Dear Entrepreur…
Youre not tired, you are burning out.
If you were tired you’d go to bed and get up refreshed tomorrow. If you were tired, some sleep and some food would revive you. Tired is when we have used up our fuel for the day. We tire.
You, dear business owner, are burning out. I know it sounds scary, but if anyone knows how to face scary, it’s a woman in business. You’ve done it plenty of times.
Burn out is defined in many different ways, by different people with different agendas, however the World Health Organisation agrees it is a syndrome not a diagnosis, and is particular to the workplace – although I would also include the work of a stay at home parent myself. The simplest definition I’ve ever found is “too hard and too much, for too long”.
I like simple.
See how it is different from “tired”?
If you were to think about current events, we have recently had quite a bit of “too hard, too much and for too long” in my humble opinion. If you were just getting on with your work, working hard, doing what you love, and well, working. You’d be tired. Deliciously, satisfyingly tired, as though you’d worked your keep and earned your rest.
But because you’re also juggling COVID, government sanctions, new helpers such as job seeker/maker/ keeper, support grants, changes in consumer activity, changes in the way we deliver service, learning of new technologies (on the fly!) natural disasters, opening and closing boarders, developing world war… you are probably headed more in the direction of burnout than tired.
Quite frankly, that paragraph is too much for me.
One of the greatest outcrys I get here is “yes Amy maybe I am burning out, but I can’t just close the doors and go to bed. I have to work”.
There IS good news for you.
Getting back to work you love, the work you opened a business to do, work that you’re good at, work that you can have some sense of achievement and satisfaction from, can actually heal your soul a little. You DO need to reduce the work pressure, so being able to delegate will be an important factor, and you do need to plan into the future so the “too long” eases, but if you DO get to get back to the work you love doing, and get to see yourself competently achieving that work, or doing the parts of the job that bring you satisfaction, this will indeed help fill your cup back up.
Burnout feels like “not enough” there isn’t enough of you to do all that has to be done, compared to tired, or other words which focus on how flat you might feel, burnout is an overwhelming sense that there isn’t enough of you.
If you feel like you are burning out, take a moment and a pen, write down all the areas of your business, and then beside each, or with bubbles, or whatever suits your fancy, write who is helping you with them. Look at the page, who that is already helping in each area can take over some of those things? Or who could potentially take over some of those things? And when? if no one is helping, who could?
We want several things here in this process
- Better delegation, means being able to identify and train someone competent to take on some roles with your supervision
- Better delegation leads better to legacy planning, so the person you’re supervising can eventually become a manager while you go on holidays
- Better delegation and understanding of who does what eliminates double handling and improves efficiency
- Delegation will upskill your staff. This has only good repercussions for your business
- Better delegation means you get your weekends back (hopefully) and with the break in work, you may well get your mojo back too!
Lots of fears typically come up for women in this phase, fears about security of their business, their business assets (clients) their intellectual property. Legitimate fears. Trusting staff is a really big step. Don’t allow those fears to stop you from trying new things, even in micro steps, and from working toward your own wellbeing and rest. You deserve that as much as you deserve a thriving business.
Creative ways to delegate:
- To your adult kids
- To a virtual assistant who doesn’t know you or your business
- To a colleague you already share joint projects with
- to network colleagues you haven’t worked with, but who are same size business as you and grappling with the same size issues as you.
- Take whole projects and outsource the whole lot, don’t learn how to design your website, give it to a student for the rates, and let her learn and muddle it out for you, allow yourself to be happy with possibly less than perfect but working, for the rest it brings you.
- Delegate other areas of your life you don’t like – the shopping, the cleaning, the cooking, mums taxi
- Voice record letters using your computer software while you drive.
Longer term delegation and planning will serve you well when you get yourself on a roll with this, make sure to book in to see your advisors for long term financial and business planning, so you get really clear on where youre headed, and what you need to get there and who will do the leg work so that you aren’t doing it all. Remember, you’re the CEO, and your job is to vision.
If you were just tired, you’d have handled this. You are capable like that.
Its time to take better care of you.
Gentle with you
A
Amy Madden 