Pushing through fatigue or reaching exhaustion - How to find the sweet spot

Weeks are long and days are too short for you to do everything. You have deadlines, laundry, and maybe a workout to fit in to your schedule but not enough hours from the sound of your alarm to the « to dom » of Netflix when you lay on the couch at night.

You are definitely trying your best but the more you end up pushing yourself, the closer you get to exhaustion.

So where is the balance between pushing through fatigue and not reaching exhaustion?

There is a very fine line between getting things done even if your brain tells you to sit down, and burning yourself out.

Lately I reached the second situation. My discipline makes me have a solid morning routine, which means I wake up early. I started to take on more and more hours with clients, and go to bed late. This made my hours of sleep far and few between. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that it would be ok to skip my Sunday day off (skipping my Sunday pancakes and no alarm day) to work and organize a bootcamp. Spoiler alert, this was a mistake.

Erasing that moment of rest, decompression and recovery had a terrible effect, it made me feel awfully tired, irritable, unfocused and sick. This is where I realized that I crossed the line between doing what I have to do as I want things to be done and pushing too much.

Fortunately for me and for all of us, there are strategies to be an efficient person, accomplish what we plan and still not crash and burn during the flight.

First things first, prioritize the tasks. Pretty simple idea, I didn’t invent it. But be honest with yourself, you don’t need to snooze your alarm, you don’t need to spend two hours on Instagram everyday as you don’t need to watch Netflix the entire evening. All this time you are going to gain, invest it in things that are really important (your health, increasing your knowledge, spending time with your loved ones, reading or writing).

Second of all, don’t be a lazy a** and half do things. That is a matter of fact, the more you procrastinate to write that email or pay that bill, the more it is going to haunt you, stress you and eventually cost you energy. Same goes with the dishes in your sink. My sister and I have this rule : « if it takes less than 5 minutes, do it right away. » You’ll see that a lot of your daily tasks won’t be a problem for long with that mindset. Also keep that rule in mind : « if you start something, finish it. ». Don’t take useless breaks before you are done with your mission. Why would you take a break to smoke a cigarette or scroll on social media when you’re cleaning your house ? You are just spending more time on the task knowing in the corner of your mind that you still have to finish it when you could just complete it now and relax afterwards.

Finally, don’t neglect rest. I am a firm believer that we need to not listen to ourselves all the time and we should do difficult things every day as a way to challenge ourselves, to get more things done and to elevate us. But being respectful in certain moments you give yourself to replanish and refuel your battery is not important, it is essential. Imagine that the battery of your iPhone is at 10%, your first reaction would be to plug it in and charge it. When I skipped my day off, I went from 10% to 1% and my body and mind made me feel it with strong signals.

Never again.

All I am trying to say through these words is that there is no perfect recipe to organize our days, we have to work, we have to eat, we have to train, take care of our family, houses, etc.. but we have the control over some variables of the equation. And it is our duty to know and to use those tools to ride this fine line between fatigue and exhaustion, ultimately arriving at our destination.