Avoiding Burnout Without Doing Less

If everything was perfect then everyone would be able to do everything that they said they were going to when they said it would get done. The world isn't perfect so there's always an be and flow from the different parts of our lives and how much time they take up. 

This is the key, noticing when one part of one's life is taking up too many resources and scaling back in other areas. 

What is the best way to do that?

Listening to yourself. Meditate for a couple minutes at the end of the day and ask yourself what's been taking most of your time and energy. Is there a way that you can have it take less energy or a way to make sure you have more energy to put towards it if it comes up again the day after?
 
As someone who really thinks best through writing I also highly recommend journaling. Perhaps something more structured such as an after-action review, which I do every ROW80 checkin on my blog. I do it because it works. If there's been no progress on a goal for one or two checkins then something needs to change, I need to try something new. Perhaps I need to lessen the goal. Perhaps I need to focus on a different goal that's easier for me to do when under the circumstances that are in front of me. 

When you set your goals you can't predict what's going to be in the way, but you can predict that something else will be coming up. pace yourself to finish early, so that you have the space if you can't do much of any writing for a week or such. 

The key is to budget in a 20% buffer into your goal/plan to finish said goal. 

For example, your original goal is to read 52 books, or one book a week for a year. You can adjust the goal by 20%, or 10 books. Therefore your new goal is 42 books, which allows for a couple weeks where the goal doesn't get accomplished. Alternatively you could adjust the due date by 20%. In the first case the end date was the end of the year. 20% of that would be 72 days, which I would personally round to two months. Therefore the goal would be to finish 52 books by November 1st, and if you end up needing some extra time then you have it. 

Having this extra time built into goals can really help you stay on track, even when a major world changing event such as COVID-19 changes everything. Also remember it's ok to stop and reassess your goals at any time. Life is for living, not being stressed about not succeeding in self-imposed goals! (That's just as much for future me as for you!)