From Busy to Burnout
July 11, 2019
As PR professionals, we know busy. Sometimes, however, being too busy can result in you becoming unproductive, stressed and resentful. The point at which you see yourself becoming these things is when you need to reflect on your workload and make some changes — before you get to the point of burnout.
Managing Deadlines and Saying No
According to a study by Harvard Business Review, male employees are nearly twice as likely to ask for a deadline extension than women. Why? Women were much more likely to worry that their managers would judge them harshly for asking for more time.
This concern of being harshly judged may be tied to feeling less secure in their position at work and being more socially-focused. The female employees surveyed expressed greater agreement with statements like “I am uncertain about my future career with my current company” and “When making a decision, I take other people’s needs and feelings into account,” which in turn explained how likely they were to ask for more time on a task.
Public relations is an industry that lives and dies by deadlines so it’s vitally important to manage them well. When you don’t ask for deadlines, you shoot yourself in the proverbial foot. You end up stressed as a result, with a PR product that is likely not the quality you’d hoped for and may miss deadlines, causing more disappointment than if you’d been transparent in the first place. If you are unsure of the strictness of a deadline, don’t be afraid to ask how flexible the deadline is.
Your PR manager is far more likely to appreciate you asking for a deadline extension to complete the task at a high standard instead of rushing to get it done and producing a substandard work product. Your manager will have to spend more time reviewing, and you will need to spend more time revising and editing — perhaps even redoing the work and creating even more work for you and your PR manager.
Asking for help
If your to-do list is getting the better of you and you find yourself getting flustered, go to your PR manager, or a teammate, and see if they have the bandwidth to help you. Your colleagues are mostly unaware (especially if you work remotely) of your workload; you have to manage yourself. You also don’t know whether a colleague might be twiddling their thumbs looking for tasks to do, so just ask.
Clarity comes through communication. If you’re stuck on a writing task or didn’t fully understand a brief, there is absolutely no harm in clarifying. You will be able to better complete the task and do so much more efficiently vs. spending hours rereading a brief you don’t understand.
It’s also often useful to speak to another member of your PR team to have someone review what you have on your plate and help refine your priorities.
Setting Priorities and Being Productive
Use pen and paper, create a Trello board, use Asana — whatever task management tool works for you — and write which tasks are the highest priorities. Having just one giant list is not helpful, but having a list in order of importance will help you to go through the tasks one by one. Organization is key to productivity.
Speaking of productivity, here are eight tips to increase yours:
- Have a routine – and stick to it: Get dressed and have breakfast. Sit down by a certain time every day. Allow yourself time in the evenings to relax rather than pushing yourself to keep going.
- Go for a walk first thing: Gather your thoughts; make sure you get in half an hour of exercise each day.
- Eat well: Allow yourself time to make a good, healthy lunch. Don’t feel guilty for being away from your computer — we need to eat for our brains to function properly.
- Create a productive workspace: Get a desk, declutter, find somewhere bright to work. Create it to your taste so you enjoy working there
- Get more sleep: Go to bed an hour earlier every night and keep your bed routine consistent, including the weekends
- Be conscious of how much time you spend checking your phone and scrolling through social media: Keep your smartphone face down and allow yourself to check it once an hour. Be realistic — don’t tell yourself not to look at your phone at all, because you’ll most likely fail. Simply learn to limit yourself, and don’t let those push notifications suck you in!
- Break large projects into pieces: Reward yourself for completing each piece.
- Compose an abstract or outline first when writing content: If you’ve got a long piece of content to write, it’s incredibly useful to have a structure rather than going straight in with no direction.
You often hear people bragging about working all the time and how busy they are, but the reality is they are probably failing to be productive — which is actually why they’re working all the time. Having a healthy work-life balance is vital to avoid burnout. Is it time to rethink the way you work?
Carla Richardson
Senior Account Executive
From Busy to Burnout
July 11, 2019
As PR professionals, we know busy. Sometimes, however, being too busy can result in you becoming unproductive, stressed and resentful. The point at which you see yourself becoming these things is when you need to reflect on your workload and make some changes — before you get to the point of burnout.
Managing Deadlines and Saying No
According to a study by Harvard Business Review, male employees are nearly twice as likely to ask for a deadline extension than women. Why? Women were much more likely to worry that their managers would judge them harshly for asking for more time.
This concern of being harshly judged may be tied to feeling less secure in their position at work and being more socially-focused. The female employees surveyed expressed greater agreement with statements like “I am uncertain about my future career with my current company” and “When making a decision, I take other people’s needs and feelings into account,” which in turn explained how likely they were to ask for more time on a task.
Public relations is an industry that lives and dies by deadlines so it’s vitally important to manage them well. When you don’t ask for deadlines, you shoot yourself in the proverbial foot. You end up stressed as a result, with a PR product that is likely not the quality you’d hoped for and may miss deadlines, causing more disappointment than if you’d been transparent in the first place. If you are unsure of the strictness of a deadline, don’t be afraid to ask how flexible the deadline is.
Your PR manager is far more likely to appreciate you asking for a deadline extension to complete the task at a high standard instead of rushing to get it done and producing a substandard work product. Your manager will have to spend more time reviewing, and you will need to spend more time revising and editing — perhaps even redoing the work and creating even more work for you and your PR manager.
Asking for help
If your to-do list is getting the better of you and you find yourself getting flustered, go to your PR manager, or a teammate, and see if they have the bandwidth to help you. Your colleagues are mostly unaware (especially if you work remotely) of your workload; you have to manage yourself. You also don’t know whether a colleague might be twiddling their thumbs looking for tasks to do, so just ask.
Clarity comes through communication. If you’re stuck on a writing task or didn’t fully understand a brief, there is absolutely no harm in clarifying. You will be able to better complete the task and do so much more efficiently vs. spending hours rereading a brief you don’t understand.
It’s also often useful to speak to another member of your PR team to have someone review what you have on your plate and help refine your priorities.
Setting Priorities and Being Productive
Use pen and paper, create a Trello board, use Asana — whatever task management tool works for you — and write which tasks are the highest priorities. Having just one giant list is not helpful, but having a list in order of importance will help you to go through the tasks one by one. Organization is key to productivity.
Speaking of productivity, here are eight tips to increase yours:
- Have a routine – and stick to it: Get dressed and have breakfast. Sit down by a certain time every day. Allow yourself time in the evenings to relax rather than pushing yourself to keep going.
- Go for a walk first thing: Gather your thoughts; make sure you get in half an hour of exercise each day.
- Eat well: Allow yourself time to make a good, healthy lunch. Don’t feel guilty for being away from your computer — we need to eat for our brains to function properly.
- Create a productive workspace: Get a desk, declutter, find somewhere bright to work. Create it to your taste so you enjoy working there
- Get more sleep: Go to bed an hour earlier every night and keep your bed routine consistent, including the weekends
- Be conscious of how much time you spend checking your phone and scrolling through social media: Keep your smartphone face down and allow yourself to check it once an hour. Be realistic — don’t tell yourself not to look at your phone at all, because you’ll most likely fail. Simply learn to limit yourself, and don’t let those push notifications suck you in!
- Break large projects into pieces: Reward yourself for completing each piece.
- Compose an abstract or outline first when writing content: If you’ve got a long piece of content to write, it’s incredibly useful to have a structure rather than going straight in with no direction.
You often hear people bragging about working all the time and how busy they are, but the reality is they are probably failing to be productive — which is actually why they’re working all the time. Having a healthy work-life balance is vital to avoid burnout. Is it time to rethink the way you work?
