As the owner of a psychology and business mentorship enterprise, Sheena Schuy is no stranger to other people’s burnout. A few years ago, however, she experienced it for herself. During the period in which she struggled with burnout, Sheena would do nothing but work and rest, having no real energy for anything else. Her life looked a lot like getting to the weekend, getting her chores done, and then spending the rest of the weekend rugged up on the couch or in bed. Once horizontal, her friends were snacks, alcohol and exhaustion.
“I didn’t really have a life,” Sheena says. “I just felt so exhausted by the weekend, like I needed to collapse.”
The entrepreneur explains how she knew that what she was feeling was burnout and not stress. She says that stress drives her to action, allowing her to move along in life. Burnout, on the other hand, was the aftermath of her stress and anxiety: exhaustion so complete that her life began to consist of just work and rest.
“You aren’t burnt out if you just had a big day and now you’re tired. That’s kind of like saying you’re OCD when you just like things clean and tidy,” Sheena explains. “True burnout is really that physical and emotional exhaustion that is happening more often than not, and it’s becoming a regular pattern…It might look like working, exercising and sleeping without any energy for friends, family or anything else.”
To overcome burnout, Sheena notes that she had to “train herself” to rest. This can be difficult to learn – even uncomfortable – if you’re not used to doing things just for yourself, she says. The entrepreneur admits that resting had always felt “lazy” and “unproductive” to her. She learnt to overcome these emotions, however, and internalise that free time is just as important as working, cleaning or exercising.
Aside from learning to embrace rest, Sheena started seeing a therapist. During her sessions, she began to unpack a “constant need for achievement” that she says led to her anxiety and burnout. Sheena also focused more on her physical health, seeing a naturopath and receiving IV drip therapy for vitamins and minerals.
Finally, Sheena says that switching to a more flexible work week has been the best thing for her burnout journey and ongoing mental health. The therapist and business mentor is an advocate for the 20-hour work week, and now instructs other professionals on how they, too, can lessen their hours. She says she mentors workers from various industries on how to pivot their career into businesses that give them flexibility in their schedule – even if it is just part-time initially.
“Having control over what you do and how you do it has a major impact on how our work affects us,” she says. “This is why rigid micromanaged workplaces have the highest rates of burnout, due to lack of control by the employees and lack of trust from the business.”
To avoid burnout, Sheena urges small-business owners to learn to let go.
“If you want your business to be around in two, five or 10 years, you need to learn the concept of, ‘I let go, so I can grow,’” she says.
Letting go can begin by delegating simple admin tasks to teammates initially, then other tasks as the business grows, Sheena says. She adds that, ideally, your goal will be less about service or product delivery, and more about managing the business in a way that you can switch off because you have people to whom you can delegate.
“It’s about learning how to trust your business systems and team,” Sheena says. “I love James Clear’s quote: ‘You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.’”
This article first appeared in issue 46 of the Inside Small Business quarterly magazine
