Hello Internet!
I hope everyone is having a fantastic week! August is in full force and summer is slipping away slowly by the second. We’re seeing more and more back to school commercials as children and teachers cling to every minute of summer they have left. As for me, I’m continuing to sweat through the rest of summer. I’m totally done with summer and ready for fall to get here. My bedroom is 100 degrees at all times and it’s awful when I’m trying to sleep. I’m one of those people who love to sleep with a blanket on top of me, so when it’s this hot, it’s really hard for me to fall asleep. I just lay there in bed sweating and wishing I had air conditioning. Anyway, that’s enough about me. I hope you are having a great summer and not sweating to death. Drink plenty of water! That’s the most important thing. On the website, we had another fun week full of wonderful pieces. Last Sunday, I published a Weekly Blog where I told More 4 – H Camp Stories and shared some stories, songs, and chants we did at 4 – H camp when I was a youth. On Wednesday, I published a Poem titled Gazing At The Stars. It’s one where you can just imagine sitting there with your love one looking at the stars. It’s really sweet. On Friday, I published the next chapter in my Dungeons and Dragons series titled Battle For Vern Road. Last we saw, our party was traveling south on Vern Road when they ran into an ambush of bandits. Read the latest chapter to see how they fare in battle. Lastly, on Saturday I posted another story I wrote in college called Crossing Bridges. After the success of both Garden Base M2-4 and Garden Base M2-4 Part 2, I thought it would be a good idea to share another story with you. Part one came out yesterday, and part two will come out next Saturday, so keep an eye out for that. If you haven’t read any of those pieces I just listed, go ahead and give them a read. If none of those interest you, there are over 250 more on the website, so spend some time reading those. But first read this Weekly Blog all about Overworking Yourself.
So I came up with this topic for the Weekly Blog after I watched the YouTube Animation by Jaiden Animations titled “Burnout and Overworking Yourself.” The video is below or in the blue text. I highly recommend you check it out. I’m going to touch on a lot of the same points she did, but her animation is beautiful. Jaiden is a YouTuber who always make amazing things and deserves all your views and love, so go watch the video!
Now that you watched that, let’s talk about some the points she hits on. Number one that overworking yourself and burnout are major problems that every creative person feels from time to time. If you’re a writer, blogger, YouTube animator, Twitch streamer, or even student, you know this feeling. I know I’ve prioritized work or studying over sleeping and relaxing many times in my life. I was lucky enough that I never had to pull an all-nighter to study for an exam, write a final paper, or finish a project, but I did have nights where I got very little sleep due to last minute schoolwork. I was able to avoid the all-nighter due to preparation and planning, but there were still times were I was up studying late into the night. There have also been moments where I stay up late finishing a Writing Prompt piece or writing a Weekly Blog. Again, I try to stay ahead of schedule, but sometimes I end up deciding to do something else or that I don’t like the piece and I stay up late editing and revising. There have been moments where I was up until 5 or 6 am working on a piece that gets published at 9 am. It’s not fun.
Jaiden also talks about the attitude of praising hard work and lack of sleep. I know that as a young adult, it’s almost a competition to sleep less and less and be busier and busier. I’ll tell one of my friends that I only got five hours of sleep and they will reply that they only got four hours of sleep. It’s a back and forth on who is the most tired while also being the hardest working. Honestly, that whole attitude isn’t healthy. Instead people should be competing to have a normal sleep schedule and have normal work hours. Bragging about how you only got one hour to sleep is not something people should be praising. This also goes hand in hand with the attitude that time sleeping or relaxing is time “wasted.” Some people have trouble putting work aside to enjoy time for themselves. Time watching a movie, playing a video game, or reading a book is time that could have been used to work. Work is most important. Nothing is more important. Not time with friends and family, not moments where you’re enjoying life, and not time sleeping. That attitude of work above everything else is already pretty bad here in the US, but I know that that attitude is even worse in some Asian Countries like Japan, China, and South Korea where people put so much stress on themselves that they almost die from overworking themselves. Let me tell you that it’s not worth it. Nothing at work is that important that you almost kill yourself over it.
The last point I want to touch, on that Jaiden also talked about, is that when you overwork yourself and burn yourself, the project your working on suffers. This is absolutely true. I can go through the stuff I write piece by piece and I can tell what pieces I wrote far into advanced and spent a lot of time on versus pieces I wrote at the last second. The pieces where I spent all night writing them and was powered by nothing but stress, turn out to be some of my worst pieces. And your response as the reader also shows it. The pieces with the least amount of love and views are usually the ones that I finished after all the stress and overworking has killed my creativity. I’m stressed out and exhausted. The content suffers. You don’t like it. No one wins. It’s a lose-lose-lose. It would be way better for me to either get it done way before and have time to edit and revise it or just not post anything for that day.
So these are the problems. What are the solutions? I’m not an expert, but let me put out some ideas and see if you agree with me. First we need to stop praising overworking and stressing yourself out. Burnout is not something we should be trying to achieve. It’s something that we should be working to avoid. It’s important to get your work done and manage your time wisely while also putting in some time for breaks and fun. You will be much happier and your content will be much better when you’re happy and fully rested. Mental health is such an important thing, but is usually the first thing tossed to the wayside in the name of getting more done and being stressed about it. Again, it’s important that you get your work done, but you need to work smarter, not harder. Plan better and use your time wisely. If you give yourself plenty of time to get things done, you’ll have less stress leading up to when it’s due.
If you’re a student studying for a big test, study for smaller amounts over a longer period of time. Instead of cramming for eight hours the night before, spend an hour a day studying for the week leading up to the test. Spend that last day restudying the stuff you just studied. And then when you reach the moment where you’re just reading the same paragraph over and over again; GO TO BED! Sleep is so, so, so, SO important. Sleep will do much more for you then just sitting at your desk reading the same line over and over again. Sleep is important for learning and crucial for your mental health. If you’re a blogger or writer here on WordPress, set reasonable goals for yourself and then give yourself plenty of time to achieve those goals. I write three pieces a week which is a reasonable goal for myself. Sometimes there are four pieces in a week and sometimes I have to tell you all that there will only be two pieces a week. It all depends on how busy I am and how long I can spend writing during the week. I also take breaks from time to time. I took a break in May. I’ll take one around Thanksgiving and I’ll take a longer one around Christmas time. It’s ok to take breaks. There are some writers out there putting out a piece every single day. And that’s great as long as you maintain your physical health and mental health while doing it. Don’t shut out your friends and family and become a huge ball of stress just so you can maintain that schedule. That’s really, really bad.
If you’re reading this, I hope that you’re taking care of yourself. Make sure you get the stuff done that you need to get done, but also make sure that you are taking care of yourself. Go outside and get some sun. Read a book. Spend an hour playing a video game. Go on Netflix and watch some Friends reruns for an hour. Then go back to working. It’s going to be way more beneficial in the long run. Just trust me. Put down the writing stylus, school book, or laptop and go outside. Go for a nice walk to clear your head. Just please do something other than work and once you had a break, you can go back to working.
Thank you so much for reading that Weekly Blog. Maybe this was your break from working or studying. If so, thank you for coming here between stressful moments in your life. If you liked this Weekly Blog, give it a like or leave a comment down below. You can tell me a story about when you pulled an all-nighter or leave some tips on how you avoid burn out and overworking yourself. If you have any compliments, critiques, or criticisms about this Weekly Blog or anything on the website, you can also leave those in the comments as well. If you really liked this Weekly Blog, feel free to check out the other stuff on the website. There are a ton of Weekly Blogs, Poems, and Writing Prompt pieces ranging from Science Fiction, Fantasy, and so much more, so check them out. Thank you again for all the support!
I hope you have a wonderful week!
-Allen_The_Writer
P.S. Go check out Jaiden Animations on YouTube. She is an amazing animator and YouTuber and she deserves a ton of love. She also directly influenced this Weekly Blog so shout out to her.
Header Photo Credit to Yourstory.com
https://yourstory.com/2017/02/relieve-your-overworked-employees/
Allen The Writer 