Burnout is a very REAL thing so many ambitious women experience. And—if you listen to my podcast, The Power Within Her—you know that I spent 2023 healing that burnout. Because no goal is worth pursuing if we don’t have our mental, emotional, and physical health.
Now that I’m on the flip side of this healing journey, so many women are asking me: “how did you heal from burnout?”
Because we’re in this together, I’m sharing with you one of the unconventional ways I healed from burnout. (If you want to hear about the other thing, you gotta listen to the podcast!)
But first, a caveat—no advice is one size fits all. You might love what I’ve got to say, and that’s okay. You also might hate what I’ve got to say, and that’s okay, too. The point is: we always need to adapt and tailor advice to our own individual experiences, taking what serves us, and leave the rest.
Yeah?
That said, here is one of the major things I did to heal from burnout:
No More Physical “To Do” Lists
I know that this might seem super weird and maybe even totally unfathomable. But, at the beginning of last year, I stopped making any sort of physical “to do” lists because the lists I used to make were MONSTROUS! And if you’re an ambitious woman, too, I just know that you know what I’m talking about here.
The lists that we tend to make are never-ending and ginormous to the point that there's absolutely no possible way that everything can get done in a day. There simply aren't enough hours in a day. We're constantly setting ourselves up for failure.
For example, when I made “to do” lists pre-2023, they had these larger, umbrella categories like:
Stuff for Me
Business
Writing
Work
Other
And underneath each of them, I’d have like 3-7 tasks to do for the day. Yes, not the week or month or quarter. The day. Here's an example of a very real "to do" list from back in the day:
It's no wonder I felt immense anxiety when I looked at my lists and a complete failure when I couldn't complete them. This list is 110% undoable in a single day, which is why when 2023 started, I quit making "to do" lists altogether.
What did I do instead? I made mental "to do" lists. My thought process was: if can't hold everything I need to do in my head, then the list of what I'm expecting of myself is to do is too big.
At this point, you might be thinking, "she's crazy!" And I definitely might be...
But, here's the thing: we, as ambitious women, tend to hustle and grind ourselves to death because we're so passionate about our goals and dreams. Somewhere along the line, we adopt this unintentional belief that our worthiness is determined by what we accomplish in a day. And I didn't want that for myself anymore, and I know you don't, either.
By making mental "to do" lists I could hold in my head, I was able to create healthier expectations around what I can accomplish in a day, and as a result, I stopped feeling like a total failure all the time.
So, my mental "to do" lists became more like this:
Obviously, I wrote my mental "to do" list out for you for this post... but, in all seriousness, this is what one of my mental "to do" lists looked like.
I kept them simple and short and doable, and in the process, I taught myself what healthy and reasonable to do lists looked like, which made me less anxious and less overwhelmed, and more productive and more confident. Because the lists were DOABLE, so I started to feel better about myself.
Now… I’m definitely NOT saying that you need to do this. In fact, it might not be helpful to some ambitious women. At the end of the day, you always have to do what's best for you.
That said, this is the point I want you to latch onto:
In order to heal from burnout, I don't think that we can always have 90 million things we need to do in a day. We’ve got to have a reasonable number of things on our to do lists—whether they’re mental or physically written down—because that is going to create less anxiety and overwhelm and the tendency to hustle.
When our "to do" lists are manageable, we feel like enough. And changing my relationship with "to do" lists was crucial in starting that healing process from burnout.
So, girlfriend— I now invite you to take a look at your "to do" lists and figure out if they're causing you anxiety, overwhelm, and the tendency to hustle your face off.
If this article was helpful for you, please share it with a friend or family member or on social media!
And if you want an even deeper dive into this topic, check out my podcast episode that expands on this topic: Episode 196-Two Unconventional Things I Did to Heal From Burnout!
Thanks for being here with me!
XO
Meggy
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