Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / The Cost of Being Always On
Transcript
- Lucas: Look, if we have been helping you think through a career move or decision lately, I want to mention that listener support keeps these conversations going. If you've gotten something out of them, buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo — that's F. E. X. I. N. G. O. A couple of dollars a month is genuinely what keeps these going. Luna: Yeah, it really does help us keep the quality up. And speaking of keeping things going, let's talk about the thing that keeps my phone buzzing at ten pm on a Tuesday. Lucas: The phantom vibration syndrome. Or rather, the real vibration of a Slack notification that demands immediate response. We used to talk about context switching as a productivity killer. But now it feels like we are living in a state of permanent context fragmentation. Luna: Exactly. It's not just that you switch tasks; it's that you never fully leave the task behind. Your brain stays half-in the meeting while you're reading an email about it. Lucas: Right. And the data supports this sense of intrusion. Studies on digital distraction suggest that after being interrupted, it takes nearly twenty-three minutes to get back to deep focus. But here is the catch: most people don't even finish that twenty-three minutes before the next ping arrives. Luna: So you are essentially stuck in a loop of shallow work for eight hours straight. That explains why I feel exhausted by three pm even though I barely moved from my chair. Lucas: It is cognitive depletion. You are burning glucose on attention regulation instead of creative problem solving. The interesting part is that this isn't just about willpower. It is about design. Our tools are designed to maximize engagement, not minimize interruption. Luna: Which means the burden falls on the individual to fight the system. That feels unfair. Is there actually a structural way to fix this, or do we just have to be stronger? Lucas: There is a structural angle. Look at companies like Basecamp or GitHub. They have explicitly moved away from real-time chat for non-urgent matters. They treat communication like mail, not fire alarms. You send a message, you wait for the reply. You don't expect an instant answer unless the building is literally on fire. Luna: That sounds revolutionary. Most managers would panic if someone didn't reply within five minutes. How do you sell that to leadership who equate speed with competence? Lucas: You sell it by showing them the cost of errors. Constant interruption leads to sloppy work. I remember reading about a financial firm that implemented a no-meeting Wednesday. Productivity went up because people could actually do the complex analysis required for their deals without checking their phones every four minutes. Luna: So the trade-off is slower communication for better output. That makes sense. But what about the junior employees who feel pressure to be always available to prove they are working hard? Lucas: That is the visibility trap again. We confuse presence with performance. In many tech roles, especially remote ones, being online becomes a proxy for contribution. But if your code doesn't merge or your report isn't filed, does it matter if you were logged in at midnight? Luna: No. But the fear of missing out on a critical update keeps people glued to their screens. How do you break that habit when the whole industry seems addicted to it? Lucas: You start by auditing your own notifications. Turn off all non-human alerts. No marketing emails, no app updates, no automated reports. Only direct messages from people actually need your immediate attention. Treat everything else as asynchronous. Luna: That sounds liberating but also terrifying. What if something urgent happens? You can't know what is urgent until you check. Lucas: This is the illusion of urgency. Most things are not urgent. If it was truly urgent, your boss would call you on the phone. The phone is the only channel that guarantees immediate attention. Everything else is a preference. Luna: I like that. The phone is the emergency exit. Everything else is just hallway noise. So, if I stop responding to Slack instantly, am I going to get fired? Lucas: Only if you work for a company that values theater over results. In a mature organization, clear deliverables matter more than response times. You set expectations. You say, I check messages twice a day. Then you stick to it. Luna: It requires confidence. And trust in your team. It feels like a lot of responsibility to put on the employee. Lucas: It is a cultural shift. But it starts with one person modeling the behavior. If you consistently deliver high-quality work without being online twenty-four seven, you force your manager to rethink their assumptions about availability. Luna: So it is a form of quiet rebellion. By being less available, you become more valuable because your focus is sharper. Lucas: Precisely. Deep work is scarce. Shallow work is abundant. If you can offer deep work on demand, you differentiate yourself from everyone else who is just chasing notifications. Luna: That is a much better career strategy than trying to be the fastest responder. Speed is cheap. Insight is expensive. Lucas: Exactly. And insight requires silence. It requires blocks of time where you are not thinking about what to type next. It is about protecting your mental space as fiercely as you protect your calendar. Luna: I think a lot of people struggle to define those blocks. They say they need focus time, but then they fill it with meetings anyway. Lucas: Because meetings are visible. You can see them on the calendar. Focus time is invisible. But if you want to advance your career, you need to produce visible results from invisible work. You have to make the output speak for itself. Luna: It feels counterintuitive in a world that rewards loudness. Why would anyone choose to be quiet and focused? Lucas: Because burnout is louder than success. Eventually, the noise gets too much. The people who survive and thrive are the ones who learn to tune it out. They treat their attention like a finite resource, which it is. Luna: So the lesson is to guard your attention like you guard your bank account. Don't spend it on things that don't pay dividends. Lucas: That is the right analogy. Every notification is a transaction. Ask yourself if the return on investment is worth the cost of your focus. Usually, it isn't. Luna: I am going to try turning off all non-essential notifications tomorrow. See if the world ends or if my actual work improves. Lucas: I bet your work improves. And if the world ends, well, at least you won't have seen the tweets about it until you checked your phone. Luna: Fair point. Here is to a quieter, more productive week for everyone listening. Lucas: Here is to it. Let us see if we can reclaim some of that twenty-three minutes back.