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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A lot of manners and basic etiquette in this country seem to be long forgotten. No one sends “thank you” notes anymore (hell, no one even shoots off a quick email to say thank you most of the time). People don’t say “please”, they don’t say “excuse me”, and they generally ignore everyone around them. When was the last time someone bumped into you in a store and said “excuse me”? Bet it was a long time ago. When was the last time someone bumped into you and then shot you a glaring look as if to imply that it was your fault? Bet that was within the last week.

Saying “thank you”, “excuse me”, and “please” should not be regarded as antiquated traditions that have no relevance in the modern world. If you bump into someone, say “excuse me” or “I’m sorry”. Don’t glare at them as if it’s their fault for being in your personal space. If you need to squeeze past someone, again, say “excuse me”, don’t just try to squeeze through (this is one that my husband is horrible about — he always squeezes through people when I’m following him and then they seem to close in immediately behind him so that I can’t get through, and then they miraculously don’t hear me when I repeatedly say “excuse me” until I’m practically yelling it; meanwhile he’s already 100 feet ahead of me).

One of the biggest ways that you can form lasting relationships is to be polite. If you meet someone interesting at a conference, give them a call or send them a note afterwards thanking them for the opportunity to chat and suggesting some sort of follow-up in the future. If a colleague, friend or family member does something nice for you, send them a thank-you note. If you have a good job interview, send a thank-you note immediately afterward (this can score you major points toward getting the job, as long as you’re sincere and don’t sound like you’re just trying to suck up). If a client does something nice, send them a thank-you note. If a prospect invites you to bid on a project, even if you don’t make the sale, send them a note to thank them for their time and the opportunity. Same goes for if a prospect schedules a meeting with you. Send a thank-you note for the opportunity immediately afterward.

One of the keys to this is that most people don’t bother. The majority of people won’t take the time. So when someone receives a hand-written thank-you note from you a few days after a meeting, they’re going to remember you. They’re going to remember that you took the time to acknowledge them, and that you’re grateful for that person. This can go a long way in forming stronger business and personal relationships. It forms a positive impression in their mind. They know that you value what they’re doing for you or what they did for you. Everyone wants to feel valued, and they’re going to remember the people who value them.

Oh, and thanks for reading!

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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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