Self-Care and Avoiding Burnout

My posting schedule hasn’t been regular this week and I am so sorry. Several of you mentioned you look forward to my next post and the idea of you taking time to come to my page and there being nothing new makes me feel downright terrible. That’s why I’ve tried so hard to post consistently, but to be honest the last few weeks have been a struggle to stay afloat. Work has picked up significantly and so has work travel. Enter New York Fashion Week: an amazing experience I’m SO thankful for, but jam-packed from the second I woke up to the moment I went to bed. We returned from NYFW Sunday evening and Monday morning I caught a plane to Philadelphia. I got home at 1am Wednesday then Thursday caught a 7:50am flight for a meeting in Rhode Island.

It’s been a whirlwind since I entered the exciting (and at times overwhelming) world of blogging and I realized this week I’m terrible at “self-care”. I don’t take time to relax and unwind- and at this point as awful as it sounds it’s something I have to re-learn to do. I expect a lot of myself as a mom, as a fiancé, as an associate, and as the editor of FMF. However, the last few weeks have forced me to realize I’m stretching myself too thin and that I need to:

“take a break”
“relax”
“chill out”
“decompress”
“unwind”

…or whatever ya want to call it. 🙂  As I was thinking this, it hit me- why not ask you for your suggestions?

How do you relax, unwind and otherwise avoid burnout?

I’ve gotten a lot better at time management in the last year but I still have room to improve. Here are the things I’m putting in place to manage my time more effectively and to build “self-care” into my routine. My goal is to do this but still be as consistent as possible with my posting schedule. These are what I’ve thought of, but I’d love to get your suggestions.

1. Setting time limits for things, turning off distractions and focusing. At a recent conference, Rite Aid’s Vice President of marketing shared an interesting statistic: the average attention span is down from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8 seconds today. I thought about that later and also about how easily I get distracted. As I’ve been typing this post I’ve twice resisted the urge to check Instagram (any of my fellow blogger gals with me on this?! 🙂 ). Even at work, I find myself tempted by incoming emails that don’t need to be read and responded to right away. I’ve noticed that when I spend a few minutes in the morning and pick 5-10 things I decide to absolutely get done that day, I accomplish them. Why? Because I set a goal and turn off distractions so that I can achieve it. The challenge with blogging is I haven’t set these kinds of time limits. If I need to get a post done that night, I give myself “however long I need”, and as a result don’t make it to bed until well after midnight.

2. Avoiding perfectionism when it doesn’t matter as much. Using this post I’m writing as an example, I want to make sure it’s well structured, the content flows smoothly, the writing style is engaging, and the images flow well with the text. Almost every time I write a post I fight the urge to make it “perfect”; I’ll go back and edit- and re-edit. What I’m realizing though is while high quality written content is crucial, I can still write an impactful post without it being the most eloquent masterpiece I’ve ever crafted. The time I get back is precious time I can spend elsewhere (ahem, downtime, I’m looking at you).
3. Getting enough sleep. I’ve heard that getting adequate sleep makes you more efficient during the day- so much so that it more than makes up for the extra time spent snoozing. To get enough sleep, I’m going to start waking up earlier and writing my post (or at least the majority of it) first thing in the morning before I start work at 8.

5. Building in an hour every other day for “me” time and putting it on my list. I feel like every other day is a realistic goal and putting it on my list will be my way of holding myself accountable.
6. Giving myself permission to unplug, especially from Instagram. Instagram is a huge component to blogging and the platform has been one of the best ways to get Fifteen Minutes to Flawless’ name out there. The problem however is that Instagram has begun to consume the majority of my time in the evenings. I try to reply to every comment and direct message I get, but as the volume of both has grown so has the time spent to keep up. Going back to the concept of setting time limits, I’m going to set a specific amount of time each day for Instagram-related activities and stick to it.

If you made it all the way down here, thank you for reading this and allowing me to hold myself accountable by sharing these new “self care” goals with you. And if you struggle like me, hopefully some of these ideas are beneficial for you as well. Can’t wait to hear how you make time to “do you” and to avoid the “b” word. 🙂

XO,

Terra

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Photos c/o Banavenue