Overcoming Entrepreneurial Burnout, Part 5 – Rearranging Priorities

Burnout is the #1 occupational risk of today. If you’ve been following along in our series on overcoming burnout as an entrepreneur, you know we’ve reached the fourth and final R. 🤓  Let’s recap, overcoming burnout requires you to

• Reassess your Why (why you are in business doing what you’re doing in the first place)
• Take a Rest (which includes building in regular downtime for yourself)
• Reach Out to others (for personal and professional support) and, finally,
• Rearrange your priorities.

Burnout is more than stress.🔥 Psychology Today characterizes entrepreneurial burnout as having three dimensions: exhaustion, detachment (or cynicism), and ineffectiveness. One of the main experiences entrepreneurs on their way to or already going through burnout report is the feeling of having no control of their time.  This can sometimes show up either as having your enterprise become your all-consuming obsession or having so many “top priority” things to accomplish that you either don’t know where to begin or where to end.

Rearranging your priorities is essential.
In part, this is about time management, right? And because that is always a valuable thing to master, here are a few time management tips for entrepreneurs. 
 
But it’s important to understand that time management is really priority management. It’s TIME ⏰ to shift from working hard and being busy to working smart and being productive, particularly in service of what matters most to the values of your business. 

Secrets to prioritization often note the importance of prioritizing according to your values or the values behind your company’s goals. When it seems you have 50 different tasks and directions you could go in, consider which activities move you in the direction of your company’s North Star – your main reason for existing in the first place, which is wedded to your values.  This is about perspective– taking the time to figure out what your true priorities ought to be, rearranging them, and then building a roadmap of how you will get there.

Consider organizing your efforts and energies on what can get your business moving toward its next most important goal. For example, if you are in the early stages of your business, your focus is likely (or ought to be) on getting clients/sales – anything that helps make money 💵 – and getting valuable feedback as you build. Activities that don’t address that directly or indirectly, should be banished to lower on your list for now. A helpful article that supports this notion is this one on ruthless prioritization.
 
As you get down to analysing what priorities will get your immediate attention, definitely learn more about productivity guidelines like the Value vs. Effort method (see link for brief overview) and the Pareto Principle a.k.a. the 80:20 rule.  And a few other top prioritization techniques.

Last tip but certainly not the least – make sure that you and taking care of and time for yourself are on your list of priorities.

You can’t spell entrepreneur without U. 😜