How to Ease Up Before Overwork Burns You Out

The most counterintuitive, surprising, and impactful new stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday.

“Our society is overworked, and as result, overstressed,” says PsychCentral’s Michael Hedrick. We’ve become so accustomed to overwhelming ourselves that we’ve forgotten how to hit the brakes before burning out. Because of this, we’re a nation of grumps who fester in pools of our own stress. It’s disgusting.

Hedrick thinks a lot of people are need of a remedial course in stress management. The skills and strategies one needs to monitor their workload can be relearned. All it takes is a willingness to step away from the overheated vehicle that is your life. You’ve got to take a breath and make the decision to stop trying to do too much. Hedrick suggests listing all the overwhelming items in your life in order to find places where you can break apart larger projects.

“Whatever the task is, it can be broken into chunks. Essentially this means setting small goals for yourself. Take time out in the in-between periods, after you’ve accomplished one part but have yet to get to another.”

Hedrick offers a number of other strategies to help overwhelmed readers relearn what it’s like to take a breather. The basic takeaway here is that overworked humans tend to lose track of reality when their capital-G Goals are constantly breathing down their necks. The silver lining is that just because you’ve rewired yourself to be miserable doesn’t mean you can’t re-rewire yourself back to normalcy. Take a look at the full piece (linked below) and let us know what you think.