The issue of burnout in nonprofit organizations (and in other demanding professions) has been talked about for years. The umbrella term “self-care” emerged fairly recently (as far as I can tell) to capture ways to prevent and address burnout. Too often, descriptions of self-care boil down to recommendations to take time off, work less hard, and partake in indulgences, such as going to a spa. As useful as these ideas can be, they seem inadequate to me on their own. Taken alone, they address symptoms of burnout more the causes; they represent band-aids more than sustainable solutions or cures.
I described some of my top self-care strategies in the last third of my book Changing the World Without Losing Your Mind, and disclosed how my career almost went down in flames in my early 30s for lack of thoughtfully prioritizing my own well-being. (My book When in Doubt, Ask for More has dozens of bite-sized self-care techniques among the 214 success strategies I briefly describe.)
I have come to think of effective self-care as comprising three elements: life structure, habits, and moment-to-moment decisions. I was moved to write this blog post because of a recent example of the third approach and how it got me thinking more about the entire subject. Let me briefly describe each approach and how they complement each other.
Structuring your life to ensure self-care can take many forms, and is a very personal process. What works for someone might not make sense for another; in addition, what serves someone in one phase of their life might not in another. Common structural approaches include not taking work calls after a certain time of the day, doing certain types of work only or primarily in the morning, limiting work travel to a certain number of days per month, taking direct flights wherever possible (even if they cost more), or ensuring (as much as possible) that one’s primary workspace is bright, comfortable, and promotes wellness. It may be worth it to periodically evaluate the structure of your days, weeks, months, years (i.e., how you spend your time) and your environments (i.e., where you spend your time) from a self-care perspective, and to then take action where important changes are warranted.
Habits, on the other hand, are things that one repeatedly does that are consistent with well-being. For me, always being engaged in a hobby that I am a relative novice in is one such habit. Another may be taking a brisk walk every afternoon, or writing down 10 things you are grateful for every morning before starting work. Obviously, some habits become so ingrained that they become a part of the structure of your life, so there is often some overlap between these first two elements of self-care. Many habits take a month or two to become ingrained, so while the impact may not be immediate, they can take root fairly quickly.
The final aspect of self-care is moment-to-moment choices. These are decisions that one is confronted with, often unexpectedly, that have implications for self-care, wellness, and happiness. Let me give one recent personal example—in fact, the one that planted the seed for this blog post. The other night I was watching my favorite football team on television. They only play on national TV a few times each year. After the third quarter got started, I turned off the TV and went to bed. I did this because I have gotten into the habit of going to bed fairly early so I can wake up at 5am and get a jump on my work while still enjoying 7-8 hours of sleep. While this structural element of my life was arranged to promote self-care, sometimes it works against that priority, and I end up denying myself things I want to do in the evening.
So rather than go to sleep feeling that I was denying myself something I wanted, I changed course and decided to watch the entire game. This lasted for about an hour more; I took out 30 minutes from my sleep and 30 minutes from my workday. It felt like a meaningful mini-indulgence to me at the time. (And, happily, my team ended up winning a close game!)
Each day, we are all faced with many moment-to-moment decisions that represent conflicts between various priorities in our lives: serving and being with family, earning money, doing meaningful work, engaging in our faith traditions or with hobbies, and promoting self-care. When decisions involve a trade-off between self-care and some other priority, simply increasing the number that are resolved in favor of self-care from, say, 40% to 60% of the time can make a noticeable difference in ones well-being—and in a way that complements both one’s life structure and the habits that promote self-care.
By the way, taking the time to write this blog post on an already busy day represented a moment-to-moment decision supportive of my own self-care, which was in some degree of conflict with my desire to get some work completed earlier and to keep some white space (i.e., unscheduled time) in a rather full day.
As a mission-driven leader, emerging leader, or engaged volunteer, what new structural elements can you bring to your life that support self-care? What new habits will you try to create? And what moment-to-moment decisions will you make today and tomorrow that will nourish you and help ensure wellness?