Avoiding Burnout as Librarian
Burnout is an enemy of every professional and I would argue it’s an even bigger beast if you work in a job you love and are passionate about—which many librarians do! It can be a slippery slope, from completing your to-do list to championing and offering every new program, service, or collection you think a patron might want, especially in a job you love. After years of 50+ hour weeks, finishing work at home, answering one more email before bed, being on call to solve problems after my shift, and managing social media at all hours I realized that if I really loved my job I would want to give it my very best, but burning myself out by never stopping work was causing me to never give my best—not to my job, my kids, my family, my friends, my hobbies, my house…. you get the picture. When we start to struggle with burnout every aspect of our life begins to suffer in some way, shape, or form.
With that in mind, here are some tried and true tips to avoiding burnout as a librarian!
1. Limit the number of committees, boards, or clubs you are part of.
This can be hard because we get so stuck on how much we can help by being on that committee, or how good being on that board would look on our resume, or even how you could do that job that no one wants to do and it wouldn’t take that much time (ask me about how I ended up on three boards and numerous committees at once!). Yet the more commitments you make outside your library, the more you increase the chances of not fulfilling the duties you have to your library. Yes, those committees and boards might look great on your resume and yes you might do that job better than anyone else, but is it really worth it if at the end of the day you are exhausted from being stretched too many directions, behind on your to-do list, and running on empty?
Take a few minutes today and list out all of the committee, board, community, or other extraneous obligations that you have outside your day-to-day tasks and evaluate whether or not you are participating in a manageable amount of activities or whether it has gotten out of hand. If you need to cut back, think about which obligations are necessary for you or your library and cannot be done by anyone other than you. Once those are identified, look at everything else. If you don’t want to eliminate everything, start by choosing the obligations that really bring you joy in your work and make your job better. If you cannot do more than the necessary, consider which things could be taken on by someone else in your library who would excel with that responsibility and which obligations can be respectfully left for someone else in the community (whether local, global, or library) to fulfill.
2. Delegate, Delegate, Delegate.
I cannot say this enough, but I also understand it can be extremely difficult. I am the queen of “I can do it all!” but that isn’t usually the best route to take. Here’s the thing, there are hundreds of reasons you and I could give as to why we HAVE to be the one to do everything we do, but the reality is that most of those reasons don’t hold up in the face of scrutiny. Those reasons keep us on the path to burnout by allowing us to continue to do too much.
The truth of the matter is that there are likely many things on your list that either don’t really have to be done or can be done just as well or ALMOST just as well by someone else on your team. Whether you are the best children’s librarian, director, bookmobile driver, or branch manager there ever was, there are still other people who can do some of those things that take up your time and do it well enough. Additionally, giving those employees the opportunity to do some of those things that you have previously held onto too tightly to will give them the opportunity to improve and become their version of “the best” someday! Not delegating, especially in a management position, will inevitably lead to burnout. And the more you can take off your plate, the more it opens you up for new ideas, new programs, new services, and new parts of your library that you might not be able to curate or experience if you are stuck taking care of every daily, mundane task.
Look at your to-do list today or this week, and see what things that you do that you might not have to do, or what things someone else can do just as well or almost just as well as you can.
3. Schedule regular vacations, and STICK TO THEM!
This can look different for everyone. Some people do best taking one mental health day a month. Some would rather have a few days off at a time every 2-3 months. I know that I need at couple long breaks a year so I always take two weeks at the Christmas holiday and then 3-4 days in the spring and again in the fall. For me that gives me time to detach from work, rest, accomplish things in my personal life, and then gear back up for work again so I can power through until my next vacation. Does that mean I don’t love my work? No! But I am an all-or-nothing worker and giving 110% all the time is exhausting even when you love what you do. Whatever works best for you, your brain, your family, your self-care—do it!
Vacation doesn’t always have to mean going somewhere else, though it can if you want it to! Taking a vacation can also mean a long weekend spending a day catching up on errands or housework and another day in your pajamas reading or binging movies.
Now for the last part of that tip—stick to it! It is so easy, especially when your vacation plan is to stay at home in pajamas, to reason away taking time off. “I’ll just work a half-day and finish up these tasks,” or “I’m feeling okay this week and I could accomplish so much if I just worked instead.” Don’t do it! Having those regular breaks is so helpful to avoiding burnout. Then, even when you have a stressful and overwhelming week, you know that you have time to recuperate coming and it makes it so much easier to push through and accomplish everything you need to, and to do it well.
4. Create a Culture of Leadership-
Now, I have a whole course about how to do this from beginning to end HERE and ideas you can use to create a culture of leadership in your library at every level, but the important thing to understand right now is that leadership and management are not synonymous, they can be very different. So, I am not saying promote everyone in your library to a supervisory position, but what I am saying is create a culture where your employees feel empowered, valued, and invested and they will do their jobs well without you having to watch over their shoulder. They’ll be the ones coming to you with new ideas, incentives, programs, solutions. And when you do that, it inevitably takes a load off of you because you are not the only one trying to come up with all of the ideas, programs, services, and solutions. You will have people in those positions wanting to do that and do it well and it will take a lot off of your plate.
5. Separate your work and home life
This is so important to avoiding burnout and also so difficult for me. Anyone else? If you are working 8 hours a day, coming home and being on-call, taking your kids to every program or service, visiting every branch, whatever it may be, you are spending all of your time in that place that your brain associates with work. So make sure you are separating your work life from your home life and giving yourself, your family, your dog, your friends-whoever is involved in that home life, a break from library talk, and library programs, and library worries….
Does this mean I think you should never go to the library when you’re not working? Absolutely not. But, make sure you are finding time that you can still have separation. Do you have Fridays off? Take your kids to the library on Thursday when you get done working instead. Is there a program you really want to attend on Friday? Great, then Saturday is your day you do not think about work at all. Just like scheduling in vacation time, making sure you have that separation so your brain can have time to rest, recharge, think about what is going on in your life will make it so when you go back to work the next day or the next week you will be that much more ready to go and you have a clear head and can process every problem, idea, and program coming up for that week and you don’t already feel burnt out from never stopping work the week before.
Will there be times when this isn’t possible? When you have to cover a shift or an emergency arises that you have to be the one to handle? Almost certainly. But if you are making this separation a regular practice in your life, then when those weeks inevitably happen it will be okay. You will be rested, recharged, and prepared because you kept that separation the weeks before, and you know that you have that separation coming again in the future once this problem is handled.
6. Knowing what burnout is
This may be late in the blog post for this tip, but if you don’t have a firm definition of what burnout looks like for you and what symptoms you might experience, then you might not even know when you have a problem until it is already too late. While burnout manifests and is experienced differently in everyone, there are a great number of reliable resources out there discussing burnout symptoms such as this one from the Mayo Clinic. And in order for you to be able to self-assess, delegate, rest and recharge, etc. you need to know what burnout looks like for you! Once you know how burnout manifests for you, you can more quickly respond and redirect in order to avoid a huge crash.
7. Periodically assess yourself
Recognizing the early symptoms of burnout is key to being able to avoid a huge crash. If you know that you are getting to a point where you are overwhelmed and unable to manage your workload, your mental health, or your family life, then take some time to figure out what aspects of work are causing that burnout and what you can do to change those or relieve yourself of doing those things. And let me be clear, I understand that sometimes there are things that cause burnout that you cannot change or relieve yourself of. However, if you are avoiding burnout in other areas of your work and life then you will have more ability to deal with those unpleasant aspects of your job and still not experience burnout.
Periodically assessing yourself, your goals, your work quality, and your mental-health can help you regularly realign your priorities so that you are spending your energy and focus on the parts of your job that really need your specific attention and are crucial to the success of your library. And then, once that assessment is done, use the other tips in this post to put yourself back in a place where you are set for success and not on the fast path to burning out.
When you don’t feel like your job is taking everything you have you will be able to give more to it. And more invested, happy, healthy, librarians makes better for a better library which supports a better community!
