Burnout hits everyone. These Atlanta women have advice for managing it.

One of Hillary Kerr’s main tools for managing burnout is a tiny trampoline.

The co-founder of style website Who What Wear and a senior vice president at Future Publishing, Kerr said she jumps on a personal-sized trampoline practically daily.

“I find that I am a better partner, a better parent, a better colleague when I have done an exercise every single day,” she said onstage at the recent Marie Claire Power Play Summit, a gathering of about 100 prominent Atlanta businesswomen, entrepreneurs and nonprofit leaders.

Kerr was speaking on a panel with two other successful female executives about how to navigate burnout, sharing tips and advice gleaned in their decades of experience at the pinnacles of their fields.

Credit: Getty Images for Power Play

Credit: Getty Images for Power Play

The event was hosted by the fashion magazine at the St. Regis in Buckhead and is the first such summit Marie Claire has ever held in Atlanta.

But tiny trampolines aren’t the only antidote to burnout. Here are four strategies to manage feeling depleted, personally and professionally.

Credit: Getty Images for Power Play

Credit: Getty Images for Power Play

Take it on, don’t take it in

Burnout can come in many forms and from many places, but constantly dealing with crises at work can fan its flames. The World Health Organization defines burnout as “a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.”

In 2010, Kat Cole was the new president of Cinnabon during the heart of the Great Recession. Most of the franchisees were on the verge of bankruptcy and Cole was fielding their desperate, teary calls.

“It was an unbelievable amount of stress and pressure,” Cole, now the CEO of supplement brand AG1, told the audience.

Her friend saw what she was going through and told her about a technique to manage feelings of being overwhelmed by imagining a soft rose filter between herself and the other person, just a bit of distance to not absorb someone else’s feelings or the stress of a moment.

Credit: Business Wire

Credit: Business Wire

“I’m an off-the-charts empath,” Cole said. “Until I learned to navigate that, it was a negative experience.”

But her friend’s advice helped her to learn how to “take it on, don’t take it in.”

Set boundaries

For Katie Kime, founder of an eponymous brand of apparel and home decor, she manages burnout by making sure she has consistent time to be creative. She blocks two hours of her calendar every morning and her team knows not to book meetings or call her during that time.

“It really has just been transformative,” Kime said.

Kerr is also firm with her employees about respecting their time and hers. She doesn’t want her employees to work when they are off the clock unless there’s an emergency.

“I really try and be as respectful as I can about people’s time off,” Kerr said, because she wants them to be respectful of her time, too.

“It ultimately makes me a better leader when I can have a life outside of work,” she said.

Check in with yourself and others

Before getting out of bed, Daisy Auger-Dominguez, the panel’s moderator and author of “Burnt Out to Lit Up,” lists three things she is grateful for and three things that are important to get done that day.

“I’m grounding myself in how I want to show up … and when the unexpected things come, I’m clear on what’s really my priority today and what’s somebody else’s,” Auger-Dominguez said.

Credit: Getty Images for Marie Claire

Credit: Getty Images for Marie Claire

Once a month, Cole checks in with her employees with a set of six questions that she first started using with her husband nearly 10 years ago, asking:

Advocate for yourself

Burnout “is the sum total of hundreds and thousands of tiny betrayals of purpose, each one so minute that it hardly attracts notice,” Dr. Richard Gunderman, a radiologist and professor, wrote in The Atlantic more than a decade ago.

Kerr, Kime and Cole all agreed that advocating for yourself is essential to prevent those betrayals.

“The greatest thing you can do to prevent burnout is to deeply, deeply love yourself,” Cole said. “Because when you do, you will listen to your body more. You will make a bigger deal about the little things before they become big things. But if you feel you are second, third, fourth, fifth or worse, you will ignore those things in service of other people’s goals and needs.”

AJC Her+Story is a new series in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlighting women founders, creators, executives and professionals with in-depth profiles and stories exploring important topics. AJC Her+Story is about building a community. Know someone the AJC should feature in AJC Her+Story? Email us at herstory@ajc.com with your suggestions. Check out all of our AJC Her+Story coverage at www.ajc.com/herstory.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Report for America are partnering to add more journalists to cover topics important to our community. Please help us fund this important work here.