Its has been a while since I posted, on this blog and I had to go on a bit of exploring, well let talk about a valuable concept I learnt on my journey, which is about dealing with burnout and recharging your productivity battery.
Burnout is common word which goes around the productivity field a lot, it is most common among knowledge workers, any work that has a high level of intellectual input, this frequently occurs. The World Health Organization defined Burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed, they characterized it in three dimension, feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one’s job, lastly reduced professional efficacy.” A simpler way to perceive burnout is a feeling of tiredness toward one’s work. This state is generally categories as a form of low productivity output, hence to come out of the state you need to recharge your productivity battery.
Recharging your productivity battery exist in two form, but its primary purpose is to handle burnout. The first form is EFFORTLESS WORK, and the second form is PURPOSEFUL WORK. This two form of work are essential towards recuperating after feeling the stress of Burnout.
Effortless work, simply denote work that require little to no effort at all while doing this work. These are essential task you use to rest and recuperate, such tasks or activities include maybe binge watching a series, reading a light Novel, swimming, any activity that makes you relax and put your mind at ease, and increase the level of dopamine output to the brain. One advice I will give in relation with effortless task is to schedule it for a particular day within a week, and do not skip it, me personally I schedule my effortless work or downtime on a Friday, I am personal advocate for thank God is Friday, TGIF, and like any other of your important task please do not skip your schedule effortless work hours. This allow you to feel more relax and calm and genuinely feel more productivity towards the later portion of the week.
Purposeful task, the activities which fall into purposeful task are essential toward recuperation. Purposeful tasks are simply task that give you a sense of fulfillment, this can also be seen as hobbies. Working toward a purposeful task instead of draining you helps recharge your focus and zeal toward other activities. A purposeful task is truly dependent on each and every person, it could be to learn a language, improve your drawing skill or start a podcast. That the beauty of a purposeful task you are working form what genuinely provide you a sense of fulfillment.
As you are more aligned with your intention and desire for life your purposeful task become clearer, I remember in my secondary school days my purposeful task was drawing, and I used drawing as a means to relax and get more creative with work. Drawing never felt like a chore, it felt more personal and self-fulfilling. As we grow our purposeful task will tend to shift, now your purposeful task might be a big project, starting a business, podcast etc.
Here is the key to why purposeful tasks are so essential in human living, no matter how big or small the task is, “The Task is aligned to your ideal self.” Hence as you do less and less of those tasks, you will feel less and less fulfilled. When I entered into my higher institution, i grow deeper and deeper in love with the concept of learning how to learn, what started as a crotch for my learning challenges has now grown into my desire of self-improvement and purpose.
Identify this two task in your life, and any time you feel drained, unmotivated or burnout, remember to return to them, as my good friend always says “your body is not a machine”, in local parlance body nor be firewood. Remember to be productive.
