Last week, Buzzfeed News Reporter Anne Helen Petersen dropped a whopper of an article called How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation. It’s a harrowing yet slightly optimistic view of what is and what could be as relates to the way we millennials live based on factors that are both in and out of our control. She talks about how many of us experience “errand paralysis” and feel a deep shame for that, and how our societal, cultural, and economic factors have systemically caused so many of us to feel burnt out.

Before I had even read through half of Petersen’s article, I felt it describing my life. My state of mind. My plague. A plague that has been ingrained into our generation so deeply that we don’t even see burnout happening when it’s happening. If you haven’t read the article, I highly recommend you do. But I want to add to this, as it inspired me to tell a little of my story as relates to burnout, and things that are helping me with it. I hope you can add your own story, too.

In my third year of business school, I attended a panel of successful people in the business industry, of which included a woman who was making waves at PepsiCo. I very much looked up to her because she was 1) young and 2) a successful woman. At one point she said that in order to be successful in this new time of technological changes in the workforce, we needed to be more accustomed to incorporating work into our daily lives outside of the time we spent at the office. I specifically remember her saying, and I’m paraphrasing here, “You need to be okay with answering emails while watching TV on your couch. You need to be okay with there being a fluidity to when you’re working and when you’re not.”

Immediately after this statement left her mouth and another man on the panel reiterated her point, I thought, “This is what I need to do to be successful. I need to be available and ready to work all the time.” I looked down at my Blackberry, something I had finally just upgraded to from my Razor flip phone I refused to let go of for seven years, and I felt ashamed that I hadn’t even set up my school email on it yet.

Another point that was drilled into my head during my years at business school was that I must take as many internships as possible (which were unpaid) while I was in school and even after graduating with a business degree. It wasn’t enough in our generation to get your degree and graduate with a good grade point average and a handful of rave reference letters from college professors. You had to work for free, too. Which, for me, meant that I had to also work another job that actually paid me during the hours that I wasn’t doing the internships.

And these internships weren’t just about grabbing coffee and observing meetings. They were legitimate jobs that expected a lot out of me. For example, after I graduated in 2012, I was interviewed several times for an unpaid social media internship at STAPLES. The interview process was just as rigorous as interviews I’ve since had for high-level positions. They even required me to create mock-ups of content and come with a strategy on how I would run the social media accounts. Again, let me emphasize, I would be getting zero dollars in return for the internship.

As someone who had to work to pay my way through college, I always resented this process. But I knew if I didn’t do it, someone else would. They would take my opportunity. So I added more to my plate with fewer expectations of return on my efforts, and that mentality bled into the full-time positions I took in the future.

During this time of searching for my first a full time job post-college, the economy was still suffering from the 2008 financial crisis, and what I did to make it work was take jobs with fewer benefits, jobs that weren’t paying enough for the work, and jobs that expected a lot out of me. It was all that was available. Doing more for less was just the way that we as millennials had to work to make it work. And if we didn’t meet expectations for these jobs, we felt bad about how we weren’t doing enough.

I can’t say that these formative years for my work ethic didn’t help me in some ways. It helped me have enough drive to start a blog on the side while holding down a full time job. A blog and social media presence that then grew enough that I was able to leave the full time job to focus on creating my own content, as well as other freelance projects where I could be my own boss. It gave me freedom. Perhaps a freedom that was perceived, but freedom, nonetheless. But blogging and having a prevalent social media presence also requires you to be “on” 24/7. Could I really say I was a successful blogger that was connected with my followers if I wasn’t keeping up with and constantly monitoring the engagement on my posts and responding to comments or DMs in real time?

Plus, there’s the pressure to look and be perfect all the time. Could I really say that following me would inspire your lifestyle if I hadn’t vacuumed my apartment in 2 weeks or if my living space wasn’t perfectly decorated? Or if I wasn’t always traveling to exciting, new places and documenting my daily style (which meant a full face of makeup and an outfit with a capital “O” needed to be done every day)?

Here’s the thing. This isn’t just a problem for bloggers. In the way we’ve built how we communicate with each other via social media, we all try to create these perfect little stories of who we are, which forces us to try to be “more perfect” and “more on” all the time.

Even social media companies like Instagram have trained us to think we need to do more. I remember when Instagram Stories came out, which at the time, was basically Snapchat. I thought, “So now I need to post a photo on Instagram at least once every day and do a series of stories?” Today, incorporating Instagram stories into my daily life seems like nothing. But the thing is, it is. We just don’t notice it anymore.

The part of Millennial burnout that’s scary is that it’s so systemic in our society and the way we live that it’s hard to avoid. At least that’s what Petersen believes. But I think there are ways to mitigate it. To keep it from boiling over from burnout to full-on nervous or mental breakdown.

Petersen puts the whole “self-care” trend to blame as much as other factors, but I disagree with her (a little). She says that it’s a billion dollar industry that makes the idea of relaxing more tedious. While I agree with her on one front, which only defines self care as meditating, using a bath bomb, exfoliating, masking, etc., to me self care extends way beyond that. It’s understanding your behaviors. It’s trying to be in touch with yourself enough to actually see you’re in burnout mode. And the ability to consciously avoid or change behaviors that are contributing to it.

As someone who has been working on finding ways to simplify my life and be more present while still living and working in the field of social media, these are some things that have really helped me. I’m definitely not perfect, and my behaviors slip back into old habits often. But I’m more aware of them now. And it’s getting better. I’m not saying all of these things will work for you, but maybe some of them will. Or maybe some of them will help you see your own ways to keep Millennial burnout in check.

Learn how to say ‘no’ better, even if you think it impedes your growth (it probably doesn’t).

This is something I’ve been terrible at since high school. Taking on too many things and also taking on too much responsibility because I see a perceived righteousness in doing more. Being more. But lately, saying no has helped. For example, during the holiday season, I decided to cancel festive plans a couple of evenings where I was particularly in need of my own personal space. I said no to a client about executing a last-minute promotion. I told Rich I’d rather be by myself in the bed watching Netflix after a week of insane holiday travel instead of going out on a date. Did it hurt a little to say no? Yes. It was hard. But the personal reward for doing so was worth it.

We need to be more mindful on social media and our phones. And that means less of them.

As someone whose partial livelihood is dependent on how people engage with me on social media, it seems pretty counterintuitive for me to be advocating for this. But even after just one week of actively trying to be aware of what I was doing when I went on my phone, I noticed two things. The first is that I would grab my phone to perform a specific action pertaining to work, like add something to my calendar, and without even thinking about it, my thumb would tap the Instagram app, or the Twitter app. It was like muscle memory. And then 20 minutes of mindless scrolling later, I would emerge wondering what task I had grabbed my phone for to complete in the first place.

The second thing I noticed was that this was happening at least five to ten times every day, which was sucking up time that I didn’t even realize was being stolen from me. I made a concerted effort to avoid doing this or to stop myself from doing this when I started down the rabbit hole. You know what was interesting? I was spending less time on social media and email, but I wasn’t seeing less. I was actually more engaged with things I like to see on social media. I relished more in the accounts I follow and had a deeper connection to posts family and friends had put out into the internet ether.

Turn off your social media notifications.

Part of the reason I think I was automatically tapping into the Instagram or Facebook app was because I saw that little red notification bubble. It’s psychologically built to create urgency in your mind. So unless it’s something I absolutely need to be on top of for an hour or so, I turn them off. And I’ve gone into those apps a lot less. When I do, it’s because I really want to. Not because it’s telling me to.

Put more focus on living things that are in front of your face.

I can’t tell you how many times Rich has been talking to me while I’m thinking about things I need to do, or strategies and content ideas I’m formulating in my head, and I’ve not heard him at all. Even while looking directly at him. Or how many times Speedy has brought a toy to me while I was on my phone because he wanted to play, and I ignored him. The cultivation of relationships to the living things around me were being shoved to the side for things that aren’t even real, or living for that matter.

Lately, I’ve been trying to silence the inner monologue and be present with the people in my life. When I have a conversation, I try to really be in it. And when Speedy brings me a toy, I have a fun play session with him that always makes me laugh. I also got plants, which seems simple, but they’re living things that actively require your attention, too. You need to monitor them for signs of what they need, and I’ve found taking a little time to check up on them every few days is really calming.

Don’t give a (or give less of a) fuck

I’m pretty hard on myself. It’s no question that most of us millennials are. I push myself. I’m intrinsically motivated. But I’m trying to live without judgement of things I am not or things that I don’t do. Because at the end of the day, I’m doing what I can do, and that’s good enough.

This especially has reared its head as pertains to my gym routine. Going to the gym is something I really enjoy, but as my interest in it and athletic ability grew, the more time I was needing to spend in the gym to get better and more athletic. It became more of a nagging responsibility. So I dialed back. And you know what? Going less and not guilting myself for it actually freed me a bit.

Stop comparing yourself to other people

This one’s easy. Well, it looks easy. There’s always going to be someone who’s better than you or doing more than you. Just stop it. Stop comparing yourself to others. You’re on your own journey. Your own path.

Keep no more than five tabs open your browser’s window at any given time.

This has been a game changer for me. I’m the type with at least 20 tabs open at all times, whether I’ve used them in the last hour or I want to have it there to remind me about something later. But it was really effecting how I stayed on task to complete things. Part of burnout is the feeling of your brain being clogged. So much stimuli. I’ve challenged myself to only keep five tabs open at a time, which has increased my ability to focus. I also get a little spark of excitement from clicking out of the tabs. It’s a “thank u, next,” type of joy.

I hope that you find this post resonates with you or is helpful in some way. Most of all, I hope it makes you ask two questions of yourself: 1) What are things that contribute to your burnout? 2) What are the things that you can do to keep that burnout in check?