As a creative small business owner with a full-time job
There’s a lot out there about how to avoid burnout (which is inevitable) and how to recover from it. Most of that advice is either generic, corny, or out of touch. It also kind of sets you up for failure – if you tried to avoid burnout and it found you, then you failed. So on top of being burned out, you also feel crappy for letting yourself get burned out.
Rather than vacillate between running from burnout and wallowing in it, I’ve found that mitigation is much more effective. I know some level of burnout is inevitable, so rather than trying to avoid it completely, I diffuse it. Then I’m not stuck in the cycle of being completely burned out and having to pull myself out of that, rinse and repeat.
So let’s talk about how to do that.
And a BONUS – none of these burnout tips involve outsourcing, so all of these ideas are practical and doable regardless of cash flow.
For some key context if you don’t know me, I work full-time at a corporate job during the week and run this business on the side on nights and weekends. I joke that I can’t do anything just for fun, so I have to monetize my hobbies. Thus, because I am almost always working in one form or another (or completely checked out watching junky reality TV), burnout is constantly lurking, and I quickly had to learn to see around the corner and react.
And I’m sure I’m not alone. Many of my maker friends have a full-time job like I do, have multiple jobs, are stay-at-home parents, and/or have other higher-priority responsibilities. Thus their small businesses are not their primary focus as well. When you’re juggling so many responsibilities, the threat of burnout is very real.
Before I begin, I want to be clear that this method really only works if you’re like me and you run your small maker business on the side, or it is not your sole or primary source of income. If it is, this method most likely will not align with the way you need to operate your business. You’ll see why in a moment.
So here’s the short answer: I’ve set up my systems and tasks in a way that I can pick and choose what to work on and how much to work. Some days, I feel super motivated and energized, so I’ll work on something I need the extra motivation for, like setting up shipping on my website. Other days, I feel like a couch potato, so that’s a good day for making rainbows or working on a draft in Procreate in a low-pressure setting.
So let’s elaborate – here’s what I do to mitigate or avoid burnout as a small business owner who also works full time:
Know how you operate. As I mentioned above, I like to pick and choose what I work on on any given day, depending on my mood and energy. Thus, I’ve laid that foundation and set my work up in advance to allow for that – because I know that’s how I work best. Figuring out how I work was a real lightbulb moment for me; I honestly kind of created this system by nature without even realizing it. Once you have a good grasp on how you work best, you can create your systems in an optimal way according to that work style.
Give yourself flexible deadlines. The key here is ”flexible”! Setting goals and creating target dates for yourself are great ways to ensure you get things done. The other side of that coin, though, is feeling forced to work, or to work on a specific task, because of a deadline, which is a major burnout contributor. By keeping your target dates flexible, you have that wiggle room to work on something else or take a break entirely, and you’re not beating yourself up for missing a deadline. Of course, there are times when you do have a firm deadline – which is exactly why you build flexibility in where you can, so you have a higher tolerance for situations where you can’t.
Know what’s mandatory and have a backburner. Some elements of running a small creative business are mandatory – shipping orders within your committed timeframe, bookkeeping, reordering supplies you’re about to run out of, etc. Other elements aren’t and can have that flexible deadline I mention above … or no deadline. They’re ready to be worked on and can be picked up anytime – they’re on the backburner. This might sound counterintuitive, but the backburner actually helps you make sure those mandatory activities always get done. If you only have enough time or energy for one thing, you know you it’s going to be a mandatory activity. If you have more capacity, you can pull from the backburner. If you’re like me and don’t like to leave a project unfinished, this may take some practice! But I have learned to appreciate that I have work queued up that I can pick back up anytime I feel like it or have extra time, and it doesn’t distract me from my top priorities.
Be okay with taking things off your list. This is a tough one for many of us; after all, if something was added to the list in the first place, it must be important. But I know burnout is around the corner when the list starts to feel like this insurmountable monolith that just keeps growing. I am also notorious for creating ‘aspirational’ to-do lists that really aren’t that realistic in practice. I’ve learned to recognize when that happens and walk away. It has taken a lot of time and practice for me to feel “okay” with not accomplishing everything I want to do. I am constantly reminding myself that not getting everything done is the better choice than getting everything done and burning out.
Plan ahead & plan to make it fun. Confession time: product photography is probably my least favorite task. Great product photos are super important to a small business, but photography doesn’t come naturally to me so it takes a long time and I easily get frustrated by it. Which is where planning ahead really comes in handy for me. I will choose a day (usually a Saturday) to designate as ”photography day”. Prior to photography day, I set myself up for a successful day: I choose a playlist or a podcast, clear a space in my office, make sure I have plenty of coffee and treats, and get out the products I want to photograph. Planning ahead makes me more productive day-of, it gives me a way to get excited for the day, and it enables me to prepare in advance by doing less mentally-demanding tasks in the days leading up. It also puts a stake in the ground to ensure that I accomplish a task that I would readily put off.
Burnout mitigation does require some level of mindset shift. As you start to try things like removing items from your to-do list, starting a project and setting it aside for later, or changing up your systems to accommodate your work style, you’ll also start to recognize your signs of burnout earlier, and you can react and adjust sooner. This is where that mitigation comes in – as soon as you start to see yourself going too hard and headed for a full-blown crash and burn, mitigation diffuses it. Keep practicing, keep trying, and keep yourself in balance as best as you can!
Lemon Press Studio 