I’m a burnout coach — here are my 10 tips for better work-life balance

Gabriela Flax, 28, had a “dream” product management job that eventually left her suffering migraines, panic attacks and constant exhaustion.

Flax blames her burnout on self-inflicted pressure in a stressful workplace and the need to always say yes. She has since become a burnout coach — and now she’s sharing tips on how to stop feeling overwhelmed all the time.

“The ‘boring list’ is for people who have just acknowledged burnout — it’s a mental reprieve,” Flax, a Baltimore native living in London, told SWNS.

“It’s going to be tough, but it’s about focusing on small changes that can be made to your daily life.”

Flax’s burnout prevention tips include creating a “focus mode” on your phone to only see important notifications and having a clean basket as well as a dirty basket for laundry.

“Everyone has a dirty wash basket, but we don’t often have a clean basket,” Flax explained.

“Most of us have a clean chair, but anything that creates chaos through mess makes us feel worse. The clean basket allows you to keep the space tidy, but if you don’t want to open your closet because of decision fatigue — don’t bother with it, go to the clean basket, you know it’s clean. No decision needed.”

Flax also recommends buying several sets of the same outfit to reduce decision fatigue.

“Get three versions of an indoor set and three of an outdoor set,” she advised.

“What I find with implementing a ‘capsule wardrobe’ is people stick with it long after burnout.”

She also suggests creating a group chat with “need-to-know” people who can help out with errands or childcare; buying an automatic dog food bowl; and using paper plates to lessen the burden of cleanup.

“When I started sharing that tip people were saying it wasn’t environmentally friendly. My view is, you cannot save the planet if you can’t save yourself,” Flax noted of disposable plates.

“After getting out of burnout you then have the capacity to give back to causes you are passionate about,” she added. “There were days when I would forgo eating as I didn’t want to wash the dishes. Get yourself paper plates, and the dishes can be out of mind for a while.”

Flax says her burnout got so bad that she would refuse to nap or let herself watch TV as it “wasn’t productive.”

“Burnout is when your brain is in direct conflict with what your body truly needs. Sometimes we let the need for success interrupt with the very need to rest,” she said.

“For me, it was about learning tactics and removing things from life that were causing me more stress and then looking inside to see what was holding me stuck from a mental perspective.”

She said she stopped drinking alcohol in her mid-20s, which lessened the “brain fog,” and she created her “boring list.”

“It’s not a cure to burnout, but these are things you can do in the early stages to let some steam out,” she reasoned. “It allows someone to win back bite-size pieces of energy and put it into their reserves.”