Which Routines Help When You’re Burned Out at Work?

Readers have been talking about this, and I agree — I'm totally burned out and tired. I think all of us are having problems focusing on work and getting stuff done, so I thought today might be a great day to talk about routines. Namely, which routines help when you're burned out at work and with life in general?

I'm a big fan of being really intentional when building habits — the book Atomic Habits is awesome for a ton of great ideas for this (here's my review), and we've talked about 4 ways to make the most of your evenings, weekend prep for Monday, variety versus routine, how to build good habits, and how to make the most of your productive times.

For me, routines that help when I'm feeling burned out include:

• Choosing which work tasks to do the night before — You can make a list (just three things! Post-it size!), leave them out on your desk, or even start a task and leave it mid-sentence so you can pick up easily the next morning.
• Breaking work into batches — For my work on the blog there are differences in the energy/focus required, between hunting for recommendations for the afternoon posts (or the Hunts, although those are generally in their own category for energy required), brainstorming/scheduling future posts, writing midday posts, refreshing older posts, doing admin stuff, and more. I also find that depending on my mood and what else is going on, some of the tasks are more appealing at other times than others.
• Exercising when I'm tired of work — When I hit the midday slump and just want to check social media, I've started thinking, “Now is a great time to exercise.” I'm not taking quality brain time away from work and I'm getting in a much-desired workout.
• I'm liking showering at night lately as part of my evening routine, but obviously a morning shower can be a great anchor to a morning routine.
• This may sound weird for a “work productivity” discussion, but doing some batch preparations for food helps with my energy during the week — if I make it easy to grab the healthy choice then it actually involves more mental energy to choose the unhealthy option. For me this means
  • On Sundays I plan dinners for the week, defrost chicken (we eat it at least once a week), do a quick fridge/pantry edit to get rid of any poor choices I made during the week, and lately, soaking dry beans or legumes (I read somewhere that even 2 oz. of beans a day can help with cardiovascular health — it's one of the points on the Mediterranean diet! Once I cook them, I just refrigerate them and as needed, nuke them and eat them with hot sauce or Everything but the Bagel seasoning.)
  • Prepping a few days of chia pudding at a time (I eat it most days for breakfast — about 30 g chocolate protein powder, 30 g chia seeds, 115 g skim milk in each serving — the trick is to stir after 15 minutes and THEN refrigerate for a few hours. I'll make four servings at once in one of those glass Snap-Ware containers and then just spoon one portion into a bowl each day.)
  • I tend to prepare two servings of veggies whenever I make them — one for now, and one for a few days from now. I'll also just roast a bunch of brussels sprouts, broccoli, and/or carrots and nibble on them cold throughout the week.

{related: how to get out of a work-from-home slump}

As the school year approaches I'm starting to think about what a great morning routine looks like for me, and I've already written about rethinking my evening routine now that we're out of the multi-hour ritual that was the “dinner-bath-bedtime funnel.”

Stock photo via Deposit Photos / kchungtw.