Today we're gonna get real and talk about burnout. Since late 2019, I've noticed the signs of burnout creeping up in my work life. And once the pandemic hit, I know so many small business owners who were noticing the same signs in their own lives. I'm no expert on burnout or how to overcome it, but I'll be sharing my own experience moving through it... and surprise, I don't have it all figured out!
When I first started my business back in 2014/2015, it was all fun. I was still working a full-time day job as a designer, so my business was a fun side project that filled my evenings and weekends. It never felt like work, it was all an experiment. (Was it easy? Nope. But I like a good challenge.) I viewed my free time as extra work time (big mistake!). When I quit my day job and took my business full-time, I was a newly single mom with a 6-month-old baby and virtually no childcare. So again — my free time was my work time. I kept with the same patterns of working during every free minute, between diaper changes and naps and late into the night after bedtime. This is the case for so many working parents, and I totally understand that it was also a form of survival. I had to carve out time for my own life outside of being a mother, and that naturally is very limited when your kids are so little.
Over the years, a clear paradox started to show up. The backwards-ness (is that a word?) was that I was a workaholic intentionally building my business to be more hands-off. So I was left with exactly what I built – a business that didn't need me as much. But where would I channel all this working energy I still had? How would I untether my productivity and worth from how many hours I was at my desk each day? It took a few years to not feel guilty for working fewer hours in a day — even though that's what I wanted all along. It's so backwards when I think back to it! And sometimes to combat that guilt, I would still put in a lot of work hours on a business that maybe didn't need it. Years of that workaholic mindset fused with a business that didn't need me as much as I thought it did, led me straight to burnout.
Again, I am no expert in burnout. I wasn't sure if that's what I was feeling at first, I just noticed in late 2019 that I was pretty bored with work. I didn't have the passion I used to when I first started my business. I dreaded the usual day-to-day operations of my business. I had launched the same course over 10 times in the last 5 years, not to mention many other smaller courses, and I was frankly tired of talking about the same topics over and over again. The more I examined these feelings, the more I realized I was burnt out and itching to try other ways of earning money. But I had (and still have!) no intention of abandoning my business as it is. As a single parent, that is my sole income, that's how I put food on the table and roof over my and my daughters' head. It's not going anywhere, don't worry 😉
So I went into 2020 with big plans of trying new things and exploring other interests. I bet you can guess how that went! Like everyone else, I watched the world shut down in March 2020, and my business changed over night. I launched my course for the 10th time during a worldwide lockdown, and what was originally projected to be one of my biggest launches, was actually one of my lowest earning launches. My priorities shifted after that, and I put all my energy into creating a couple smaller mini-classes that had been on my mind for awhile (this one about digital products and this one about graphic design!). It seemed like a good time to help others earn money from home, and give it a much lower price to keep it accessible. Not to mention I was suddenly homeschooling my daughter through the end of her kindergarten year. It scratched my itch to try new things for a bit, but it didn't last. My business had taken a hit during the pandemic, and I just wasn't very interested in building it back up in the same way. My energy, enthusiasm, and bandwidth for day-to-day work tasks quickly dwindled. That summer of 2020, I was feeling those burnout feelings more than ever.
Part 2 is coming soon!
