Since I'm a huge achievement whore and completionist, open world games in general can be quite taxing on me. To prevent myself from burning out on them, I tend to spend a lot of time in between such games playing my usual fallbacks (Fire Emblem, Pokémon, etc.); I almost never get bored of them.

As for Skyrim itself, I really haven't played it much; real life got in the way after I played through the opening in Helgen. Personally, I think the best way to prevent it from getting stale is to go in as blind as I reasonably can. I think some of the greatest experiences from games like Skyrim are when you dont know where to go or what to do, so you have to find out for yourself.

Unfortunately, my penchant for spoiling myself on game details and great memory make that goal a difficult one. I may not succeed entirely with Skyrim, but I do plan on going into Pokémon Y (which I have pre-ordered) with only the information given by press releases (e.g. the official website, Pokémon Smash, CoroCoro) leading up to the game's release.