A short monologue by a creator reflecting on personal strategies to avoid burnout. The speaker outlines a mental 'map' including understanding motivations, setting boundaries (what they won't do), realistic expectations, leaning on community for support, and intentionally adding rest and reward stops to sustain progress toward goals.
Typically, burnout for me is like going one direction. I'm just going. And I've learned that there's actually a map that allows us to avoid burnout. And I see it as this. I have to understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. Like, why do I want to reach this goal? This keeps me motivated. I also have to know what I'm not willing to do because sometimes I'll neglect my own values and do something different just because I think it might help me grow faster. I have to set up realistic expectations and know that I'm not going to get to the goal as fast as I'd like. And that's totally okay. And I also need a community that I can turn to when I start to get into the thick of it and need some support. And as I get closer to my goal and especially when I start to get tired, I look at my options and say, how can I make this easy? Because many times in the doing I will stray from the path. I've tried to patch in rest stops. I'm not great at this yet. But not only rest stops, but reward stops. Because if I can't celebrate the frickin journey, then what's the point of even taking it?
