While being a freelancer has its many perks, such as flexibility, choosing when, where, and what kind of projects you want to work on, these tips will help you avoid feeling a burnout so you can have long-term success in your freelance career.

• What Is a Burnout
• What Leads To Feeling Burned Out
• What To Do When You Feel Burned Out
• Activities To Do When You Need a Break From Work
• How To Make Time For Yourself
• How To Balance Your Work Life & Your Personal Time

"If you get tired, learn to rest, not to quit."

- Banksy

What Is a Burnout? - A burnout is what you will start to feel if you are not balancing your work-life and social life properly. Especially if you do not leave yourself any room to do other things besides work. When you feel burned out it may feel like everything is piling up and you can't stop it. Your work will begin to stress you out, which takes a toll on your relationships and strains on your mental state, which then impacts your physical body. It is a feedback loop that you must avoid at all costs. 

In this society we live in, there’s so much emphasis being put on productivity in the work field. It's all about being productive, producing, getting things done, moving towards your goals. While those are important qualities to have, especially when you can have success, but a lot of the time what happens is we don't balance ourselves properly. Burned out feelings include:

• Not wanting to get out of bed to work on your business 
• Not working on your goals anymore
• Lack of motivation
• Exhaustion and low energy
• Feelings of negativity towards your job
• Lack of passion

If you have ever felt these feelings, that's when you know you've gone too far. If you have been feeling these signs, then these tips will help you how to handle and prevent the ultimate business killer... getting burned out. Taking massive action to achieve your goals, balancing your energy and preventing feelings of 'burnout' is vital to avoid this feeling for long-term freelance success.

What Leads To Feeling Burned Out - There are many factors which can lead to burnout. One of the ways that lead to this is if you are inside too much. Especially for those who can work from home, or work remotely. This can lead to putting in extra hours if you're home more often and that can lead to burnout. This can ultimately cause you more harm than good.

A common misconception a lot of people have especially when they're new to freelancing, working from home, or just being their own boss is that they put too much emphasis on getting things done and jam-packing everything. This leads to them not taking the proper time to recharge. Then what happens is it leads to burnout. The truth is, anyone can be motivated for a short time but what separates those who have success from those who quit, is the ability to manage challenging times and push onward.

Working for yourself also comes with a price tag. When you are in business for yourself you are presented with a unique set of challenges that can lead to burnout quickly if you don't catch the early signs. Work can be stressful or even overwhelming at times, so it's important to take care of yourself so you can stay motivated and passionate about what you do for the long haul. If you’ve noticed any of these signs, don’t worry. The sooner you feel yourself burning out, the sooner you can take steps to reduce the effects and avoid it in the future. 

What To Do When You Feel Burned Out -The first thing you can start to do when you're feeling burned out, is you want to take a step back and look at if you are properly taking care of yourself. This means making sure you are getting enough sleep. For adults, the healthy average sleep time is 8 hours.

This is vital to be able to function for your brain to work properly to have enough sleep. Also having a good diet is vital for when you are feeling burned out because what happens is if you're just working too much and you're too busy to make yourself a proper meal, your body and diet are going to suffer. Your body needs to get the proper nutrition to be able to function healthy or it will cause you to shut down and listen to it. 

Activities To Do When You Need A Break From Work - When you take a break throughout your day and implement some sort of exercise in your routine, make sure that you do it at least three to five times a week ideally will help you avoid that burnout and it'll help boost your energy levels. Exercising will help move any negative energy out and would result in more energy and feeling less burned out.

Your body is meant to move, so if you don’t properly take care of it and get movement in, or sweat, your body will start to get tense and cause other health conditions which can affect your work life. Especially if you are already having built-up stress from work and life things that pop up. Without exercise, It's easy to become overwhelmed, burned out, and this can lead to a lack of motivation and detrimental to your mind, body, and spirit.

Another activity to do when you need a break from work is to get outside and reconnect with nature. When you're burned out it’s because you're most likely inside most of the time. By going outside for a little bit whether it's going on a walk, going on a camping trip for the weekend, or sitting in your backyard can reconnect you back with the natural rhythm of nature.

This can also calm your mind, and body down so you can get proper rest that night. This will lead you to feel a lot better coming back to work and less burned out when you take the time for yourself and connect back with nature.

How To Balance Your Work Life & Your Personal Time - Setting time aside to look at your day-to-day schedule and see where your energy is going the most is very helpful. It’s important when managing your schedule to focus on things that are moving the needle forward. People are spending time on just busy work tasks that don't do anything for themselves. When you prioritize your different tasks based on how urgent they are and then how not urgent they are you can begin to organize your calendar and your schedule around that. Once you start to look at what is moving the needle in your life, in your business, in your career and see what is not moving the needle and what is taking up your time, you can then prioritize around that. It’s all about working smarter and not working harder. 

You don't want to be busy, you want to be productive. This doesn't mean work at all and only work an hour a day. What it means is making time for yourself by putting the time into analyzing what makes the most sense to spend your time on that day. When you're in control of your time, and your body, and personal time, instead of it all being focused on work, you're not going to feel burned out.

Also by taking account of where your time and your energy is going into and if you're just being a consumer and lost on social media platforms, or Netflix for hours upon hours, take account of that. That is going to be contributing to you feeling burnt out. It’s all about having balance and where you want to put in enough effort. When you plan things out and make time for yourself instead of working 15 hours a day straight for three weeks, you will be able to avoid getting burned out from work.

As important as it is to be productive and get to all those to-do lists, it’s important to take time for yourself. It's so easy to talk about all the awesome successes as a freelancer but another part of just this journey is shedding light on these challenges. If you're not burned out, practice the prevention models to re-nourish yourself and get back to feeling motivated and passionate about what you do for work. 

Remember, It's always a good time to implement these practices and take time for yourself so you can avoid that burnout feeling and stay consistent for the long term in your freelancing career. So if that was helpful and you liked this blog, I made a video discussing more in-depth detail on how to avoid burnout, what activities to do to get your spirits up and how to avoid a complete burn-out so you can feel your best and have the most business success.

>>> Click here to watch my new YouTube video now!

- Paul Mendes

 Founder of Profitable Freelancer