Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is to relax – Mark Black
Sunday, 10 October is World Mental Health Day. Why are we talking about it now?
Because there is the elephant in the room, and it goes by many names: burnout, stress, anxiety, depression, exhaustion, etc. Because health – mental and physical – is an everyday thing that cannot be relegated to a single day in the year. Because it was there before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Workplace burnout is a crisis.
We aren’t alone in recognising that workplace burnout is a crisis. The World Health Organisation officially acknowledged burnout as a syndrome stemming from “chronic workplace stress.”
Mairi Morrison, a Senior Proposal Consultant at Strategic Proposals, published a research paper last May on this topic. It investigated themes we, in the proposal world, are very familiar with:
- Highly competitive
- Fixed deadlines
- Complex documents
- Conflict
- Solutions that are often ‘square peg round hole’
- Team members threw together – who don’t want to be there and who are juggling their bid work with ‘the day job’
- Enormous workload.
- Working for 29 consecutive hours to finish a proposal…
Finding ways to unwind and manage stress will increase your productivity and keep you from reaching burnout.
Breathe, you’ve got this.
To help proposal managers deal with stress and burnout, nFold, in collaboration with Purposely Ignited, developed “Breathe, you’ve got this”, a very different Proposal Masterclass. In this Masterclass, delegates learn how to thrive in the new-normal by understanding the neuroscientific drivers for resilience and high-performance readiness. By understanding that you cannot create more time (the thing we most often lack in our profession) – only more energy – you can change your life.
This Masterclass has reached delegates in the UK, Uganda, and South Africa. It delivers practical outcomes, like:
- Understanding brain-body optimisation
- Realising why a baseline-relaxed physiological state is important
- Managing your energy and not your time
- The importance – and process – of calming your mind
- How planning reduces anxiety
- Why laughter really is the best medicine
Ask for help.
Take control of and responsibly for your mental and physical health. There are some fundamental ways to do this: exercise regularly, drink lots of water, go for a walk, talk with friends and be there for your colleagues. Above all, ask for help if you need it.
