Insulators

Starting Out Right: Avoiding Founder Burnout

Founder burnout is all too common. “Just push through it.” Not! Founders need insulation from burnout.  Passion, focus, and conviction can carry you only so far. Without keeping self-care, community, and the other burnout insulators in focus, many fall by the wayside. Luckily, productivity actually is greater, creativity is more accessible, and founders last longer when we keep burnout insulation inside our focus of concern. This is key – Your burnout insulation choices are not optional frills for a founder. They are productivity enhancers. And we ourselves, the Burnout Solutions, almost fell into the “optional” trap.  Here’s how it went down: Our first business-planning retreat brought us face to face with questions that were, as yet, impossible to answer. “Revenue streams?”  “Customer channels?’  We knew we would nail down these things, and many more.    But did we know them right then, as we attempted to write our first plan?  Of [...]

By |2015-04-27T23:30:45+00:00April 22nd, 2015|General, Insulators|0 Comments
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If Burnout Has You in Deep … Trouble

If your burnout has you in deep distress, then know that there is a way out. Both of the founders of Burnout Solutions have been there, in deep trouble. We recovered, and you can too. You can win your way back to a more rewarding life. Before you begin: Please give yourself some recognition --it took time for you to get into this deep place, and it will take a bit of time to get out.  Be gentle with yourself.   To climb up out of the pit is a "one step at a time, take it slow and easy" kind of process. First things first.  Please assess yourself. Have you had repeated injuries, or bad thoughts, that you brushed off as bad luck, on top of your burnout? This could be your body or your psyche, trying to get your attention with ever-louder emergency sirens? Often, burnt out people have numbed [...]

By |2015-04-27T23:01:27+00:00April 22nd, 2015|General, Insulators|0 Comments
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Small Wins Have Big Benefits in Burnout

Do you feel like you your formerly creative, energized, great-thoughts brain has become sluggish, slow, resistant? This state is likely to arise in a working environment where the tasks seem like they are never done, the wins are not recognized, and the routine presses on.  Many highly-educated professionals are surprised to find themselves in this boat, but in fact it is an all-too-common symptom of burnout. Lawyers, teachers, health care professionals, programmers, salespeople... this syndrome reaches across all categories of work. This frustrating brain state takes over because, in response to low-win environments, the brain actually biochemically shifts into a reactive, low-creativity survival mode.  When that happens, we at Burnout Solutions recommend that you engage in a very conscious and intentional strategy to pull the brain out of this defeated rut. We recommend an article by neurologist and educator Judy Willis, MD,  which contains a great description of how the survival-mode shift [...]

By |2015-04-27T23:24:18+00:00April 22nd, 2015|General, Insulators|0 Comments
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