As excited as I am to finally be in my favorite time of the year— fall— I can’t deny that I feel a slight knot in my stomach, knowing that the end-of-year race will soon be upon us, which notoriously leads to me — and I’m sure many others —feeling burned out.
It’s undeniably hard to avoid burnout completely, especially during these times when many of us may be juggling multiple jobs to make ends meet or have other responsibilities outside of our day-to-day. However, there are many tools and methods that people swear by to make it more manageable.
One of these methods is The 8/8/8 Rule, which strategically divides your day into three eight-hour blocks. For example, you might dedicate 8 hours to work, 8 hours solely to yourself (doing literally whatever you want to do during that time), and then 8 hours to sleep. I learned of this rule while listening to an episode of The Every Girl podcast.
In addition to the inevitable burnout, I definitely spread myself thin, which often makes me feel overwhelmed with life. When I learned about this method, I figured I had nothing to lose if I gave it a go, so I decided to try this method for a few days and report back if it helped me feel productive, less stressed, be more intentional with my time, and overall feel more balanced in my life.
To give some backstory of how my day goes, sometimes I’ll work past 6 pm on the couch while trying to catch up on a show. Sometimes, I’ll do laundry after a long meeting or just work through lunch, which screams chaos.
The night before I started, I planned my days to figure out how exactly I wanted to divide my hours. Here is what I came up with:
-The first three hours of my day would be dedicated to me.
-I planned to work for eight hours with an hour lunch break
-I planned to spend four hours at the end of my workday for me.
-Then off to sleep for 8 hours.
WISH ME LUCK!
In addition to being a full-time writer, I also teach group fitness classes on the side, so I usually start my days early (around 6 a.m.) with a workout. I count this hour as “me time,” whether teaching or participating in the class. Then, of course, I have another hour afterward to have breakfast, shower, and prepare for my day.
I mainly work from home, which is a great thing, of course, but I notice that it’s sometimes hard to jump right into my work day without a commute, as I like to ease into it. But for the sake of trying this method and not wanting to waste an hour of my time chunk on nonsense (I am a person who can easily putz around my apartment), I sat down at my desk with my coffee, glanced at the day’s to-do list, and got to work around 9 am.
I also put an hour lunch break in my calendar, which I typically never schedule when working from home. I rarely eat lunch at the same time every day and often work while eating, but NOT TODAY. Since this was my fourth hour of “me” time for the day, I was more intentional with it and either watched a YouTube video, read a book, or just caught up on social media around 1 pm.
While following the 8/8/8 method, when it came to my work block, I realized how easily I get distracted and let my mind wander about doing other things. I think this is more common when working from home because it’s easy (for me, at least) to start checking off things on my personal to-do list, like doing a load of laundry or cleaning the kitchen while I’m waiting to get edits back on a story or after sending a few emails.
I really tried my best to remind myself that I would have time for those things later after my workday and to finish on the block at hand.