnout absolutely happen and there are so many different ways to overcome them and stay productive. Everyone has their own coping mechanisms... My team and I have a few things we do when we've hit a wall. Stepping away and setting a project aside for a moment, and coming back to it with fresh eyes is always helpful. Also, asking for feedback from other creatives is great - everyone typically views projects in different perspectives, so looking at it through someone else's lenses is a great way to help move forward. Sometimes the pressure is high when we compare our work to others, but I try to stress that in the design world we need to be confident in our creativity and understand that our work is a reflection of our unique selves. This applies to not only the world of design, but I believe in all businesses/industries.
We hope you have taken away some new tips on how to help your team. As a community we can learn from each other to lead more effectively. When we lift each other up we will all succeed together to make our communities stronger.
Learn. Lead. Succeed.