AVOIDING BURNOUT, AND WHAT TO DO IF YOU BURN OUT

AVOIDING BURNOUT, AND WHAT TO DO IF YOU BURN OUT

 At some point in your academic life, you’re going to burn out. It happened to me last year, and it was honestly one of the worst things that’s happened to me. It wasn’t just that I lacked the motivation, it was also that I completely lacked the energy to keep myself disciplined enough to work through the rut. Following this, I learned some tricks and techniques on how to avoid it in the future, and how to cope with it if it happens, and I’m going to share them with you below:

Avoiding Burnout

 The primary cause of burnout is overworking, and getting stuck in a rut where you really don’t feel like you’re learning anything new, and so your learning experience becomes stagnant. I find that I come closest to burnout when I’m reviewing and revising my notes before a test, and being aware of this helps me to plan for it and avoid burning out. The most important things to do are as follows:

Plan your work and take breaks: I found that I could get 5-6 hours of studying done per day for 80% of the days I had over the holidays, and the key to that was taking regular breaks, and when taking breaks, to completely switch off from learning and revising and stop working when I said I was going to instead of being tempted to continue over the breaks (more on my productive holiday study routine and how to make one here). The key to effective studying is essentially to allow you brain the time to process what you’ve learned, and you need to remember to take breaks during a day of studying, and to take days off whenever you can.

Socialise: This is partly tied to the taking breaks, but if you put yourself in what could be considered a kind of solitary confinement when you’re working, your brain will learn less effectively and get distracted more quickly, and it is also likely to affect your mood. You may notice that the best students also party the hardest, and that’s because they know that they need to counterbalance the hard work with being sociable and doing things that aren’t at all related to work. It boosts your mood, and having the reward of being sociable keeps your brain and motivation fresh.

Physically get out of your study space: Even if it’s to go to a local café, or to go for a walk in the woods, it’s important to get yourself moving every so often, firstly so your brain can get a little bit more energised, but also so you don’t feel physically confined by the space you are studying in, or again you’re going to get demotivated and possibly even reach the stage of burnout. When I feel like this, I tend to either go for a run, or head somewhere where I can practise my cello without disturbing other people, just so my body and brain are physically away from my work for a bit.

Do something you love: For me, this includes doing stuff like playing my cello, but this also means taking a break by watching your favourite film, or drawing, or baking, or whatever makes you happy and really isn’t studying. It’s important also that in your free time (which is different from your break time) you’re doing things like these, and not letting your academics creep in, because you need to set up a mental and physical space where you aren’t constantly running at full speed in academic stuff, because a lack of escape mechanism means you’re going to get stuck in a burnout, which is honestly the worst.

What to do if you burn out

 You can tell pretty quickly if you have burnout. If you feel physically and mentally dead, and completely lacking in any kind of motivation or discipline to get yourself to work, then you probably have burnout. I find that my burnout feels like a mental and physically deadness, and my head feels really heavy, like the machinery is all turning, but none of the cogs are making contact with one another and turning, so to speak. If you feel like nothing is working, then it’s important to not keep pushing (I’ve touched on this in previous posts where I’ve burnt out in exam season, but it’s important to crash, take a breath, and start again). Try the following:

Take a huge break: I know this may not always feel possible, but if you take a day off and do absolutely nothing, or at least nothing to do with your studying, your studying will get overall more effective. I took a rest day like this in the middle of my A-Levels (which, for my non-British friends, literally determine if you can get into university), and even though in the back of my mind I was really questioning if this was a good idea, it ended up really boosting my productivity and helping me really get my studying into gear

Scrap your current plan and make another one: I know this also sounds like another terrible idea, but if something isn’t working, you can’t stick with what you’re doing, or you’ll drive yourself further into the ground. Re-plan your study schedule (you can obviously use the previous one as a kind of template) and make sure you have time to take breaks. Also, I find that planning things gives me the motivation to actually go out and do them, so this helps in regaining your motivation.

Seek new perspectives: Talk to other people taking your subject if they’re available to talk. Discuss problems in the subject. Teach each other. This is a kind of group revision where, if you’re not going to get distracted, you can really genuinely learn new stuff and figure out what you don’t know. I found this useful when I couldn’t bring myself to revise on my own because I didn’t think I needed to look over anything more in particular detail, but the person I worked with helped to pick apart the things I didn’t know and helped explain them to me.

Try something new: If you have sufficient time to learn something new on the side, then do it. Find something you’re interested in, and research it further, or learn a new skill like cooking or playing guitar or something. If you burn out without pressure from exams, then learning something new is the perfect way of stimulating your brain back into action, and this in turn will have an impact on how effective your studying is as a whole, thus rescuing you from burnout

 If you ever feel yourself burning out, then take action as soon as possible: the more you wait, the more you end up driving yourself into the ground and the harder it is to rescue yourself. A large part of studying that often gets ignored is the impact on your mental health, and if it begins at all to feel overwhelming or is forcing you to burn out, stop what you’re doing and make adjustments. If it gets really bad, then speak to someone, because you can’t constantly work at full speed without some repercussions. Please, please, please, look after yourself and your mental health, as they are a priority over your studying, and a sound mind and body will help you study much more effectively overall.

My collection of clothing references for writing. 

Do you have any tips on how to make sure your character stays consistent throughout the book? (especially for a newbie)

Get to know your characters really well before you even start the first draft. It’s a time commitment, but it’s well worth it. If you write the story with an already solid knowledge of who your character is, how they present themselves, what their motivations are, and how they change over the course of the plot, you’ll have a much easier time keeping the character portrayal consistent, as well as interesting. 

I have a couple articles that will help with your character development in the planning/outlining stages of your story:

Ways To Fit Character Development Into your Story

When To Stop Planning

Character Trait Form

Tips On Introducing Characters

Tip On Giving Characters Flaws

As well as some master posts of resources:

Resources For Creating Characters

Resources For Describing Characters

Questions I’ve answered:

Having Trouble Connecting To Your Characters?

Giving Characters Bad Traits

On Making Scenes/Characters Unpredictable

Showing Vs. Telling And Characters

Keeping Characters From Sounding Identical

And finally, some prompt lists to inspire you:

31 Days Of Character Development: Wordsnstuff May Writing Challenge

Interview As Your Character

Art Block

I got an art block and I thought to do something about it. We’re friends now! \o/

Concept: an apocalyptic or post apocalyptic tv show centred on a group of disabled protagonists

Must include:

-enough details about how they survive that no one can call it “unrealistic”

-mental and physical disabilities 

-a character who isn’t necessarily contributing to the survival of the group, but is not abandoned or looked down upon

-at least one character whose disability is actually less of a problem for them now that the world is ending/ended (example: autistic character who used to be constantly overstimulated but no longer is)

Optional features:

-abled person says “the only disability in life is a bad attitude” and gets told where to stuff it

-creatively weaponized mobility aids/assistive devices

-character who abled people think isn’t worth helping because of their disability, but actually has at least one skill essential to the survival of the group

-every time an abled person says something ignorant, all present disabled people look into the camera like they’re on the office