Burnout effects everyone. I get close to burnout at least once a year (if not more often), and it can be difficult to prevent it from happening. But, I’ve got some strategies to share that tend to pull me out of the cycle pretty effectively.

Take a break.
Depending on how severe your burnout is getting, taking an afternoon or a day off can do wonders. The main catch is that you can’t do ANY work during that time off. That means put your laptop away, turn your phone off (or unplug it), and basically forget that you even have a job/business/etc.

Take a vacation.
This is a bit different than a day off, as what I’m talking about requires actually leaving your house or other place of business for at least a couple days.

Work in bursts.
Working in bursts helps to free up large portions of your day for things other than work. Make a to-do list at the beginning of your day and then work in short bursts with breaks in between until everything on your to-do list is done. This works especially well if you’re self-employed or telecommute. But even if you work in an office for someone else, you can adapt this to your work schedule (the key is to generally look like you’re busy…or you can always pretend to be on a conference call or in deep thought).

Bonus: When all else fails, do a forced burnout: just load up on coffee (iced mint mocha latte’s are my favorite), and work until you absolutely can’t work anymore, and then you’ll crash for a couple of days and be completely non-functional, but you’ll feel surprisingly better afterward.

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I’m not one for Getting Things Done. The system is completely overkill for what I do, and pretty much any system that is that complicated (ie, you need to read an entire book about it) just isn’t worth the time to learn it unless you REALLY need it.

But, with all of the hype about it, I did read through a lot of blog and forum posts about the system, and devised my own very simplified version of GTD. After using that system for awhile, I revised again, and have now gotten to a system that works well for me (at least at work - my home & business productivity system is a bit different, and would pretty much only make sense to me). Here are both systems, which are suitable for different levels of chaos.

My Productivity System v1.0
This system pretty much consisted of post-it notes in front of my keyboard. My job, for the most part, consists of a few regular tasks, and then random things that people tell me to do (often in person or over the phone instead of electronically). I would make to-do lists on the notes (adding an additional post-it if I ran out of room on the first couple) and cross things off as I completed them. If I didn’t finish everything during the day, I would leave the post-its on my desk until the next morning. If I did finish everything, I would throw the post-its away. In the morning I would transfer anything off of post-its from the day before (and then throw the old ones away), as well as transfering anything from my email inbox and voicemail. As I said, this is a very basic productivity system, but if most of your to-do’s come in like mine did then it’s a good place to start.

My Productivity System v2.0
Then I moved on to a Moleskine, keeping to-do lists in the front of the book. I also started writing down additional ideas and things to bring up at meetings, etc. in the back of the book (I started on the last page and am working my way forward, this way I won’t end up wasting pages by finishing one section before the other). In the Moleskine I cross off things that I’ve completed (it’s more satisfying than a check mark or slash), use a squiggly line for any that I decide don’t need to be done, and draw an arrow in the check box next to any that I defer. When I’ve completed and/or moved all of the activities off of a certain day, I put an “x” at the top of the page. On the idea pages at the back, I put an “x” on the top of the pages (or next to ideas) when I’ve brought them up at meetings or otherwise done something about them (sometimes they end up getting moved to my to-do list). I also started a to-do folder in my inbox (so that I can move things into that folder if I don’t have time to write them down when they come in, as well as putting things in that folder for future actions that don’t need to go on my to-do list yet, and I put emails associated with things on my to do list in that folder also) and a projects folder on my desktop. I also have a physical inbox on my desktop for things that need to be dealt with or that are associated with things on my to-do list. I also have folders for filing that I do on a daily or weekly basis right on my desktop.

These two systems have worked quite well for my work duties. These are separate from the blogging and other activities that I do for my business (yes, I still have a regular 9-5 job in addition to the blogs that I run and my other business ventures).

Other productivity tools I use
I use Google Bookmarks for personal, work and business bookmarks. This is a rather new development within the past couple of months. The tagging works really well.

I also use Google Personalized Homepage (or iGoogle) to keep track of a few of my favorite blogs, as well as keeping track of my Feedburner stats and news. I have three different tabs going (one for blogs & bookmarks, one for news, and one for random widgets).

I use Zoho for just about everything now. I have a wiki for brainstorming and keeping lists of things. I use Zoho Writer for most of my word processing now (or Microsoft Word), and I’m slowly integrating their other services with my life.

The other productivity tool that I use, and probably the only one that I would say that I couldn’t live without is my collection of Moleskine notebooks. I’m currently using one for work (pocket ruled), one for personal ideas/goals/etc. (pocket ruled), one for personal & business projects (pocket quad ruled), one for Tarot readings (extra large cahier), one for my unschooling (extra large cahier), one for writing ideas and blogging stuff (large cahier), two that I use for random notes and ideas that aren’t things I necessarily want to keep forever (pocket cahiers) and I have three others (pocket address book, pocket ruled, and large cahier) that I haven’t decided what to do with yet.

The main thing with any productivity system is to use something that works for you. The above work for me very well, but are probably not for everyone. Anything more than what I’m currently doing would start to get too cumbersome, and the above is flexible enough so that I can change things on the fly if I need to without having to change my entire system.

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Cell phones are the best, worst invention of the 20th century. In 1990, very very few people had cell phones and coverage was pretty iffy even in metropolitan areas. In 1996, my parents bought a bag phone for use when my dad would travel (mostly hunting trips). He would have to drive to the top of the hill near our cabin to get reception, and would pay somewhere around $1.50/minute to talk. Some nights he couldn’t get any reception, and wouldn’t call.

Now, even in Northern Vermont where I live, we can get cell phone coverage in most places (but definitely still not all places). I can’t get cell phone reception in the downstairs of my house, but upstairs it works just fine. There are a couple of competing cell companies up here (Verizon and Cellular One, mainly), and in some places you can get coverage from one but not the other, and vice versa. A lot of people who need to stay connected all the time end up getting two cell phones, one from each company.

But enough babbling about our spotty cell coverage up here in no-man’s-land. Cell phones can either be an excellent tool for productivity or the worst thing that ever happened to your workday. Learning to use your cell phone for good is an important lesson indeed. Here are the basics:

1. Caller ID exists for a reason. Use it to screen your calls. No one will know why you didn’t pick up, promise. And this brings us to,

2. Voice mail also exists for a reason. Those calls that you screened using your caller ID will go to your voice mail, and if it’s important, that person will leave you a message. Make a point to return phone calls within 24 hours (except on weekends). If you’re worried about something being really important, just check your voice mail immediately after the caller hangs up. If it’s that important you can just call them right back.

3. Make sure you get a cell plan that allows you to roll over minutes. Then get the highest number of minutes practical for you. Anything you don’t use will go to the next month, and you won’t have to worry about overages. This means that you won’t be looking at your watch while you’re on the phone with your biggest client (or your boss).

4. Learn to turn it off. When you’re in a restaurant, movie theater, library, or other public gathering place, turn your phone off. No one wants to hear you talking about your latest project, last night’s date, or how sick your mother has been. They really don’t care, and you’re only pissing them off. Phones have an off button for a reason. Use it. If you can’t bring yourself to turn your phone off, at least put it on vibrate and excuse yourself (ie, go outside) if you have to answer it.

5. Buy a hands-free setup for your car. Nothing pisses me off more than seeing someone not paying attention to what they’re doing while driving because they’re busy talking on their cell phone. How’s it going to sound to that big client that you’re trying to sign when you get into a fender bender (or worse) while on the phone with them? They invented hands-free systems for a reason - get one and use it. Many states (including Vermont) have either made talking on cell phones illegal while driving or are in the process of banning it. I couldn’t be happier!

6. Use your cell phone to read the news and blog feeds you subscribe to. I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you have a super-tiny cell phone screen, but if you have a newer smart phone or similar, you shouldn’t have an issue doing this. Mobispine offers free mobile feeds, with almost 20,000 feeds active (including this one, right under the bookmark button and above the tag cloud on the right). You can also add feeds for any of your favorite blogs, whether they have a Mobispine account or not.

Cell phones are tools, and should be treated as such. While they can be incredibly annoying if used improperly, they’re also excellent for increasing your productivity if make them work for you.

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