Category: Health and wellbeing

Burnout is a word we’re hearing more and more. It is usually associated with being under pressure at work, but it can be brought on by any area of your life where you’re under pressure, like being a carer. Burnout is more than just a bad day, and it’s more than getting a bit stressed because of a deadline. It’s important to remember that burnout is a physical and/or mental breakdown which can cause permanent damage.


What are the signs that we are heading towards burnout?
We all have bad days from time to time, but in general, we should enjoy our jobs. Even if we’re not in our dream role, we can still feel fulfilled knowing we’re playing our part in the world, or providing for our families.


But when work turns sour, we always feel under pressure and it’s affecting our self-esteem, we might be on the road to burnout. Here are some signs to look out for:

  • Doubting ourselves and feeling the need to prove that we’re the best
  • Working harder because we think we’re not doing enough, but actually being unproductive
  • Neglecting ourselves, our relationships and our interests
  • Imagining problems have been created by us because we’re not working hard enough
  • Losing perspective and feeling helpless
  • Behaving uncharacteristically
  • Not feeling fulfilled by work, and feeling empty, detached and isolated instead
  • Developing depression

How can we protect ourselves against burnout?
Fortunately, there are ways we can progress in a fulfilling career without burning out. At Get Ahead, we’ve seen for ourselves how working flexibly has created career opportunities balanced with fulfilling family life, and how this turns into high productivity and achievement of business goals.

Here are some pro-productivity, anti-burnout mindsets we’ve learned:

  • Value yourself for who you are, not just your job title or how much money you earn
  • Make time for your physical and mental health
  • Taking breaks increases productivity
  • Enjoying life outside work helps you maintain perspective and build resilience
  • Making time for relationships, with yourself, your partner, family and friends helps you look outwards while also maintaining your support network.


Let Get Ahead help!
If you’re worried you’re heading towards burnout because you’ve got too much on your plate, Get Ahead can help. Your local regional director can meet you and do a time audit, working out how much time you’re spending on different responsibilities and helping you manage your time more effectively. Our diary management service means you can concentrate on the task in hand, confident that the others are not forgotten. And if you’ve got a list of tasks that you could delegate, our virtual experts are ready and waiting.

Find a life or business coach
Get Ahead has many life coaches and business coaches in our network of clients – many of them support us too! If you think you might benefit from talking to a coach about the problems you’re experiencing, we’d love to put you in touch with the right person.

However overwhelmed you’re feeling, Get Ahead can help you get things under control. Get in touch today – we’re here for you.

Procrastination is the thief of time. So many of us sit down at our desks with the best of intentions, then put off doing the important jobs that will drive our businesses forward.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can beat procrastination and spend our working time productively. For this blog, we’ve gathered together some of our favourite tips for beating procrastination.

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One of the biggest working trends in recent years has been the fifty-hour week, with homeworkers not knowing when to stop, or not feeling confident that they’d “done enough.”

But working a fifty-hour week should be a warning sign. No matter how determined you are, you cannot be productive for fifty hours of your week. It’s not good for you, and it puts pressure on your colleagues and family too.

It’s time to work smarter, not harder.

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Climate change impacts all of us, and we all share the responsibility for slowing it down. Operating individually, we can easily feel overwhelmed – how will a fabric-wrapped shampoo bar make any difference to such a huge problem? Fortunately, as business owners, we have more power. When we adopt sustainable practices on a business-wide scale, we can set an example to others and have a wider positive impact.  

Here are five ideas to help businesses lower their carbon footprints and operate more sustainably.

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However you feel about it, coronavirus is here to stay. People in nearly every country are living with the realities, threats and opportunities covid brings with it. For businesses, many temporary changes we implemented in 2020 now need to become permanent. Complaining about the impact of covid isn’t an option – it’s time to get on with it, flex where we can and open our eyes to the benefits of a different way of working.

In this blog, we look at how we can learn to accept the realities of business in a covid world.

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Get Ahead’s ethos is built on flexibility. The business was created to provide flexibility to the people who work here, and to allow our clients to achieve better work-life harmony too.

Christmas is a great time to take a break. It’s accompanied by two bank holidays followed by a third a week later, forcing us to down tools for a few days. Many of us take the whole week off to rest, relax, see friends and family and observe Christmas in whatever way we choose.

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If you’re a busy business owner, you’ll have jobs you need to delegate. But do you really need the hassle of the recruitment process? At Get Ahead, we believe that outsourcing to one or more virtual assistants is a realistic alternative to recruitment for businesses of any size. Here’s why:

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The Get Ahead team has been growing steadily over the ten years we’ve been running. Now, in addition to our virtual assistants, we also have an ever-growing team of regional directors. The regional directors are all experienced people managers who have come away from the conventional workplace to run their own teams of VAs and manage client accounts. Valuing all the members of the Get Ahead family is an important part of our business – we’ve thrived and grown in the last decade because we’ve invested in our team.

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We can all benefit from time off from work. It’s been harder during lockdown, without the structure of a booked holiday or seeing friends, and some of us have slipped into working “all the time.” In turn, this has led to stress and working from home getting some very bad press! The reality is, however, that working without a break can undermine our productivity, as well as giving us no time to enjoy the rewards.

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While many B2B businesses go quiet over summer, many B2C businesses become very busy. If you work in hospitality, tourism, retail, travel or any other business that historically has its busiest period in July and August, it’s important that all your back-office support works perfectly – it’ll underpin your core business and help you get the most out of the season.

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