Want to learn how to prevent burnout from ever happening again?
Hey everybody, I'm Kati Morton and I'm a licensed therapist
and I have a mental health channel here on YouTube where I educate
about all things related to your mental health.
But today we're going to talk about how to prevent burnout from happening again.
The first thing I always recommend,
it's something that I constantly work on in my own personal and professional life,
is boundaries.
Boundaries, by definition, mark a limit.
Boundaries are on a map, it's a limit between the states, right?
This is California, this is Nevada.
We can also talk about boundaries when it comes to psychological health.
What hurts us emotionally, so it's not okay.
And what doesn't hurt us emotionally and it is okay.
That limit in between is the boundary.
And so when it comes to our work life, what do boundaries look like?
The first place to start when it comes to boundaries
is notice all of those signs and symptoms of burnout that we talked about before.
Like if you're feeling really irritable or super tired,
or maybe resentful of your viewers, or comments you get, or people around you.
Notice those symptoms and those signs
because that tells us that a boundary has already been crossed.
And that's what's really cool about the human brain
is that it responds, and it lets us know,
it sends signals to tell us when things aren't okay.
And so if we recognise those symptoms at that point
then we can assess what we're doing and how we can make it better.
How much of your time and yourself are you willing to give up or to share
with your audience.
Every time we give of ourselves, we give of our personal life,
we're left with a little bit less.
That's less time spent with our loved ones or less stuff that we have that's private.
But everyone's level of tolerability and what they're willing to share
is going to be different.
Be patient with yourself as you figure out what's okay for you.
And we can't have anybody else tell us either.
Unfortunately, no one can solve this for us. Everyone's different.
My ability to give to my audience
is going to be very different from your ability to give to yours.
So, think about it. Give yourself a little time
and consider what's okay and not okay for you to give of yourself.
I think boundaries are really difficult for creators as a whole because
we work and live often in the same place.
I mean, right now, I'm in the second bedroom of my apartment,
It's only a two-bedroom apartment by the way, and this is like my "office"
that I share with my husband. So I'm legitimately working at home.
That makes it really hard for me to experience work-life balance
because I don't clock in at 8 o'clock and clock out at five.
The difference between our personal life and work life can get a little hazy
and therefore it can be difficult for us to know when we're really taking time off
or when we're 'not on' and being a creator.
And so something that I learned about when I was studying to be a therapist,
we talked about boundaries of space.
I do not work in spaces that I want to do other things in.
So I work primarily in my office or in one part of my couch in my living room.
Those are my only two areas.
I refuse to ever do work in bed.
Or at the dinner table.
Or in our other lounge chair.
Because those are areas where I want to relax.
And we know behaviourally, psychologically, through research,
that if we separate our spaces,
then we're better able to do the thing that we need to do in that space.
When I sit down to work at my desk that's right behind me,
my brain knows it's going to do work.
I don't sit down there and read a book or chill out and listen to music.
I only work.
And so it takes me less time to get settled in and to focus.
And I know for many of you,
you might not have the space to devote to a complete office
but I would encourage you to set up a certain space
maybe this is buying a desk and a chair, and putting it in a corner.
The next issue many people run into,
and something I've struggled with off and on for years,
is how to communicate to your audience about boundaries.
The first boundary that I ever set up was that I only answer questions
for the first few hours or first 24 hours, I think was the first one I set up,
after a video is released.
So setting limits to when you're going to be available,
and when you're going to answer questions, reply to tweets, respond to comments,
whatever it's going to be, set a time limit, let them know when.
So it's kind of just letting people know what to expect,
that way they're not disappointed or frustrated,
and you don't have any guilt about setting boundaries.
Take some time and consider what will work best for you.
Give yourself a few weeks to assess what's okay and not okay,
and when you're usually active, and what feels good to you,
and what do we start to resent and feel overworked about.
Start noticing those things and then start putting together
how you want to communicate that to your audience.
Now that we've learned how to stop burnout from continuing to happen,
let's find some ways to work smarter instead of harder.
Make sure you're subscribed to this channel because our next episode is all about that
and turn those notifications on and I will see you then, bye!