Within those past months I have heard of so many people having had a burnout, being in the middle of one or on the verge of having one that I started wondering whether the feeling of being overwhelmed by one´s job and/or life is
due to pressure that either our society or the individuals put on
themselves or whether it is due to a lack of ideas how to healthily balance out your (work-)life.
When my husband then felt like HE was on the verge of a burnout (and those people knowing him know that he can take A LOT) and took a few days off of work for us to go on a holiday, I had the idea to write a blogpost about burnout.
Especially as freelancers you can easily get overworked because you don´t have a boss telling you to work appropriate hours and take a holiday every now and then.
It´s so easy to get carried away and wanting to edit "just a few pictures" for me often ended in editing a whole session for hours.
So I´ve come up with a few things you may install in your workflow and weekly schedule to make sure that your health stays stable.
1. If you haven´t yet, install a weekly schedule. This may seem ridiculous but it´s very good for one thing: Getting appropriate times of breaks in between which you need to work more effectively!
It is so easy once your "in the flow" to keep editing pictures until your eyes hurt (I know the feeling...) but why not install special hours for editing pictures and - if you need something to keep you on track set an alarm clock - then take a ten minute coffee break and browse through your favorite magazine.
Making time for breaks also gives me a huge boost of motivation. When I don´t feel like starting something cause I know it will take endless hours, I limit the time to work on it to two hours. That way the time frame is limited and to me that makes it easier to find the motivation to start and work through those two hours to get the "reward" (coffee, tea, a short walk, a piece of chocolate, ...) after.
2. Do something completely unrelated to photography. Go running. Go horse-back riding. Go swimming. Find a TV show you enjoy. Learn a new language. Really the possibilities are endless!
And purposely leave your camera at home (especially when you go swimming and don´t have any of those fancy under-water-cameras...). Take some time to get your head free and open for new inspiration in order to come back to your workspace and work more efficiently!
3. Set a certain time that you close your computer. For the rest of the day. Now I know that there will be days when that´s not possible, when you´ve numerous weddings and/or portrait shoots in the cue waiting to be edited.
But make it a rule to not work until late at night. You can always bend it when necessary, but make giving yourself time to relax the rule.
So, maybe this wasn´t something new to you but maybe you needed to hear that once more. I know I also have to keep reminding myself of thes things.
