Hello!
Index
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Note from Olga: Spring is coming
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Olga recommends: "Make 2011 Your Most Productive Year Yet!" Mentoring Program
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Feature article: Simple and effective self-care tips for dealing with a burn-out
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Where's Olga: Palace of Westminster and music at extreme conditions
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About Olga
Note from Olga
It was really cool to spend some time last week in the Royal Botanic Garden of Edinburgh together with my children spotting the signs of spring. They really enjoyed running around and climbing the trees! 
My five-week "Make 2011 Your Most Productive Year Yet!" Mentoring Program finished last week, and it was so good to talk to one of the participants this week and hear how useful and effective this program was for them!
This week we went with the whole family down to London for one day for me to present a science poster at the SET for Britain event in the Palace of Westminster at the UK Parliament. The trip was exciting, but also overwhelming and tiring. The highlight of the evening for me was meeting and talking to Professor Brian Cox, the presenter of Wonders of the Solar System, which was very inspiring.
Working hard on a couple of projects for the last few weeks and trying to finish them on time "no matter what", lead me into the situation where I ignored several warnings from my body and just "kept going". As a result, I ended up in bed with a fever for several days (hence the missing issue of the Productivity Insights last week) and an exhausted state for several days after.
This week I took it super easy on my self, went to have a professional massage and a session with a life coach. I also set down to write up my experience of how I took care of myself to effectively recover from a burn-out and avoid it in the future. I thought you might find this summary useful so I am sharing it with you in today's Feature Article.
Burn-out and feeling helpless can result from the events in our personal lives as well as from worrying about lives of other people, as we now do worry about the people in Japan after the earthquake that happened there wondering how we can help. As my mentor Christine Kane beautifully summarised in her blog post this week there are simple things that each of us can do to heal our planet and ourselves.
Love,
Olga recommends
Web-based "Make 2011 Your Most Productive Year Yet!" Mentoring Program is your personal step-by-step guide that helps you become less busy and less overwhelmed and achieve a peaceful and productive working day while feeling happier in your life. If you think this mentoring program is something that might help you become more productive, then please do express your interest to be notified when the registration opens again.
Feature Article
Simple and effective self-care tips for dealing with a burn-out
You probably don't expect a "productivity guru" like me to talk about how I overworked and ended-up in a burn-out state. But we are all humans and do make mistakes. So this happened to me last week, and I would like to share with you the techniques I effectively applied that were really helpful in recovering and replenishing myself and I hope you find them useful too.
So while you are working hard towards achieving your goals feeling excited and powerful - all is well. There is a point though when your body, mind and spirit start to send you signals to slow down, take it easier, have some more rest and take care of yourself. But you consistently ignore them. After all, there are only a few days left until the deadline, and you feel like you can push just that little bit more.
What happens when you finish you project? You find yourself in a completely drained state, a burn-out. Nothing is interesting you; you feel depleted.
There are few tips that you can apply immediately for a simple and effective self-care in order to successfully recover into your normal energised and excited state. And of course you can use these tips to care for your well-being in order to avoid a burn-out and stay fit even working towards multiple important deadlines.
Tip #1.
Pull out your "Here is what I love" list, or create one now if you don't have one! My mentor Christine Kane made me create such list about half a year ago. And feeling completely burned-out last week, the first thing I did to start my recovery was pulling out this list. It said "Olga loves nature sounds, birds singing, water streams rushing, her children laughing". So we packed a picnic and off we went into the woods for the whole afternoon, where I started feeling more relaxed by listening to my favourite sounds of nature. And we did laugh a lot!
And I did realise that I have skipped the walks in the nature for the last couple of weekends trying to catch up with work, preventing myself from enjoying the simple things I love. I hope I will remember in the future to take time each week to fill up my energy by doing those little simple things that bring me joy.
Tip #2.
Professional massage. An old good tip! And it does work! I received a professional massage for about an hour with a mixture of essential oils and had a few hours rest after that and it literally started to fill me back with energy.
A side note here for mothers, who often ignore this resource because they think they should not spend this kind of money on receiving a massage when there is a young family to take care of. In this situation I would say - look for resources around you! The massage that I have received was ... free; it was in frame of a complementary therapy service for stressed parents that out health visitor made me aware of.
Tip #3.
A session with a life coach. If you don't have a life coach, hire one! Start with someone to try it out, you can always move on to another one later. Or if you more into therapy, hire a psychotherapist. One session a month can do a lot of good for you! And again look for resources around you: GetSET Women is currently paying half of the price for up to 6 coaching sessions (if you are a woman working in UK in the Science, Engineering and Technology sector).
After a session with my life coach this week, I finally started to feel I am coming back to life and being Olga again ;-) I will also hopefully remember in the future not to disregard this resource for keeping up my energies - it can be also called a "mental SPA" :-)
Tip #4.
Get active. Once you start feeling better again, get active, get outside. I went for my favourite walk up a hill next to the campus where I work - and started to feel I am getting stronger and almost ready to get excited about new projects and activities.
I have also noticed that I have ignored my physical exercise routine for the last couple of weeks. A recovery ritual is always useful when we screw up like this: it is a gentle ritual that can help you get back on track with your physical exercise routine.
Tip #5.
Sleep. Sleep. Sleep. This one again is very easy to ignore, and then we pay toll after we collapse from exhaustion and the lack of sleep.
A friend of mine and a mother of three asked me this week: yes but how do you combine catching up on sleep with caring for 3 young children? Well, I have two young children myself, and the way I did it this and the last week was 1) to sleep when the children sleep!! (again mothers often ignore this simple tip by trying to catch up with the house work when children sleep - I myself often forget to go and rest when children are asleep - so here is a reminder for you: sleep when you children sleep); 2) get my husband to get up with children in the morning and cook breakfast for them while I am having a lie-in and 3) go to bed earlier than everyone else leaving my husband and children to watch movies all by themselves.
I know some of these tips are simple and often self-evident, but far too often we forget about them and ignore looking after ourselves ending up with a burn-out. I hope you find this reminder as useful as I did.
Happy accomplishing! And happy self-care!!
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE?
Please do! Just be sure to include this complete blurb with it:
Olga Degtyareva is an award winning research scientist and a mother of two who blogs about peaceful productivity at our workplace. Her weekly Productivity Insights ezine is published every Friday. If you are willing to start increasing productivity at your work place while feeling happier and more on purpose then join Olga's community at http://olgadegtyareva.com.
WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Olga's blog at http://olgadegtyareva.com.
Where's Olga
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On the 14th of March, Olga presented a science poster at the SET for Britain event at the Palace of Westminster in London - the UK Parliament.
About Olga
Olga is a research fellow working at the University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom, conducting studies in the Centre for Science at Extreme Conditions. She lives with her husband and two children currently 3.5 and 2 years old. Last year Olga received an international prize for her scientific research and published a review article. At about the same time people started to ask Olga how she manages it all. This is where the idea of her blog on peaceful productivity for creative types came from. In her blog (http://olgadegtyareva.com), Olga focuses on the ways of increasing productivity at our work place using creative and effective concepts that take into account all aspects of our lives.
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