I am back from a restless break.

One of the things I find difficult is rest, as I typically just keep moving. My breaks will consist of stopping one thing, but just picking up another. Which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a break. I’ll work on another project, working out, or simply worry that while at rest, I’m not making any movement.

It’s not ideal, I can assure you.

But one thing I can say I’ve gotten better at is noticing the signs that may mean that I am very close to burnout.

I want to share this for the sole purpose that incase you are feeling some of these things too, it might also be a good idea to take a break.

After I label these red flags that I find within myself, and have studied to be a general precursor to burnout, I will try to tackle how best to take a break. To be honest, it’s idealistic, and I struggle with it myself, but let’s tackle it together.

THE RED FLAGS
These are general, and precursors to burnout will act differently from person to person. The best thing to do for yourself is if you have experienced burnout, think back to what was occurring before it.

Try to notice what your feelings were beforehand, how were you generally leading up to that burnout period? Were your relationships being affected? What about your general philosophy on humanity or the world?

Typically, the red flags that exist within me are the following:

These are a few of the main red flags that I personally look out for within myself, being a precursor to burnout. This is my body telling me that I need to take a break.

REST
As stated before, this is a practice for me, but what I have come to learn is that rest needs to be a decision.

Without the conscious decision to take a break, what will instead happen is you will busy yourself with things that are not conducive to a break. You’ll scroll through instagram, you might say yes to random plans that pop up, or maybe someone asks you for help and you accept.

Without the conscious decision, you are without boundaries. When you go to work, you are actively doing countless tasks, when you are off, it’s not ALWAYS time to get the countless tasks that you have to do ticked off.

So instead of resting, you’re just going with the flow of things, and that can be fine to a point, but you’ll eventually have to find a moment of rest.

Rest is the decision to put the thing down. That’s it.

You’ll pick it up again eventually, and you’ll come back stronger too, just take a moment, rest, come back stronger.

Rest needs to have a level of nothingness to it.

A level of emptiness, and it’s not fun, I can assure you, but it’s the creation of space that was once cluttered. Then with that space, you can come back and absorb so much more and retain more in the process. Then finally being able to give in abundance once again.

My favorite is leaning toward light physical activities and the practice of clearing my consciousness. Like a walk on a trail, focusing on my breath, listening to the world around me, and/or focusing on each step.

But I also played video games during my break too, and that was fun. What I’ve come to find about video games is that you can improve upon things with absolutely no pressure or stakes. It’s the greatest practice of, “this is useless and does not move the needle forward. But can you find acceptance that sometimes everything you do doesn’t have to move you forward. Can I do that without guilt or fear of everything moving ahead of you?”

Because my biggest problem when it comes to my breaks is trying to over-optimize my time. I surround myself with trying to “figure it out” during the break. The pressure of trying to come back stronger, and the fear of “what if I don’t come back any stronger.”

So I’m not perfect, and I suffer from a lot of the same pressures that a lot of people are suffering from, but I can see where the right path is. It’s the practice of walking it.

It’s realizing that stepping off the trail to make camp doesn’t mean you’re not still on the journey.