A Kind Reminder To All Marketers

I burned out and it wasn’t fun.

As most marketers in our ever-evolving digital world, you will reach a point of burnout.

You will often be anxious and stressed, and even gradually promote yourself to become a professional overthinker. But worry not, we have been trained for this. For a living, we evoke emotions, analyze and reason reactions, create exciting experiences, and change people’s perspectives, we just forget to do that to our own lives.

With a lengthy task list, a multitude of deliverables to complete in short periods, and the immense pressure to live up to the quintessential version we set out for ourselves, it’s sensible to believe complete mental exhaustion at the end of every day is normal.

If you fall for that trap, you are on an inevitable road to burnout because, in reality, it shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be that way.

STEP AWAY

You imagine having the perfect life-work balance but instead hurriedly drown yourself in your agenda because it’s the “only way to get work done”. Only way? Hmm sure. Best way? No. You’re unknowingly harming yourself and your work. Step away and look at the bigger picture, if you don’t dedicate time to do the activities and hobbies you love, your creative juices will run out. This means you’re left with a zombie-ish mind just getting through your tasks. For some, it might mean going for a quick run, for others, it’s committing to a full-hour lunch break instead of inhaling your food to hastily get back to work.

LET MORNINGS BE MORNINGS

From a recent experience, during a team meeting, we humorously discussed how our “marketing brains” never shut off. We even wake up thinking of ways we can sharpen our strategies and set out new trends. Over time, this pattern of action repeated itself and manifested into a bad habit we’re all trying to get rid of. It was mildly okay for it to occasionally pop up on weekdays but it crawled its way to the weekends, which meant no resting time for the brain. Remember, your mornings set out the mood for the rest of the day, so waking up already worn-out from thinking about work is going to make you dread actually starting work.

IT’S “JUST” MARKETING

Marketing is commonly conceived as a way to sell an idea/product to a user without them feeling that it’s a sale, but it runs deeper than that. Beneath the surface, you have psychology, neuroscience marketing, sociology, cultures, and other factors at play behind every campaign and ideation. This tells us that unless you allow yourself to truly experience them firsthand, you will be running in circles with the same knowledge and way of thinking you’ve always had. 

Don’t worry about not being on the latest trend, missing out on updates happening on every single platform, and not managing your tasks to perfection. By stepping away, you’re going to get closer to the skills, learnings, and aspired version of yourself more than ever before. 

LASTLY, TURN OFF YOUR BRAIN

Discover beautiful places, communicate with new people, be open-minded to different opinions, dive back into activities you love, and take note of what moves you in this massive world. 

And if you must rebel against this advice and continue your chain of thought, do it for your own good.

For once, commercialize your life. Give it a meaningful story, trust me, it will find its way to your work.