The busiest part of the year is here! Pumpkin spice everything, academics, athletics, and extracurricular activities are spinning us headlong into the new year; and oh yeah!- we still have to stay on top of our jobs. Add to this the draining reality of being an adult and mother living through unparalleled world events. We’re exhausted before we even get out of bed!

We’ve been running on empty for a long time, and chances are, our quality of work may be reflecting that. All it takes is a crazy week in our personal lives to deplete our ability to put out fires at work. If you’re worn out and need some tactics in your back pocket to whip out when you just can’t handle another “I hope this finds you well” email, don’t despair!

Communicate Your Needs

The worst thing we can do is to keep our struggle to ourselves. We’ve been conditioned for decades by companies to push ourselves past our human capacities when it comes to our workload. While speaking up about our limits is still frowned upon, it’s important to let your people know! 

Speaking to your manager or peers at work about your burnout and your desire to find ways to keep supporting the team will go a long way. If those around you see a diminished output without understanding its cause, incorrect assumptions can follow. 

Before you bring things up, try to pinpoint the cause behind why you’ve become depleted. Are you a new mother trying to navigate the needs of your newborn while simultaneously returning to the demands of your work role? Have you been given the work of two people, and you’re running out of motivation to show up every day? 

If you can’t identify any one cause, it could be general post-pandemic fatigue that many of us are still experiencing. This just might be the underlying cause of your fatigue, lack of focus or even anger at your inability to keep up with your kids and work tasks like you used to. 

Anticipate It 

Once you’ve voiced your struggles, follow through with setting boundaries that you’ve agreed on with your management, peers, or employees. To help you keep these boundaries in place, do your best to get ahead of any problems that tend to regularly arise. 

Are you usually left alone to wrap up projects under a tight deadline? Are there seasons where your business experiences a higher volume of tasks and clients to help? Do your best to anticipate and put a plan of action in place to address these issues, but don’t get bogged down by the “what ifs”. 

Even the best planning can’t prevent a last-minute technical problem or a family illness that throws a hitch in your schedule. 

Redistribute The Workload

Many of us have seen growth in our existing companies or started and grown our small businesses because of dissatisfaction with our previous employers. Growth is great and we want to see it, but with success also comes the potential for stress. 

To keep your workload manageable, work with your team to set realistic expectations. If for some reason you’re expected to take on more responsibilities, (we’re looking at you, record turnover rates) ask if this will be a permanent addition to your job description going forward. 

Many times an increase in workload starts out as a temporary change but solidifies where it shouldn’t because the person handling the duties “makes it work” for so long. Management then assumes they have the bandwidth going forward to own those tasks. If this has happened to you, it might be necessary to have a conversation to renegotiate your salary. 

If you’re a small business owner, and you notice there is more work to go around than current employees can handle, hire temporary or full-time employees as necessary! This is especially important as we head into the holidays if you’re a part of any eCommerce or product-based business. Don’t let a lack of funds cause burnout in your team. Small business loans or lines of credit for businesses can boost your bottom line, support demand, and keep your team well-staffed and happy. 

Tools that Lighten the Load

We’ve all worked for companies that lag behind the times on tools and operations. The amount of extra work a lack of ingenuity causes can, and usually does, pile on stress – and possibly resentment among employees! There are many tools available to help streamline or even automate some processes that are time-sucks on your productivity. 

Some can even be used in a personal capacity to help you organize your family’s activities and household to-do lists. 

If you know you’re coming up on a project with low energy and motivation, try breaking down large tasks into manageable sub-tasks. It’s easy to get overwhelmed facing a large amount of work and procrastination can set in. Knowing why you procrastinate can also help you identify areas that need to be redistributed among your peers or employees. 

Oxygen Masks

Every time we get on a plane we’re reminded when oxygen masks drop down, to put our mask on first, then help anyone sitting next to us to put on their mask. We often see ourselves as the capable adult in this analogy who needs to take care of ourselves so we can take care of others. 

But – what if sometimes we were the other person sitting in that airplane seat, unable to reach the mask, fumbling with our seat belt, terrified for our lives? 

These days, it takes more than a cup of tea and a hot bath to recharge from what life and work throw at us. As individuals vacate jobs to change careers or start their own ventures, the overwhelming theme is that people are asking for mental and emotional support, and for companies to just do better!

Collectively, we’ve learned a lot about the importance of mental health and self-care in the last few years, but there is still a lot to unlearn from decades of being told that our best was never good enough. 

Sometimes we need someone to hand us the oxygen mask so we don’t have to spend hours of research trying to figure out how to pay for the mental health tools that our employers could often easily purchase and make available to us. Offering paid time off for doctors and counseling appointments, and the comprehensive healthcare plans that make those affordable is a huge draw for employees that have previously been treated like a commodity instead of a human with limits. 

If you run a business, give your employees the resources you would want, and if you’re an employee, gather like-minded peers to ask your HR department for help. 

Reach Out

If you start your day already depleted from personal struggles, chances are someone else at your company is as well. Giving a tactful, but honest answer to “how’s your day going?” on a Zoom call can feel awkward, but another employee may hear that and finally acknowledge to themselves that they aren’t doing so hot themselves! Reach out to coworkers you know are struggling, or start a Slack channel for everyone to have a safe space where they can offer one another support when they need it. Knowing we’re not alone can make all the difference.