Doing What You Love vs Burnout – Is it One or the Other?

Do you have to choose between doing what you love or facing burnout? Is it one or the other?

It seems like for the past month I haven’t been able to blink without seeing yet another article about burnout.

Yes, burnout is real.

Yes, it can be a serious physical and mental health issue.

Yes, people are sick and tired of dealing with a pandemic that leaves us not knowing from one day to the next whether we can mask or unmask, gather in person or stay isolated, or hug our grown children or grandchildren.

I’m not sure if we’re really all getting burned out, or if we’re just frustrated, angry, and tired of uncertainty.

Several of the articles below touch on burnout, and various approaches to being productive and staying healthy anyway.

In my mind, the concepts of burnout and doing what you love are interrelated. I always believed that, if you do what you love, burnout is less likely. But Tim Denning rocked me back a bit in a recent article where he claims that “do what you love is stupid.”

Then he proposes a solution. . . do what you hate until you retire.

In fact, he poses this question: “What if real retirement is simply doing work you love?”

Intriguing. . .

Read: ‘Do What You Love’ Is Stupid Advice for Most People

Tips & Tools

Mindset

Would you like to be happier?

Gretchen Rubin wrote the book on happiness. Literally. She has traveled all over, studying what makes happy people, and her book, The Happiness Project, is a best seller.

In fact, her work has given rise to a movement.

In the USA, that movement is called American Happiness Project, and founder Michelle Wix recently wrote about her own travels looking for happy people to find out what sets them apart from the rest of us.

After talking with 500 people across all 50 states who describe themselves as “happy,” she tells us “there are a number of simple tweaks you can make to improve your happiness levels immediately, and build habits that put you on the path to long-term happiness.”

She explains four of them in this article.

Read: I interviewed 500 happy people. Their habits will transform your day

Work/Life Integration

Do you watch a lot of cable TV? Are there sports you avidly follow, series where you feel the characters are your friends, and news shows you watch regularly?

When we first moved to Panama, the concept of streaming television was in its infancy. In order to watch some of the shows we wanted to see, I had to jump through some hoops.

It’s a whole lot easier now.

In fact, even after we returned to the US we never got another cable subscription. With an internet connection and my Amazon Fire Stick, we could see pretty much anything we wanted.

There are other players in the streaming games, of course — Roku and Apple TV devices, for example.

If you’re new to streaming — and if you want travel around as an Anywhereist, you’ll definitely want to convert from cable — Jared Newman has a helpful beginner’s guide.

Read: Cord cutting: A beginner’s guide

Creativity

Here’s a really important reason for exercising your creativity — it helps you stay healthy as you age!

My health is important to me at any age, but as I get older I’m more and more aware of how much harder it is to maintain good health today than it was 10 or 20 (or more) years ago.

So if staying creative will help in that, I’m all for it!

Read: Creativity may be key to healthy aging. Here are ways to stay inspired

Habits

Jeff Haden, Contributing Editor to Inc. Magazine, believes “The small world rule is an emotionally intelligent way to stay the course when you feel overworked, overwhelmed, and close to giving up.”

When a project gets out of hand, when you’re starting to feel burned out, or when you just can’t see the goal line, emotionally intelligent people keep their world small.

That means focusing only on the next step.

Yes, you need to set goals that are days, weeks, or months out, because growth needs time. But for completing tasks, you’re better off just taking the next step. Then the next. It’s a variation on the old, “how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time” schtick.

Writing a book? Don’t get tied up in knots over having to write 80-100,000 words. Just focus on the word count for today, whatever that is.

Building a website? Focus on finding or creating that image you need for the homepage, not on the entire site design.

You’ll get more done, with less emotional wear and tear.

Read: Why Emotionally Intelligent People Embrace the Small World Rule to Achieve Huge Goals

Resilience and calm will go a long way toward helping you through the uncertainties we’re all dealing with today.

Here are six specific habits you can develop to improve your mental resilience and calm those hyperactive thoughts.

As someone who’s worked from home for years, I had already mastered several of them, but one in particular — #6, in fact — still eluded me until a few months ago. Then I made one simple change to my routine that made a really big difference.

Read: 6 unconventional productivity tips for a calm and focused 2021

Location

Do you love cities but wish they were more environmentally friendly?

Here are six European cities making “gloriously green strides towards a sustainable future.”

Read: Six European cities going green for 2021

Tools

Is SEO a mystery you’d like to unravel?

While you may not need to become an SEO expert, if you maintain your own website you should at least be familiar with the fundamentals.

Here’s a helpful guide for beginners from David Hartshorne at Blogging Wizard.

Read: What Is SEO? A Beginner’s Guide To Search Engine Optimization

Some of the links on this page may be affiliate links. That means, if you click and purchase, you pay exactly the same amount and I’ll earn a small commission. These fees help me to keep the free information flowing.

In Case You Missed It. . .

Do You Care About Your Online Privacy? Get This. . .

Back in 2012, not a lot of people knew about VPNs (virtual private networks) and why they needed them.

Today, they’re much more common. Still, if you’re going to another country, or even if you plan to work at the local coffee shop, you should have a VPN installed on your computer, laptop, and phone, and you should use them when you’re connected with public or semi-public WiFi.

Here’s a brief article about another reason you should use a VPN — at home, in fact — that ties in with the article on cord cutting above.

Read: Do You Care About Your Online Privacy? Get This

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