Write more interesting posts, elevate your social media account to a qualitatively new level, regularly post to all social networks, and create only interesting and high-quality content—such goals are set by every SMM specialist. And, eventually, they burn out in the pursuit of success and working in multitasking mode. Together with practicing psychologist Natalia Makeda, we figure out how to consistently release content without anxiety, burnout, and procrastination.

How Burnout Occurs

Imagine the situation: at 9:00, the workday begins, and you start looking for ideas for new posts, writing texts and scripts for reels and stories, considering collaborations, developing a content plan... Then an urgent task comes up - and you throw all your strength into solving it. Then you get distracted by a phone call, something else. You wrote a great text, but - the moment is lost, and the post is no longer relevant. And instead of eight hours, you worked 10-12, and the result is mediocre. You didn’t accomplish anything.

Tomorrow - the same thing. And the day after tomorrow. And now you’re already thinking that you’re working in vain, not accomplishing anything, that content is wildly complicated, and you’re mediocre. Calm down, it's not like that. It’s just that working under conditions of multitasking, chaos, and tension pushes you toward emotional burnout: the strongest physical and emotional exhaustion. Burnout can be recognized by clear symptoms:

• you stopped understanding yourself, your desires, living as if in "Groundhog Day";
• there’s been a sharp drop in interest in work and any activities;
• rising tension and negative emotions leading to aggression and a desire to harm those around you;

Gradually, the psyche "turns off" one emotion after another. First, you stop enjoying and deriving pleasure from usual things, then you lose the ability to concentrate, and the circle of interests gradually narrows. You lose interest in communicating with friends and family, stop playing sports and hobbies, and gradually all interests focus on one point - work. But it doesn’t bring pleasure either. In the last stages of emotional burnout, only "basic survival emotions" remain. People experiencing burnout often say: "Leave me alone, otherwise I’ll ‘do something bad’ to you."

The psyche lacks energy, which is needed for memory, thinking, concentration, attention, and speech. The same tasks start requiring twice as much time to solve, and this inefficiency leads to frustration and self-devaluation.

How to Get Out of Emotional Burnout

The tip "Don’t be nervous!" doesn’t work. But there are several ways to reduce the emotional tension associated with work.

Delegate tasks. For example, as an SMM specialist, you can delegate some tasks, but not to other people, but to the auto-posting service Postmypost. It frees you from the need to sequentially log into different accounts of different social networks and manually publish the same post in each. Just plan the post in the unified service window, specify the publication time—everything will be published on time automatically. Instead of an hour for posting, you’ll spend 10 minutes. Moreover, you can plan the release of any number of posts at any time. Text creation for posts or creative headlines for them can be entrusted to neural networks Postmypost AI: it will do it quickly and efficiently.

Praise yourself even for minor achievements. One element of burnout is devaluation. At the end of the workday, remember each of your achievements: found three new ideas for content, planned five posts in the auto-posting service, learned the meaning of a new word, picked up your child from kindergarten on time, walked 8,000 steps—praise yourself for these seemingly insignificant achievements.

End your day with good thoughts. If out of 10 planned tasks, you completed only 5, praise yourself for what’s done and don’t scold yourself for what’s not. Try to remember all the good things that happened during the day. This will help you fall asleep in a good mood, get a good night’s sleep, and accomplish more tasks the next day than you planned.

Monitor the quality of sleep and change activities more often. Our brain rests best during sleep and when changing activities. This is the alternation of activity and relaxation, creativity and monotony, sleep and wakefulness, work and life. We make a mistake when we tell ourselves: "I’ll finish these tasks now, close the project, launch it and ... rest/do something for myself/walk..." But instead of the promised walk, you barely crawl into bed.

Therefore, always plan rest first! Let it be one hour a day that you’ll use for life, sleep, and pleasure. But it’s your hour. By the way, you can "find" it using the same auto-posting service.

Plan your tasks. Clear planning reduces the level of tension: because you know the exact amount of work and when you can rest. Thanks to planning, we create stability and safety for ourselves.

Add monotony. If you’ve heard the story about burned-out top managers being sent to the warehouse to pack boxes, know that it’s not a story. While performing monotonous tasks, nerve cells rest. By the way, browsing social media feeds is not rest. On the contrary, attention excitement makes you compare yourself with others. Guess whose favor the comparison will go if you’re emotionally burned out? And anxiety grows even stronger.

Try performing simple, understandable, monotonous actions: copy-paste text or images, peel potatoes, mop the floor. Transferring created content to the unified auto-posting service window and setting the time and date for content release, by the way, is rest.

Take yourself an unscheduled day off, go for a walk, let your eyes rest, and enjoy nature. Don’t wait for vacation to have a refreshing drink on the veranda or chat with friends. This can be done while the auto-posting service publishes content on its own.

Reduce stress levels. To relieve internal stress, do a little exercise, breathe "square" (inhale for four counts, hold your breath for four counts, exhale for four counts, and another breath hold. Repeat 10 times). Jump on the spot, finally, or go up and down a couple of floors to relieve tension from the body.

More important than the number of hours we work is the state we are in when performing tasks. High tension deprives energy, reducing efficiency. Allow yourself to step out of the "do-it-yourself" role, use your free time for yourself. This seemingly imperceptible investment will help you recover and significantly increase the quality and quantity of results in the future.

There are also 3 ways to work with self-discipline and optimize time in multitasking mode from practicing psychologist Natalia Makeda.