4 Steps to Avoid Burnout
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[00:00:00] Being in business is about playing the long game, not the short game. So what do you need to do in order to avoid combat? Get over. Burnout, let's talk about it. My name is Huang. I'm an occupational therapist and certified hand therapist. Over 10 years ago, I started my therapy clinic and over five years ago I started hand therapy secrets to help therapists, uh, develop their clinical skills and become CHCs.
Now I've kind of noticed a pattern in the things that I'm doing over the last several years, and I would encourage you to one, look at your patterns, um, and then 'cause once you can identify your pattern and. Know when it's occurring and how it's happening. It's a really easy, it's a much easier way of combating, like burnout.
So burnout is just, you're doing too much, girl. You're just doing too much. That's me. I started the year with this idea that I was going to, you know, put out two books 'cause [00:01:00] I was already working the year before. Collaborated with some, uh, with two other people to help me put out my book. She's huge. So this just came out.
Um, so you'll see this after it's been out for, you know, a few weeks, but getting that done was a lot of work right now. I had collaborators, thank goodness, so that I could produce at a much faster rate. I think that if I had started this. Before, um, I don't know if I would've done it with collaborators at the point where I'm at, I've got two businesses running.
I'm looking to, you know, just kind of stabilize and grow my business. And so working with other people is actually to my advantage. Um, and it's, it's kind of hard to find when you're, when you're a newbie. Now that I've been established, it's a little, it's a little bit easier. I don't want, I wouldn't say it's easy, but I would say it's a little bit easier.
Um, but I wanted to put that book out by a certain [00:02:00] time. Um, I created a deadline for myself and I had a lot of other stuff going on, and so I've noticed over the last several years a particular pattern of mine. I start off strong in the year and I start to sort of. Burnout by midyear. So at the time I'm creating this, um, podcast slash video.
We're six months into the year, right? This is June. And one of the things I've noticed is I've been starting to burn out by midyear, and one of the reasons is I just pack on a lot of shit, right? I'm running two businesses, I've got a family. My son just graduated. From, um, from high school is gonna set off to go to college.
My daughter's got her thing too. And so I think we're always constantly juggling, you know, our careers and our families. 'cause we want, we, I don't wanna say we want it all, but we do to a [00:03:00] certain extent. Like I want a successful business. If you're watching this, it's because you want to start or you start it and you want to have a successful business.
Now I didn't build my business so I could be in business for a few years and then go work for someone else. I'm building my business so I can have longevity in my career. I can have more choices, more options. Um, I can work with who I wanna work with and from a standpoint of staff I wanna work with who I wanna work with in terms of patients.
Students, um. And I wanna work in the way I wanna work with like how I use my time. Right. Um, but sometimes because of that and because if you're an entrepreneur, like I'm an entrepreneur, like I have a creative side, I have a drive, and sometimes that drive burns me out. Um, and I have a tendency not to notice my burnout.
I think some people are more sensitive, like. I'm a big person into like [00:04:00] personalities and all that good stuff. Like I study all that. Leave me a comment if you're into personalities as well. 'cause I can share more of that. 'cause I share that inside the, the program, inside the OT Business Corner program. I think it's important to recognize and understand your personality type and things like that so you can, it can help guide your decisions.
Um. But I started to notice a particular pattern, um, that I burn out in the middle of the year, and I don't recognize it. I ignore it. I'm somebody who eats my feelings, right? We, we don't need to be talking about our feelings all the time. Uh, can we move on and like roll past this? Like, that's me to a t I'm a Capricorn, but.
One of the things I started to notice is like I've gotta build some, some kind of like, some safety rails for myself. Uh, and maybe this can help you as well if you're. Someone's similar. If you're a little bit more [00:05:00] sensitive to like the burnout, you're probably in a much better place and a much better space because you could recognize it earlier, you can do something about it earlier and you shouldn't feel bad about being more sensitive to it.
Probably someone like you, uh, you can take care of yourself a little bit easier and a little bit faster than someone like me who like. Tends to be like, ah, suck it up. Butter copy. You know, like you can do it, like hammer it through. Um, and to a certain extent you have to have that, um, to do the hard thing and to keep going.
But one of the things that, uh, I'm trying to do better is to kind of like paste myself. So I knew the book was coming out in May. I knew that, um, that summer was coming and people were taking time off. Uh, which then means like, certain things are piled on to me. Like I have a little bit more responsibility.
My time is a little bit more constricted. And so sometimes when my time is a little more constricted, I'll start to [00:06:00] feel like that. Like, oh my God, like, like the burnout from just being constricted. Um, so one of the things that I'm trying to do is notice, number one, notice, um, and anticipate all of those things before, and I'm trying to plan for it.
So, um, sometimes I. Start with these grand ideas and I'll knock them off the list, um, by like three to four months into it. So at the beginning of the year, I started with like this grandiose idea that I was gonna have two books out, one in, um, may, and then one in November. Well, three months into it, I was like, Juan, what are you, what are you thinking?
Are you crazy? Because. The whole thing with the business thing is you can create new products and you can create new services, and you can create new classes and you can bring new shit into your clinic. I brought new shit into my clinic. The problem is, is that you still have to, at the end of day market, a lot of it.[00:07:00]
What do I mean by marketing? It's just telling more and more people over a period of time what you do, how you do it, what stuff you have to do it with, and so that marketing and that marketing mess, it's just like an ongoing machine. You're constantly doing it and you can't take breaks from it. Because once you take breaks from it, your revenue stream starts to die because, you know, this is just what happens when we're in a small business.
Like you have to constantly tell more and more people about it because you just don't know when someone's gonna come into your world. Like for my clinic, we um. Kind of slowed down a little bit in May. And um, now we're kind of ramping back up in June. Like ever since COVID happened, I no longer have like, um, like a predictable cycle.
I don't have that anymore. I used to have a, a somewhat predictable cycle of like, I get really busy during this quarter. I slow down during this quarter. I get [00:08:00] really busy. I don't have that shit anymore for the last five to six years, I there. It has been all over the place. Um, so we were a little bit slow in May, and now we're gonna start picking up in June.
And the thing is, is like people are constantly coming into your space to a certain extent, or they're coming into your space because they're having injuries, and so they will consume your information whenever they get to it. A patient just hurt himself a month ago, had surgery two weeks ago, and now is moving down to my area and he's looking for therapy and that's how he found us, right?
And he came in, got a package of, uh, therapy visits and now we'll continue to come in to get great results, right? But. You know, we have to have that turn going. So the idea of being burnt out and like taking a break sometimes isn't, doesn't feel possible when you're in your own [00:09:00] business. Um, so. One thing that I would recommend is just kind of recognize like based on your activities and based on your family life, right?
So my kids ended school now, and now the summer is here. And so there's a mental, like even though I don't mentally shut down, there's a certain element around me that like summers here and people are winding down a little bit, right? So, uh. In order to go with the flow. With that, I'm also kind of winding down as well because I also know that I just came out with a big product and I've been working tirelessly, tirelessly over the last several months, especially the month prior to putting it out, right?
And now I still have to continue doing the work for it, but how can I pace myself so. So if you can see patterns, if you can anticipate it, and then you can pace yourself out. So the other thing that I'm trying to do is just to find blocks of time. So [00:10:00] I might not be able to be off for a whole week or anything like that, but how can I be off for just like two days in a row consecutively?
Where I could sort of shut down my brain a little bit and then I can get going another time. Sometimes it doesn't have to be like the whole day or two days. Sometimes I can get my wind down or mentally, um, myself back from being burnt out, um, is like going home early every day. So this week I'm actually trying to go home early every day.
Uh, in order to avoid the burnout, um, I've shifted one of my projects now, instead of doing the two books, I'm shifting one book to next year. I'm constantly like, oh, but what about this project and that project? And so I'm gonna sit down, it's mid-year, I'm gonna sit down and kind of list out. I'm gonna journal.
I know I was doing really well with journaling, but then I stopped, but now I'm gonna come back to it because that's the way that [00:11:00] I'm gonna wind down and I'm gonna write down my ideas and I'm gonna put into priority, like what's most important, how's that gonna impact the future? So the things that we do as a business owners now, they'll impact us months and years from now.
It's not gonna impact you like directly today. Just know that. You have to put sweat equity in. You have to do the work now, and then the how you do the work now will predict your future. So I'm gonna do the work now, so I'm recognizing I've seen the pattern, recognizing I'm putting some boundaries around myself so I can kind of calm down and rest for a little bit.
And then I'm gonna journal so that I can combat some of the, the noise that's going on in my head, write down my ideas, and prioritize what I want to do for the rest of the year, and try to put it in a timely manner with rest breaks in between. Because otherwise I'm just gonna run myself into the ground.
And we tend to do that too, because we worry so much. Right. So the burnout is also [00:12:00] like, the burnout can be from activities of all the stuff you're doing, but the burnout. Truthfully can be from the worry, from the, the in, um, the, what's the word I'm thinking about? The burnout can come from not having complete clarity or not having complete, um, like guarantee of outcomes.
So then you're constantly on the churn of worry. A lot of that does, it does help when you journal, like I know. It's a little, um, like I never thought I would journal. I always thought that was like a woowoo kind of thing, like, but it's been really helpful because it just helps me to organize my thoughts.
So I thought I'd share it with you just in case you're midyear and you're thinking, oh shit, like all the stuff I wanna do and all the things I have to do, and like, how am I gonna get it all done? Uh, I'm gonna journal. I'm gonna journal and I'm gonna spend a few days journaling, writing down all the stuff that I want to do, writing down [00:13:00] how that's gonna impact my business, and, uh, prioritizing what I need to do next for the next six months, and also into.
The next year. I know it's like long-term thinking, you, you want to do certain things that are short-term, like you're getting things right now, but a lot of that burnout sometimes is like you, we wanna have a certain amount of long-term thinking so that it can help us, like, prepare and just give us guidance to know like.
Oh, we're going down that yellow brick road. Um, what's that path that we're gonna take? When are we gonna do a right turn? When are we gonna do a left turn? And when do we need to go straight, you know, type of thing. How long is it gonna take? Um, so yeah, so one of my things is I'm gonna prioritize the stuff that I want to do.
Um, I will come out with a, a third book. So this is my second book. Let me see. Where's my first book? My first book, um, oh. My first book, the Hands On Approach, this was a book I wrote, um, for my patients, [00:14:00] like for people with hand and arm injuries. And then my second book is Hand Therapy, um, exam Success, the Ultimate Book of Practice Questions.
And then my third book that I'm planning on doing is gonna be around hand therapy, helping hand therapists as well. Um. But yeah, there's a lot to do and, you know, we want to do it and, uh, we just have to, we have to be around long enough to do everything. Um, so I hope this video helps you just sharing a little bit of, you know, the journey that I'm going on to see if it can help you at any point.
Like this video, leave me a comment. Um, let me know if this helped you and if you wanna get on my email list where I talk all things business, there's gonna be a link below. Um, all right, let me know if this helps. Thanks.
