Feel the burn….OUT

You’re pouring all of yourself into your business. Sleep is something you can catch up on later, although that never seems to work out. As for staying healthy, exercising and eating well are often sacrificed to the demands of your business. When you’re always busy focusing on running your business’ operations, paying suppliers and keeping customers happy, who has time for… living? You do. This blog article will outline 3 simple ways to work on your well-being, helping you better kick those business goals.

Exercise

Take a spoonful of exhilaration and another of disdain, the measures vary for everyone but the taste of exercise tends towards bittersweet. You know it’s great for you but the benefits will not accrue without commitment and effort. So how do you find the time, and sometimes the motivation, to get moving? Let’s break it down:

• Prioritise by setting a calendar meeting at least 3 to 5 times a week for 30mins titled ‘Burnout buster’ (note to self: you are doing this for that reason). Those that study this stuff a lot suggest a moderate-intensity activity for 150-300 minutes per week.
• Ignore your brain when it tells you the usual things like “We don’t have time.” No, negative voice in my head, we do have the time. We made time, remember? It’s in our calendar!
• No delaying –  “We’ll go after this email. No really, we will go after this email.” Hey procrastinating part of my psyche, we would NEVER miss a client meeting that was in our calendar. Why is it OK to miss this? The answer is, “it’s not!”
• It’s hard. OK, sensible voice of reason, you’re making a lot of sense. And this is especially true if you haven’t exercised in a while. But do you normally achieve professional and personal gains (aside from weight) by following the sweet siren song offering comfort? Of course not. Facing challenges makes you stronger and it does get easier. Moreover, getting fitter also makes you more productive! According to this study, you can expect around an 8% increase in productivity over 3 months.

Eat well 

Of course, it’s easy and quick to order food delivery and keep working until it arrives… and also while you’re eating… and then, with a full stomach, keep on working some more. That’s efficient, right? Yes, in the short-term. But is takeaway keeping your body in good health? We all know the answer is NO. You cannot expect peak performance from your brain when your body is not getting the great nutrients it requires. Owning and running a business needs your full attention, so prioritise your health to help alleviate burn out. OK, but how?

• Make a meal plan. There are a plethora of websites that have meal planning templates but for a place to start, check out The Organised Housewife for meal planning ideas.
• Shop online. Having the ingredients on hand makes food preparation and cooking easier but grocery shopping is time-consuming. Shopping online can minimise the time it takes to prep for cooking at home.

Get help 

So far, we have offered tips on investing a little more time in your health but there are, sadly, only 24 hours in a day. Actually, it’s probably for the best, otherwise, you might work another 10 hours per week. Back in reality though, making the extra time needed to optimise your health, and in turn, your business means getting help. Adding people to your business can be daunting and, for some, overwhelming. There will almost certainly be a need to train this new person and is there enough work to keep someone, who has likely honed their specialised skills, busy over a mutually convenient schedule? You need someone to look after lots of different tasks. You need someone a lot like you but is there anyone person with a really diverse skill set looking to help you with your business? There is a solution.

• Outsource – engaging specialists in different fields as required can help. The type of tasks a freelancer can help with are almost endless and are tailored to you, your business model and goals. So how do you decide what could be outsourced?  Here are the steps to getting help:
  • List out ALL the activities you (and your team, if you already have one) do on a daily, weekly or monthly basis.
  • Decide which tasks MUST be handled by you or your internal team.
  • Source individual freelancers to help you with individual activities or a business which can help you with many different activities, such as marketing, admin, sales and documentation. For example, you need someone to run your social media platform but it’s only 5 hours of work per week. No problem, one of the social media virtual assistants (VA’s) at We Virtual can help. And because a VA is not your employee, you don’t have to find extra work to justify hiring them for more personally fulfilling hours. Winning 🙌.
  • Meet with them to ensure a good fit for your business. Find a business or individual freelancer you can trust and communicate with effectively; that understands what you need.
  • Engage them and start leveraging the power of many to start smashing your business goals and achieving balance in your life.

Let’s recap

Your sustainable or growing business requires your devotion and sacrifices are inevitable. But if you strive in business now so that you can have a better life later, don’t abandon the small but critical investments that lead to better health. You can start slowly by cooking a couple of the week’s meals at home and by locking in time for your burnout buster exercise routine. Use your exercise time to start thinking of the tasks you could outsource then engage an awesome business offering VA services or a freelancer who is the right fit. You’ll be rewarded in the short term by improved functioning, both at work and in your life outside of the business; yes, it’s true, some people actually have time for that. Then, in the long term, plan to be around to fully enjoy your successes.