Might as well get this over with early this month, instead of waiting until the last minute.
So, June’s blog prompt over at WriYe is:
Some of your strategies to avoid burn out.
All right, just to make sure we’re all on the same page, burn out is where you physically and/or mentally cannot work on something (writing, in this case, as it is a writing community) despite wanting to.
Burn out can be caused by a number of things–working too hard on something, pushing yourself too hard, trying to do writing on top of everything else in your life, especially if you’re going through a hard time, are sick, have too many other responsibilities, etc.
Burn out is a real issue, because if you’ve reached the burnt out stage, there’s really nothing to do except let yourself recover, which may take weeks or even months, depending on things.
So, I guess my number one strategy is to allow yourself breaks. Personally, I set time limits for how long I can work on one thing in a day, and I make sure I’m building in breaks throughout the day and allowing myself some decompression.
Of course, sometimes you might have to do more work than you’re comfortable with (due to deadlines or whatever), but I still think you’ve got to allow yourself a chance to decompress periodically. Watch some YouTube during lunch, or take a nice bath before bed.
My second main strategy is to have smaller things that I can break up a big project with. Things like doing RaTs prompts or, heck, writing a blog post. Drawing a picture or knitting, if one can do so (I have never been able to figure out how to knit, which is irritiating). Just something that’ll take you less than an hour and give your brain a chance to focus on something else.
And I guess my last strategy would be to pay attention to yourself so you can identify the signs that you’re starting to burn out, and take steps to make your progress more sustainable before it gets really bad.
Thoughts, squiders? Things you find work for you?
