Avoiding Burnout: the Marketing Edition

As we all know, burnout is not a joke – even when you work in a fun, creative environment like a marketing agency or department. When you find yourself dreading even the simplest marketing tasks, when you’re reflexively checking your email every day at home, when you can’t seem to relax, no matter what you’re doing, you’re likely suffering from burnout.

That’s the bad news. The good news is this: there’s a way to recover and, what’s more, a way for avoiding burnout all together. Here’s how to avoid burnout. 

Avoiding Burnout: the Marketing Edition

1. Plan your day

What’s that old expression? “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail.” If you don’t plan out your day, there’s no way you’re going to get everything done. Plus, you’re probably going to feel overwhelmed and worn out before the afternoon even hits!

That’s why you make to-do lists. Schedule out each task on your marketing checklist and stick to it. It’ll make you more efficient and ensure that you get everything done when it needs to be.

2. Delegate responsibility

It’s OK to share the workload. Collaborate. Assign teams. Do break-out sessions. The goal is to spread out the responsibility so that it’s not entirely on your shoulders. And, you know what? You’ll find that collaborating as a team makes the creativity coming out of your office soar. Sounds like a win-win.

3. Shut it down

When you’re not working, don’t work! It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But in this age of 24/7 access and “working out of pocket,” it can be hard to stay away from work when you’re not supposed to be working. Take hold of your time away and treasure it. Doing so makes you more fired up and ready to get back at it when you’re in the office.

4. Schedule in advance

Are there tasks on your to-do list that can be managed ahead of time? If you’re a social media manager, this tip is especially for you. Instead of spending each day coming up with content for each post, dedicate a handful of days at the beginning of the month towards creating the content calendar. Then, use a tool like Hootsuite (for example) to schedule out your posts in advance. (See more tips on scheduling social media ahead of time here.) During the month, all you need to do is monitor the social channels and manage interactions, which is much more manageable.

Scheduling in advance means that when things come up (as they always do), you’re ready for it. Your to-do list isn’t destroyed because of one surprise meeting. Your stress levels don’t skyrocket because of one new top-priority project. You’ve prepared ahead of time, and you’ve got the built-in space in your schedule. You’ve got this.