The Burn-Out Syndrome

[Leaf]

I bet that a lot of you have already suffered from the ‘burn-out syndrome’. You try to focus on too many areas of your life, at the same time, and you end up losing all of your focus, hence, getting burned out.

As Steve, a lot of posters around here, and even my own experience, dictates, it’s better to just focus on one or two areas of our life, at a time, and experience temporary disequilibrium to achieve overall equilibrium in the long run. When I focus in just one (at maxim, two) areas of my life, I get a laser-beam focus, and experience great growth in that area, but when I set myself to improve everything at a time, I tend to be… over-helmed by the mission.

Right now, I was focusing on working out, and I was getting great results. But as I look at the different areas of my life, I have this extreme urge to improve in all of them. So, today, I just set goals in this areas of my life:

• Physical/Health
• Studies
• Writing
• Social/Relationships

Immediately, I’m already feeling chopped into bits in the inside, like you’re trying to juggle four apples, but you’re not very good at it and you start losing control.

All of these areas are very demanding. The physical implies hours of exercise a day; studies lots of… well, studying; writing is a creative exercise, and as I get the ‘burn-out’ feeling, my creative part just disappears into oblivion (besides, I get outbursts in which I write for hours a day), and as for the social/relationships part, right now, I really have to put conscious effort to make it work out.

Is there any way you can juggle all of this in a successful way? I know it would be best to just focus in one thing, but it’s hard to leave areas of your life behind to improve another. Can you avoid the burn-out feeling while demanding all of this from yourself, without falling behind in performance? Or is it that the only way is to focus in a single area and work on it?

[Ezza]

Though Steve does head in that direction with this one (read it - again if you already have):

Living Congruently

I think Steve is right that improving one important area of your life will have positive effects on other areas, but I think this is different to 'fixing everything at the same time' which is causing the burnout you speak of.

I think that it is simply reality that you can't fix everything at once. It's impossible by definition to devote all your energy to everything!
I would suggest to accept this rather than trying to 'solve it' as if it's a problem that can actually be solved.
All you can do is work out a balance - balance your time and your energy towards your various life areas in a way that feels right to you in your current circumstance, and don't be afraid to vary it over time as things change.

E

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Leaf

• Physical/Health
• Studies
• Writing
• Social/Relationships

Oh it's easy. You study until your brain need a break, then you exercise. You get a girlfriend who is as interested in reading as you are in writing. You can go on dates where she proofreads your work. As for friends, find those who are into exercise too. Then you can exercise together. That's social life too. If you're exercising alone, use the time to think of what you're going to write next.

[Leaf]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

Oh it's easy. You study until your brain need a break, then you exercise. You get a girlfriend who is as interested in reading as you are in writing. You can go on dates where she proofreads your work. As for friends, find those who are into exercise too. Then you can exercise together. That's social life too. If you're exercising alone, use the time to think of what you're going to write next.

Ahaha... Sweet. There's some true in your post.