Life is a marathon, not a sprint.

As the three founding members of Maven Consultancy UK recover from taking part in this year's London Marathon, it has us thinking lots about long distance running, endurance, and effort!

Adam, Paul, and Dan trained for over six months - hours of preparation, miles of feet pounding on concrete, diet considerations and cold winter nights but now the time has come to put their feet up after hours of action.

In the world of business, life can become something of a sprint, though, can't it?
Deadlines. Meetings. Ratings. Evaluations. Targets.
It's all about how much you can achieve and how quickly.

Alongside this target centred mentality is also the acceptance that to be the best you'll have to live with a certain amount of burnout. That being the best will cost you the most. We see it filter through so many companies from Managers through to Interns. It's that certain feeling of guilt that can so often accompany days off. That rest = laziness.

The problem with pushing staff and ourselves so much can be, that although it may well yield short-term results, it often leads to substandard work and an increase in staff turnover. At Maven, we are committed to providing the best possible service whilst also offering our staff the freedom and support necessary to avoid burnout.

Now we're not being unrealistic here, we know that sometimes you'll need to work on weekends and evenings and you'll need to answer e-mails when you're with your families but quite often technology is blamed for the hyper-connected world we live in.

Instead of banishing phones from the dinner table and closing your laptop every weekend we believe that technology can also be a solution to burnout and may actually help us switch off and avoid burnout by streamlining and prioritising the information we receive. 

HERE ARE A FEW TIPS TO DOWNSIZE THE INFORMATION AND ALLOW YOU TO REDUCE YOUR WORKLOADS:

• Organise your incoming e-mails into priority groups. That way you needn't check every e-mail you receive but only those that enter your 'high priority' mailbox and may require urgent responses.
• Buy an Apple watch, no really! This may seem like a convoluted sales push but we think it makes perfect sense. The Apple Watch allows the wearer to see incoming messages/e-mails/calls with a mere glance and remove the need to use their mobile where it is easy to get distracted by other demands on our time. It is also possible to prioritise what information gets sent to the Apple Watch meaning that it won't light up your wrist unless you've decided it's worth it!
• Siri is your friend. Despite the fact that Siri was first introduced way back in October 2011 a lot of users still shy away from using him/her as an intelligent shortcut to a number of otherwise fiddly tasks. Ask Siri to remind you to phone your client back first thing Monday morning and it's done. Business lunch on Friday 13th May? Ask Siri to put it in your calendar. Can't choose whether to eat out or eat in? Ask Siri to flip a coin.

Now we've given just three examples of how to streamline and prioritise your mobile life but bare in mind there are many options to stop burning out than simply just ditching your tech!

After all, technology should work for you, not against you.