How To Avoid Burnout While Working Remotely? Effective Tools That Can Help 

Burnout can happen to anyone and typically happens to everyone at some point. That’s why keeping a good work/life balance is extremely important. However, when it comes down to entrepreneurs and very driven people, sometimes maintaining such a balance can be challenging or nearly impossible. Since Burnout can eventually cause job loss or damage to your business, it’s very important to “switch off” and stay fresh. So, everybody who works remotely these days needs to learn how to regain energy to keep moving ahead. 

What can help to avoid burnout? Having a set scheduler where you use certain time for professional work while keeping personal time apart from daily work routine is the most important way to prevent burnout. What else can help? Let’s find out!

In this blog post, we’ll talk about some useful online and mobile resources that can help you avoid burnout, delegate things you feel almost sick of, and focus on learning new things.

How to recognize the signs of burnout early?

Burnout is a state exhaustion resulting from excessive and prolonged stress. It occurs when individuals are drained from having to meet stressful demands that occur in their lives. The term “burnout” was first coined in the mid `70s by Herbert J. Freudenberger, a well-known American psychologist with of German ancestry. He was one of the first who recognized burnout as a serious and stressful condition that can easily lead to acute  exhaustion. The negative impacts of burnout can disturb every aspect of your life: family, work, social life, etc.

Yes, burnout affects people in different ways. Here are 3 common symptoms that cause most damage:

Physical symptoms: extreme fatigue, lowered immunity, frequent headaches or muscle pains, bad night sleep, etc.

Emotional symptoms: feeling helpless, detached from the rest of the world, loss of motivation, sense of failure, constant self-doubts, etc.

Behavioral symptoms: isolation, procrastination, substance abuse, etc.

The indicators of burnout can seem subtle at first but you might notice symptoms like:

• No enthusiasm for things you used to enjoy 
• Lack of motivation at work and feeling “trapped” 
• Procrastinating and constantly shifting deadlines
• Feeling worn-out and taking too many “sick” days
• Frequent headaches and muscle tension
• Poor sleep without feeling refreshed & energized 
• Feeling helpless, worthless, and irritated for no reason
• Lack of empathy or compassion for others

5 tips to achieving an effective work-life integration:

• Start a day with something enjoyable (not relevant to work)
• Create a routine and stick to it
• Have a dedicated workspace
• Take short breaks between tasks
• Use productivity tools

Today, let’s focus on the last tip from this list of tips and talk about what productivity tools can help you work productively and live a happier life. 

Mobile assistants for taking best care of your work & habits 

Unfortunately, there are enough people in this world who thrive on a whole bunch of stress and pressure in 2022. Mostly it happens because of demanding jobs with strict deadlines for lots of different tasks that sometimes may seem even chaotic. And the level of stress can build up even higher, if a person is working remotely. In this case, burnout can turn into something almost unavoidable for those who try to balance multiple tasks all at once. 

As a result, becoming a “heavy multitasker” causes a fair amount of pressure which then impinges on the work/life balance. And leads to even more stress. If this problem is left untreated it can cause some serious health problems. 

How to start keeping everything in order and bring out the best work? A good move is to look around and browse around some mobile apps. There are plenty of mobile assistants today that can help sort everything out and organize remote work effectively. 

We’ve picked the top 5 mobile apps for you to look into:

• Visme – one of the most helpful tools for creating charts, infographics, business docs, and captivating presentations with a wide variety of pre-made templates and the built-in animation feature. Being super intuitive and full of adaptable assets, Visme can really jumpstart the presentation process. Most users noted that it’s really versatile and easy to use. Using Visme’s pre-designed elements is a huge time saver over making things from scratch. For example, many course builders have been using Visme successfully for making infographics and presentations for online courses. Moreover, once you are done editing, you will be able to export all your downloadable content that you’ve produced in any file formats (jpg, png, pdf, ppt, etc.) and share your work online with your co-workers.

• Miro – an online collaborative white boarding platform which is perfect for ideation and brainstorming, research and design, wireframing, Agile workflows. People use it for sprint planning, keeping track of retrospectives, a program increment (PI) planning, breaking down user stories to conduct backlog grooming, strategy, planning, and goal setting. Miro can track tasks using Gantt charts, flow charts. With Miro, any complex processes can be explained easily with visual mapping on canvas where you can brainstorm and add sticky notes with different colors and draw lines to connect ideas. Users can also upload files, images, and documents from their computer or Google Drive. And then edit files directly from Miro, if needed. The board can be shared online with others and the working team can keep on editing the board together. You can export your board as PDF and in any other format. Miro is really a good tool for a distributed team to collaborate effectively and efficiently.  

• Evernote – runs on all mobile devices and on desktop computers. This app works almost like a second brain allowing users to store bookmarks, articles, and just random bits of information. They can scan really important information and keep it in their Evernote accounts. Users like Everynote for being secure, reliable, and highly searchable that can easily find anything users are looking for without having to spend hours tagging and organizing information. Evernote makes it relatively easy for 3rd party apps to integrate with their service. That means you will have a decent chance that the time and effort you spend putting information into Evernote won’t be “wasted”. Online course builders, take note of it!

• Dashlane – this app has been designed to work as a digital wallet which stores your sensitive data, passwords, and usernames. And it keeps them safe and secured. Basically, instead of keeping your sensitive info in your browser, notepad, or somewhere else where it can be accessed by others, you can store it all in one place which would be accessible only to you and you only. 
• 7minutes app – this app works great for reminding to take short breaks and do quick workouts just to switch off and reset your brain away from your desk. For example, it navigates users through a series of pushups, lunges, crunches, and stuff like that. Basically, with this app, you’ll be more motivated to get out of your pajamas to start doing something good for your body and your health. It’s been proven that physical exercises reduce stress and help to maintain a good brain activity. So, don’t omit the importance of such apps. 

By the way, if you want to learn more about the most popular wellness apps that people utilize in 2022 for effective workout programs, healthy eating, mediation, good night sleep, and more of other good stuff, check out our recent article here. 

Online work management tools that help to keep good track of projects while working remotely

Yes, many of us are working remotely these days. Even though remote work brings lots of benefits to both companies and team members, managing remote projects sometimes gets complicated. Then communication becomes a prominent challenge too. That’s where online project management tools come into play helping to plan, organize, and control multiple tasks so the project finishes on time and meets the deadlines. The importance of project management software has become more and more striking, especially in circumstances where most people on staff are working from home. 

Here is our top 10 project management online tools which not only help to manage remote work but also saves time, and improves productivity:  

1. ClickUp – one of the best project management software for teams of all sizes. It reduces internal email flow, delegates tasks, allows users to collaborate on files, and check the status of current projects from one central dashboard.
2. Wrike – project management software that works great for customizable views.
3. TeamGantt – one of the best for creating Gantt charts.
4. nTask Manager – allows an unlimited number of users.
5. Bitrix24 – one of the best for small teams.
6. PivotalTracker –  fosters collaboration, great for analyzing progress and provides unlimited storage to teams.
7. Freedcamp – free project management software with unlimited projects.
8. Redbooth – works great for teams in terms of collaboration and communication.
9. Front – allows managing customers’ conversations within one place and can be integrated with Intercom. Allows assigning messages to teammates, write comments for internal collaboration, set reminders to respond later, and create templates for common questions. Excellent for the remote work teams. 
10. Loom – quick-video app is so easy to use! Provides training for remote team members on how to do something, record a bug, or record onboarding videos.  

Online courses provide wealth of info on how to do things right and prevent burnout while working remotely

If you need a skill upgrade, learning more techniques on meditation & relaxation, getting more hints on workouts, or just getting a lift for your self development, an online courses platform comes in handy. This can get even more convenient, if you can take classes under subscription. Basically, paying once and taking any classes you want (and as many as you want) makes it really easy to learn all kinds of stuff on any topic. 

Online training saves your time, effort, and money. In an online courses platform that lets you subscribe for a week/month/year, there is no limit for learning, which means you can take multiple classes at a time and still do your daytime job, even if you’re working remotely. In fact, if you are not tied up to a particular scheduler, this takes lots of pressure away and gives more room for getting things done while feeling at ease.

By the way, if you’d go to the Grinfer platform and hit a “Personal Development” tab, you’d find lots of very useful courses that help, especially if you’re under a whole bunch of stress or feel overloaded.  

A quick list of courses we recommend to anyone who wants to avoid burnout:

1. How To Avoid Burnout – for anyone who is seeking strategies to help soothe and self regulate their stress levels, become more resilient, set boundaries and look after your mind, body and soul. You will learn how to slow down, manage overwhelm, regulate your stress levels and positively reframe your outlook to become more resilient. 
2. Productivity with Purpose – learn all about the productivity systems, geek out on productivity tips & tricks, and download all the right apps and tools. This class helps gain clarity on what to spend your time on. It teaches about effective methods of making the time and gaining more energy. And more!
3. Manage Time And Overcome Stress – this course will teach you all about the best practices that can help them manage time more efficiently during stress or crisis.  It will show you how to actively practice time management techniques to effectively manage stress.
4. Master And Overcome Remote Work Information Overload – this great course unravels some of the most important mysteries that many new remote workers or managers of remote workers overlook. You’ll learn some good fundamental ways to take care of the most important needs you have mentally and physically, so that you can expand your information handling capacity and reduce the impact of stress. 
5. Sound Therapy – provides a lot of exercises for self-development and self-healing, as well as practical tools to provide sound therapy sessions from a certified instructor. This unique course will not only teach you how to use music and sound to heal your own mind from stress but it will let you start your practical journey as a sound therapy consultant!  

Got a whole lot more other awesome courses on Grinfer, so feel free to check them out!

Final thoughts

While working remotely keeping a few things in mind can help in working efficiently. Try to have a designated space for working which can orient you towards getting started. Have a high-priority list of tasks that you need to complete for the day. Prioritize amongst those tasks and start off with the most important ones whenever you’re the most alert and productive. 

Always make sure you take enough short breaks in between your tasks to re energize yourself. Establish healthy boundaries at both personal and professional domains as this will prevent you from reaching exhaustion. Take adequate rest and nourish your healthy eating habits in order to maintain your good physical and emotional well-being.

Learn more with Grinfer about how to avoid burnout and be most productive while working from home! 

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