Work Burnt out? Try This!
Jason Allan Scott
Investing in & building 7-figure 1-person businesses | Sold companies on 3 continents | 2x Forbes featured | NeverBeABoss/NeverHaveABoss | Founder, Speaker
Work Burnt out? Try This
We’ve all had a bad day at work.
But when you start having one bad day after another and find yourself quick to anger, tired, and constantly overwhelmed, you may be experiencing work burnout.
You’re not alone.?
A?gallop survey ?found 76% of workers feel burned out sometimes, and 28% are experiencing work burnout ‘very often’ or ‘always’ at work.
Whether your boss wants to accept it or not, work burnout is a thing, and, clearly, signs of burnout are?trending upward.
What is work burnout?
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), burnout is a syndrome resulting from unmanaged?chronic workplace stress.
Throw in a pandemic and it gets worse. The pressure is on. With essential workers clocking overtime and more people working from home, the ‘always on’ work culture is in full effect causing work-related stress, anxiety, and cynicism.
There are many different causes of work burnout. Here are a few:
Signs and symptoms of work burnout
Work burnout is characterized by exhaustion, negativity, or cynicism about your job and a general feeling of a lack of accomplishment. But it’s not always obvious. Burnout can creep up on us and manifest in different ways for different people. Here are some of the most common signs of work burnout.?
If left unchecked, burnout can elevate fast. Even if you take a break from work, you’re just returning to the source of the burnout afterward.?
You might not be able to cure burnout today, but you can take steps to ease the stress while you work on those long-term solutions.?
Short-term solutions
1. Turn to others
One way to tackle burnout includes seeking support from others, such as family, friends, or even colleagues.?If your job runs an employee assistance program, look into it. If the source of your stress is to do with workplace processes, then working with management on solutions is one way to tackle it.?
2. Embrace healthy habits
While it doesn’t address the root cause of burnout, learning how to manage stress is so important in staying sane. There are plenty of different activities and habits you can start to deal with stress. There’s exercise, spending time in nature, getting enough sleep, yoga, and meditation. Anything that gets your head out of your everyday work life is great.
But let’s go beyond that…
3. Address anxiety today
A major cause of burnout is an underlying anxiety that bubbles below the surface and pops its ugly head out when things get tough.?So, do you feel overwhelmed and anxious?
Admitting that is a great first start, but what are you going to do about it?
Jason’s approach to anxiety?is about knowing when to let things go.
Ok, my partner and NeuroScientist taught me this.
It’s also about not waiting for inspiration to strike or waiting to “be in a better/more productive mood” to tackle your problems.?
Instead, it’s about taking real action, building systems to deal with anxiety.
You probably already know what you need to do. But just focus on one or two things, and practice them daily.
However, you decide to tackle anxiety, be consistent with it.
Do it even on the bad days, no,?especially?on the bad days.
Long-term solutions
The problem with short-term solutions is that they often don’t really?solve?the root problem. It’s just patching up a hole in a sinking ship. Temporary relief is great, but to really treat burnout, long-term solutions are in order.?If you are burnt out at work, you really only have two options: improve your current job or find a new one.?
Option 1: Improve your current job
A few ways you can ease burnout and improve your job include:
Option 2: Find a new job
If the above doesn’t work or your boss won’t work with you, it could be time to move on and make a career change.
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I know, scary stuff! But, it’s ultimately worth it if you can’t find happiness where you are now.?
Now, don’t just walk into another job without some careful thought first. If things don’t work out in your current job, that’s a great learning experience. What went wrong? Was it the environment, the work itself, or the boss?
Try to pinpoint what you hated and use that to fuel your?search for your dream job.?
Option 3: Start a new company
Contrary to popular belief, there are actually many ways to?start a business?that let you focus less on the logistics and upfront costs and more on getting your ideas started.
Let’s get you past the first major mental hurdle of “I want to start a business but have no ideas.”
Best small business ideas?to start in 2023
*Above from Shopify as you know I like a one-person agency or education business*
Or Podcast - where you build an audience you can monetize
In today’s connected world, the ability to capture and keep the attention of others is an asset. It’s one that many businesses are even willing to pay for and one that many creators are able to convert into a business with multiple revenue streams.
Whether you choose to grow your following on?your Podcast, TikTok or a?blog?(ideally a combination of different channels from one main channel like a Podcast), you have many avenues for monetizing your audience:
Taking an audience-first approach to your small business idea means you’re playing the long game (it might be months until you’ve figured it out).
But you don’t need millions of followers to do it—Instagrammer Kat Gaskin, for example,?pulled off a $10,000 product launch ?with only 3,000 followers for her brand,?The Content Planner .
I made a video on this with best-selling Author John Spencer Williams or more accurately, he made a video on this, from our interview on his channel.
Three tips for choosing the best business idea
The small business ideas we’ve covered might be easier to run when it comes to logistics, but that doesn’t make them easy.
There are at least three things you should keep in mind as you consider your options, no matter what business you decide to start.
1. Focusing on a niche makes marketing easier
As with any business, marketing is what unlocks your success. It’s not enough to know that there’s demand for your products—you need to figure out ways to reach the people that are most likely to buy them, i.e., figure out your target market. You need to get the right visitors to discover your products.
Luckily, marketing is a lot easier when you’re catering to a specific target audience or identity (e.g., vegans, board game lovers, photographers in your city). You can produce?social media content that resonates?with these people or run ads that target their interests. Taking this approach also helps you project a consistent brand because you’ll have a more specific idea of who exactly you’re talking to.
Think about how you can zero in on a specific audience for your products and how the business you build can serve them. If you already have a sizable audience (a blog, a YouTube channel, or an Instagram account), maybe you can even find a way to base your business off of that existing audience.
2. Pricing is about more than profit
Price your products too low and shoppers might assume they’re low quality. Price them too high and you risk scaring some customers off. In any case, you’ll need to find a sweet spot that also lets you factor in the cost to acquire customers and offer discounts, especially if you plan on?paying for ads. Getting your pricing right is something most business owners struggle with.
At the end of the day, your prices can be tweaked and you can experiment with a variety of pricing strategies until you find one that works for you.
3. Test, learn, and grow as you go
The pursuit of perfection can be one of the biggest hurdles in getting a business up and running.
Keep in mind that nothing is set in stone.
Products can be swapped in and out fairly easily (especially when you’re not stuck with stock). Your store can be redesigned. Your prices can be adjusted. You can switch to a better supplier. And you can validate all of these decisions based on the dozens of signals you have at your disposal (traffic, how much time people are spending on your site, reviews, abandoned carts, etc.).
If your idea just isn’t working out the way you planned, think about how you can pivot before you quit.
There are aspects of your own business you can always salvage if you try a different product or approach. The brand you invest time into creating and the followers you amass on social media or in your email list can be assets you repurpose for your next business idea.
Thanks to a combination of technology, third-party suppliers, and the ability to quickly test ideas online, it’s easier than ever to build a successful business and start making sales without getting caught up in sourcing products, renting space, and managing inventory.
With this approach, you can test ideas before you invest in them, or start making good money part-time without all the inventory-related commitments that might stand in your way.
The small-business ideas covered above can even be combined in a variety of ways to start a business that’s uniquely yours.
If the idea of sourcing, storing, and shipping inventory kept you from starting a business before, begin with an inventory-free, low-cost business model and grow from there.
Use this list of online business ideas to get the creative juices flowing.
The world of self-employment can be challenging, but with a little hard work and know-how, you can work towards building your own business and saying goodbye to burn out.