Are you heading for burnout? Step back and decide what is really important

 I don’t know about you but it seems that my life can often be summarised as too much to do and not enough time. Sometimes it feels like I’m working all hours but I’m not making sufficient progress towards my goals. Do you ever feel like this? Do you find that:

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  • Emails are piling up unanswered.
  • Phone calls are not getting done on time.
  • You’re getting behind with the URGENT work.
  • You’re not seeing the family as much as you’d like.
  • You’re not spending enough time relaxing with friends.
  • You can’t wait for that glass of wine at night so you can wind down.

For most people too much work creates stress and not getting it done quickly enough creates even more stress. If life feels like that to you then you could be headed towards burnout.

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The busier and more complicated our lives get, the more we need to be able to switch off from those stresses that control and restrict us. One idea that is really helping me avoid burnout is the concept of Mindfulness or striving to LIVE IN THE NOW.

Living in the NOW is a very simple concept but unfortunately it’s not as easy as it sounds to achieve. It’s about not mourning the past, not thinking what you could have done better, not worrying about the future, not anticipating tomorrow’s challenges, but living totally in the present moment.

I was reminded of how difficult this is when I was in New York recently. I had some free time so I decided to visit the Empire State building. While at the top with a thousand other sightseers, I noticed that almost nobody was looking at the view. Instead they were all taking a photo of it! They were so busy taking a selfie to post on Facebook or recording a video to show their friends that they forgot to marvel at the amazing view itself.

It appears to me that our modern technically enhanced world is driving us away from living in the NOW. We always seem to be multitasking these days, never just doing one thing at a time. We eat in front of the TV, we text our friends during a business meeting, we answer emails when we are cooking a meal, we even practice our sales pitch when taking a shower!

Ask yourself this: When was the last time you just drove a car? Yes that’s right just drove – nothing else. People don’t just drive these days, they drive and drink a coffee, they drive and make a phone call, they drive and listen to the radio.

When you stop and think about it you know that your brain can only concentrate properly on one thing at a time so when you’re eating and watching TV, which one are you thinking about? If you’re focused on the TV then you won’t taste the food and if you’re focused on the food then you won’t be following what’s happening on TV.

We can only do one thing effectively at a time and when we are doing two or more then we’re not living in the NOW. We are flitting from thought to thought, never really concentrating on one thing, and living a life full of conflicting and confusing snippets of information. It’s no wonder many of us are stressed and heading for burnout!

Now consider this: Almost all happiness happens in the present moment. We feel happy when we really make a connection with someone. We feel happy when we do something that we’re totally absorbed in and love doing. We feel happy when we get completely lost in a piece of music, a book or a film. Being ‘in the now’ – that’s when happiness happens, time just disappears and all we are aware of only what’s happening right now.

Choosing to live in the past or the future not only robs us of enjoyment, but it robs us of truly living. Deep down we all understand that the only important moment is the present moment. When we stay in that moment then we aren’t stressed and we experience happiness.

A friend of mine had an attitude towards credit cards and charge cards that used to drive me to distraction. If Debbie saw something she wanted, then she bought it and paid by card. Her theory was that she would get great enjoyment from the item right now and payment was something that could be sorted tomorrow – she used to joke that she aimed to die in debt! Sadly, Debbie passed away twelve years ago, and achieved her goal of dying in debt, but my memories of her are of the fun and happiness that she extracted from every moment of her life – in many ways she was the epitome of living in the now and she got more joy out of her forty years than most of us would manage in one hundred.

With this concept in mind, consider these situations and see how you can adapt them to your life:

  • Next time you’re playing with your kids, be totally with them. Don’t think about work, don’t think about tomorrow, don’t dwell on yesterday, just be with your kids. Soak in the sights, the sounds, the smells, and the emotions. Focus on your children’s triumphs, and sorrows; try and see the world from their eyes and you will be in the moment.
  • When you are talking to a parent really listen to what they are saying and stop thinking about what you are going to say next. Being in the now will tell you so much more about how you can help them and their child.
  • If we just ‘survive the week’ desperate for the next weekend to arrive, we are wasting 5/7th of our life living in the future. Surely it would be a better to find a way of loving what we do every day. Learning to love our job would require us to be in the now.
  • Are we living in the now when we are dreaming of our goals? Unfortunately when we become too goal focused we can get frustrated with the fact that we are not where we want to be and find that today just passes us by. We must have goals but we should be careful not to focus on them too much.
  • Dwelling on past accomplishments is just as bad as dreaming of the future. If you are thinking too much about what you did yesterday, you won’t be doing much with your life right now.

I do recognise, from time spent at my children’s school that teachers have a huge amount on their plate and that stress often plays a large part in their day-to-day lives. Maybe though you should make time to step back and decide what is essential, and what is additional, so that you don’t overload yourself – sometimes we end up concentrating on the tiny details that make tiny differences instead of something big that will make a massive change, and often these two will take up the same amount of time and attention. We can only live one moment at a time so let’s make it the present one. By doing this we will increase our happiness, reduce our stress and avoid burnout.

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John Shackleton


With a sports psychology and sports coaching background, John now shows international business audiences techniques that exercise and improve the biggest, most powerful muscle in the body – the brain. His clients include Coca-Cola, Air New Zealand, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Sony and Renault. www.JohnShack.com