Strategies to Prevent Burnout While Overemployed

Maintaining mental and emotional focus is key to prevent burnout. While you can try working multiple remote jobs by brute force through overworking, why do that when you can try practicing good S.P.A.C.E. – sleep, presence, activity, creativity, eating – and get into an effortless state and getting more things done in less time. We’ll take a closer look at how you can stop on top of your Overemployed game of navigating multiple meetings and to-do lists while preventing physical and mental burnout.

Why Sleep Is Important To Prevent Burnout

A common factor in success in two jobs is, of course, concentration and focus. Sleep is at the heart of it. Without sleep, you’re not protecting your knowledge worker’s asset, aka your brain. Without sleep, we lose focus and our ability to prioritize. This is what sets the Overemployed Pros from the rest of the pack. If you get into a lack of sleep, it becomes a vicious downward spiral. Before you know it, you lose concentration and focus, and your stress begins to increase, further impacting your sleep, focus, and eventually burnout. Therefore, protect the asset. Get 8 to 8.5 hours of sleep, it’s the new Overemployed status symbol. Plus, with a full night of sleep every night, you feel like a million bucks! What’s not to like. Pro tip: try keeping your phone away from the bedroom and reading or meditating before sleep every night – we call it getting into a pre-sleep flow state. We love rituals and routines, the foundation of living a sustainable Overemployed life.

What Leads To Burnout When Working Two Jobs

While working from home, there are tons of distractions, from your other job to kids and roommates. Over time, these micro stressors pile up and lead to burnout, putting you in a constant state of anxiety and leading to a lack of motivation and apathy. It’s essential to keep micro stressors in check with plan periods of 90-minutes focus time. Check out the symptoms of burnout here.

Multitasking Is A Myth

Brain scans and scientific studies have proven that humans are unable to multitask. When people claim they can do “two things at once,” it is essentially context switching back and forth really quick. Similar to working two jobs. You can’t be working two jobs “at the same time” since it’s scientifically impossible. Convincing your employers of this concept is another story, especially when you’ve got a heartless boss who doesn’t care what you’ve to do for your kids or your mental health.

“You’re not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously but switching between them very rapidly.”

NPR

Similarly, do you notice it takes time to get “in the zone?” A University of California-Irvine study claims that it takes 30 minutes to refocus once you are distracted. The key takeaway here is to try to chunk your concentration between two jobs in three to five 90-minutes blocks if that’s possible. More on that in timeboxing below.

Identify Factors Impacting Concentration and Focus

To improve success at two jobs, you need to know the factors that impact your concentration and control it. These are some of the major factors:

–Sleep
-Exercise
-Nutrition and Diet
-Dehydration (eat)
-Stress (sleep, presence)
-External distractions (presence, stay in the moment)
-Lack of motivation (creativity over monotony)

If there’s one takeaway from all of this, it’s to remember to practice your S.P.A.C.E. daily. We recommend a 5-year journal to track your S.P.A.C.E. and your 5-year Overemployed journey to financial freedom, reflecting back each day what you did on this exact day 1, 2, 3, or 4 years ago.

Strategies To Prevent Burnout While Working Two Remote Jobs

1) Timeboxing

One strategy to help with concentration and focus is timeboxing. Timeboxing can give a greater sense of control over your workday. To do this, you set a block of time and assign it to a specific task and only that task. This forces you to think about what is the highest priority and block off distractions. Apply this to your calendar. With WFH, a lot of companies are introducing “focus” time.” This is timeboxing.

2) Sleep

Sleep is paramount to learning, memory consolidation, and focus. Lack of sleep increases cortisol which leads to anxiety. Use #1 – Timeboxing to help keep to a regular sleep schedule. Sleep is usually the first thing that gives when things get stressful. Have you noticed that your mind drifts when you don’t get enough sleep? It’s no coincidence. You don’t want to lose focus and mix up your job #1 with your job #2 during concurrent meetings. The bad news bear follows after that.

3) Block WFH Distractions

This one is obvious. Blocking the distractions sounds simple, but we find ourselves addicted to distractions in today’s connected world. We subconsciously reach for our phone, even if it’s not in our pocket. In an office environment, there’s tons of way to go about it.

• Setup do-not-disturb time.
• Do not use reply all.   
• Turn off notifications

4) Exercise And Eat A Healthy Diet

As a knowledge worker, your number one mission is to PROTECT THE ASSET, aka your brain. Super obvious, right? Also, tons of studies have proven that exercise and what you eat are paramount to operating at the highest level. Working two jobs, you might find yourself engrossed in an intense work schedule that you forget to exercise. It’s also super common for people to skip meals, eat at your desk, or grab unhealthy fast food. An important strategy we use is to plan and stick to a schedule. Use meal prep companies to get prepared ingredients shipped to you.

5) To-Do Lists

To-do lists are classic and time-honored methods for productivity, concentration, and focus. Thinking through what you need to do and listing them will help you prioritize and minimize what you need and don’t need. Just keep it short, like 1-2 things for the day, inclusive of personal and work. The to-do list also keeps you accountable to make sure you finish what you set out to do. Add all of the above strategies (1-4) to keep yourself accountable to practice S.P.A.C.E. and perform at your best in both two jobs.

Keep Your Health In Mind Above All Else

All these tips should be evident in today’s world hyperconnected world (try Digital Minimalism when not working). But above all, we can use a reminder once in a while. It’s far too easy to get caught up with the stress of working two jobs and spiral into burnout. Remember, you became Overemployed to prioritize life not work.

Finally, remember there is always the choice of dropping one of your jobs. Ask yourself why you started two positions in the first place. None of this is worth it if you cannot keep your health and focus on what matters, your family.

This is the way to preventing burnout.