Avoid Burnout: Burnout Signs to Know and Watch For

While forgetfulness, brain fog, and trouble thinking straight can also be signs of serious illness like Alzheimer’s, chronic fatigue syndrome, and dementia, it can also be a major sign of burnout.

 

If you are experiencing issues with remembering things, can’t keep your thoughts straight, and have a hard time thinking in general or have ruminating thoughts, it’s important to seek professional help even if you think it’s burnout.

 

Go to your primary care provider for a complete physical and work up to be sure that it’s not chemical or physical. But understand that even if it is depression or burnout that you’re experiencing, your doctor may be able to advise you on treatment.

 

Mental issues are still treatable by healthcare professionals and are real illnesses. In the meantime, you can watch out for these signs and seek help to keep it from getting worse.

Delegate

  • Fatigue or Exhaustion – If you feel so tired you can’t function even if you’re sleeping or you’re also not sleeping due to experiencing insomnia it’s important to note that it can be due to burnout. However, the way you feel may also be due to another illness.

 

  • No Motivation – When you have a lot to do, but you really just can’t be bothered with doing any of it, you’re missing deadlines, you’re not performing up to your skill level, and others are noticing it, you may be burned-out.

 

  • Can’t Focus – Another sign of burnout is the inability to concentrate, focus, or remember things. This is a sign that is also associated with depression, and frequently situational depression can coincide with burnout.

 

  • Feel Dread – If you feel dread every time you think of work, go to work, or get home from work, you may be burned out. If you are always fantasizing about getting out of your job or your business, you may be burned out, and that is why this is happening.

 

  • Ruminating Thoughts – When an issue comes up with your business, work, or relationship (whatever it is that is contributing to your feelings), if you end up having circular thoughts to the point of distraction, you may be burned out.

 

  • Don’t Care That You Don’t Care – This is a big sign of burnout. If you can barely be bothered to read this blog post about burnout because you feel numb to everything, it’s likely you either are burned out, or you have major depression.

 

It’s imperative to remember that being burned out doesn’t mean you don’t want to keep your business, or your job, or even your marriage—if that’s what is causing you the dread, lack of motivation, and exhaustion—it might be the way you’re doing it that is causing your burnout. Therefore, it will help to identify the reasons you’re experiencing these problems so that you can fix it and avoid it in the future.

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Avoid Burnout: Reassess Your Goals

The only way you can be sure that anything you do works is to test it and look at the data. Once you do that, you may discover that a goal you made was the wrong goal for you to be shooting for in the first place. After all, as you learn, grow, and change throughout your life, it’s normal for your priorities also to change.

Passion post

When you were in your teenage years, you probably underestimated how challenging and all-encompassing parenthood would be. Even if you don’t yet have your own children as you experience your peers going through parenthood, you learn by watching them, and that will also change your perspective in ways that can be life-changing, causing you to reevaluate your priorities.

 

This is okay. It doesn’t mean you’re indecisive or that you are a hypocrite. You simply just don’t know what you don’t know until you know it. That’s a mouth full, I know, but it’s the truth. Because of this fact, it’s imperative that you periodically reassess your goals to avoid burnout.

 

Evaluate Your Original Goals

 

Ask yourself whether the goal is something you even care about at all at this point in your life. It might be easy to determine to stop pursuing it right off the bat. You may have to dig deeper to discover the answers, but you can ask yourself a few questions to help.

 

  • Is this goal still attainable?
  • Do I need to adjust the timeline?
  • Is the goal even important to me?
  • Do I have the tactics and techniques right for achieving the goal?

 

Examine Your Process for Reaching Each Goal

 

When you set goals the SMART way, you’ll end up with several smaller goals with smaller daily steps that help you reach the goal. Did you set up the initial process in a way that really will ensure you are successful? You may need to adjust the process for reaching the goal to make it desirable or possible for you to keep pursuing it.

Go back through the process of setting SMART GOALS.

Click here SMART Goal blog post for each of the goals you’re examining to help you ensure that you’ve done all you can to facilitate success.

Track Your Progress

If you have not been tracking your progress until now, it’s essential that you set up some form of goal tracking.

Some people like using project management systems like Trello.com, Basecamp.org, and others to set milestones and track progress even if they’re doing all the work alone. This is highly recommended to help you stay on track with your goals.

 

Finally, ensure that any goal you set advances your path toward your overall life mission. You don’t want to do things that set you back from reaching your ultimate mission in life.

When you know what that path is, you’ll have a much easier time saying yes or no to any additions on your plate. This will be one of the main ways you can avoid experiencing burnout throughout your life.

 

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How to Accept Failure and Mistakes

No matter how well you plan or implement, sometimes things aren’t going to work out as you expected. Sometimes you’re going to make mistakes, but sometimes you’re going to experience failure due to nothing you have done. However, it happens, and due to that, it’s essential to learn how to accept failure and mistakes as part of life and not the end of the world.

 

Feel Your Feelings

 

One thing to realize upfront is that your feelings are perfect and are ‘allowed’ no matter what. No one has a right to tell you not to feel a certain way. However, understand that your own thoughts are what make you feel something. If you can change the way you think of something, you may be able to affect how you feel about it too.

 

Be Kind to Yourself

 

There is a vast difference between the notion of being nice and that of being kind. When you are kind, you are mindful of the impact your thoughts and actions have on yourself and others. Think and do kind things, and you’ll end up a happier, healthier person who is not at risk for burnout.

 

Acknowledge Your Own Mistakes

 

When you do make a mistake, it’s imperative that you accept responsibility for your actions that lead to the failure but not the things you cannot control. For example, if you missed a deadline because you binge-watched a new TV show, that’s on you. But, if you missed a deadline because you were sick, that’s not on you.

 

Prepare Yourself Mentally for Failure

 

Everyone makes mistakes no matter what, and everyone falls short of their goals. This is normal life. If you don’t fail sometimes, it’s likely you’re not even pushing yourself hard enough. Everyone cannot be number one every time, and that includes you. Instead, focus on your effort in proper goal setting to help you avoid failing for that reason.

 

Learn from The Failure or Mistake

 

When you do make a mistake or a project or idea fails instead of beating yourself up, figure out what you can learn from the situation. For example, most failures start from day one with goal setting. How could you do this over again differently and get a better outcome? Even if you can’t actually get a do-over, it’s good to explore the reasons.

 

Develop a Plan for Moving Forward

3 step plan

Once you’ve examined the mistakes you made and figured out why you failed, it’s time to create a plan to move forward. If you can do everything over again, that’s great, but if you can’t, learn from it and move on.

 

When you take the time to learn from your failure and mistakes, you can actually avoid making the same one twice. When you avoid making the same mistakes again, you will improve your life exponentially as you grow and improve over time. When you keep an open mind about failure and errors, you’ll find that you start being more realistic about the goals you set, the actions you take, and the way you view failure and success.

 

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Tips to Help You Practice Positive Thinking

Sometimes you might think that the whole focus the world has today on thinking positively is crazy, but the truth is when you can see the good things in the world before you see the bad you’re going to be a happier, healthier, more productive person who is less prone to burnout than the next.

 

These tips will help you practice more positive thinking without turning you into an unempathetic monster. After all, you probably know one of those toxically positive people who cannot ever accept that sometimes people have bad days. You don’t want to be that person, but you also don’t want to swim in the negativity. Let’s get started.

set up your day

 

Focus on The Good Things

 

There is always at least one good thing happening, even when everything else seems horrific. Even during the worst of times, humans can see the good. Find just one good thing to focus on when times are hard to help you avoid burnout.

 

Practice Daily Gratitude

 

Set up a gratitude journal and keep notes of the good things that happen to you each day. Then at night before you go to bed, read the positive things you felt and experienced throughout the day so that you go to sleep with the good on your mind.

 

Let Yourself Laugh

 

Sometimes things go to heck and back. It’s okay. Learn to see the humorous side of it. Did you have a Zoom chat with your colleagues only to realize that your bra was showing the entire time, or you had spinach in your teeth? Honestly, everyone is human, so it’s okay if this happened, laugh at it, and make fun of yourself.

 

Spend More Time with Positive People

 

As they say, “birds of a feather flock together” if you want to be happier and more successful hang around happier, more successful people. When you hang out with negative people, it’s going to rub off on you and contribute to stress and potentially lead to burnout.

 

Avoid Toxic Positivity

 

While you do want to focus on the positive, don’t be toxically positive. They think any measure of sadness or negative expression is a sign of permanent negativity. For example, if your mom died, it’s okay to be sad. You don’t have to focus on the good right now. You can focus on the horrific loss right now. Later you can focus on how you’ll live your life without her in a positive way.

 

Identify Areas of Negativity You can Fix

 

Take some time to note the things you tend to react negatively toward. For example, if you hate your schedule to be interrupted, find ways not to have it interrupted. Set boundaries for yourself and others. If you tend to get ‘hangry’ if you don’t eat on time, try to schedule your day so you can eat on time to avoid that negative time.

 

Learn from Failure

 

Everyone makes mistakes, and sometimes people fail even if they did everything to plan. However, there really is no failure if you learn from mistakes. Learn how you went wrong and how you can avoid it in the future.

 

Focus on Now

 

The more you can focus on the present, the better your life will become. Yes, you do have to plan for the future, but you have to do the tasks today that build on your future. Don’t become stagnant, keep acting today.

 

It’s okay to feel negative sometimes. It’s okay not to have a perfect day. The truth is, how you pick yourself up after a bad spell is proof of your resiliency and that resilience is what will protect you from burnout.

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Avoid Burnout: How to Exercise and Sleep More

Sleeping enough each night is an essential component of ensuring that you live a life that will help you avoid burnout. If you are well-rested, you are going to perform at a higher level every single day, thus making you more productive. If you are tired due to a lack of sleep, problems will seem more prominent and less surmountable. The thing is, exercising every day is a big key to sleeping better every night.

 

Know Your Body

 

It’s okay to be a night owl going to bed later and sleeping later. This is not really a big problem in terms of causing burn out. The main thing is that you need to sleep when your body wants to sleep and wake when your body wants to wake so you can do various tasks when your body is most efficient.

 

Schedule Your Life Based on Your Priorities

 

When you look at your priorities, there are obviously going to be sometimes that you cannot go by your own internal clock but someone else’s clock. Even when you have to do that, it’s okay to priorities your life based on what you want to accomplish most. If it’s important for you to sleep 9 hours a night to be most productive during the day, then you need to set up your lifestyle to ensure you can do that.

 

Do the Minimum to Maximize Your Life

 

Remember that productivity is about the results and not how hard you worked to get there. When you schedule your day, remember that you should seek to do the minimum workload to achieve the most results. For example, to maintain good health, most doctors say you need to exercise moderately at least 150 minutes a week. That’s not really that much. What would happen if you did that minimum? Do it, record the results, and adjust as needed to reach your goals doing only what is necessary to make the goal.

 

Exercise is One Key to Good Sleep and Health

Balance, exercise, sleep

Remember that if you have problems sleeping at night due to being restless, either mentally or physically, that exercise can help. Try exercising aerobically for 20 to 30 minutes, at least once a day before 6 in the evening. Studies show most people get the most benefit exercising this way within a couple of hours of waking.

 

Set Up Your Space for Success

 

No matter what it is that you want to accomplish where you are doing it is important. If you want to sleep well every night, make sure your bedroom is an oasis made for sleeping. Keep the room temperature cool and make sure you have the best bed you can afford. Keep technology out of your bedroom and create a sleeping haven for yourself. Likewise, if you want to work out every morning, set up your workout schedule to make it easy to get ready and do the exercise you want to do without much thought.

 

While it’s okay to be a night owl, understand that exercising soon after waking is more effective than doing it later in the day when it comes to helping you sleep. However, everyone is different, so feel free to test out the ideas to see what works best for you.

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Productive or Just Busy?

If you feel like a chicken with your head cut off trying to get everything you need to get done in a day finished, you may be at risk for burnout. The sad fact is that many people who feel overworked are not as productive as they think. Society has instilled into many people that downtime is terrible and that you should always be busy to be productive.

eliminate automate

The truth is, productivity is only measured by results, not by how much you have to do to get the results. Because of this fact, you can be super busy and totally not productive and not busy at all and extremely productive. If you want to be more productive, it’s imperative to learn how to use your time wisely, as well as to eliminate, automate, and delegate when possible.

 

  • Create a Life and Business Mission – One reason some people have trouble making decisions in life and business is that they have no idea what they stand for. Create a mission statement that explains in a few sentences what your values, morals, and principles are.

 

  • Understand How to Prioritize – When you set goals, you must learn what’s important to you about the goal. Usually, the most crucial part is the deliverable or the impact of the goal. Know what’s important to you by matching goals to your values, morals, and principles.

 

  • Learn to Say Yes Slowly – Some people will tell you to learn to say no, but the problem is that saying yes is going to get you a lot further than always saying no. You do want to do new things after all. Instead, say yes slowly. Think about the offer and make sure it matches your goals, values, principles, and morals. Plus, check that it fits in with your mission and that you genuinely have the time to devote to it properly before you say yes.

 

  • Know the Expected Results or Deliverables – Being busy is about the appearance of action while being productive is about the results or the deliverables. You should be able to describe precisely what is expected once you’re finished.

 

  • Avoid Shiny Object Syndrome – One thing that distracts everyone is getting their head turned by the next big thing. It’s okay to give yourself time to discover other things because you never know what doors will open, but don’t diss what you’re already doing. Set aside about five percent of your time to explore shiny objects so that you keep windows and doors open but don’t fall out.

 

  • Do Stuff – The only way you can actually succeed in life is with actions that produce results. Do things, but always make sure you are checking to see if what you’re doing is working or not working. Do more of what works, eliminating what doesn’t.

 

  • Make Time – If it’s important to you for your mission in life, then make time for it. It doesn’t matter if other people don’t get it, you do. Put the things that are important to you in your schedule.

 

  • Focus and Stop Multitasking – No one is capable of multitasking, according to science. Because of this, it’s time to stop doing it. Yes, many jobs out there require it as part of the interview process, but it’s a ridiculous and impossible thing they’re asking of you. Stop doing it.

 

  • Eliminate, Automate and Delegate – Whenever you can stop doing things that don’t affect results, as well as automate and delegate the things that do, you’re going to experience a lot more success and a lot less burnout. You can’t do it all, and you shouldn’t even if it’s your stuff and your business. You need help, and you should get it.

 

If you want to show results and not just look like a busy person, you can do it with the right plan in place. Remember that the impact you make is far more important than how you get there.

 

For example, you can lose ten pounds slowly over the next year by simply getting rid of about 120 extra calories per day from your diet. This is equal to one cup of coffee or soda. Or, you can do it the faster way and totally redo your diet to force your body into letting go of those ten pounds in a month. However, which method is truly going to give you the best long-term results?

 

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How to Identify Over the Top Goals to Make Them Reasonable

Part of learning how to create goals that work is to learn how to make SMART goals. A SMART goal is a goal that is specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely.  If a goal is all of these things, it will be a reasonable goal that is possible to attain. During the goal-setting process, though most people will tell you to dream big. That’s great, do dream big, but don’t dream so big that you fail because what you dreamed was not possible for you right now.

Feeling Exhausted

For example, let’s say you want to go to Law School, but you don’t seem able to get a good enough score on the LSAT to get into the school that you want to go to. At first glance, it may seem as if the goal of going to law school itself is impossible and not reasonable, but that’s not true. Instead, you need to step back and attack this goal from a new angle and now set your goal to get a better score on the LSAT.

 

This may require that you take a year off to take a course and study your heart out, but if you don’t give up, you will eventually pass. It’s not really impossible, just not probable for you to succeed until you’ve spent more time studying.

 

But let’s say you have a goal of being six feet tall, but you’re 35 years old, and you’re only five foot two. Guess what, you can be six feet tall in the right shoes, but you may look ridiculous. The truth is, you’re never really going to be six feet tall. It’s vital to differentiate dreams from possibilities that can become your goals.

 

When you are in the goal-setting process, you’ll want to ensure that your goals are reasonable and not over the top and, therefore, impossible or not probable for you to succeed now.

 

Maybe you don’t have enough capital to invest in the idea right now, so you need to step back and find that money. Perhaps you just don’t have the skillset, so you’ll need to step back and get that skill. Whatever the reason is that you cannot reasonably reach that goal yet step back and set a smaller target at the level previous to the harder, more improbable goal.

 

Write down all the things that have to happen for the goal to happen. Can you do those things? Do you need to go back to an even earlier step and goal before that one? If you cannot see a way to reach the goal realistically and reasonably that meets your personal timeline and life, no matter how much you step back, you’ll need to adjust the goal.

 

The old saying that you cannot swim until you learn to tread water applies here. There is no reason to burn yourself out, trying to reach for something that is never going to happen. At the same time, don’t limit your potential either. Go through the goals you’ve set and create a step-by-step path to achieve them even if you have to step back several paces to make it work.

 

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Say No More Often: Purge Your To-Do List

The telltale signs of burnout are feelings of overwhelming exhaustion, cynicism, and detachment. You may also feel as if you are ineffective and are not accomplishing anything in your life while simultaneously feeling irreplaceable and as if no one else can do what you do and help you.

 

In other words, you may be experiencing signs of burnout because you never say no. Purging your to-do list can help. But first, how do you know what to stop doing, and more importantly, how do you stop saying yes to everything?

Burnout Symptoms

 

Remember these keywords:

Eliminate, automate, and delegate as you rid yourself of extra work and start saying no more.

 

Eliminate

Whenever you look at a task, you need to first think about whether it’s even required to be done or not. Just because you’ve always done something does not mean it has to be done. Try to anticipate what happens if you just take it off your list completely. Write down the pros and cons of totally letting this task go.

For example, if you are a writer, do you limit how many times you read through and edit any one piece of work? If not, you should. There is always a point at which future editing will just make the work less effective.

 

Automate

Can the task that you need to do be done with software? If you can eliminate a task through automation, taking it off your plate in an affordable way, it’s essential to do it as soon as you can financially accomplish it. There is a technology that exists that you may not even be aware of yet.

It might help to talk to someone aware of the technology available for productivity in your space. The advice will be paramount in helping you move your business forward with as much automation as possible. For example, did you know about IFTTT technology that you can use through platforms like Zapier.com?

If This Then That (commonly known as IFTTT

 

Delegate

If you can’t let it go entirely, and you can’t automate it, perhaps you can outsource it to someone else? You might want to pay a virtual assistant to help you with customer service, editing, or other things. Maybe you can get your spouse or kids to do more housework, so you have more time for business.

For example, if you are a writer and you know you have to edit your writing, it might work out better for you if you let someone else do the editing and final revisions to ensure it gets done in a timely manner? Or perhaps you cannot yet afford an editor, so instead, you get your spouse to cook dinner so that you have more time to edit in a timely manner.

Finally, once your to-do list is cleaned up, start saying no more often when asked to add something to your plate. Make it a habit to never say yes right away. Instead, tell people (or yourself) that you have to check your schedule. Then determine the benefits and drawbacks of adding that task to your life. If it helps you advance your goals, you can say yes, if it doesn’t do anything to move you forward and only adds stress to your life, say no.

the journey

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Signs of Burnout to Watch Out For

The best way to protect yourself against burnout is to understand the signs to watch out for.

 

Many high achievers experience burnout, whether they work for themselves or others.

The thing is burnout can be prevented if one understands what to watch for and what to avoid.

Do you Experience Burnout

First, understand that burnout is essentially a state of chronic bad stress that leads to physical and emotional exhaustion, detachment and cynicism and feelings that you aren’t accomplishing anything and that everything you do is ineffective and doesn’t matter.

 

While, at the same time, feeling irreplaceable and unable to say no to anything. It’s kind of like feeling as if you’re on a mouse wheel. Working harder and harder but never going anyplace. You’re tired, overworked, and not accomplishing your goals. In all the chaos, you may not even have goals to check.

 

Any one or more of the following signs can signal either outright burnout or the potential to experience burnout if mitigation methods aren’t imposed.

 

  • Chronic Fatigue and Insomnia – If you are always tired, or you can’t sleep, or both, primarily due to circular thoughts about the work you’re doing, it can be due to burnout or approaching burnout. It’s often one of the first signs.

 

  • Forgetfulness, Lack of Productivity and Poor Performance – When you can’t sleep well or concentrate, it is natural that you may forget things, not work fast as you did before, and do things poorly.

 

  • Inattentiveness and Detachment – It’s hard to focus and pay attention when you’re suffering from burnout, and it can look like detachment and even inattentiveness. If you have been accused of this by someone else, pay attention.

 

  • Isolation, Apathy, and Hopelessness – When burnout gets really bad, it can turn into wanting to pull away from others due to not caring about anything. If you feel like your actions don’t matter, it can lead to hopelessness.

 

  • Illness and Physical Symptoms – Your feelings can end up manifesting as an actual illness. You can become more susceptible to colds and infections when you’re not eating right. Plus, due to not taking care of yourself, you may end up more likely to get a diet-related illness like diabetes if you’re not taking care of yourself.

 

  • Lack of Appetite or Poor Diet – All the feelings you’re experiencing can cause you to either not eat at all or eat very poorly. It might not seem apparent immediately but eating a diet high in nutrition is one of the ways to avoid burnout and adverse health outcomes.

 

  • Anxiety and Depression – Mental illness can also rear it’s head as you are experiencing burnout. Sometimes it’s due to nutritional imbalances, or chemical imbalances, but sometimes it’s situational.

 

  • Anger, Pessimism, and Loss of Enjoyment – When you are experiencing the brunt of burnout, you may act out with hostility due to being disillusioned about business and life. If you aren’t enjoying it and feel like you never will, that will affect you severely.

 

If you aren’t enjoying your business or your life and the feelings of discontentment are intruding on your ability to move forward, you may be experiencing burnout. If you think you are, it’s a good idea to start right now, today, creating a plan that will work better for you as an entrepreneur. After all, you deserve all the good things in life, including security, satisfaction, and joy.

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Develop a Realistic Business Plan

One reason for burnout is incongruency between the life you want and the life you’re living. Most of that problem is due to a lack of planning.

Entrepreneur Burnout

Many small business owners think that if their business is a home business or a small business that they don’t need a real business plan. After all, they think I am not going to get a business loan, so why do I need to do all that planning?

 

The truth is if you want to succeed, and you want it to be repeatable, and you want to avoid the potential for burnout, you must develop a business plan. A business plan will help you structure, run, and grow your business realistically and sustainably. Plus, creating a business plan isn’t even hard to do. Let’s learn how to make a one-page business plan for your home business right now.

 

Your one-page business plan should include the following. However, keep in mind it doesn’t literally have to live on only one page. You should include as much information as you need in your business plan to help you develop a guiding document for your business. If one page works for you, that’s fabulous!

 

Describe the Problem

 

You’ll want to write a well thought out description of the problem that your customers have that you can solve along with any relevant data that describes how you can do that to show proof.

 

Your Product or Service

 

This is the solution to the problem above, so you’ll want to go through each product or service you offer and describe the solution in terms of how it solves the problem that the customer has. If you have more than one solution, this is the area that might end up taking more than one page. However, going through this can help you with marketing later.

 

How You Make Money

 

This is considered your business model. How will you make the money, how much will it cost you to make the money, and what is the price the customer will pay for the solution and how will they pay it?

 

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Know your number

Describe Your Customer(s)

 

Understanding your target market is an essential component of your business plan and your business planning needs. Include a customer avatar through the buying journey. Talk about how many customers there are, and how much you can earn from each customer throughout their customer life cycle.

 

Describe How You’re Different

 

It can help to describe how you’re going to differentiate yourself from your competition. This is called your “competitive advantage” in business. It’s how you use your differences to stand out from the competition and create customer loyalty.

 

Describe Your Team

 

Even if it’s just you, it helps to write down all the tasks and roles that need to be accomplished to make this business work. However, even if it is just you, it’s not just you due to the technology you can use, such as email marketing software, funnel software, and other automation.

 

Also, if you plan to outsource anything, write that down too. Maybe the first year you’re doing it all yourself but include financial metrics that trigger outsourcing or major software purchases.

 

Include Key Financial Metrics

Do you Know your Numbers?

You need to know what your budget is for marketing, software, outsourcing, and so forth. This is often called a Financial Summary in a business plan. You’ll want to include figures for now, and your future as you forecast potential sales. Finally, you’ll want to add what funding you need right now to get started or to move forward with your business.

 

As you go through this, just focus right now on writing a summary of each section so that you see what needs to be done in one easy to read page. As you move forward, you can add more information to the plan, which may make it grow past the one page, but it will be a helpful exercise to help keep on moving toward your goals.

 

As you move toward your goals, you’ll be a lot less likely to experience burnout when you’ve set up your business realistically in balance with your entire life. Writing down the business plan helps you see it more clearly and plainly, thus allowing you to really accomplish what you set out to do rather than keeping it as a dream.