Feeling overwhelmed as a BCBA? Here’s how to recognize the signs of burnout, reset your boundaries, and reclaim your balance without sacrificing client care.

I am presenting my current morning routine. I have found that I crave these activities if I do not complete them. The essential bottom line of this post is the importance of a morning routine, not necessarily the activities that occur.

I generally do NOT follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I have a specific method of goal development and tracking and therefore, I DO complete a weekly, monthly and quarterly review. Over the next several months I’ll be covering these different reviews. To successfully complete any kind of review, you need to be sufficiently prepared. In the end, you’ll find a sequence of steps to prepare but here’s a general overview of what you’ll need to do to prepare.

Do you own your own time? Six months ago, I didn’t. I spent hours honestly engaged in so many wasteful activities. I value achievement, knowledge and learning above most other things however I spent an average of four hours a day on my phone. Those four hours weren’t reading the news or ebooks. It was a whole lot of mindless scrolling, emailing and texting.

While I worked in WA, my program closed and I spend 10 months being a homemaker. I found that I was busy all day long while home and could fill my time quite productively. Following that season, I transitioned to an in-home supervision position and was creating a program from scratch. Any work not face-to-face with a client was done from my home. The transition away from working primarily out of or from home would be an adjustment.