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EVERYTHING.
If I had to break it down into 5 anti-hustle habits to focus on doing every day to make burnout a choice and achieve more with less burnout, these would be them. These habits help us to achieve the things we care about without sacrificing our health, our relationships, or our very selves in the process. Think of these as your new, anti-burnout daily habits…
But, before we get into that, I’ve been thinking bout the things that often burn us out—the causes of burnout, if you will—and these steps we can take to intentionally take our lives back! What I ultimately came up with were 5 pillars and 5 causes of burnout that, if we can overcome them, will help us to make burnout a choice in our lives, too! They are…
The 5 Causes of Burnout in Achievers…
A LACK OF CLARITY & SELF-AWARENESS - here
A LACK OF SELF-CARE SELF-CARE - here
A LACK OF PRODUCTIVITY - here
A LACK OF BOUNDARIES - here
A LACK OF ANTI-HUSTLE HABITS - this post!
Yup, today marks the final day in this series, but—perhaps, most importantly—this is the day that really brings everything together! This is the day where we take what we’ve learned about boundaries, productivity, self-care, etc. and we put them into a framework of daily habits that can help you keep burnout at bay…
As I was putting things together for this post and for this podcast, I realized something important about these habits: they need to be tangible, they need to be specific, and they need to be something that can be personalized.
I loved the framework I had before and the habits, but they just weren’t tangible enough. They were intangible. They weren’t something that you could look at and turn into daily behaviors, but I want them to be because they’ve become that for me and I want them to become that for you.
So, let’s do this…
1
Connect with yourself consistently
The first habit that I’ve found to be tremendously helpful is this: connect with yourself consistently! This relates back to pillar #1 of clarity. We have to be clear on ourselves , what’s going on, what we’re feeling, etc. to know what we need and to support ourselves through the inevitable emotional tides.
For me, the things that have helped me to connect with myself are things like journaling, meditation, or reviews. I recommend doing at least one of those things, but, ultimately, all of them play a role and are important, distinctive role. Regardless, they’re all about the consistency with which you do them!
Journaling gives you insights into the deeper emotions you might be dealing with or dwelling on. I also love journaling as an opportunity to work through things. Not just emotions, but also goals and dilemmas. You can find more information here >>
Ideal frequency: Ideally, I would recommend journaling multiple times a week. But, to start with, at least once a week is a good frequency to aim for. I find that every time I pivot to journaling on an “as needed” basis, I often don’t end up journaling enough. It’s something that’s very easy to skip and procrastinate on if you’re not disciplined about it.
Meditation is another very powerful practice because it helps you to turn down the volume on your conscious voice and turn up the volume on your intuition. Most of us lose ourselves because we’ve lost track of how of that intuitive voice, that gut instinct inside of us. Meditation and similar practices in silence help us to reconnect to that voice. Perhaps more than all of that, though, is the fact that meditation is a pause button in an otherwise hectic day. A moment where we train our brains to react less to our impulsive thoughts and embrace stillness, quiet, and solitude. You can find more information here >>
Ideal frequency: Daily. Meditation is a great practice to get into on a daily basis, but I would encourage you to not set a minimum time limit that you don’t feel comfortable with. There’s no point starting with a 10-15 minute meditation. Start with 2 or 5 and train yourself up to the longer meditation lengths. I may not be a meditation expert, but what I will say is this: the meditation length that is “best” is the one that works for you.
Reviewing yourself is perhaps my favorite way to get clarity on ourselves. It helps us to check in on our goals and what things are working to move us toward those goals. It helps us to check in on our habits and behaviors and determine which are serving us and which are not. I’ve already written posts about doing reviews and how to do them. You can find more information here >>
Ideal frequency: Weekly, Monthly, and Quarterly. You’ll see at the link above that reviewing yourself is also about consistently but it can be a little less infrequent. At a minimum, I would say aim for monthly, but you’ll also get the biggest bang for your buck with a weekly review.
2
Move Your Body Daily
When I first started thinking about these habits, I made this one too vague: take care of your body. But, the more I thought about this, I caught myself thinking "what the hell does that even mean? What am I doing to take care of my body that makes me feel the best?” The more I think about this, the more I realize that what makes me feel best is this: moving my body every single day.
I think back to when I did #75hard and I truly did feel so good during that because of the fact that my body was constantly being taken care of, and it made me realize that it doesn’t matter what kind of exercise you’re doing. It can be challenging, yes, and that kind of exercise has its purpose, but restorative exercise does too!
However you slice it, daily movement is a crucial anti-hustle habit. Not only does it help to make sure your body feels good, but it’s restful, restorative, and helps you get rid of pent-up stressors, which is why I love this.
So, stretch, lift weights, do cardio…whatever! I usually aim for 30-45 minutes of movement but regardless of what it looks like or how much, just move your body…and do it every day!
3
Weekly Progress on Your Goals
This is likely our anti-hustle habit for pillar #3: productivity and it’s one of the habits I kind screwed up on before. I made this one “prioritize your priorities” and…what does that even mean? Like…seriously!
I think that this one is important because it’s so easy for our priorities and the things we care about to get lost in the shuffle of to-do lists and responsibilities and we absolutely can burn out when we’re not fulfilled.
So, I think one of the best things we can do for ourselves to make sure we’re making a concerted effort to work on our goals and priorities each week. Not daily because it’s too easy for something to turn into another to-do list item when it’s like that…but it’s important to still find the time. I have found that weekly is a good frequency.
But, there is always the question when it comes to goals and priorities of…how! How the hell do we do that? How do we figure out what our priorities are and what actions to take on a weekly basis? I do this using what I call a “life evaluation". In that, essentially I assess the different parts of my life to identify which ones I need to be prioritized and focused on.
I go through this whole process for identifying your priorities, setting goals, and then breaking those goals down in my Goal Mapping webinar. So, if you’re struggling to figure out how to break down your goals and priorities to something that you can tangibly work on each week, I highly recommend checking that out.
4
Spend (Daily) Time in Silence
Perhaps of all the habits we’ve discussed, this is the most straightforward. Silence. It’s straightforward as fuck, but definitely not easy.
I love this habit because we get so many sensory inputs all day. We have so much information thrown at us and so much, well, noise. And that’s why I love this habit because it relates back to something that we all struggle with: exhaustion. I wrote a post before about why we’re always exhausted and, in it, I detailed the 7 different types of rest we need to cultivate to properly rejuvenate ourselves. One of the most challenging of those 7 types is sensory rest. Sensory rest covers the noise and informational inputs we constantly receive, as well as the visual stimulation we’re constantly receiving. Spending time in silence is the best way to get in that sensory rest.
So, some ideas for how you can spend time in silence”
Meditation. All that information that I wrote above about meditation is true and even more true when it comes to spending time in silence.
Drive around without the radio on. This is a nice, easy way to get in some silence and actually has been one of my favorite ways to fit silence into my life.
Go for a walk without headphones. It’s nice to be on a walk and simply enjoy time in nature and listening to nature sounds. It feels like silence even with the birds chirpy and waves breaking in the background.
One of the big things that I love about this as a habit is that it’s a great place to start when it comes to boundaries. If you can build a boundary of not turning on your radio on a five-minute drive or of sitting in silence for 5 minutes, it’s going to make it easier for you to build a boundary of, say, not checking your email on the weekends, you know?
It’s a building block. It’s a keystone habit and boundary that is going to make your other boundaries easier. That’s what I love about this habit.
5
Exercise Self-Compassion Consistently
Of all of the habits on this list, this one is probably the most abstract, but it’s also one of the most important.
Self-compassion is all about the way you talk to yourself. It’s about talking to yourself with kindness and also recognizing that you’re not the only person who struggles. That you’re not alone.
We need to have compassion with ourselves in all aspects of our lives and the reason I feel like this is the final anti-hustle habit is because, when I haven’t had compassion, that’s only added to my burnout in the past.
When I haven’t been compassionate with myself as I’ve spent time trying to figure things out, that is when I’ve forced myself down a path that wasn’t right for me and made poor decisiosn for myself. When I haven’t been compassionate with myself in regard to my self-care, I’ve burned myself out physically. When I haven’t been compassioante about my goals and making time for those things in my life due to selfishness or feeling guilty, I’ve burned myself out because I need to have fulfillment. I cannot solely prioritize other people’s priorities. I also need to prioritize my own.
Compassion plays a role everywhere in our lives and it definitely plays a role in our burnout. But of all of these habits, it’s the one habit that requires consistency. It’s not something that boils down to a daily habit. It’s something that we need to think about all time time. Consistently. Even when we screw up we need to have compassion for ourselves. Hell, we need to have compassion for ourselves when we’re not compassionate.
Compassion. Consistent compassion. Speaking to ourselves the way that we speak to our best friends, children, etc. That’s what this is about
