How to Avoid Burnout When Working from Home and Blogging

Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest.

Matthew 11:28

About 10 years ago, I began my adventure of working from home. The economy had tanked and people were going back to school to find a career to give them a better life. Online education was slammed. Enrollments were through the roof and I was getting job offer after job offer.

When I first started, we were considered contract workers, so every job I got was a contract. I was not turning many down because I thought, “why not take them all, I am working from home.” I knew I could sit and watch TV at night on my couch with my computer in my lap and get my work done. I was so excited to do this and when the money started rolling in, it was even better.

Now the thing no one told me was that you really don’t get a break from your work. Being a contract worker and an instructor, there were requirements. These requirements meant that assignments had to be graded and we had to participate in the discussion forums. If you are not familiar with online education, the discussion forums are like the classroom. There is a topic that is tied to the weekly subject. The instructor is required to do a kick-off post to get it started and also lead the interactions with the students. Each student must answer the question in a scholastic manner and have a couple of responses that are educational and add to the discussion. Some schools wanted me to participate each day in the forum. This meant working 7 days a week.

I honestly thought it would be no big deal, I would wake up and just hop on the computer for an hour or two on the weekends and I was good to go. And then one day, I was just tired. I remember thinking I have no idea what my responses were to my students. I felt like I was going through the motions. I was burned out.

It is super easy to get burned out when you do not take your breaks. That goes for any job, work from home, traditional, and even blogging. I made the same mistakes with my blog that I did with working from home. I thought I had to have a post a day and had to be active on all social media every single day. Even though I love my blog and consider it more fun, I got burned out. I did not want to post anymore and found myself posting less and less. I was burned out.

When we get burned out and don’t take breaks, it is because we think we feel we need to do every. Single. thing. We think that if we are not working, we are not making money. We feel that we have to be tied to our computers and phones and work all day every day. We don’t trust God and His plan and many times that is what we need to do.  We feel if we are not working every day, if we are not proving our worth, we could lose our job or opportunities for more money. That is not what God intended at all. He intended us to take those breaks and He will take care of us.

To avoid burnout, we need to take those breaks. We need to rest in God. If we are doing too much, we need to take it to God and see if that is part of what He wants for us and if not, we need to fix that. If our schedule is too packed, we need to pray about ways to lighten it up. We need to take care of ourselves. We don’t need our identity to be defined by our work. What we do need is to enter each day of our jobs feeling rested and rejuvenated and trust God for the rest!

1 – what are times when you have felt burned out with work?

2 – what did you do to avoid burnout?

3 – Have you ever just looked at your schedule and knew it was too much and let it go? What happened?

Later!

Kara