Many of us find ourselves spending our days going from task to task from the moment we wake up to the moment we go to bed. We try to manage the needs of work, family, friends, and our physical health all while staying functional enough to keep going. It’s exhausting. It’s a grind. It’s hard. It’s bad for your mental and physical health¹.

I wish I could give you a magical solution where you awaken refreshed after five hours of sleep and enjoy every moment of every task of your day without feeling tired or overwhelmed. Unfortunately, we both know that magical solution doesn’t exist. I do have some good news though; You don’t have to love every moment and experience to feel good about yourself or your life. Making a few relatively simple changes in how you think and what you do can have a significant positive impact.

Here are three ways you can shift your mindset, starting today. Starting now.

1. Connect with Your “Why” by Increasing Mindful Awareness:

Everything we do, we do for a reason. The more in touch you are with the connections between your day-to-day tasks and what’s important to you, the more meaningful those actions become. I’m not promising you’ll ever enjoy every task at work, making multiple meals every day, doing the dishes, or folding laundry and connecting those tasks with the things that are important to you can make doing those things a little less painful. It may sound cheesy, but it works.

Here are a few examples:

Next time you find yourself dreading doing a monotonous chore or difficult personal or work task, ask yourself “why am I doing this?” and give yourself a few moments to come up with a real answer about how the task is connected to what is important to you. If you find yourself asking “Why am I doing this?!” or “Why do I have to do this?” and feeling frustration, it can help to take a few slow, deep breaths to soothe your frustration and ask again, with the intention of providing yourself a deeper answer. You may have to ask a few times. The more you can get in touch with the deeper “why” the more it will take the edge off the frustrations of doing the task.

Side note: if you ask yourself “why” and there is no deeper connection between the task and what’s important to you, consider taking it off your plate.

2. Give Yourself Permission to Be Imperfect.

Offer yourself some kindness. People who are self-compassionate handle problems in healthier ways². In therapy, we often work in dialectics. That is, holding two seemingly opposing ideas or beliefs as true at the same time. One of my favorite dialectics is that people are doing the best they can and people need to do better and try harder. Giving yourself validation that you are doing the best you can doesn’t mean you stop trying or accept feeling burned out and overwhelmed until you reach a distant milestone (e.g., kids turning 18/moving out, achieving a certain status or income level in your profession or career, retirement). Doing the best you can means not adding the guilt of beating yourself up about the past to the ongoing stresses of your daily life.

Doing your best may look a little different every day based on factors like how much sleep you got, how stressful the day was, or what you ate or didn’t eat that day. This is not about making excuses for not doing you best, it’s about understanding how different experience impact you so you can plan better and do better in the future. Take a moment to consider the following list of questions before you jump into judging yourself for less-than-optimal performance any given day.

• How did I sleep last night?
• How was my eating today? (i.e., how often did you eat? What types of food did you consume?)
• How did you feel, physically? Did you experience acute or chronic pain? Were you battling some form of illness or physical discomfort?
• What happened throughout the day that triggered an emotional reaction, especially a difficult one?
• How much mental energy did you use today?
• How was your physical movement?

Allow yourself to “cut corners” on the things that don’t really matter to you. For example, perhaps the laundry doesn’t need to be folded perfectly and the kids’ socks don’t need to be organized by color, or even match. Maybe every meal does not have to be made from scratch with food you grew in your own garden. Perhaps going to the gym or for a walk for 20 minutes instead of an hour a few times a week is okay. Maybe proofreading a work email once instead of five times is enough. Consider where you spend your time and how much these tasks add value to your life. Are they worth the effort they require? If not, consider ways to let it go or reduce the effort to no more than the task requires.

3. Take breaks. Real ones.

The many demands of modern life mean many of us never slow down. There are no more forced breaks due to the sun going down or inclement weather. Most families cannot survive on a single income, meaning that most households are composed of adults with full time jobs who are also trying to stay on top of household tasks, such as cleaning, laundry, cooking, and caring for loved ones while also finding time to exercise and get sufficient sleep. This can lead to putting enjoyable tasks on the back burner, or maybe we take them off the stove entirely.

Eventually, lack of down time results in feeling burned out and disconnected. This could look like ordering delivery or take-out every night, not keeping up with laundry or cleaning tasks, or not exercising regularly. You might find yourself watching more TV, going to bed late, or scrolling social media more than usual. You may feel apathetic about doing things you usually find fun. This can go on for days, weeks, or even months before you eventually feel recharged enough (or guilty or anxious enough) to re-engage in some or all of the tasks you do when you aren’t feeling as burned out.

This yo-yo between superhuman focus and productivity and burnout and inactivity is exhausting. Doing more than just surviving requires finding a balance that views breaks and relaxation time not as a luxury, but as a critical component of a healthy lifestyle. People who make time for rest and relaxation regularly are ultimately more productive than those in the “boom or bust” cycle and they are less psychologically stressed while doing it ³.

It may take some time to find the ideal balance for you, depending on where you are in the cycle and how long you’ve been stuck. Small breaks are important on a daily and weekly basis. Larger breaks are typically most helpful several times per year.

Examples of small breaks:

• Take a long shower or bath
• Take a slow walk or hike by yourself or with friends or family members
• Spend time in nature or with animals
• Mindfully enjoy a tasty beverage or meal
• Take a nap
• Practice 5-10 minutes of mindfulness or meditation
• Get a facial or massage
• Reading an “unproductive” book, such as one related to fiction, a non-work-related interest or hobby
• Plan a trip
• Look through old pictures that evoke fond memories
• Creative expression (music, art, writing)
• Watch funny videos or a movie

Examples of bigger breaks:

• Take the day or two off work
• Take a trip over a long weekend
• Take a vacation

Try tracking your mood and daily activities for a week or two (or longer, if you’re feeling ambitious) and notice any patterns you find. There are many apps and paper tracking log templates online you can use if you aren’t sure what to track or where to start.

4. Socialize

People often cut out fun and social activities when they are stressed and overwhelmed. Even though it may seem that working, eating, and keeping your surroundings relatively clean and sanitary are more important than going out with friends, taking a long bath or shower, reading a book, or going on vacation, these types of activities are critical to psychological wellbeing. Having the support of others makes you more resilient when stressed ³. The amount of connection that feels best varies by person. Below is a list of ways to get support and meet your need for social connection.

• Call someone you care about. You don’t even have to talk about your emotions or the hard things you are going through (though I encourage you to do that from time to time).
• Have someone over or arrange to meet them for a meal or coffee
• Reach out to friends or family members you haven’t seen in a while.
• Join a local or online group for people who share similar interests or hobbies. This could also include spiritual or faith-based organizations
• Join an in-person or online support group for people in a similar phase of life or with shared experiences.

Like with taking breaks, figuring out how much support you need to feel balanced can be hard to find if things have been out of balance for a while. Keeping track of how you feel and your daily activities can help you find patterns that work for you and avoid those that don’t.

If you need help breaking the cycle of hyper productivity and burnout, prioritizing balance over task completion, or figuring out and being okay with the balance you need to feel psychologically healthy, therapy can help you identify patterns and find your ideal balance.

Key Takeaways:

1. Connect with your “why.” Increasing awareness of how your daily tasks connect to what’s important to you reduces burnout.
2. Give yourself permission to be imperfect. Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good. Allow the best you can do that moment or that day to be good enough.
3. Take real breaks. Small, regular breaks and intermittent larger breaks support both psychological well-being and productivity³.
4. People who feel supported by others are less stressed out³.

 Resources

• A cool tool that leads you through an evaluation of why you may not be feeling at your best in this moment: https://youfeellikeshit.com/ ⁵
• Get a deeper understanding of how emotions work and ways to manage emotions in my other blog posts The Limits of Control: Understanding Thoughts and Feelings, and Different, Not Defective: Understanding Emotional Experiences.

Works Cited

1. Mayo Clinic Staff. Stress management. Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/stress-management/in-depth/stress/art-20046037. Accessed October 2, 2025.
2. Neff K. How self-compassion can help you deal with stress. Greater Good Science Center. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_self_compassion_can_help_you_deal_with_stress. Accessed October 2, 2025.
3. Melnyk BM, Hsieh AP, Mu J, et al. Associations among mental and physical well-being, lifestyle behaviors, and burnout in academic chairs of departments of medicine. J Occup Environ Med. 2022;64(10):e623-e628. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9432722/. Accessed October 2, 2025.
4. American Psychological Association. Manage stress with social support. https://www.apa.org/topics/stress/manage-social-support. Accessed October 2, 2025.
5. You Feel Like Sh*t. An Interactive Self-Care Guide. https://youfeellikeshit.com/. Accessed October 2, 2025.