Avoid School Burnout

Let's go and talk about burnout because I think it's inevitable for most students. We got to be able to understand what we're capable of. And sometimes we don't know that until we push ourselves too far. I don't want you to think about this as avoiding burnout, meaning burnout's never going to happen. I don't think that's achievable. What I want to be able to do in this video is give you some steps to be able to identify burnout as well as what you can do to try to avoid it happening in the future. And I think the best way to understand about burnout is knowing your own capacity, knowing when burnout is happening and knowing what you can do about it. That is going to be the key because burnout's going to happen. As long as you keep on challenging yourself, there's going to be failures. There's going to be times where you're going to be overwhelmed, dressed out, right? That's part of the school year. As I mentioned, when testing comes up, when you are going to be having homework and exams and the holiday season and the spring and the summer and the weather gets nice, a lot of times everything just comes in and we can't take on everything. And a lot of times we want to keep on doing as much things as we can, like take as many hard classes as possible, do as many activities as possible, and burnout sometimes happens. So what we're going to do is as we keep on moving on, we keep on making steps, we're going to try to get better and better at knowing when burnout is coming up and how to avoid it. The first thing that I can simply say when you are feeling burned out is just to stop and breathe and walk away. I think a lot of times we get so into what we are constantly doing and all the things that are racing through our brain that sometimes we just need to step away, walk away, take a walk and relax and breathe because your brain can't work optimally if it has so many things that you are constantly trying to juggle and think about. You need to be able to spend that time just reflecting, relaxing, and that is when some of your best thoughts are going to come into your brain. That's why a lot of times we talk about creatives, when are there some of their best ideas? It's like in the shower or it's when they're laying in bed because there's no other distractions that are going on. So when you have a lot going on and you're feeling overwhelmed and burned out, take some time for you. Take your time for yourself to really allow things to kind of go through and for you to kind of map out a game plan for you to be able to kind of overcome or analyze why you're being burned out. The next thing is, which I struggle with. A lot of times when we feel burned out is because we don't really know what to do next. We have so many things we want to achieve, so many things that are going on. We don't know how to really kind of organize everything. And that's a lot of times when I burn out because I'll just add things onto my calendar and my schedule and then I realize, holy crap, I did too many things at one time. So I think one of the best things you can do is like set aside some time on a Sunday or on a Monday or on a Friday or whatever works for you, morning, at evening, and just schedule things out. When you have a list of like 20 things that have to get done and you're like, oh my God, how am I going to like do all this stuff? Relax, right? Settle down and say, all right, let's go ahead and start scheduling some of these things done. My wife is one of those people that like, she'll have like a checklist and she always does a checklist and that's how we get things done. But a lot of times with burnout, things have different importance. So instead of going down a list, you might be able to get like the top five things done, but those might not be really that important. So when you're scheduling out your activities or your tasks that need to be completed because you're feeling overwhelmed and burned out, make sure that you are selecting the most important things to get done. Typically, preferably a lot of times that happens early in the morning, right? The whole like eat your frog, take care of the most important thing first. And then what you'll see is like, you'll start making that progress, achieving the things that were the most consuming for you on that burnout. And then you'll start seeing things start getting a little bit lighter. That's really, really key. The next thing, which is a little bit unconventional, but sometimes when we're feeling burned out, as I mentioned, like so into what we're doing. And when I talk about like stepping outside and like relax and breathing, sometimes it's also really good to do something different. And again, this is something that I really struggle with because like YouTube is my life. This is what I am constantly doing. I am always in this room, not always in this room, but like basically when I come home, it's like I come in here. This is how I start my day and how I end my day. And most of my hours are inside this room. And sometimes it kind of feels like the walls are closing in. I feel burned out. There's so many things going on. A lot of times it's really helpful to do something else, do something else you enjoy. And if you don't know what else you enjoy, then go ahead and find something. That is why hobbies are so important. I hate reading fiction books, hate it. I really like reading nonfiction, personal development, all kinds of things. But the problem with that is it kind of builds into more and more what I'm always doing every single day. So I really have to force myself to do something else that I enjoy, to give myself a break, give my brain a break of doing the same thing over and over again. And that's why I really think it's important to have like some extracurricular activities, something else that you can just like release some of that stress and anxiety of doing something else that you just enjoy. Life is so much more than just trying to achieve your goals and handling everything you have. Do something else that you are competing against other people to be the best at or anything like that. Just find something. It could be volunteering. It could be building something. Maybe it's just joining a community or a group of something that you enjoy, that you get some benefit from, and you will find those benefits. And sometimes later down the line, you'll realize that my ability to be able to do something else was the reason why I could be successful in this other area where I was feeling burned out because you've got to have balance. You can't just always constantly be doing the same thing over and over. There was a study I think of looking at baseball players. It was something about the American baseball system where it's like such encouraged that baseball players are always only playing baseball. What they realized is a lot of those baseball players, this thought that like they should only focus on baseball, a lot of them never made it to the pros. And it was a lot of other athletes that played baseball, but they played other sports. They did other things. Those were the ones that eventually never burned out and were able to actually get themselves to the pros. It was very something interesting because a lot of times you just think you just got to do more, more, more, but that's not always the case. One thing that was happening today when I was watering some plants is I was watering the plants and I realized there's a hole at the bottom. Why is there a hole at the bottom of the plant? Well, there's a hole at the bottom of the plant because the plant can only hold up in so much water, right? So if you didn't have a hole at the end of the plant, you would overfill that with water and it wouldn't be able to drink all that water and it would drown and it would die. So we have the hole at the bottom of the plant for water to go through. A lot of times we have to think about that as our brain and knowledge, okay? We can only take in so much knowledge at a time. One of the reasons why I have my YouTube channel the way it is, is because me myself, I can't like watch a 30 minute, 40 minute YouTube video on learning anything. I need something that is much more smaller chunk. When you're starting to feel burned out, try to think about, I think a lot of times what you're doing is you're adding so many things into your task list and so many things that you're trying to like absorb, you physically can't do it. It's just extra water that's being poured into the pot and that's going straight out. And you feel like you still have to like try to find and collect that water and put it back in and just realize not everything is possible for you to go into that pot. So what you're going to have to do is you're going to have to cut your losses. You're going to have to focus on, as I mentioned with that schedule, what is the most important things? All these other things that are taking up our time, right? All this extra water that's being poured in that is not actually making something meaningful, but is making us feel burned out, get rid of it. Let the water go through and disperse, okay? We can only focus on what we're able to do. And a lot of times, guys, this just comes with some life experience where we start to realize how much we can take on and when we don't want to take on anything more. So think about that water in the can. You could only take on so much. And if it's not going to be a meaningful impact to you and what you're trying to achieve, let it go. Focus on the most important. And I'd like to add onto that too, focus on the most important, but also that comes into like the prioritize, right? And one way you can kind of determine that is think about in five years, in 10 years, in 15 years, like how important is what you are focusing on, what you're spending your time on going to be in that timeframe. A lot of times we focus on things that from other people that are not truly our friends. They would never show up at our funeral. We don't care about what their opinion, you know, naturally be. Or we focus on things that are not going to make a meaningful change or difference in our life five, 10 years, 15 years down the road. So that comes into that priority of focusing on ways that those most important things that are going to make an impact. The next thing, which is hard for a lot of students is don't feel like you ever have to go at learning alone. The best progress that I ever made in any of my education was not sitting behind a computer and watching YouTube videos by myself, right? What it was, was getting with a group of my fellow students and studying together, doing our homework together, studying for the test together. Because what we had was that synergy. We were working with each other. We're asking each other questions and we're going through the work and some things I understood and they didn't. Some things they understood and I did. But by working through, not only did you get friends and it's actually makes the learning like enjoyable, but you get help. You get somebody that you can kind of like go through on that process, right? Just like in life, we don't want to go through life all by ourselves, right? You want to continuously be making connections. So therefore, it's life is much better enjoyed with others and learning is the exact same thing. So a lot of times when we struggle, we don't want other people to know. We sometimes feel embarrassed that we don't understand the information. I get it. I think it's a total normal human reaction, but I want to challenge you to really kind of sometimes step out of your comfort zone if that's you and really try to identify some people that you would feel comfortable like studying, doing your homework with, asking questions. I think it's really, really important, especially when we feel overwhelmed that we have people that we can lean on. We have people that we can talk to that understand what we're going through, understand our situation and our circumstances. So therefore, they can support us. They can support you as well. And the last thing that is really, really important, it kind of comes into, I think a lot of times why people burn out is it's not actually them burning out with doing not having a schedule, doing too many tasks that don't matter, taking on too many things into their plate, not getting support. A lot of times we feel like we're burned out or we are burning out or we're overwhelmed and we're stressed because of ourselves. We don't give ourselves sometimes a lot of credit for what we are able to accomplish, what we are able to do. And I think a lot of times that we are our own worst critic. And when we have those thoughts of ourselves in our head, if we're not conscious of that and we're not able to identify those thoughts and be like, no, that is not the way that I'm going to think about myself. And guess what? They're going to manifest and they're going to keep on getting larger and larger and larger. If we can't have some gratitude for people around us and also our accomplishments, we're going to feel burned out. We're going to feel like it's never enough. That's sometimes I think the mindset that a lot of students will carry with them is they have to keep on doing more and more. They have to do more and more with less and less. They always have to do better and better and better. And sometimes good enough is good enough. Move on, acquire the necessary skills, get better at what you're doing, put in your number one effort. My wife and I, we both have quotes to our kids. My wife's biggest thing that she always tells them is like, do your best. That's all we want you to do. My thing that I always tell my students, like my children, is like, if you're going to get better at something, you have to keep on practicing. You have to keep on trying to get better and better and better. Success is not going to come just overnight, right? You're just not going to be like, oh, all of a sudden, like a great math student or all of a sudden getting good A's. Like it takes work, right? And it takes practice and you have to try, just not do stuff. I think a lot of times we're our own worst critic. We judge ourselves too harshly. And sometimes it takes somebody else to tell us that, to realize that like, oh yeah, you know what? I'm burned out. The reason why I'm burned out is everything's in my head. If I can just kind of change my mindset, change the way that I think about things, how I approach things, I'm not going to be burned out anymore. Well, you are going to be burned out, but again, you got to keep on challenging yourself, right? And then identify it and say, all right, here's some things I can do to lessen my burnout and I'm going to keep on moving forward. And then to my next challenge, you'll be able to see burnout's going to start to come, but you're going to be much more prepared. So hopefully this video was helpful for you guys. And if you guys have any questions, let me know down in the chat below.