Avoiding Burnout by Design

Hello and welcome to the traveling introvert. Today I'm going to talk about building a business. Actually, I'm gonna talk about building a lifestyle centric business, and that might sound weird because I'm not into like selling the lifestyle and so I want to explain what I mean about that. So many times people want to start a business and their first thought is what will make money? Or I see this need, I need to fill it. How do I fill it as quickly as possible, as much as possible, fill my calendar, fill my bank account, fill all the things, and that's great because, of course, a business should make money. But here's the thing and here's the kicker that kind of gets people stuck in a rut or people back themselves into this corner is they're so busy trying to get more clients and filling up their calendar and only seeing success as having a very full calendar, taking lots of meetings, doing everything urgently, that they end up being burnt out. And so this is why I want to talk about the importance of a lifestyle centric business because almost everyone experiences burnout at some time in their life, but if you have your own business, you probably have a little bit more control over it than most. And so burnout is chronic fatigue, cynicism, efficacy, brain fog, not wanting to do stuff, not feeling creative, not getting that spark and there are 12 stages of burnout and it kind of creeps up on you and then people don't really sort of see it happening or notice it until it's about stage 5 or 6 and then it takes a long time to recover.

And so generally as humans and as business owners, we want to avoid burnout or at least make it short term and then, you know, short term stress and then back to a good baseline. So why what does lifestyle centric businesses mean for you and burnout? So here's the thing. When you're thinking about your business or starting your business actually, you can just think about this anytime in your business. What is it that is important to you? Is it having the summers off so you can spend time with your children? Is it having the winters off so you can go see the northern lights? Is it only working weekends because during the week you need to you you do volunteer work? What time off do you need that is important to you that would make you an unhappy bad human if you didn't get it? Or what things or people are important to you and therefore activities or things that need to get done at certain time frames or certain seasons that is good for you. And that's just one thing to think about. And the other thing to think about is, how do you work as a human? Are you better in the evenings? Are you better in the mornings? What type of communication works for you? Do you prefer asynchronous? Do you like emails? Do you love long phone calls? Because these are the things that make a difference in your business. If you hate phone calls, having a business where you are on the phone all day is not good for you. And therefore is not lifestyle or not conducive for a lifestyle centric business.

If you have a business where you are on call 247 and you like time to yourself or you don't wanna be on call 247, it's probably not a good thing to have or service to offer. So when you're thinking about services and products, think about what time you currently have. Think about how much time these things would take up, mental bandwidth, and energy for you. What should you do? And then build your business around that. What times of day works for you? What types of people you wanna work with? What kinds of tasks do you enjoy doing the most? What times off do you need? If you are the kind of person that really enjoys your summers, try and do something don't don't do something where you have to do something every month and you can't take the summers off. Build it into whatever it is that you're you're creating. That's like, well, I'm going to regurgitate, content or I'm going to have a guest in or I'm going to insert thing here so that you get your summers the way that you want them and therefore helping to prevent burnout, making sure that you get that regular rest. So thank you for listening.

This is Janice at The Career Introvert, helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week, and I hope you think about what changes you can make in your business for your lifestyle.