The 3 worst habits that are making you burn out, according to a psychologist

• Ulrika Leons says our daily habits in and out the office put us at serious risk of burning out.
• There are some surprising activities that can up your risk of feeling tired, low, and stressed out.
• Some include reading or watching a movie when we get home to engaging too much with our coworkers.
• See more stories on Insider’s business page.

Every now and then, when health care psychologist Ulrika Leons has a lot of work to get done, she’ll sneak into her office in the morning without anyone noticing.

She won’t say hello to anyone, won’t get any coffee, and just goes straight into her office.

As no one knows that she’s there, she can finally get a good few hours of work in uninterrupted – and that’s not the only unusual work practice she’s adopted; she often opens a meeting with a mindfulness exercise. She makes sure no one has their phone on their desk and if a meeting is going to take a long time, she always suggests taking a break – sometimes in silence.

While it may all sound a little strange, Leons thinks everyone should adopt the same practices she does.

“We don’t treat our brains well at work,” she told Business Insider. “We busy and distract ourselves all day long with our phones and smartwatches, all while trying to work efficiently in a busy office. We just end up exhausting our brains.”

Leons went on to explain that, at the end of the day, we end up bombarding our brains with even more new information through social media or music on the way home.

“We go home and watch a film or a series,” she said, “and we don’t give our brains a second’s rest.”

“Our way of working demands energy and it’s unnecessarily draining,” said Leons. “You don’t store information and you end up working inefficiently. If you don’t allow yourself a moment to catch your breath, you end up risking burnout.”

Burnout has started to become a bigger concern in recent years. Now it’s officially classed as a mental health issue, we should start taking steps either to combat it or to prevent it entirely.

Leons gave Business Insider three tips to take better care of your brain while you’re at work.

1. Not switching off those notifications

Many of us work in jobs that require us to use our heads, all day – this means you have to concentrate on certain tasks.

This can be hard in an office because you’re surrounded by colleagues who’ll occasionally want to quip in and or ask you a question. “What about that client?” or “Can you take a look at that email?”

While it might seem harmless, it’s disastrous for your concentration, explained Leons: “If someone distracts you, it can take somewhere between five and 25 minutes for you to fully focus your attention on your task again. It takes energy to switch between tasks all the time. If this happens all day long, you’ll be exhausted by the time you go home.”

That’s why Leons advises that you to shut yourself off from your colleagues if you want to focus: “This can be done very easily, for example, by putting in headphones. You can then agree with colleagues, for example, that if someone is wearing headphones, you really can’t reasonably disturb them for a while.”

There are other ways to ensure you’re not continuously distracted. For example, together with your employer, you could visually block work stations in your office from communal or social spaces, for example, so you don’t end up seeing everyone going for coffee.

“You can arrange for people to go into a meeting room if they want to make a phone call,” said Leons, “so they don’t disturb others.”

2. Disregarding your “attention curve”

If you know in advance that you need to work on a task that will require intense concentration for an hour, you need to think very carefully about the time of day at which you choose to execute it.

“Everyone has an ‘attention curve’ – there are times at which it’s easier to focus and times when it’s harder to. In the afternoon, most people have more trouble focusing, but in the morning it’s better,” said Leons.

Different organizations also have different day-to-day schedules.

“Sometimes, for example, there’s a meeting every morning or the office is a little busier in the afternoon. Organize your day around that,” said Leons. “If you have a number of fairly simple tasks that require only a few minutes of focus, you can often do them while the office is busy. But if you want to concentrate on something, try to do it when it’s quiet in the office and preferably in the morning.”

It may sound simple, but it does require some adjustments to your daily schedule. “If it works well, it will allow you to work a lot more efficiently and quietly in the long run.”

It also makes sense to agree with the entire company on a fixed time (or several times) during the week where everyone can work in a focused way. “If, for example, there are never any meetings on Thursday mornings, you could agree that Thursday mornings will be a time when everyone can work for a few hours without being disturbed.

3. Stop overstimulating your brain

Do you ever allow yourself to just be bored, or do you always end up reading the news while you’re waiting for the bus?

Do you ever find yourself taking your phone to the bathroom with you?

Leons explained that it’s vital to give your brain that chance to catch its breath every now and then. “If you fill every minute of every day with stimuli and entertainment, your brain never gets the chance to recover and you may be at risk of burn-out,” she said Leons.

“In the past, empty lulls during the day were a natural phenomenon,” she went on. “You’d have nothing to do while you were waiting for a bus or a train; now, we fill those moments with Candy Crush or scrolling through Instagram – and yet boredom and daydreaming are moments of recovery for the brain. People mix peace and pleasure, watching a movie might feel like you’re relaxing, but your brain doesn’t actually get a rest as a result.”

The brain must also be able to cope with the day once in a while, says Leons: “You can’t do that by coming home after working all day only to start reading or watching a movie. You really have to do just nothing – you can daydream or look out the window but you really have to do nothing.”

If you struggle with that approach, there are other ways you can approach effective resting a little more consciously. “For example, you can meditate, take a walk, or simply look around you.”

“The most important thing is to be kind to yourself from time to time and to do so in a way that works for you.”

How does Leons prefer to do this?

“Start by simply looking out the window now and then just doing nothing. Then you remember what it feels like to daydream and to be in an unfocused state. From there, you can find an activity that suits you and offers that same feeling.”