I have burnt out MANY times in my life. In fact, and don’t mind me tooting my own horn here, I might go as far as to say I’ve mastered the art of burning out.
And over the years, I have developed a reliable formula to do so. If you implement this formula (or even parts of it), then you can almost guarantee a burnout.
What Does it Mean to Burn Out?
To burn out is to go so hard into some aspect of your life, that you go off balance, ignore warning signals, and neglect other parts of your life.
And then you keep going, until you cross a threshold where your body and mind FORCE you to stop and slow down. This could be illness, extreme fatigue, or overwhelming anxiety, to name a few.
Let’s get right into it.
The 12 Reliable Steps to Burnout (Works Every Time!)
If you’d like to learn how to burn out, just follow any (and ideally all of!) these steps.
- Don’t take weeks off.
- Never unplug from your phone and the internet.
- Avoid planning vacations because they’ll only set you behind!
- Dissolve all boundaries between work and personal life. Think about work right when you wake up, and right before you go to bed.
- If something in you starts screaming, “Stop thinking about work!” make sure to overpower that voice and stuff it under the basement.
- Develop the hubristic belief that you’re too elite to burnout. It happens to others, but it could never happen to you (even if you burnt out before).
- If you’re starting to get behind on dishes, cleaning, emails, and other tasks, don’t take that as a sign that your energy is flagging and needs restoration. Instead, let them all go to shit and keep pushing so that you’re living in a den of chaos.
- Slowly (but steadily!) allow all of your wellness practices to fall by the wayside. Replace meditation, exercise, and cooking for yourself with a healthy dose of work.
- Schedule meetings in your calendar as far out as you can so that if you ever want to take a day of rest, you’ll be unable to because you proactively assigned yourself plans.
- If looking at your calendar makes you feel anxiety, overwhelm, or panic, ignore those feelings.
- If you are starting to get so fatigued that you have to lie down more often than sit up, don’t take meaning from that.
- If you are feeling manically energetic one day, assume you’ll feel like that forever and make every plan possible and start a fuck ton of text conversations that you’ll never be able to keep up with.
There you go! If you follow these steps, you are guaranteed to be ultra successful in burning out.
Good luck!
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