Katie Maycock
Katie is a stress and burnout specialist for leaders & companies. She works with people and companies on how to manage stress and prevent burnout. As founder of Get Your Sh*t Toget...
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What is burnout?
Burnout is physical, mental, and emotional exhaustion from prolonged stress.
What are the signs of burnout?
So there's quite a few different types of signs with burnout. So we're going to break it down into physical, mental, and emotional. So the physical symptoms of burnout is exhaustion, fatigue, lowered immunity, so you're more likely to get sick more frequently, things like that. You might also have general inflammation, which can also lead to skin issues and other health issues as well. So it's all the health issues there. Emotionally, you might be extremely drained. You might be finding that you are either more frustrated or angry, or maybe you're finding yourself wanting to withdraw a little bit more. You also might be suffering from anxiety and some depression as well. And mentally what we're looking at is you might be finding it really difficult to focus. You might be finding it really difficult to answer questions. So for instance, you might be reading an email and you can see the words that the email is written, but you can't actually take in that information. So you're really struggling to take in information as well. So there's some of the signs to really pay attention to.
What are your top tips for preventing burnout?
So the best ways that you can prevent burnout is to become aware, to understand, and to action. And so what I mean by that is really start becoming aware of yourself. It's really easy to just fall into the pit of like, yeah, stress is a part of everyday life, and just get on with it. But what you really have to understand is how does stress impact you? How does it show up for you? So become really, really aware of that. Then what you've got to do is understand what you can do about it. And this is when we start looking at making sure that you are getting enough sleep, making sure that you're eating a healthy diet, making sure that you're doing really good things for yourself that fill your cup. So that could be going to the gym, hanging out with friends, having a chilled out evening at home, those different types of things, which is really important, which you have to be able to get to if you are more aware of yourself. And then what you've got to really make sure that you're doing is putting that into action. So scheduling it in, making sure that you are taking time for yourself. It's really easy to go, I know what I need to be doing, but not scheduling it in. So making sure that you're scheduling it in and actioning it.