Practice: how to create sustainable achievement without burnout and getting bored. Personal agreement exercise.

Do you find yourself grinding through tough projects, just waiting for them to end so you can finally enjoy life?  Do you quit things often because you get bored or tired?  

What if sustainable high performance didn't require sacrificing your wellbeing or joy of living?  

This episode tackles the critical challenge many ambitious professionals face: how to achieve difficult goals without burning out. We'll explore the missing skill that separates sustainable achievers from those caught in burnout cycles.  

Most people don't burn out because their work is too demanding; they burn out because they never learned when to pause.  

Your mind and body operate as an integrated team, and when physical resources become depleted, your decision-making, emotional resilience, and perception of your work all suffer. The early warning signs of burnout appear in your thinking and emotions long before physical symptoms emerge.  

Through a practical step-by-step exercise, you'll learn to create your personal energy agreement—establishing clear boundaries around working hours, designing effective transition rituals between work and personal time, identifying activities that genuinely recharge you, and recognizing your unique burnout warning signs before they escalate.  

Download the worksheet to create your personalized framework for sustainable achievement while enjoying the journey. Remember, this isn't just about avoiding burnout—it's about creating a pattern of fulfilling growth where the process itself becomes rewarding.  

Share this episode with someone who might be teetering on the edge of burnout. Together, we can transform how we approach achievement and create work lives worth living.  

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey, guys, and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Shurina, I'm your host, I'm your high-performance executive leadership coach 360, culture transformation strategist and just someone who's really passionate about change, personal and collective, mastering ourselves and unlocking and using more of human potential, the limits of which we are yet to discover, and it seems those limits just keep expanding. Today's podcast is all about learning how to create a pattern of sustainable, create a pattern of sustainable, fulfilling achievement when you work hard on things that matter to you, at the same time not hating the process and waiting for it to be over. You know, when is this success milestone? When can I just rest? So, instead of that, enjoying the process, leaning into the challenges and opportunities for growth and having fun doing that, instead of burning out and again waiting for all of it to end, and where you can finally enjoy your life and do something that you actually want. And I want to start with a quote by the end of this podcast. By the way, today, guys, you're going to have an exercise. I'm literally going to be walking you through an exercise which will help you to create a personal agreement and a pattern of behavior which will allow you to sustainably and continuously go towards the achievement, the goals that you have for your career and personally, again enjoying the process versus hating it and waiting for it to be over, waiting for some vacation or some exit. You can enjoy the hard process, enjoy your life, grow, master things and again have a fulfilling life. I want to start with a quote have a fulfilling life.

Speaker 1 2:28

I want to start with a quote from Brendan Bouchard. I think he's a very famous high-performance coach and he has this phrase when you get tired, don't quit, take a day off. And that's the mantra I've been repeating to myself and my clients who are recovering from burnout. And it sounds simple, right, when you get tired, don't quit, take a day off. It sounds simple, almost too simple, yet it's often the missing skills. So many of us never learn the ability to pause before we break, before I want to emphasize this word not when you already burned out and you hate everything and you have to take time off, but before that happens, strategically incorporating rest and recovery into your routines. Because you know, because it's true, true that recovery is the other side of the medal of high performance. Every professional athlete knows that.

Speaker 1 3:31

I think, in the arena of knowledge, work and being a mental athlete or a business athlete or a knowledge worker kind of athlete we need to understand, just because our bodies don't work like professional athletes' bodies work, we also need to recharge, recover and match the intensity of our efforts with the recovery protocols. We are so often told that we need more accountability, whether personally we need discipline to do some personal challenge or in the workplace, team accountability, accountability on the organizational level, we need accountability for getting things done. But to be honest, it feels like what is actually a lot more relevant to our times is accountability to rest, to recharge, to recover properly. This stop button kind of accountability we rarely ask for. We rarely ask for before we burn out. You know burnout. I think the trickiest part about burnout from my experience as a coach and personally the trickiest part about burnout is that it's not just physical, it's mental, it's emotional, it changes what's happening in your brain, how you make decisions, what stories you tell yourself. Burnout often shows up in your emotions and in your thinking long before your body starts showing the signs of breaking down.

The Burnout Problem

Speaker 1 5:11

Recently I had this conversation with a client of mine who now is considering to returning to her previous career that she quit because now, as she understands it, she couldn't handle that intensity that she put on herself. So the conversation went something like she told me when I quit. We were talking about why she quit. She said I just felt like I just don't want to see clients anymore and I hate my job and I hate people around me and I just want to quit and get under the blanket and rest and see no one and become a full-time housewife or something. And then we unpacked it a little bit further and she kept going. And now that I think of it I realize I did many stupid things that could have prevented me quitting and hating everything, like sending a presentation to a client at 11 pm even though next morning would be just fine, or agreeing to have a call at 9 pm, often because I just didn't want the client to go somewhere else, or think something bad about me Never asking for a more flexible schedule, even though nobody told me I couldn't.

Speaker 1 6:30

And then I started hating it all and then I quit. And then I asked her do you think having a bit more human schedule might have worked to prevent that? To prevent that? And so then we went into doing this exercise before she jumps back in to set the boundaries, create a schedule of strategic recovery and recharging mentally, emotionally, physically so she never gets into the space where she hates everything and everyone. She hates everything and everyone.

Speaker 1 7:05

Right, because I think what I want you to understand, and for whichever reason maybe my decade-long meditation and yoga practice and journaling and my coaching work, whichever reason I always felt this connection very strongly what's happening in my body, what's happening in my mind and how they affect each other. But very few people, as I realized in my work, have that. And so when I talk about mind-body connection and how certain emotions and thoughts actually feel in your body, very often for my clients at first, before we work on that, I see blank stares and they tell me I don't really understand, angela, what you mean here. Can you explain further? And then we start practicing things like body scanning, connecting the mind and the body better, and we're going to get into that perhaps on the next podcast. Today, again, we're going to walk through the exercise that will help you to set boundaries, to even have the chance to build that connection.

Speaker 1 8:09

Sorry, I'm recovering also from some cough, you know all human. But I keep doing what I love, which is sharing wisdom and tips and advice that hopefully making your life and work and the whole work-life experience a lot more fulfilling. So anyhow, guys, body and mind, they're not two separate machines. They are a team. They evolve together to support each other's function. They are two pieces of one thing you well, probably there are a lot of other pieces but they evolve together to make you function holistically better.

Speaker 1 8:53

And when your body gets run down, your mind changes the story. Your body changes literally every single second how your mind works, how you make decisions, what emotions you feel when you get tired. You don't just feel tired, you start feeling and thinking like oh this person irritates me, I don't like what I'm doing. My clients are hopefully not to that extent, but your thinking, your decision-making, your emotions change and that's not objective truth of your experience, that's survival mode. On A little story, I've noticed one thing when I go climbing mountains here in Cape Town, when I push too hard, I start hating this beautiful hike up the mountain with this gorgeous out of this world views, I start hating it. But if I just pause every now and then for a minute or two and just breathe in and enjoy the views, all of a sudden this joy of doing it, like I get to do this, it comes rushing back. Maybe life is no different, guys.

Speaker 1 10:13

So, again with this client, we are working on this exercise that I'm about to walk you through, the exercise which is designed to help you, which is designed to help you learn how to build boundaries around your work and life and recharging. So you notice the signs and you very often prevent those signs of breaking mentally, emotionally, before you quit and decide, oh, you know, this relationship isn't for me or this job isn't for me. It's too freaking hard. This business building thing is too hard. Well before that, maybe, again, as Brendan Bouchard said, don't, when you get tired, don't quit, just take a break, right? So let's go through the exercise. It's a worksheet and what I recommend you doing is listen through the process right now, familiarize yourself with the idea, or, if you are in a place where you can do it, it's probably going to take you around 15 minutes. So, if you have that time, take it now, because it's really worth it.

Speaker 1 11:22

High performance which is sustainable and fulfilling growth and mastery and achieving things. It comes with the skill, with the need for the skill, of learning how to recharge and recover strategically. So you stop before you break and start hitting things and then quit and decide you know, this thing isn't for me, I'm going to go somewhere else. So this exercise is designed to help you build the boundaries and routines which will allow you to recover and recharge so you enjoy the process of achieving hard things and mastering and growing. And most again, people don't burn out because the work itself is too hard. Everything is freaking hard. Most people burn out because they have no clear rules like when to rest, how to take care of themselves and when work and family life and other parts of our lives get hectic, people just push when they needed to stop.

Mind-Body Connection

Speaker 1 12:23

So, worksheet, personal agreement for energy and boundaries and everything here, guys, also take it as an experiment, the boundaries that you're going to set for yourself. They are also not truths written in stone. You can try them for a week, for a couple of weeks, and then, if something doesn't exactly work, you can change it and adjust. And just like your life changes, those things will also change based on your priorities, your stage of life right now, your work and your goals, etc. But let's dig in.

Speaker 1 12:56

So step number one working hours and boundaries, especially like more and more of us getting more and more flexibility to set the hours that we are best at, to work and then to rest and recover and recharge and achieve and get things done right. So use that flexibility. Don't just go with the flow, with the default. That is just the default. It's like a suggestion for most of us. There are. There is a lot more flexibility that we that we for some reason decided there is. Just for my client, especially if you're working for yourself, guys, you don't need to have a day off on sunday or on fr. You can rest when you get tired, and the purpose of this exercise is to start noticing when you get tired and just, let's say, every five days, six days, seven days, or every day at 4 pm you're taking a break and you know that you're low on energy at that time and you need that break, so freaking take. So step one working hours and boundaries.

Speaker 1 14:05

Question number one what working hours are optimal for me or for you guys? Example yeah, maybe nine to five works just fine, but it also can be anything that works for you. Obviously, you know when you have your job and you have your hours, you need to show up at certain hours, but maybe you can also negotiate some of that. If you are a late night person or a morning person, maybe you come in earlier, maybe you come in later. Right, there's almost always room for negotiation. You just never took it because, well, it's a little bit harder than just doing what everybody else does. But just never took it because, well, it's a little bit harder than just doing what everybody else does, but it's worth it. This is your life we are talking about. You are not going to have another one. So what's the ideal schedule for you, and can you negotiate to get closer to that? Do you want to work a few days, or maybe more days, but less hours? Do you want to work a fewer days, or maybe more days, but less hours? Some days more intense, some days less. What really works for you? Not sure? Experiment your way through it, figure it out right. So question number one what working hours are optimal for you?

Speaker 1 15:14

When do I absolutely not want to work and respond to clients, for example, evenings, mornings, weekends? For me, I set a rule for myself After 6 pm I allow myself to not respond to anyone. Now, sometimes, if that's one kind of a client on the other part of the world. I might do that, but I know that is not the rule, and especially hour before sleep, it's freaking sacred. If I want to continue not hating what I'm doing, I need to take it for majority of the cases, unless again, it's like one kind of a person who can only do that time for that specific reason. But that shouldn't be a rule, otherwise you know why have rules in the first place and if everything can override your rules? So when do I absolutely not want to respond to clients, and how? This is very crucial.

Speaker 1 16:10

Question number three how will I communicate these boundaries to clients? Believe it or not, guys, most of us don't care about urgency. Like most of the stuff we want other people to do are not urgent. We just want clarity. Well, when is it going to happen? When will this person reply to me or not reply? Should I do something else? Should I go to someone else? When you communicate to your clients, this is when I'm going to respond to you. I don't, and here's the example. I respond to clients that you can use in your personal agreement from 9 to 5 pm on Monday to Friday. After 6 pm I'm with my family and at the very beginning I tell my clients I'm always available during the day. In the evenings I don't work, but I will respond quickly in the morning at that time.

Speaker 1 17:01

Without clear boundaries, guys, work will spill all over the place into your family time, into your personal time and even during rest, quote unquote if you don't have boundaries, your brain will still be on because you never set the boundaries and your brain is not sure when the work is over, when not, and when your brain is not sure it work is over, when not, and when your brain is not sure it just always on expecting something to happen and then you never really rest, you never really recharge you. Even if you feel into your body, you'll notice you're not even that relaxed, like your shoulders are tight and everything is switched on and you're actually using more energy and that's why you get so damn tired and fatigued. So question number three is communication with clients. Give them clarity. Maybe use some auto-response messages on WhatsApp. If your clients can message you on WhatsApp or whatever platform you use, set up some autoresponder or in your email. You know the research, I think, is auto reply on schedule in your email, and so when somebody emails you after, let's say, 6 pm, they get a response that I'm not available this time because I'm spending time with my family. But at this time in the morning you're going to get a reply from me, right? And the person on the other side will be oh okay, I'll wait for that, instead of thinking, oh, maybe you know I should go somewhere else. So clarity makes magic.

Personal Agreement Exercise Begins

Speaker 1 18:36

Now the second part is, you know, step number two, actually, the work home rule. Question one where will I work and where will I rest? The nullity guys really matters for your brain. What it means is your brain reads your environment, where you are, where you see the things that are around you, and it prepares your body to act based on that. And so if you sit at one table and you work there let's say you work from home, like I do, and what you do there is work, which is often, you know, you are on, you're often stressed, you are challenged. If you use the same table for eating, you might get digestive issues. For more sensitive people you eat more, so for less it's less so, but your brain will still get these mixed signals and your digestion even cannot go that smooth, and then, when you're working, you might start getting hungry and wanting to snack all the time. But, more importantly, your brain will lose this ability, the switch like, oh, this is where I'm relaxing, which will make recharging just more complex and it will take more time for you to turn on and off when you don't have specific context set up, like specific part of the table, specific place where you read, where you sleep, where you eat. So you need to have this zonality for your recharge to switch on faster and be more effective. So question number one where will I work and where will I rest? Especially relevant for those of you who, as well, work at home what will be my transition ritual from work to home? Is it going to be a five-minute walk around the block? Is it going to be listening to some music, maybe some relaxing music? Is it going to be a workout?

Speaker 1 20:42

They call them liminal spaces, the spaces in between, which are like buffers which allow you to go from one mode to another. Like your brain, your body, they are often not like switches on and off. They need this transition and so when you create this transition on purpose between your work and home, you switch into that mode a lot more consistently, effectively and you will be able to relax and recharge and disconnect from your work a lot better when you have these liminal spaces, these buffers between your work and your home. That can be an activity like a small walk or a piece of music or a places. If you, let's say, work from home and now it's the time to close your laptop and start doing other activities, like your family, your personal time, then maybe going and sitting on the couch and, yes, maybe listening to some music, maybe meditating, maybe just daydreaming for five minutes, that also will give your brain a much better clue and after a while you become like Pavlov's dog. Your brain will start recharging once you hit that couch, after you close your laptop.

Speaker 1 22:04

So question number two what will be my transition ritual? Question number three what will help me avoid opening my laptop phone in the evening? And that is more about accountability. So you need to create your rituals as well, how to keep yourself accountable so you don't get to your laptop and phone all that easily, like, for example, coming home and putting your phone in the cupboard, or coming home and putting your laptop in your wardrobe where you can't really see it. Also, accountability works here. You might have your spouse or your kids keeping you accountable, asking them. You know, when I come home, just make sure I put this thing away, your laptop, and I don't touch it till next morning. Your brain needs this clear signal Work is done, and this is when I recharge. Without it, the body stays tense and never fully recovers.

Setting Work Boundaries

Speaker 1 23:02

Step number three is personal wellness and energy. And, by the way, guys, this exercise is linked in the show notes. It's a Google document that you can copy and then use to fill it in. There's space to fill it in and then print it out so you could put somewhere on the visible place and then ask someone to keep you accountable, like this is what I'm doing to help myself recharge, recover, so I don't burn out and don't become this cranky, crazy person who barks at everyone. And please help me right? You can ask your kids, spouse, your partners, your co-living people if you rent out a place with someone else, right? So put it, make it visible, make a visible social commitment and, even better, ask someone to keep you accountable. So this exercise is linked in the show notes, and then to the step number three personal wellness and energy.

Speaker 1 24:04

What activities give me energy? Question number one get to know yourself, guys, what energizes you Exercise, reading, walks outside, listening to some music, maybe watching something, again, some nature, playing with animals, with bats what charges you? Maybe giving yourself a luxury, taking a short warm bath or a shower with some essential oils, like what really gives you energy back? Number two how many times per week can I realistically fit in the needed exercise or rest? And then a tricky question what if I had to do it? Like you know, for example, there's certain things. You need them to feel recharged and feel at your full capacity, but you're like there is no way I can afford to do that every day or every week. What if you had to? What if there is no choice for you to either do that or consistently grow through the cycles of burnout, like who's going to benefit from that? Even Nobody likes to see burning out, cranking, barking at everyone, tired and fatigued and grumpy. You and you're not even doing your best job when you are in that state. So if you had to, how could you squeeze in the things that you need?

Speaker 1 25:23

Number three what micro breaks can I insert into my workday? We somehow think that we need to sit down to work from nine to five with no breaks, and this is how you're supposed to function because somebody told you that or because that is your work schedule. No, you're not a machine and our brains work in cycles. Our biology works on this 24-hour cycle. We don't work as machines. We do pretty well recharging, but we need breaks to do our best.

Speaker 1 25:57

So what are those breaks that you need? When do you need them? For example, for me, I need to break in the middle of the day. I need to go for a walk, I need to have my lunch, not just putting something in my mouse while working on my computer. No, I need a proper break and I need a walk and after that I do my best work, do it so much better, so much faster and no matter what. That's what allows me to be joyful and doing consistently showing up, no matter what. So what do you need? And then you use it to write down another piece of your personal agreement. Like I go to the gym three times per week. I take breaks every two, three hours during the workday and during those breaks I go for a walk and have some light snack. In the evening, I dedicate 30 minutes just to myself. Remember, physical energy is your emotional resilience, guys. It's your joy, it's how you do your best. If your body is depleted, the mind breaks down much faster and nobody will be benefiting from you doing half as a job, which eventually you will start doing if you don't take breaks.

Speaker 1 27:16

Number four early warning signs and action plan. Question number one what are the signs that I'm heading toward? Burnout? Irritation with clients, fatigue, wanting to quit everything? Like what is it? You know yourself? Dedicate some time, think about that. Question number two what will I do when I notice these signs? It's not just noticing, it's also taking action and creating the plan. Before that happens, do I need to rest, take a day off, exercise, talk to someone, listen to the music, reduce workload? What is it? Question number three what can support me during such times? Who will keep me accountable for my self-care, not just work? Example if I catch myself thinking I hate my clients, then I will take a day off, go to the gym, switch off my phone in the evening and rest. I'll ask my spouse to keep my phone and laptop away and remind me why it matters. Right? So that sort of agreement, course of action got to be in place before it happens. But now it really happens suddenly.

Speaker 1 28:25

There are always early warning signs and again your mind and emotions usually the first to react and we tend to ignore them. We're like, no, it's just bad mood. No, it's just your body telling you you're freaking tired, take a break. And if tend to ignore them, we're like, no, it's just bad mood. No, it's just your body telling you you're freaking tired. Take a break, and if you respond quickly, you'll recover quickly and you can go back to performing and doing your best and smiling and joyfully chipping away at this client thing or whatever work you need to get done, you can stop before stuff escalates. Then, guys, there is also in this worksheet that you need to copy to do this exercise properly, which is linked in the show notes. Again, but before we jump into the next session we're almost done guys, don't forget to share this podcast Share review rate.

Creating Recovery Rituals

Speaker 1 29:17

This helps to spread this podcast to more ears and that's how we collectively, by taking action, help each other to do better. So if you like what you're learning, what you're listening to, what you're hearing, share it with one person. Help them to move towards better as well. Give them tools like this exercise. Right, they don't have to go from one burnout to another or feeling fatigued, working hard. No, you can and people can. People, you know, can enjoy and achieve hard things and in fact, that's going to benefit them and their work both.

Speaker 1 29:58

So, besides that, there is step five in the worksheet, and this step five is about keeping your interest while working on hard things, long term, keeping your curiosity, your joy, your spark right, instead of getting bored with the same old thing. So how to do that? That's covered in step number five. So download the shit absolutely free, available when you click on the link in the show notes. So there is step five how to create this kind of curiosity and never ending motivation for the thing. That might take 10 years or even if like two months and you constantly get bored. So how to keep yourself curious and motivated and engaged with this thing that you're working on right.

Speaker 1 30:46

And after you do all of this writing, all of this reflection final step is write your personal agreement. After answering all the questions, write a short text that summarizes your agreement. The example is in this document. It basically summarizes what you decide to do with your work schedule, with your break so with keeping yourself accountable and warning signs, and what you're going to do when you get bored. So all of that a short agreement statement. You write down or print it out and you put your signature underneath it and you put it somewhere visible. Ask someone to keep you accountable and do it.

Speaker 1 31:28

And, the most important thing, also remember that you just created this as an experiment.

Speaker 1 31:34

Things will change, things will not always work as on the shit, but it's something to keep you accountable and remind you that you're not a machine and when you take care of yourself, not just you get better and you start enjoying the process, not the pay of the accident, but also the things that you do and the value that you put into relationships, into people around you. That's going to improve and grow by a lot too. So everyone wins, especially over a long term. So the worksheet is in the show notes. Please copy and do it. It matters if you want to get consistent and if you want to stay in it for the long game, which is anything worth having, actually requires that long game. So check out the worksheet, do it. Set up the boundaries, not just to work hard, but also to rest smart, to support your hard work and fulfilling achievement while enjoying the journey. So do the work. And, guys, thank you for listening, thank you for your attention and till next time, keep changing and keep growing.