**This article is for informational purposes only. As with all things related to your health, be sure to consult your doctor or other medical professional, not the internet, for an official diagnosis.
Burnout is a big buzzword right now. The nature of indie publishing means you are wearing several different hats, sometimes at the same time, and it can start to take a toll on you after awhile. It’s great to see that concerns about health – especially mental health – have made their way into the conversation.
Add the demands of motherhood to the regular craziness of writing and marketing as an indie, then it seems like a situation ripe for burnout.
However, I want to note that feeling tired and overwhelmed, while unfortunate and sucky, is not always burnout. There is no need to add to your already stressful life by ALSO worrying that you’ve now worked too hard and you’ve seriously hurt yourself!
Burnout and stress are not the same thing.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being stressed. Sometimes you react to a stressful situation by becoming faster, better, or stronger. The first time your child fell and hurt themselves, you ran faster than you ever thought possible.
And stress does not always happen as the result of negative things. Labor is pretty stressful – and mine only lasted 8 hours so I don’t even feel like that really counts as anything particularly stressful compared to others! A ringing doorbell will put us into a brief period of stress, interrupting our normal activities, but often turns out to be a package or visitor we are happy to see.
Without a little bit of stress, you wouldn’t actually do very much (writing seems to happen magically faster when there is an editor or beta reading waiting for it, doesn’t it?). It’s when stress gets beyond that optimal point that things get dangerous.
Burnout comes from sustained stress over a longer period of time without breaks.
While a completely stress-free life isn’t possible, you can certainly plan in breaks. How frequent those breaks need to be can also change over time. Leading up to a launch week, breaks may only be ten minutes at night with a cup of tea listening to music. But once that launch is over, you might need two full days of no author business at all before you’re back to work at normal speed.
Accepting that breaks can, will, and need to happen can be hard for moms. You’re used to being moms all day, every day. If you’re also an indie author, it makes sense that you’d be an indie author all day every day, right? When your time is already crunched by other responsibilities, using any of that hard-to-find extra time as a real break can feel lazy, or selfish, or irresponsible. But just like you have time in your day/week/month without a child demanding something from you, your author side also needs and deserves that break.
One key way to make sure breaks are scheduled starts with setting achievable SMART goals based on your own objectives. Remind yourself about the time you gave yourself to do things and don’t force yourself to do it sooner just because you have an extra few days. You planned those extra days for a reason!
Signs of burnout can also be symptoms of other illnesses – so be sure to get anything unusual checked out by your doctor.
While chronic fatigue is often a big warning sign of burnout, this is kind of the default state of mothers for the first few years of their children’s lives. It can be hard to tell what’s normal and what’s cause for concern! The same goes for getting sick often, another common sign of burnout. Kids are germ magnets and in our house we all sport sniffles from about November until May.
A sign of burnout that may be easier to identify for writer moms would be a lack of motivation or increased cynicism and frustration. Yes, there are times that we get discouraged and don’t “feel” like writing. A few days of this from time to time is normal, and taking that break is probably a good idea. But if a quick check in with writing friends (maybe with some of your favorite Facebook groups) doesn’t get your spirit up, there may be something else going on.
If you take a break from writing and feel yourself itching to get back to it, then it was the break you needed. If you just don’t feel excited or interested in writing anymore, and constantly have to force yourself to do it without feeling any satisfaction or enjoyment, then burnout may be on the horizon.
One final thing to note is that burnout can come on gradually for some people and very quickly for others. Often for the latter it’s due to some large external event (grief, illness, major life shift like career loss or change). The same events do not cause the same amount of stress for everyone, and how you react to the same event will change over your lifetime.
Just like you know your writing the best, you know yourself the best. You know what stresses you out and what makes your littles ones just as anxious. You can tell the difference between normal tired and “hmm, this might be a problem” tired – in yourself and your family. So trust yourself and figure out your limits. Give yourself a few more breaks than you think you really need, and don’t stress too much about burnout. If you still love what you do every day, and wake up wanting to do it, then you’re doing fine.
(And as a final reminder, please reach out to your doctor for any and all medical advice and questions on this topic!)
Recent Comments