Stress isn't something you should have to endure.
But rather, it's information your body and mind give you about what is out of alignment or needs to shift in your life.
Yet when we live in a world that glorifies hustle and expects constant productivity, listening to that information feels taboo and a bit rebellious.
And maybe that's exactly what we need more of right now - a little rebellion against the status quo.
To work with our bodies and support our needs instead of against it...
Stress Signals, Not Sirens
One of the first things I learned as I dug into my burnout symptoms was the difference between stress and burnout.
I think with the prevalence of both in our current work culture, they can easily be thought of as interchangeable but they are truly different.
Think of stress as having too many browser tabs open - it's slowing things down, but you're still functioning. Burnout is like when your computer freezes because you've had those 147 tabs open for three weeks (or three months) straight and refuse to restart. (Yes, I'm calling out everyone who feels personally attacked by this tab analogy because I am you and you are me 😅)
Stress looks like over-engagement, over-reactive, urgency and hyperactivity, loss of energy, and can lead to anxiety.
Burnout in comparison looks like disengagement, blunted emotions, hopelessness and helplessness, loss in movtivation and ideals, detachment, and can lead to depression.
Knowing this and that I'm personally prone to chronic burnout, burnout prevention has to be baked into everything I do.
I wish it was as simple as a single set of changes that do that but it's a lot of building new skills continually over time—like resilience.
It takes patience.
Mistakes are made.
It doesn't always feel good in the moment.
But it's always worth it.
Research confirms what many of us feel intuitively - stress and burnout operate differently in our bodies and minds.
A 2019 study of over 800 emotional labor workers [1] found that unchecked stress directly contributes to burnout, but here's the key insight:
It's not the stress itself that leads to burnout, it's how we manage (or don't manage) our recovery.
The catch 22 here is that we often don't have any control over our external stressors.
I mean, that's half of what makes it stressful...
***raises hand slowly*** 🫠
While we can't control external stressors (especially during high-stress times), we can build our resilience - aka our ability to bounce back.
Think of it like training a muscle; the stronger it gets, the better we manage the stress.
Let's take a look at what research shows as the top 4 strategies that actually works and then we'll dig into how you can align your productivity type with the best stress response strategy:
1. Energy Management
You can't manage what you don't measure. Energy management is the first thing we focus on when I work with 1:1 clients by spending the first month tracking while we work on diving deep into habits, routines, patterns, and goals. Tracking helps you see your needs and patterns objectively and then use that information to make a plan to best support yourself.
2. Boundary Setting
Realizing boundaries were energy protection not limitations, that they fostered better, healthier connection with others was life-changing. Once I started identifying and keeping boundaries with myself, my burnout recovery skyrocketed. Whether it's access to news, social media scrolling, conversations with family members, or routine self-care practices, setting boundaries that help you protect your peace without completely disconnecting you is important during high-stress periods.
3. Recovery Rituals
I know that everyone says "take regular breaks" but that can sometimes feel unsafe for our bodies or unrealistic. Simply touching grass isn't helpful if we aren't working to activate our parasympathetic nervous system and complete those stress cycles in the body. When it comes to breaks, consistency, and recovery, I always think of the quote by actor, Andre De Shields, "Slowly is the fastest way to get to where you want to be." Just as your computer needs regular restarts to maintain long-term performance, your brain and body need consistent recovery windows. Major breaks like vacations are great and definitely part of an overall strategy, but small daily resets are vital to help prevent that dreaded system freeze.
4. Communication
Of all the things I learned in recovering from burnout, how to ask for help and then allowing others to show up for me was (and sometimes still is) the hardest. When someone asks 'how can I support you?' it can feel overwhelming - especially in the thick of stress and your brain doesn't know where to begin. As someone who often freezes at this well-meaning question, I've learned to keep a mental list of simple, specific requests that actually help:
Ask them to be an accountability buddy for regular breaks
Have them check in via text at set times (without requiring a response)
Let them know you may need a listening ear this week
Support can often be as simple as asking someone to remind you to drink water or to help protect your calendar by being understanding when you decline non-essential commitments.
These are strategies that work universally, how you implement them most effectively depends on your unique needs and approach. This is where understanding your productivity archetype becomes crucial.
⚠️ If you haven't taken the quiz to find your productivity archetype yet, take a few minutes to pause and do that here before reading on! It's not required, you can always select the one that feels most like you to see some personalized examples 🫶
Let's take a look at each of the productivity archetypes and the most impactful strategies personalized for each type:
THE FOCUSED OPTIMIZER:
If you're an Optimizer, you may hyperfocus on work as a coping mechanism and can find yourself overcommitted in an effort to maintain a sense of control.
This is a great strength when you channel anxiety into productive action and can maintain your performance levels through structure. Though you may run into challenges during stress when you ignore emotional needs in favor of productivity and risk burnout by using your work as an escape.
Personalized Strategies for Optimizers:
Schedule mandatory breaks to prevent overcorrection and use a breaks menu to reduce decision fatigue while ensuring you work through grounding your body and nervous system.
Set clear boundaries around news, social media, and digital devices in general. During high-stress periods, make sure you have a few minutes to center afterwards (your body will thank you later!)
Use your love of data to track energy expenditure and start uncovering your unique patterns to build more detailed strategies around.
THE BALANCED INTEGRATOR:
As an Integrator, you may feel pulled between staying informed and maintaining focus since you naturally seek to understand all the perspectives in a situation.
This is an incredible strength because it helps you excel at finding creative solutions and adapting well to every changing circumstances. Though you may get overwhelmed trying to process everything at once and decision fatigue can hit hard when high-stress and uncertainty collide.
Personalized Strategies for Integrators:
Lean on mono-tasking (focusing on a single task at a time) in order to allow your brain to not be overwhelmed by too much info at once. Try the Single-Tab Challenge if you're not sure where to start!
Create set time blocks for your digital consumption. Social media is a big part of work or interpersonal connections for many so have clear guardrails around when you'll use it.
Use your natural flexible skills to adjust routines as life happens and plans inevitably change.
THE RESILIENT PERFORMER:
As a Resilient Performer, you may find yourself pushing through stress by doubling down on effort since you naturally take on both your own pressure and others' emotional burdens.
Your strengths give you a high capacity for handling pressure and a natural ability to rally and support others. Though you may end up ignoring your own stress signals and the risk of emotional exhaustion is higher due to supporting others.
Personalized Strategies for Performers:
Regularly checking in with your energy and auditing to make sure your focus, priorities, and values stay aligned so that you don't overextend yourself.
Make sure you are scheduling in dedicated recovery time any time you make a large commitment. Last week's Holiday Capacity Planning exercise can be used year round to build this into your planning habits!
Get clear on and set boundaries around your capacity to provide emotional support for others. We heal in community, not isolation but we it's not helping anyone if you are destroying yourself in the process.
THE MINDFUL ARCHITECT:
As a Mindful Architect, you may feel deeply affected by collective energy since you naturally process events through deep reflection and strategic thinking.
This strength makes you excel at thoughtful, strategic planning with a natural ability to consider long-term implications when making decisions. Though you can become overwhelmed by constant deep thinking which can cause struggles around taking action when things feel uncertain.
Personalized Strategies for Architects:
Create structured reflection time to allow yourself to see the patterns, lessons, and guidance from past situations and make sure your reflections end with distilled action items you can use to implement learnings.
Set limits on analysis time and honor those boundaries with yourself so that you can lean into your strengths without feeling the double-edged sword.
Focus on small, manageable actions and use tools like the Eisenhower Matrix and the Weekly Matrix Mapping to balance action and energy management.
Like any quiz or personality test, the Productivity Archetypes aren't the end all be all. You may even see yourself in more than one—I sure do!
They are meant to give you a starting place to discover, deepen, and connect with your unique needs. Take what feels best for you regardless of your result and then...
Try This:
Create Your Stress Response Strategy
I mentioned it before and I'll say it again—we can't control all the stressors of our environment but you can know how to best support yourself when they pop up.
For this exercise, grab your favorite place to take notes, physical or digital, and set aside 30 minutes to work through steps 1-6. You'll start with some reflection and then dive into building out your baseline stress response strategy:
STEP 1:
Take inventory of your stress signals by listing 3 ways you first notice when stress starts affecting you:
In your body (physical signals that can look like tension headaches, your shoulders creeping up toward your ears without realizing it, etc.)
In your mind (thought patterns may look like catching yourself re-reading the same paragraph multiple times, the sudden inability to decide what to eat, your inner voice getting more critical of small mistakes, etc.)
In your work (productivity patterns could look like bouncing between tasks more frequently than usual, taking twice as long to write a simple email, organizing your desktop files instead of tackling priority work, etc.)
STEP 2:
Journal around your current coping pattern and what you would like it to look like for better support.
When stressed, I tend to...
This helps me by...
This costs me...
When stressed, I'd like to move towards [new habit] because [how this will better support you].
STEP 3:
What are your non-negotiable daily practices:
Morning (which may be no screens for the first 30-60 minutes, morning minutes, setting top priorities, etc.)
Midday (this could look like movement, a not-rushed lunch, chatting with a close friend or family member, etc.)
Evening (here it might be a shutdown ritual after work, brain game, eating dinner at the same time every day, etc.)
STEP 4:
Outline the boundaries you want to make and keep with yourself to better support yourself:
I protect my energy by saying no to...
I protect my energy by saying yes to...
My news/social media limits are...
My work boundaries are...
STEP 5:
Identify how you can lean on the people in your life as part of your support system.
People I can reach out to:
Ways they can support me:
How I'll ask for help when people offer:
STEP 6:
Now that you've done all your reflection, you technically have an outlined strategy! Let's look at how you can make the most of your Stress Response Strategy by taking it one step further:
Determine where you'll keep this strategy. It's important to keep this information somewhere easy to access as you get used to using it.
Find a home for your strategy. If your note page feels great, you don't have to redo this in another medium but if you feel like your notes location isn't visible enough you can start this in a fresh note on your phone, write it out and hang it near your desk, create phone or desktop backgrounds, or any other method that feels helpful for you.
Schedule check-ins and adjust over time. Determine the best interval to check-in and keep yourself accountable. This can be adding a question to you weekly or monthly journal prompts, set a time every 2 weeks to see if you've been adding in new support habits, asking a friend to give feedback once a month on how much you're asking for help, etc. After you review, adjust as needed to be more aligned with you response strategy.
REMEMBER:
You're not building these practices to be perfect or become a productivity machine - you're creating them to protect your energy and better support yourself. Start small, be patient because change can take time, and know that every tiny adjustment moves you toward a more sustainable way of working.
From My Journal
I know that not everyone in my audience is U.S. based but I know this week's election is the topic of conversation worldwide. To say that this week is going to be high stress, feels like an understatement.
This week's exercise is as much for me as it is for all of you. It's easy to follow others on the internet who are knowledgeable on a topic and think they do everything perfectly. They don't call it a highlight reel for nothin'. But it's important to me that I'm vulnerable and transparent in my work because while I've grown over the last 1, 3, 5, 10 years... I'm still a work in progress. Someone who is learning, implementing, and doing this work alongside you (and will be for the rest of my life). I'm grateful that I get to do it with you 🖤
As for those in the U.S. this week, I hope you vote. Vote for a better future for our planet, better access to life-saving healthcare for everyone, and a future that feels full of possibility—not just for yourself but for all. There's plenty of things in life we don't have control over but your voice isn't one of them. I hope you use it, responsibly.
WHAT I'M LOVING:
One of my guilty pleasures (it's only guilty because I eat gluten like a lactose-intolerant person eats milk products - willingly on occasion knowing I'll pay for it later) is uncrustables. I hope I come back as a professional athlete in my next life so I can eat as many as I want a week. If someone could make a good gluten-free, yeast-free strawberry uncrustable, I would be eternally grateful.
I tried this sampler pack for a new low-sugar gummy candy this week (gummy candy is the fastest way to my heart) and I was pleasantly surprised at how good the texture was. It's obviously not super sweet, but it hits just right in both regular and sour flavors for me since I don't really eat traditional candy anymore. Though, I will forever long for nerd clusters.
Community and like-minded people. I have started branching out into online communities for some of my new hobbies and my two meet-ups last week were perfectly timed and just what my soul needed.
HAVING A GREAT TIME HERE?
Here's a few ways you can let me know:
Option 1: 💌 Share with a fellow creative or business owner. Community starts with each of us and friends don't let friends chase their dreams at the expense of their mental health! If you know someone seeking more sustainability and harmony in their life and/or business, send this their way.
Option 2: 👋 Say hi! Hit reply and share a sentence or two about anything you enjoyed or hit home for you. I always hope these words find the right people at the right time, but it's always makes my day to hear from you!
