Welcome to The Hot Shot Answer. I'm your host Travis Norris, also known as The Hot Shot Fellow. It is my passion to bring you the answers that we all desperately need, that we seek out, and we don’t know quite where to go to to get a true answer or to change our mindset. A lot of times our mindset points us in the wrong direction of where we ultimately want to go. Here at The Hot Shot Answer, I will bring you those unbiased answers that we all desperately need. I don’t care if you’re young, if you’re married, if you’re an entrepreneur, I don’t care what position you are in life, we all need to change our mindset, we all can step up and be a better version of what we are today. My hope is that one day we can lead you to be a better version of yourself. Thank you for tuning in, let’s begin today’s discussion.

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Welcome back. Man what a week we have had, what a time we are having in this world that we live now. A lot’s happened, a lot’s changed, a lot’s going on. Things are happening behind the scenes that we all may not be aware of or that we are aware of. With everything going on, with everything happening, with everything being such turned up, we can find ourselves getting burned out. And, I want to kind of talk a little bit about that today, give you some tips on how to keep from being burned out, because the world that we live, as a general rule, is such a fast paced world. Things happen so quick, and knowledge and information and everything is released at such a rapid pace. It's very very easy to get burned out; it's very, very easy to get overwhelmed. So, I want to talk about being burned out. There's some things that I've done and some things that I do to help eliminate some of that burnout.

One of them is to find time to socialize. And I'm not saying to socialize on social media. [laughs] I know it's real easy to do, and people do that, but there's something to be said for that one on one interaction of human to human contact. I know everybody's kind of scared of covid and I get it, I understand, but at the same time at the end of the day, we have to have that interaction with other people. We have to have that one on one connection outside of the screen. And if you can work on that, and end up having more social events, and going to different social events, and being more socialized, then not only does your network grow, but you feel that you’re not alone you feel that you actually have some help and things of that sort. There’s one that I strive to do on a regular basis is socialize outside of my immediate circle .

Learn to delegate. This is one that is very very hard to get and very hard to do. When you delegate, and it’s not so much as telling somebody what to do, there’s a trick to giving people tasks and delegating correctly and effectively. Once you learn what people's skills are, and their trades are, and what they’re good at, and what they’re not so good at, then you can go in and delegate. But instead of just giving people random tasks to do, you definitely want to try to kind of gear it towards their skill set, gear it towards their abilities, their maturity levels, whether they’re a kid or whatever the case is. Just giving people tasks and just delegating everything away isn’t always necessarily the easiest thing to do. This is something that takes a lot of time, a lot of skill, a lot of effort to delegate it in an effective manner to where you still get something accomplished. And where you trust them enough to give them that task, because if you’re going to delegate it, then you’re giving that role, and you’re giving that honor to fulfill a need that you have to somebody else. And they’re going to have to try to do it the best that they’re going to do, but keep in mind it may not be 100% up to your standards, it may not be 100% up to how you would have done it or how you wanted it done. So, when you delegate, and this is something I do when I delegate, I empower them, I empower my whole team. You do it how you want to do it, this is ultimately what I want out of it, this is what I ultimately want to see, this is ultimately what I need, however you get to that end result is on you, makes me no difference. They get told that quite often and I give them that power and that authority to do it as they see fit. Now, when there is times that it has to be done a certain way, or I need it done a certain way, then I will go in and I will flat out tell them, this is how it has to be, or this is how it has to be done. And talk to anybody that works for me and they’ll tell you, when I do care or when I do have to have it a certain way, I will definitely specify it and make sure it comes in that way.

Another one is indulge in self care. If you work out if you–however you indulge in your self care. Meaning, if you work out, if you take long showers, if you take baths, if you go get massages, if you have your nails done or your hair done or, you know, however you can take care of yourself. And what this does, it kind of balances out your minimal goals. When you reach certain goals and you’re able to accomplish certain things, this kind of falls into that reward scenario, where I gotta go get my haircut, or I gotta go get new shoes, or I gotta go do something of that magnitude that’s personal self care, or go get a massage, or whatever it is, then what I do is on that time I set that up to be when I accomplish certain goals. If I accomplish certain things in the day with the idea of I need an hour and a half later of my personal free time, what do I have to do to get to that point? And then when I do get to that point, now I’m rewarding myself for that additional effort, for that additional push, that additional work that was required to get me that hour and a half or that hour so I can go get a massage or I can go do my personal time and my personal, you know, retreat if you will, you know, riding a motorcycle or whatever it is for you. That’s how I do it, that’s how I indulge in my self care, is I use that as a reward system for me hitting my goals.

Be patient. This kind of rolls in together, being patient and taking regular breaks. If you operate and you’re moving and you’re getting to the point that you can’t think, or you’re getting to the point that you can’t function easily, then you need a break. Take a break, if you don’t take that break, you’re going to end up spending more time and more effort [laughs] trying to make up for it, and trying to push through, than just taking that 5-10 minute break. Sometimes the best thing you can do is just get up and walk away and come back, you’re a little more refreshed. You know, get up from the desk, walk, stretch, go get something to drink, take a bathroom break, go get some food, you know, which is something I tend not to do. When I am sitting at a desk I don’t really get up and leave. When I’m here, I’m here, and there’s been times when I’ve sat behind a desk and it’s like, man I haven’t eaten all day and I haven't done anything outside of desk work. So, this is something that I work on is taking those regular breaks to where you’re balanced and staying on task, and focused to what’s going on and being patient. In our personal world, we operate at such a fast pace that it’s when I do have to slow down and I do have to take our time to accomplish something, sometimes it’s very hard for me to be patient in having answers and having responses and things like that. Being patient is part of it, taking regular breaks is part of it.

Travis: Stop working at 3 in the morning. I used to work late hours. Man I would burn the midnight oil, it would be, you know, 12-11 o’clock, I would be down here doing blueprints and working. Some of that was okay, because it was quiet, and I was able to think and get to that level and get to that point to where I wasn’t distracted. But at the same time, it jeopardizes your personal livelihood, it jeopardizes your personal family life. Because if you stay up those late hours like that, you’re able to get stuff done because it’s quiet and that kind of thing, but as your marriage and all that kind of starts to jeopardize, because in a family aspect you’re giving more to your job, more to your work and more to that than relaxing in the evening and spending time with your loved ones and spending time with your family, and that’s where to tends to do more harm than good. So what I’ve done is woke up early. I would get up a couple hours earlier or an hour or so earlier than Jess or the kids and be able to have that quiet time, and I’m able to get a jumpstart on the day. So instead of playing catchup at the end of the day, I’m getting ahead of schedule cause I’m getting up early and I’m able to get a jumpstart on the day, it allows me to have those lunch hours with her, or go to the boys’s school and take stuff to them or whatever the case is. I’m able to do other things because I had such a jumpstart on the day. And part of doing that is making a to-do list in advance. Sometimes at night I'll make a list of what I have to do the next day just so I can get it out of my hair. If I can get the list down the night before, I’m able to clear my head and enjoy my evening with my family and with my kids so I’m not thinking about work, I’m not trying to remember what I have to do tomorrow and what I have coming and what I have everything like that because I have it written down. So I have a to-do list made up in advance.

Taking one step at a time. Uh, one thing on your list, write everything down, you know, write your steps down, write you gotta do this, you gotta do this, you gotta do this and then as you go out through the day, you’re marking those list off and you’re able to see that list get smaller and it’s a sense of accomplishment. You know, a lot of times we do certain things and we get certain things done and if it’s not written down and you’re marking it off the list, it’s easily forgotten about how much you are actually being productive or how little you are actually being productive. And some things obviously take longer than others, some tasks take longer than others, but as you’re marking those things off you’re able to keep track of what you got going on and therefore while you are doing the work, and you are putting in the work, you’re able to focus and stay on target and stay on task.

Stop comparing yourself to other people. You are in your own journey. You are in your own season of life where they’re in a different season. They might be in a season of harvest for them, it might be a uh, season of famine. Whatever the case is, don’t compare your situation with somebody else, because your situation is solely yours and your situation alone. And you're going to make the decisions that best suit you and your family.

Get as much rest as possible. Rest is absolutely key. Try to get as much sleep as possible, I know that is a precious economy. From here in our household is, you know, trying to get sleep is very, very hard especially having a newborn but when you can, get as much as you can. Relax and rest as much as possible.

There are many other things you can do to avoid burnout, these are just a few things that I do, these are a few implications that I’ve put in place. Hopefully next week I’m going to give you some signs to look out for and as these things start happening in your personal life, then maybe you’ll realize hmm, I may be getting burned out, and you’ll start seeing some symptoms of burnout. And then you can take some of these principles, if they work for you, whatever seems to work best for you. Definitely reach out and we can talk about it, if you want to kind of brainstorm between myself and you to come up with something that’s more refined and dialed in for you. Definitely reach out to us, we’ll be glad to counsel you and get you on the right path to where you don’t get burned out, because burned out is very very bad [laughs] it’s not fun to do. So next week we will talk about different stages of burnout. That way you can be cognitive of when it happens and if it happens; if you are on target of being burned out. Love y’all, please share this out and get this out. You could be the one that would save somebody from getting burned out love y’all, bye.


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I want to thank y’all for listening to my little spill here, and I want to thank y'all as well for the continued support. You can also find us on iTunes, Spotify, Pandora and we’re on everything.We do have it’s own facebook page; The Hot Shot Answer on Facebook, and we also are on Instagram. But, Dm us, tag us, and be sure to get this message out so we can continue to change peoples lives. Thank y’all and talk to you next week.

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