The calendar is blocked out for the next month and the deadlines are looming. You now have a to-do list for your to-do lists, which keep expanding even though you’re checking items off every day.
Deep breath – we’re diving into busy season!
If you’re feeling a sense of dread, hang in there. You don’t have to sit idly by just waiting for the storm to hit! There’s an opportunity here to stay ahead of burnout before you start to feel the heat.
Welcome to Part 2 of the Guide where we’re talking practical preparation!
If you’re new to the Guide, start here! The Busy Season Survival Guide is a cumulation of a decade of lessons I’ve learned about managing busy season burnout while trying to stay connected to creativity. This Guide is meant to support you in staying resilient and creative, even with a demanding day job!
When I started writing Busy Season Survival Guides for myself every January, I was hoping a little practical preparation would help me cruise through the upcoming tax season and beat burnout.
Did preparation alone help to prevent burnout altogether? Disappointingly, it did not. But it did help me keep it at bay longer, reduce the intensity, and recover more quickly!
In Part 1 we went through a brief burnout primer. In my industry we sort-of accept that burnout is a regular part of our work year, but we have the benefit of knowing when it’s coming and for how long. (Then we all go up in flames together. That’s why the tax parties were so legendary!)
If you have the luxury of preparation time, it can seriously make the upcoming busy season more tolerable.
So, let’s do some prep work!
A Preparation Primer – Why It Matters
Preparation will take you miles further than prevention when it comes to burnout. This is a mindset shift that makes a big difference.
Why?
Prevention requires you to stop things that are out of your control from happening. Boundaries are good, but trying to “prevent burnout” requires excessive ones! It also adds to your stress because every time something starts to push up on a boundary, you will be on guard. This is a reactive and externally focused approach that feels like a losing battle.
Preparation gives you options, flexibility, and the confidence to manage, whatever happens. It takes a little upfront thought and planning, but preparing for a busy season means accepting that some things will be out of your control. You expect the unexpected, but with a framework to fall back on. This is an internally focused approach that makes it easier to respond appropriately to the chaos.
What exactly should that response be? Well, it depends on your circumstances and what contributes most to your burnout (see Part 1 – Breaking Down Burnout).
A response could include some self-care actions, asking for help, temporarily simplifying certain areas of your life, getting into “beast mode”, relying on premade freezer meals, delegating, and really anything else that resonates from this guide.
The Guide is a form of preparation in and of itself. It’s intended to give you ideas for “what to do when”. But I promised you practical preparation items that you can do when a busy season is en route, so without further ado…
Six Ways to Prepare for a Busy Season
“Busy Season” is synonymous with “tax season” in my industry, but here I’m using the term generally. If you know you have a period of intense work coming up, you’re heading into your busy season.
The first three are things we’re always working on to lead a more balanced life, but if you’ve got a busy season coming up, this is a great time to work on them.
The last three are pre-busy season “to-do’s” that will make life more manageable when busy season hits.
Remember, burnout comes about with extreme imbalance, so doing what you can to remain in balance is key.
1. Find Your Why and Remember Your Path
This will give you internal clarity to support your ability to make decisions, set boundaries, and stay focused when things get overwhelming!
It used to drive me nuts seeing this advice about burnout. It’s so “pie in the sky” and it’s far from a quick fix. But it is important. Sure it’s a lifelong process, but that doesn’t mean you can’t bring a few ideas down to Earth now to start living them.
Remembering your “why” keeps meaning and purpose top of mind while you are feeling the heat of your busy season. This is important in keeping your motivation up, and it helps give context for your efforts, especially when things get challenging. If you need some inspiration, check out What Are We Searching For?
Remembering your path gives you the confidence to navigate busy season your way without succumbing to the pressure to do more than is reasonable for you. This is especially important if you are prone to overwork or struggle with healthy boundaries. For some whimsical encouragement, check out Are You Lost?
Keeping all of this top of mind can be really helpful in getting ahead of burnout.
Make it practical by writing your “why” and your vision for yourself down somewhere you can see. You could use a phone lock screen, a daily reminder, or a post-it note on your laptop.
The upfront work might seem deep, but you don’t need all of the answers now – your path and purpose evolve over time.
Keeping them top of mind, though? A very minimal effort strategy that yields big results!
Further musings in the post How to Stay Grounded During Busy Seasons: Start With Your “Why”!
2. Build a Strong Sense of Work-Life Balance
Yes, this one used to drive me nuts too, because if you’re burnt out then of course you don’t have work-life balance. That’s the entire point of a “busy season”. But hear me out – it’s important!
Burnout happens when you succumb to the stress from your internal and external factors, without a chance for recovery, to the detriment of other activities that keep you balanced.
So when you’re in the midst of a busy season, the goal is to do what you can to minimize any extreme imbalance.
If you can build a strong sense of work-life balance beforehand, two things happen:
1. Your good habits will continue on into your busy season and will stick with you (at least for a little while)! We won’t just start busy season and drop all of the things that keep us feeling balanced. We’ll naturally make time for some of the things that energize us, even if we can’t do it all.
2. You’ll have a strong understanding of what work-life balance is for you. If you know what it feels like to be in balance, you’ll be quicker to identify when you’re not. You’ll also have a good sense of what you need to get back in balance so that you can focus your efforts when things get busy.
If you understand your own work-life balance then you’ve probably already got a list of the most impactful and effective routines that you know can get you through your most stressful times. While you may not be able to follow your regular routine, you can focus on the one or two most impactful things.
Check out this post on balance and burnout to dive deeper.
If you need to work on that whole “work-life balance” thing, check out How to Find Your Unique Work-Life Balance for an overview, and 6 Introspective Steps to Create Work-Life Balance set out on the journey.
3. Prepare a Meaningful Project (or Have One on the Go)
If your busy season is your meaningful project, then you can skip this part. Otherwise, yes – make sure you have a meaningful project on the go before your busy season starts.
If you don’t already have one, start one now! That way you’ll already have something to dig into without too much resistance when you’re busy. Busy season is a tough time to start something new.
It’s a great time to pick low-hanging project fruit to get that little boost of accomplishment, though!
It sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Why am I adding yet another thing to my to-do list when I’m already going to be bonkers busy?
Agency.
Your personal project is an anchor that helps you stay in balance by calling your energy back. It adds a sense of autonomy, purpose, and joy to an otherwise chaotic work week.
We can’t control most of the things that make a busy season busy – but we can control how much of ourselves we’ll give up to it. We can tip the scales back in our favour and regain a little control over our day or week by adding a meaningful task, chosen by us, for us, and entirely within our control. I wrote more on this in Your Hobby Is the Key (To Overcoming Overwhelm).
4. Map Out an Effective Basic Weekly Routine
The goal here is to have a system in place so that your basic needs are taken care of all week, without having to think too hard about it.
My husband and I work the same busy season and we have two young kids, so sitting down together to map out the week ahead is crucial to our success.
Doing this can help you feel less scattered and free your mental load.
You could start by listing out what you think you need to incorporate every week to thrive, and modify as-needed. These are not elaborate plans – they’re quite boring, really.
Some ideas of what to incorporate:
- One “deep rest” day (zero work that day – there’s a big asterisk here if you have kids though!).
- One “deep work” day (a day on the weekend where you can work and it’s unlikely anyone will bother you).
- Household chore time blocks (eg. laundry, cleaning, meal preparation, grocery shopping, etc.).
- One whole-family activity (a dinner, going for walks, a local event, swimming, etc.)
- Work on your meaningful project (eg. 1 hour, 3x per week).
- Exercise (eg. 1 hour 3x per week).
- Time to connect (eg. coffee with a friend, date night, etc.)
Then you can start to map out what your “ideal week” would look like with time blocks. (I like to do this visually using a Google Calendar. )
Once you see it all together, you may need to cut the ideal version down a bit, but it’s really helpful to see everything in context.
This map is meant to be flexible. It’s just a “default setting”. In reality, things will come up and you may have to move them or get creative about how they’re accomplished.
Getting the family involved in the process can be really helpful:
- Everyone will know what to expect while you’re in busy season.
- If they can contribute to the calendar, they’ll feel more supported and considered. It’s their busy season too, after all!
- Scheduling fun things (like a whole-family activity) helps to make sure it will happen! Sometimes when we’re busy we think we shouldn’t be having “fun”. But having fun is a type of rest, and you can enlist your family to help make sure that happens. Plus, it’s a bright spot you can look forward to during the week!
Again, not everything will work out every week, but rather than just giving up entirely, you’ll have a default “ideal week” that you can look back to when your schedule has gone awry.
5. Did I Mention Meal Prepping and Planning?
Yes, it’s mundane, and yes, this is always the advice for busy people, but it really is impactful! It significantly reduces decision fatigue and creates some much-needed efficiencies while still managing to eat relatively healthily.
There are a couple categories to think about when you’re in preparation mode:
- One big meal prep before your busy season starts to stock the freezer with home cooked meals (or sides, or snacks) that freeze well.
- Smaller weekly meal-prep sessions (eg. a batch of overnight oats, granola, baked goods, protein to add to salads or pastas, etc.).
For the freezer: start by coming up with a list of freezer meals that you can make in advance, and set a day (or two) to prepare those before things get really busy.
Examples: Casserole, chili, stew, quiches, spaghetti sauces (it’s quick and easy to boil some pasta night-of!), mashed or seasoned nugget potatoes.
Weekly: for me, dinners are the pain point so I like to set aside time to loosely plan for what we’ll do each night. When it’s busy I like to incorporate a freezer meal, a sheet-pan meal, and/or something that will last at least two nights.
Examples: Seasoned chicken and fish are easy to do on sheet pans with veggies. Casseroles and whole chickens are great for meals that last a couple nights.
Have a list of freezer meals and quick/easy to make meals to lean on, and you’re set!
Why spend the time making all of this?
I don’t know about you, but for us there’s a lot of junk food, quick processed food, and takeout that comes with our busy seasons as it is! So it just feels good to have some home cooked meals in the arsenal.
All that said, “fun Friday” takeout is a total lifesaver. 🙂
6. Create an Effective Dopamine Menu
The “dopamine menu” is new to me, but I’ve always included a sort-of “self-care list” in my personal Busy Season Survival Guides.
When we’re overwhelmed, stretched, and exhausted, we crave that dopamine boost. We just don’t have the energy to pick one that takes a lot of effort. So we tend to reach for the fastest and easiest sources (my vices are processed high-sugar foods and doom-scrolling).
If you can get yourself to default to reaching for your dopamine menu rather than those low-effort, low-reward sources, you’ll be much more effective at maintaining your energy levels.
Create your dopamine menu in sections based on the time your feel-good activities will take.
- What could you do in 5 minutes or less (30-second dance party, anyone)?
- 30 minutes if that’s available to you?
- What if you had 1 hour? (Make sure to put that meaningful project on the menu!)
Give yourself several options in each category. While you’re in your busy season, you’ll likely be reaching for a lot of those 5-minute-or-less items, which is great. You’re developing the habit of noticing when you need that boost, and then actively choosing something accessible and beneficial to you.
Then when you do get those 30 to 60 minutes to yourself (gasp!) you’ll have an easier time making a healthy and effective choice.
As a bonus, whenever you can grab something off the menu, even one of those quick fixes, you’re intentionally caring for yourself, and I think you will feel the difference that care brings.
So, What’s Your Plan?
Planning ahead streamlines your week for efficiency, reduces decision fatigue, gives you more headspace week-to-week, simplifies your day-to-day, supports you in making healthy choices and makes effective rest more accessible.
There’s also an underlying bonus benefit to all of this prep work: It gets you in the mindset that it is temporary.
When I’m planning, I’m not planning for the rest of my life – I’m planning for a few months. So I’m going into it with the mindset that yes it may be hard and uncomfortable, but it will have an end.
The temporary mindset helps me give myself a little grace when I’m irritable, or I’ve missed a few workouts, or I’ve revenged-stayed up far too late. I’m in it, and I knew I would be!
What’s your favourite way to prep for a busy period? Leave your tips in the comments below, then head over to Part 3: Manageable Mayhem, all about weathering the storm once you’re in it!
