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SMNTY Interviews: Shirley Leung · Stuff Mom Never Told You

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, this is Annie and Samantha.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: I'm welcome to stuff I never told you a production
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: of iHeart Radio, and today we are thrilled to be
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: joined by calumnist and associate editor at The Boston Globe
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: and now podcaster Shirley Long. Welcome. Hi, We're so excited
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: to have you.
• 0:31
  Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, we were just having a conversation about technology and weather.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: This is typical for all to start recording.
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: I'm getting Atlanta weather up here in Boston.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: We are not used to it. I mean one of
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: the things working from home. Honestly, we're not really used
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: to Atlanta weather either. But my closet gets really hot
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: and I can't have the AC running because it interferes
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: with the audio. So I had to come up with
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: some pretty creative ways to cool down.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: How do you do that? Do you put ice on
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: the floor?
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: Ice packs? Oh?
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Really? Yes?
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: I'm also embarrassed to say I don't do this, but
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: I did used to. You can put underwear in the freezer,
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: and then where.
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: An I don't we know each other enough to say
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: that I'm going to break some ice right here?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: We are now offering all.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, when you bring it underwear.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: I'm just you know, I feel like we're gonna be friends.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: So laid out there and needs you to know random
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: fact about her.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: Sometimes I don't do it anymore, but I did try it.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: It did work, did it?
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Like?
• 1:51
  Speaker 4: I have so many questions, but I don't feel like
• 1:52
  Speaker 4: this is the appropriate episode.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: We'll come back well, yeah, later later and underly to that,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: we are having a conversation about women. Well, I guess
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: kind of related women in work and burnouts and things
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: related to that. But first, Shirley, could you introduce yourself
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: to our audience.
• 2:14
  Speaker 3: So my name is Shirley Lung and I have been
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: a journalist for twenty years at the Boston Globe. I've
• 2:21
  Speaker 3: done a little bit of everything. I've been a reporter,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: I've been an editor, and now I'm a columnist and
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: a podcast host. My podcast is just turning one, so
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: I'm a podcast baby compared to you guys. And then
• 2:34
  Speaker 3: the podcast is called Say More. And I launched a
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: column a little more than a decade ago because I
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: wanted to shine a spotlight on the lack of women
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: in corporate boardrooms. And I just figured that if you
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: could write it with when I say a column, I
• 2:50
  Speaker 3: can I can have an opinion, right, So I felt
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: like with an opinion voice, having a voice in a
• 2:57
  Speaker 3: column writing about a topic like that, I could get
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: a lot more done. And of course, if you think
• 3:02
  Speaker 3: about a dozen years ago, not a lot of people
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: were talking about this topic, and of course today everybody
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: is talking about, you know, the lack of women in boardrooms,
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: the lack of women in leadership. So I kind of
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: hit it at the right moment writing about that topic
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: and I've brought it into diversity in the workplace. And
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: my podcast is I Interviews. It's a weekly podcast and
• 3:25
  Speaker 3: interview guests in and around Boston about their ideas because
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: you know, we're Boston's known for our big ideas for sure.
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Yes, and we do want to talk about the podcast definitely,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: and congratulations on your year anniversary, thank you. But before
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: we talk about that, I I was wondering if you
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: could tell us because I was listening to some interviews
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: with you about how you got into journalism and then
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: how you kind of transitioned into editing and then now podcasting.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: And it's a long time interest that you've had of
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: telling stories.
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: Correct, Yes, So I have been writing and being a
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: journalist since I was like fifteen or sixteen years old
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: in high school, and I kind of just really curious
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: about the world. Though frankly, in the beginning, I thought
• 4:15
  Speaker 3: it was really cool to see my name in print,
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: to see my byline, and so I was like, oh,
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: this is so cool. And I thought it was really
• 4:23
  Speaker 3: cool to interview the high school principal and grill him.
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: And then and you know, so I did it in
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  Speaker 3: high school, and then I went to college and I
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: didn't and I wrote for the college paper, and and
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: then I was thinking, oh, I got to find a
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  Speaker 3: summer job, and then I just applied for a summer internship,
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  Speaker 3: and I kind of just stuck with journalism by accident,
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  Speaker 3: you know. And I but I've loved it. I've been
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: able to see much of the country. I grew up
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  Speaker 3: outside of Baltimore in Maryland, and I did an internship
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  Speaker 3: in New Orleans at the New Orleans Times picky un
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: and then I went to Chicago the Chicago Tribune, and
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: I've worked for the Wall Street Journal in Los Angeles
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: and in Chicago, and then I've been in Boston for
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  Speaker 3: twenty years. And I love I've been the business editor
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: at the Globe and I managed people, and then i've
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: was an interim editorial page editor as well. But I
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: really love writing columns. I love having an opinion. I
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: actually didn't think I would like column writing. If you
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: guys have a little time, I have a funny story
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: about how I became a columnist. I was the business
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: edit at the Globe at the time, and the new
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: editor of the Globe at the time wanted another business columnists,
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: and so I was in charge of the search to
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: hire another business columnist for the Globe. And I looked around.
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: I didn't really follow columnists at the time, and so
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: I decided I read a lot of people. I you know,
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: after a few months, I kind of gave up. I
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: couldn't find anyone. And then one day I said to myself,
• 5:57
  Speaker 3: I said, you know what, I think I could do it.
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  Speaker 3: You know, I know all the players in town I have.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: I think I could, you know, if asked, I think
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  Speaker 3: I could have an opinion on something. I mean, I
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: like to say I I pulled a Dick Cheney, right.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: I was in charge of the search.
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  Speaker 2: I'm glad that I.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: Was charged with that. I appointed myself and so and
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: it's been a great experience. I mean, one of the
• 6:26
  Speaker 3: reasons I decided, even though I love being a manager
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: and I loved editing, they're not a lot of female
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: Asian like journalists columnists. I mean, I knew if I
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: did it, you could probably count the number of Asian
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: women writing columns in the US on one hand. And
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: so and I still think there's only still probably a
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: half a dozen of us at the major papers. And
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: so I just knew that it would. It's a voice
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: that needed to be out there. And and I'm just
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: glad that the you know, my editors at the Globe
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: agreed with me. And so I've been doing this now
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: for you know, almost almost twelve years now.
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: Which is awesome. And Yeah, Honestly, when you look at
• 7:11
  Speaker 4: for any field, including podcasting, the amount of Asian women
• 7:15
  Speaker 4: that are in hosts are so low, so low. Yeah,
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  Speaker 4: Like for women host in general, for podcasting is ridiculously slow,
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  Speaker 4: especially compared to the amount of women who actually listen
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: to the podcast I make up the own I did it, significantly.
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: Lower than you would think.
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and then when you look at and you like
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: put into Asian podcasters, I'm like, hey, welcome, welcome to
• 7:37
  Speaker 4: the family.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: I'm glad to see you your show.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: I know, you know there's there's a you know there's
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: a trade group, right, there's like an Asian podcasting trade group.
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: You know that. I guess I get it. Yeah, I'll
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: I just I just found out about them a year ago.
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  Speaker 3: It's like, okay, there's enough of us. I think there's
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  Speaker 3: a few hundred.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, so I saw.
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  Speaker 4: I don't know if we're talking about the same one,
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  Speaker 4: because I I am a member of a group that
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  Speaker 4: I silently watched from afar like about like they do
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: like meetings and awards of like yes, yes, let's do.
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  Speaker 1: This, so I do. We will have destroy secrets later.
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  Speaker 3: So I spent most of my career in print, and
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  Speaker 3: then when I launched the column, I decided that I
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: wanted to be multi platform. I wanted to go on TV.
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  Speaker 3: I wanted to do radio, and because the media market
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: is so fractured now, to have true impact, you need
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: to go on multiple platforms. And so a decade ago
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  Speaker 3: I started as a weekly guest on our local NPR
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: station here in Boston GBH. And so I'm a weekly
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  Speaker 3: guest on a very popular radio show called Boston Public Radio.
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  Speaker 3: And so I'm on for half an hour, I talk
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  Speaker 3: about my columns. I talk about business stories and topics.
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  Speaker 3: And so that's really how I got interested in audio.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: And then in the last few years, I was thinking, oh,
• 8:58
  Speaker 3: I'd love to do a podcast. And I have to
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: say I was not a podcast listener, you know, until
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: the pandemic. And so I when we were all working
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: from home, trapped at home, I you know, began walking
• 9:13
  Speaker 3: the dog in the afternoon. That was my you know,
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: assignment my husband usually did. But now I was like, no,
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I need to get out of the house. I need
• 9:20
  Speaker 3: to get away from a commuter. I'm going to walk
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: the dog. And that's when I started listening to podcasts,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: and I really enjoyed them. And so and and as
• 9:29
  Speaker 3: you know, a lot of print journalists now are doing podcasts,
• 9:33
  Speaker 3: and so they're kind of making that leap. And so
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: it's it's been It's hard, though. It's hard to build
• 9:39
  Speaker 3: an audience. I really I don't know how you guys
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: do it. I mean, it's kudos to you for for
• 9:45
  Speaker 3: building an audience. I mean that is so hard to do,
• 9:48
  Speaker 3: especially when you're not part of like a big network.
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: You know, you're kind of doing it on your own.
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, you you are, but like you know what
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: I'm saying, like it's your startup. You know, that's hard, right,
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: you know.
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  Speaker 4: I will say we were very bless the guests, fortunate
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: to have people who already created that base for us
• 10:05
  Speaker 4: who one of them, Caroline was from the print journalism
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  Speaker 4: world as well as she was from a small newspaper,
• 10:10
  Speaker 4: jumped into podcasting as well. So right along with you,
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  Speaker 4: I do have to ask, what do you see as
• 10:27
  Speaker 4: some of the big differences and or better or good
• 10:31
  Speaker 4: coming from print to podcasting.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, they're so different, you know. And I've learned
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: so much working with my producer over the past year.
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: And you know, the questions I asked as a journalist
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: I was told very early on surely the questions you're
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: asking these are print journalists questions you were aiming to
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: get information out of people. That's not the purpose of
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: the podcast. You want to ask questions to get your
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: guests to tell stories, to kind of exhibit emotion, you know,
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: And you're not looking for answers all the time. And
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: so it's you got to find that right mix, you know.
• 11:09
  Speaker 3: And so and so it's it's been really eye opening
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: to to kind of go to to see what are
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: good print questions and what are good podcast questions.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: I wouldn't know what print questions look like because I've
• 11:21
  Speaker 4: never been in the Like that's such a different look
• 11:24
  Speaker 4: and like what you're talking about and how you like
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: go forward things. I'm also very not great at writing,
• 11:30
  Speaker 4: so it's a good thing, like like, we'll just keep
• 11:34
  Speaker 4: it there. I'm obviously more a podcaster.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: And he just puts her head down just saying, but
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: no comment as an actual writer. I'll give her that.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Like she does write a book to we did. We
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: had a lot of help. I had a lot of help.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: You can get it wherever.
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  Speaker 4: But even with the books, that's different from actual doing
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: media and doing like newspaper articles in columns.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like it's such a different world.
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  Speaker 3: It is different. It's very dirt, and I still feel
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: my comfort zone is still writing. I mean, the one
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: thing about doing the podcast it takes away from you know,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: writing more columns, and there's so many topics to write
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: about and in Boston, and so I miss that.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah, speaking of can you kind of talk to us
• 12:26
  Speaker 4: about this podcast? About your one year old podcast?
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: So we did this four part series on Burnout called
• 12:34
  Speaker 3: Beating burnout, And it started out as I was just
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: when I think of myself right now, coming out of
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: the pandemic, I've been on this kind of I know,
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: it's like a two year quest to kind of feel
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: like my old self. And now that we're four years
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: out of the beginning of the pandemic, I'm like, maybe
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: maybe I can never get back to being my old self.
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: But how do I get a little closer? And something
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: changed for me and I can't quite put my finger
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: on it. And I just remember in twenty twenty, you know,
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: we're all working from home. I was on deadline a lot.
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: You know, my kids were home from school or in Massachusetts,
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: a lot of the school systems. By the fall of
• 13:25
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty, they were on this crazy hybrid system. You know.
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: They would go to school for two hours Monday Wednesday,
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: like Friday, in the morning, and then on Tuesday, Thursday,
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: they'd go in the afternoon for two hours. And I mean,
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: you needed like a I don't know, it was like
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: a part time job, just keeping crack of their schedules,
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: you know. And meanwhile, I actually set my column aside
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: and told my editors, you know, very early on the
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: pandemics like, I don't think people want to know my
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: opinion right now. I think you need help covering the news.
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: And so I said I because as much as as
• 14:00
  Speaker 3: COVID was a public health crisis, it was also an
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: economic crisis, you know, my wheelhouse's business reporting, and so
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: I ended up writing about all the jobs that were
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: lost and all the restaurants that were closed, and then
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: and then after they were closed, they had all the
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: reopening and so it was a you know, one of
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: the probably the biggest news story of my career, and
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: so it was so busy. I just remember it was
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: I just remember by the fall of twenty twenty, I
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: was I was pretty burnt out. And that was a
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: time when and when you're at work you actually started
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: maybe before you never told your bosses you were burnt out,
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: but now it was okay. It was okay and actually
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: welcomed that you say you're burned out, because everybody's going
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: through the same thing. And so I did this series
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: to figure out how do I get back to feeling
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: like work isn't worked anymore? And that that was kind
• 14:56
  Speaker 3: of my north star to figure that out. And so
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: that's why we launched this series. We talked to a
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: Harvard Medical School doctor. We talked to Cal Newport, who's
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: a productivity expert. We talked to Christa Tibbett, who's a
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: host of On Being. And then there's another local person
• 15:15
  Speaker 3: who lives in Western mass Emily Nagalski, who's uh, she
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: was interesting. She's a she's a sex educator. Then she
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: became a burnout expert. And how that came to be
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: is that when she wrote her first book on sex,
• 15:29
  Speaker 3: you know her her whole thing is helping women feel
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: more confident about their bodies. And so she's on her
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: book tour and she said the number one topic when
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: she went on our book tour is people were saying,
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: you know that chapter you wrote about burnout, the relationship
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: between sex and burnout, and that that was the most
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: important chapter of the book for many of her readers.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: And so she just knew that there was there was
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: a good topic here, and so she ended up writing
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: a book with her sister about burnout.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: Yes, you have so many fascinating guests on the show,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: and I do want to come back to some of
• 16:07
  Speaker 2: the things that you specifically look into in episodes, and
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: also more about burnout obviously, but a couple of things
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: before we get into this. One of the things I
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: thought was interesting when I was researching this, reading into this,
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: was that you talk about the stress paradox, which I
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: find fascinating, and especially during the pandemic when a lot
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: of us were isolated in one way or another, Can
• 16:34
  Speaker 2: you describe what that is?
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Please? So the stress paradox is this idea that everybody
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: is stressed out, right, but nobody wants to admit it, right,
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: But I think during the pandemic it was okay, you know,
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: it was and because everybody was going through it, you know,
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: the CEOs down to the rank and file workers, and
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: if you think about COVID, was this collective experience that
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: we all had and unless you were one hundred years old,
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: you never experienced it before, right, And so it was
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: all uncharted territory for so many people. So, you know,
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: in the beginning, I think it was very isolating, right,
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: that everybody goes through it was very isolating. But I
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: think towards towards you know, maybe you know, I don't know,
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: by the end of twenty twenty, it was okay to
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: talk about it. It's okay to talk about how stressed
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: out and burnt out. We all were during the COVID
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: and employers were doing something about it.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: Yes, it is interesting how it's become just accepted. Like
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: a lot of times when we all start a podcast now,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: we'll say, oh, how are you, and the other person
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: will beel like, eh.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: I know it's this block, this feeling block, right, I
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: mean I feel better after going through this, you know,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: burnout series. I actually use a lot of tips, you know,
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: to help me get rid of the blas or at
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: least understand the blaus. That almost makes me feel better
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: about the blog.
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: Right, you know.
• 18:06
  Speaker 4: I find it fascinating when you were talking about trying
• 18:08
  Speaker 4: to get back to your old self pre COVID, pre lockdown,
• 18:12
  Speaker 4: because for me and I think Anny and are we
• 18:15
  Speaker 4: talk about this all the time, especially because when we
• 18:17
  Speaker 4: go out and doing things with groups and such, I
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: am naturally an introvert. But then going through the pandemic,
• 18:23
  Speaker 4: I was like, yeah, I'm retreating into myself and never
• 18:26
  Speaker 4: want to come out again, and doing so causes me
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: social anxiety or just pure out anxiety. And for me,
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: my head is like this is the new norm for me,
• 18:36
  Speaker 4: as well as the fact of like maybe this is
• 18:38
  Speaker 4: part of aging. Maybe this is me, you know, going
• 18:40
  Speaker 4: into my whatever next steps in life is, but never
• 18:44
  Speaker 4: really considering that there's a possibility of trying to get
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: back to pre pandemic. So I find this concept very interesting.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: Did you have a lot of discussions and have you
• 18:56
  Speaker 4: felt like you've gotten closer to that pre person?
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: I mean, I feel like I have adjusted my expectation.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: I think, you know, I would say twenty twenty one,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty two, even twenty twenty three is like, how
• 19:15
  Speaker 3: do I get back to my old self? And now
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking, I don't think I can go back to
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: that kind of my old self, at least not every day.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Maybe there'll be some day, there will be days I
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: feel like that. But Samantha, I also think a lot
• 19:31
  Speaker 3: about the pandemic changed me, changed my view, you know,
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: and it is you know, I mean, I'm getting older.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: I saw a lot of death. I saw a lot
• 19:41
  Speaker 3: of you know, and also you know, I saw a
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: lot of people retiring and doing something completely different with
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: their lives. And so I think, I think I'm you know,
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: and my kids they're getting older, you know, they're I'm
• 19:54
  Speaker 3: an eleven year old and thirteen year old now and
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: so now I can imagine them at an age where
• 20:00
  Speaker 3: they're not here with me anymore, you know, they're out
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: of the house. So I'm very more mindful that these
• 20:06
  Speaker 3: are incredibly stressful time to be a working parent. But
• 20:13
  Speaker 3: these these days won't last. These days will go by
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: really fast, and I will miss my my crazy, chaotic
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: working mom life, you know. And so I'm trying to
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: kind of soak it all in and enjoy it. And
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: I'm and I'm trying to find the right balance and
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: and and Samantha, I'm so glad you brought this idea
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: of because I feel like my I used to go
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: out to a lot of events. I like talking to people,
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: but now it's kind of exhausting.
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: That's exactly what we ex slayed, Like, what what happened?
• 20:50
  Speaker 4: Now We're all struggling conversation face to face?
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: Right, I was like, I got I got to put
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: on makeup, I got to put on real clothes, I
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: got to leave the house.
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I'll have to show a shy I guess I have to.
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: I was like, what, So now it's like, oh, wow,
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: this is so much work, and so it's it's it's
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: it's hard. It's hard to get out. And one of
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: the things I also noticed is that, uh, you know,
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: when I go to the office. Now, you know we
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: our policy at the Globe is three days. They would
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: like people to be in the office three days a week.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: And that's actually, you know, pretty good. You know a lot.
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: When you go to other workplaces, sometimes it's only you know,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: it's pretty empty. But when you go into the Globe newsroom,
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: it's it's actually it feels busy. But when I go
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: to the Globe newsroom, now, I mean I can't work.
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: I mean people are talking to me. It's like, why
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: are you talking to me? I need to work. You know,
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: I can't concentrate anymore. Yesterday I was trying. So I
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: try when I used to be able to sit in
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: the office and write stories, and now I try to
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: write at home because I need utter full concentration. But yesterday,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: but sometimes you can't avoid that. Yesterday I was on deadline.
• 22:00
  Speaker 3: I had to write in the office, and so I
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: had my air pods on, and then on top of
• 22:06
  Speaker 3: my air pods, I had my noise canceling all things,
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: and people were still trying to talk to me.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: You need like a don't disturb sign.
• 22:17
  Speaker 4: I do.
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: Oh police did. That's a good idea. Someone said I
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: should put up like because I also sit I recently
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: got moved at the office, and I sit in a
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: high traffic corridor. So I think I might read a
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: whole column about that. Do you have any advice if
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: you if you mean, I mean, it's like, it's like
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: I feel like I mean, I feel like I'm in
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: like Times Square, you know. I think there's so many
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: people talking to me and walking around and so. And
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: someone said I should put like like screens up right,
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: I don't know, or a wall of plants, tall plants.
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: I was like, I feel like in the jungle in
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: a resort exactly. That's even better.
• 23:02
  Speaker 3: So it's very hard. So that's also very confusing to
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: me because I'm supposed to be in the office. I'm
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: supposed to be working and concentrating, and I can't always
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: do my best work when I'm in the office. It's like, well,
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: that's so that's so strange to me.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, before we moved offices pre pandemic, the office was
• 23:25
  Speaker 4: for our podcasters, all the podcast people. It was open concept,
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: but everybody had their own stations.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: But it was so quiet.
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: It was one of the quietest places I'd ever entered
• 23:36
  Speaker 4: in my life that I was unnerving that I just
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: looked around and all you could do.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: He was clickti clack, and it would be full. Everybody
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: would be there.
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: But I was like, really, they know, they know how
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: to work the Wow.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: I love that click clack. That's now.
• 24:03
  Speaker 4: I did have another question, because you specifically have this
• 24:06
  Speaker 4: understanding of what it is to have children in school
• 24:09
  Speaker 4: during the pandemic as well as a full time, very
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: demanding job. How did you balance all of that Because
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: one of the things that we had talked about soon
• 24:19
  Speaker 4: after we were releasing episodes about the pandemic was the
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: amount of women who had so much on their plate
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: that they ended up having to give up something in
• 24:30
  Speaker 4: order to balance everything out, and then feeling so burnt
• 24:33
  Speaker 4: out because of that, and or also unfulfilled because of
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: having to let something go. For you, as someone who's
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: pretty much in high demand in your field, what was
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: that like working through that. How did you survive without
• 24:48
  Speaker 4: burning out? Or if you did, how did you survive that?
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: I mean, when I look back, it's like, I don't
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: know how I survived that area. I just remember, I
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: tell this story I had a colleague who was teaching
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: a journals some class, and she asked me to speak
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: to her class and we were talking about, you know,
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: working during the pandemic and I and then her journals
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: students had to write, you know, a story off of
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: you know, my presentation or my talk to the class.
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: And she said, everybody started with the same lead, which is,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: you know, the lead is the first graph or the
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: first anecdote. And I told this story about how is
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: you know? I was. I was on deadline yet again
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: for another page one story. And it's like five o'clock
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: and one of my kids comes up and he's probably
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: like I don't know seven. He's like, I'm hungry, mom,
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: And I'm like, I'm on deadline. My editor has said,
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: you know, he needs the story. Now I'm like shoving
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: potato ships in his face. It's like, I was like,
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: you're like, why are you hungry? Oh wait, it's dinner
• 25:52
  Speaker 3: time here, just ampet ships. And so I think I
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: scared a couple of people away from from becoming a journalist.
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: But yeah, you just I mean, part of the sacrifice
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: was your family, you know, And I mean it was
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: it was I didn't you know, I even though my
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: kids were we were all home together. I didn't spend
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: as much time quality time with my kids because I
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: was working a lot. Though the upside was we always
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: had dinner together, I mean most nights of the week
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: because the restaurants were closed, you didn't go out, so
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: at least we had, you know, dinner, dinner more times
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: you know, at home together than I could ever remember.
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: And so but it was it was hard, and you know,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: and I'm just glad that by the end of twenty
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: twenty I recognized that I could not I something needed
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: to change. I you know, I would say by twenty
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: twenty one, I took more breaks during the day. I
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: took more walks. I mean I do. I didn't used to.
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: You know how many steps I have? I mean now
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: I make sure I have ten thousand steps a day,
• 27:05
  Speaker 3: you know, because that can be hard to do if
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: you're working from home. And now through this burnout series,
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: I'm learning to breathe more. I'm learning to slow down.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: I think that's been the next phase, and I'm learning
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: to I mean, one of the things I learned is
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: that what the doctors call a new kind of burnout
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: that's happening from all this from the pandemic and from
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: working from home. I mean it used to be. The
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: classic symptoms of burnout used to be, you know, you're exhausted,
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: you can't get out of bed, you don't feel like
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: working right, you're tired. The new burnout is you can't
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: disconnect from work. You are on all the time, whether
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: it's your phone, your laptop, Slack, texts, Facebook, you just
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: can't disconnect. You are on your your mind is going
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: twenty four to seven. And if you about the tech companies,
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: they've designed their software, they've designed their hardware to make
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: you addicted. And so you have to be mindful of that,
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: especially those of us who are working from home more
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: days than going into the office or leaving their homes.
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: So some of that advice because we need to might
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: really too hard for that one speaking too lovely.
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: But should you guys both work from home full time? Yes?
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: And because we are podcasters who have five to six
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: episodes a week that we have to be constantly on.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: When we don't watch anything for fun, we watch it
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: to be like, oh, this could be this, this could
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: be this right, which is why you'll find our podcast
• 28:45
  Speaker 4: is like all over the place with books and movies
• 28:47
  Speaker 4: because we have to find and not that there's not enough,
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: there is, but it has to have also mean there
• 28:52
  Speaker 4: has to be enough information, which is sometimes lacking. So
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: for us, even when we're not working, even though we
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: may not be recording or even writing, we're constantly.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Thinking about it.
• 29:04
  Speaker 4: The amount of social media I consume and then I'm like, okay,
• 29:07
  Speaker 4: this is podcast. I literally have sections called podcast ideas
• 29:10
  Speaker 4: because I have to say that and then do research
• 29:13
  Speaker 4: to see these viable. But I know, like an He's
• 29:16
  Speaker 4: done this for multiple more years than I have, but
• 29:18
  Speaker 4: constantly where it never leaves us. So this level of
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: burnout is very real because also we want to be
• 29:25
  Speaker 4: relevant and we want to have integrity and what we deliver,
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: but sometimes it's hard to feel like we're doing that
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: when we're always on right.
• 29:34
  Speaker 3: And I used to be one of these, I mean
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: until this burnout series and talking to these experts, I mean,
• 29:40
  Speaker 3: I used to be what both of you are doing,
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: you just you feel like I just need more input, right,
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: More input equals more output, right, And I learned I
• 29:51
  Speaker 3: talked to this guy named cal Newport who's an MIT
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: trained computer scientist, and he was he was probably he's
• 29:59
  Speaker 3: probably my favorite guest. But but well, because I'm I'm when
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: you think about it, I mean, those of us who
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: love to multitask and you know, get a lot done,
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: and especially for you guys doing five or six episodes
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: a week, and who knows what else you're doing, right,
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: And you know, his whole idea is that working more
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: and being productive. We've kind of become addicted to just working, working, working,
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: and when what we really need to be doing is
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: to measure our productivity by the quality of the output,
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: you know. And so he was saying, you know, he
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: had this, he had like three I love his mantra.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: He had this. He's written books on the topic, he
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: has a podcast, The Whole Thing, and his the three
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: things that he talks about a lot is to do
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: fewer things, work at a natural pace, and obsess over quality.
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: And so I think about that a lot. And and
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: he's interesting. He's interesting because he's a working father. He
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: has three kids, maybe three sons, three boys, all school age,
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: you know, young, elementary school, maybe middle school. And so
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: he started on this productivity quest how how can I
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: work less and do more? Because I want to spend
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: more time with my kids, that and you don't hear
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: that a lot from from dads. And so he he
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: kind of built all of this so he can spend
• 31:30
  Speaker 3: more time with his family. And he's really thought about
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: he and he's interesting because he's a he's a he's
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: a computer scientist. He loves technology, understands technology, and his
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: whole field of research is how technology is is is
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: really we're addicted to it and and we're not this
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: generation and we're not used to kind of unplugging or
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: not used to functioning, and we I guess, I guess
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: his whole thing is like, for example, he tells me
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: when I'm working, when I need to do deep thinking,
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: like I'm working on something and I need to really concentrate,
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: make sure your phone is in another room, don't look
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: at your phone, don't look at your tax He even
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: we even talked about spaces, you know, because I was
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: telling him, I don't think I can't work in the office,
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: and I can't work from home either. I don't know
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: about you guys, but now working from home, I'm so distracted.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: I think about laundry all the time. I think about
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: the dirty dishes, the dirty dishes. Right, and then during
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: the summer. You know, some of my my kids are
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: you know, teen and tween. They don't always want to
• 32:47
  Speaker 3: go to camp. So they just like their favorite thing
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: is to just stay home and do nothing, which then
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: that means I'm the lunch late you know, and then
• 32:56
  Speaker 3: I'm the dog walker in the afternoon. Right, so it's like,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: what am I going to get my real work done?
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: And so anyways, so so he coined something called work
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: from near home. He thinks that's the future of work.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: He's at, you know, Georgetown University. So we were recording virtually,
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: and I said, where are you talking from right now?
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: It's like I'm talking from this office space that I've
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: leased in the little town I live in. And I
• 33:26
  Speaker 3: was like, oh my god, you really are working from
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: near home. And then I started googling, and I realized, like,
• 33:32
  Speaker 3: even in my town, my little suburban town, there is
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: a I can lease office space, you know for two
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: or three hundred dollars a month, you know, kind of
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: a I guess almost like the we work concept has
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: come to the suburbs. And so and then when I
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: started asking other people who you know, have their own businesses,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: you know, kind of PR consultants or whatever, and they're like, oh, yeah,
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: I've been doing that. I was like, oh, I was like, oh,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: maybe I need to jump on that. I have it.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: I'm thinking about because I'm also cheap.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: And I love so cheap you guys.
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't even join a gym because I'm like,
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: I'll never go to the gym enough. I'm just so
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: it's like, so it's actually when I think about joining
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: the gym, it's like it's like, you know, should I
• 34:17
  Speaker 3: rent you know, yeah? Should I also rent office space
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: on my own? So he was interesting. He was saying
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: that that's what employees should do. They should give that
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: as an option to people, you know, because you you
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: might get higher quality work from your employees because they're
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: not at home doing laundry and thinking about laundry. You know,
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: they're in a special space, you know, associated with work.
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: And I guess the upside is you're not bombarded like
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: for me, like you don't have colleagues talking to the time.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: But I know, I feel bad because I love my colleagues.
• 34:52
  Speaker 3: I love the news room. I love it all right.
• 34:55
  Speaker 3: One of the best perks is is working in the news.
• 34:57
  Speaker 3: Working in a newsroom and talking to all these people
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: and learning all these different stuff and chit chatty. But
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: I find like, I because I'm not used to being
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: in the office, I can spend my entire day going
• 35:09
  Speaker 3: from desk to desk. It's like it's like one It's
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: like one big cocktail party, you know, except we're not
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: drinking cocktails. It's like water and coffee.
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: I mean, that was definitely a pre pandemic thing. I'm
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: like it just because I'm at the office, I'm on
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: the clock, it doesn't even matter. I'm I'm producing. But
• 35:26
  Speaker 4: if I'm at home, I have to prove. I have
• 35:28
  Speaker 4: to prove to you what I'm doing. Now that we
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: work from home in a different manner, it's a little
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: different attitudes, but pre pre pandemic, that's what I would
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: used to think and be like, if I'm at homeworking,
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: I have to prove to them this is worth me
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: working from home. But if I'm at the office, I'm
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: a socialized with my coworkers because like, yeah, I like them,
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: and I'm here.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Seeing here, Well that's my life now. If I don't
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: have to have any get any work done. I love
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: being in the office.
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: It's perfect.
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: It's perfect.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: It is you show adult socialization time.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, they always come talk to you.
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: Look.
• 36:06
  Speaker 3: Look, so do you ever leave your podcast studios and leave?
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: You must do events? So that's your time out right
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: to do events.
• 36:17
  Speaker 4: Sometimes we have to do events. The way that they
• 36:20
  Speaker 4: have set up the new office, they have a lot more.
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: They do have a lot of studios, but we have
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: like one hundred and eighty podcasts I think can on
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: landa alone. So getting studio time camp like, they encourage
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: you to come, but it's not necessarily possible for everyone
• 36:35
  Speaker 4: to be there. And again, as we are now homebodies,
• 36:39
  Speaker 4: I think I've been to the office three times since
• 36:43
  Speaker 4: they've opened, as well as the fact that we recorded
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: twice there.
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: I mean, I have to say, it is so remarkable
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: the technology to be able to record from home. And
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: we have a tiny podcast studio at the Globe. I
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: mean it's it's actually hard to fit three p in there,
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, we just recorded something and we had
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: four people in the studio and it was really cozy,
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: and so I mean it's the size of a closet,
• 37:08
  Speaker 3: but four people in there. And so a lot of
• 37:11
  Speaker 3: times my producers like just record at home. Yeah, you know,
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: I've got a you know, a mic, I've got a laptop,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: I got a background I got I got my circle light.
• 37:28
  Speaker 1: We love technology.
• 37:30
  Speaker 4: It honestly because of the pandemic, we realized, oh, that's
• 37:35
  Speaker 4: as long as we have the equipment, we're good.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: Like, yeah, yeah, I'm just so, I'm I'm sure. It's
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: like amazing everybody. That's why everyone can do podcasts, right,
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: I mean you can. You can set up your own
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: radio station at home. Basically, it's amazing.
• 37:49
  Speaker 4: It is, it's amazing. And again, this is also the
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: problem with Annie and I are like, we never stopped.
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: There's no reason to stop unless we are physically unable
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: to that kind any excuse kind of comes out the window.
• 38:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: I was recently on You've touched on a lot of
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: questions I've written already.
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: When that happened.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: No, it's good. I think we can tease apart some
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: more things.
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: I have more things to say.
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, yes, this might be. Some of these are
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: kind of like my stream of consciousness. So we'll see
• 38:21
  Speaker 2: if he even resonates with anyone else. I was recently
• 38:24
  Speaker 2: on vacation and my friends were I was working, and
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: they all kind of came up to me and they
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: were like, you know, I'm jealous of your job in
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: a lot of ways, but I really like that I
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: clock in, clock out, and I'm not doing what you're doing.
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: And I was just thinking about it because that's always
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: been the case since I started this job. But I
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: was thinking about the beginning of the pandemic, and we
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: were having conversations about what this is going to look like,
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: what are we going to do, and all kinds of
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: ideas were getting thrown around beginning. And a coworker friend
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: of ours we had a meeting and she kind of
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: was very adamant, like I need to work, do not
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: take the work from me, because that's how she handled
• 39:15
  Speaker 2: her stress of the pandemic. It was like a yes distractor.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: And I feel like I do that too. I get
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: stressed and I'm like, you know what I could do.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I could work on something and it will distract me.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: And I feel I've seen that with a lot of
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: my women colleagues, less so than men. But now it
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: feels like we're all tired, and we're all like, Okay,
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I want maybe that part of my brain that shouldn't
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: be working right now wants to work, but I'm so
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: tired I can't do it right now. And you know,
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: we've been talking a lot about the work life balance
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: for if you have kids, which was huge during the
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: pandemic and caused a lot of women to drop out
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: of a lot of like academia and things like that.
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: But you know, I don't have any kids, and I'm
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: also just like, how do you balance things? I guess
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: is what I'm saying. When you're kind of defining your
• 40:24
  Speaker 2: worth through work, which is an unhealthy thing that I
• 40:29
  Speaker 2: feel like the unit us is kind of bad about,
• 40:32
  Speaker 2: and you're just stressed. I basically I'm asking for therapy.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: I keep going. You shared me for me your underwear, I.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: You see her, So here we go.
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: I mean, I do feel like the pandemic has really
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: forced me to have priorities, to make priorities, you know,
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: and to and I think I'm at a point where
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: I'm I just have to think about what's important to me.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: And I think I've decided after going through this pandemic,
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: is that I my north star right at this moment
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: is to see my kids grow up and be part
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: of their lives, you know, at this age, because one
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: of the things that people don't tell you I don't
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: have kids, but you'll appreciate this is that when this
• 41:27
  Speaker 3: is there's a sense that when they're babies, you feel
• 41:30
  Speaker 3: like they need so much attention and you need to
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: give a lot of yourself to your babies. But then
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: you realize as they get older, they actually need you more. Now,
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: when they're actually walking and talking and they're going through
• 41:45
  Speaker 3: this these middle school years or teen years, that's when
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: they actually really really need mom and dad. Because when
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: they are babies, you can outsource a lot of stuff,
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: or you know, or you could just I mean, you
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: could you get through it, you know, and but you
• 42:02
  Speaker 3: can't outsource a lot of the parenting as they get older,
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: so that you actually need to spend more time with
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: your kids. And I decide I don't want to go crazy,
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: and so I'm kind of making choices. I mean, I'm
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: still ambitious, and I feel like I think the cost
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: for me is that I'm really hard on myself, you know,
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: I'm really like, oh, look, so and so did this,
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: you know, And of course I know like they don't.
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: They're also not dealing with some of the stuff I'm
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: dealing with, you know, or and so they have a
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: little more time to do X, Y and Z, you know,
• 42:37
  Speaker 3: and but I try to. I try to think about
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: it as my kids won't be here for that much,
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: you know that. You know, it's it's maybe it's another
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: like four or five years of grinding it out, you know,
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: this work life, trying to balance out parenting, and then
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: after that, I have all this time to to kind
• 42:56
  Speaker 3: of gos go a little faster. And I guess you
• 42:59
  Speaker 3: just have to make that decision. I mean, one of
• 43:01
  Speaker 3: the one of my we did a bonus episode of
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: the Burnout series called It's the Founding Members of the
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: No Club. Do you have you heard of this club?
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: The No Club? Oh my god, they are so amazing.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: There are four academics around Pittsburgh and they started I
• 43:20
  Speaker 3: don't know, maybe a seven eight years ago and they
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: were just you know, uh, academics, working moms, and they
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: were just overwhelmed. And they decided and they were like,
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: you know, economists and other researchers, and they decided to
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: meet monthly over drinks at a restaurant and talk about
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: like what do I do I'm always burnt out? You know,
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: and why why? And why does it affect women? You know?
• 43:50
  Speaker 3: They kind of came up with this idea that women
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: in the workplace, we tend to do what they call
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: the non promotable tasks. We mentor people, we throw the
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: retirement parties, you know, we do all these things that
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: take away from work that will make the firm money.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: And so as a result, we don't focus on the
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: promotable tasks. And so, and they did this research showing
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: that women always say yes. They tend to say yes,
• 44:25
  Speaker 3: and other women know women say yes, so they tend
• 44:28
  Speaker 3: to ask other women to do certain tasks as a result.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: And so so now I'm learning to say no more
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: a lot more, and that has helped a lot and
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: to kind of focus on saying yes to things that
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: will further my career or further you know, my time
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: with my family, because I'm learning that women were hardwired
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: to say yes. We just are. And there was this
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: one story about one of the professors. You know, she
• 45:00
  Speaker 3: was looking at her schedule and she's got this committee
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: and this task for us to be on and she's
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: counseling this graduate student and then and she has no
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: time to do research. And so she compared her schedule
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: to another academic and his schedule was completely free. He
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: had seven hours to do research because that's what we'll
• 45:19
  Speaker 3: get him promoted. That's what we'll get him, you know,
• 45:22
  Speaker 3: on tenure. And she's like, what am I doing wrong here?
• 45:27
  Speaker 3: So so you got to learn to say no more, Annie,
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: and think about what matters to you, what else, what
• 45:36
  Speaker 3: else you could be doing, you know, besides working.
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: This is hilarious because before the pandemic, I was like
• 45:43
  Speaker 2: the person who did the parties. I was the like
• 45:46
  Speaker 2: usually I wasn't the one who secured all the stuff,
• 45:50
  Speaker 2: but I was like the one. And then after the
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: pandemic and we were starting to hang out again, I
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: got contacted by somebody who was trying to like, let's
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: get people office again. Oh no, tire, Oh gosh.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: So did you stop doing parties?
• 46:09
  Speaker 2: Well, I okay, I'll say I'm in between learning to
• 46:12
  Speaker 2: say no. And now I've gotten better at saying no
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: one will come because Atlanta traffic sucks, so I've I've
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I've found an excuse that equates to know. But it
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: wasn't a no.
• 46:26
  Speaker 4: She kind of ghosts sometimes where she's like, I'll think
• 46:28
  Speaker 4: about it and then just no, no, no.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: But that's a good tactic. Never say yes. In the
• 46:35
  Speaker 3: first twenty four hours sleep on it. Oh that's a good. Yeah,
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: that's good. And so I'm I mean, like, for example,
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: the other day, I had an assignment in you know,
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: I had a three o'clock assignment, and I had a
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: debate whether or not to take my kid to basketball
• 46:53
  Speaker 3: at five point thirty, you know, like a special clinic,
• 46:57
  Speaker 3: and you know it it involved travel and during rush hour,
• 47:02
  Speaker 3: and I was thinking, oh, maybe I could do it,
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: Maybe I could do it, And I'm so glad I
• 47:06
  Speaker 3: said no because it ended up taking me an out.
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: You know, my assignment ran long. I ended up not
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: getting home till six o'clock, you know, in traffic. And
• 47:15
  Speaker 3: so it's like, this is imagin if I'd said yes,
• 47:18
  Speaker 3: and then I would have been whole nother stress level.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: And so you just have to learn to say no
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: a lot more and carve out time for yourself.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: So I'm wondering about this. There was a time, maybe
• 47:45
  Speaker 2: two years into the pandemic, when we started getting emails
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: that was very much like kind of Jedgie about you know,
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: prove your work productivity and all this stuff. And I
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: feel like I had a lot of conversations with people
• 48:03
  Speaker 2: around the time where we were working more than we
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: were like overcompensating. As you said, maybe the quality wasn't
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: the same because we're all stressed and being overworked, but
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: we were working and I have an app where I
• 48:17
  Speaker 2: do clock in and clock out, and I was like, no, ooh,
• 48:19
  Speaker 2: that's great. I got the receipts my friends. But sort
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: of related to planning of parties always saying yes, I
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: feel like there might be a shift happening because we're
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: talking out about burnout in a lot of different ways, right,
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: not just work. We're talking about a lot of different
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: things where now we're not as willing to obscure the
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: other stuff we were doing that we were never really
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: telling you but was kind of helping things move along,
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: helping things function. Maybe we're just saying like, I'm not
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: going to do that anymore. But I wonder if that's
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: something you have a sense of where there's like a
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: tension of companies being like, but wait what because we've
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: just been doing it and not really saying anything about it,
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: or overworking and not really saying anything, and now we're
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: raising our hand and like, actually, I'm really stressed and
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: I can't do this anymore, and they're kind of surprised, like,
• 49:18
  Speaker 2: I didn't even know you were doing that.
• 49:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I feel I mean, I think also what's
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: happening is that the younger generation of workers at gen
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: Z in particular, they they don't want to they don't
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: want to be so work focused. I mean, they don't
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: want to spend they don't even want to make friends
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: at work. Yeah, So it's a it's a different and
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: so as more gen zs come into the workplace, whereas
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: like the Millennials, the gen xers, the baby boomers, we
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: were kind of used to working all the time and
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: and and almost as a badge of honor, you know,
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: And now it's it's not it's it's I think it's
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: a healthier environment. Now though some of my you know,
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: best friends, you know, my longest the people I've known
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: the longest are from people I've met at work, you know.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: And so I mean, so part of me is like, oh,
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: I hope, I hope, I hope that still happens. You know,
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: I've met some really great people at work, and so
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: but it's healthier. People are learning to kind of take
• 50:23
  Speaker 3: stock of how much they're working. And because I do
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: think also even though the pandemic. May it's over. I
• 50:29
  Speaker 3: mean we're still dealing with the aftershocks of it all.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, yes, for sure, Samantha and I are certainly.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: I still sometimes feel like I'm in lockdown. It's just
• 50:42
  Speaker 2: been a really difficult thing for me to get over.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: And I think that's true for a lot of people.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: And I do think a lot of this hidden work
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: that was happening was women. And then when you bring
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: in childcare whatever that is, Yeah, we're just sort of
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: not wanting to do that anymore without saying, you know what,
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: it's something's got to give, something's got to give.
• 51:09
  Speaker 4: And I'm wondering like if part of like understanding and
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: being able to identify that like we are all or
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: in similar boats, and then being able to acknowledge, oh,
• 51:20
  Speaker 4: this is kind of a mistreatment from like corporations on us,
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: this expectation that we should be okay and as long
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: as we're earning them money then everything is fine. But
• 51:31
  Speaker 4: social media has kind of brought to life like, yeah,
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: but is it really really healthy for you? Are you
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: getting anything out of this other than bringing money for them?
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: And then you're losing focus on, like you said, being
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: able to spend time with your family or being able
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: to have time for yourself and you're really starting to
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: see oh, in the end, it really doesn't like fold
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: out for us the individual who are the ones that's
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: suffering from burnout and with that, uh, still not seeing
• 52:01
  Speaker 4: the end in sight, like filling that bar again. Like
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: I said that, this has become the new norm for
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: so many of us that were like, okay, so what
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: do we do because the corporations or our bosses, our
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: businesses are not going to exactly help us find solutions
• 52:17
  Speaker 4: for this, So what what do we do to find
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: a solution?
• 52:21
  Speaker 3: I mean, in certain industries, I do think employers want
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: to you know, help employees you know, adjust to the
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: new normal, whatever that is. Because in certain sectors it's
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: a there's a very low unemployment rate. I mean it's
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: hard to find good workers. It's hard to and people
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: want to keep good, good people. And so I think,
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: you know, some employee in the sectors that aren't you know,
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: there aren't doing a lot of layoffs. I mean, they
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: want to do right by their you know, their employees.
• 52:54
  Speaker 3: And I think also as a lot a lot more
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: women get into and a lot of you know, younger
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: managers come up through their ranks. I think they're more
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: mindful about mental health and so I'm hoping that we
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: out of all of this, we build kind of a
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: healthier workplace for everyone.
• 53:15
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 53:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and again, like social media really has brought to
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: light on like, ay, this is not supposed to be
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: how it's supposed to be.
• 53:23
  Speaker 1: And I think like.
• 53:23
  Speaker 4: Podcasts in itself have given like a big platform, especially
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: to have like your podcast a series where we talk about, Hey,
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: these are the different types of burnouts. Let's talk about
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: how this affects you, and then let's talk about how
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: that looks not only in the business world, your personal world,
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: and then let's find these possible solutions in this conversation.
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: Do you feel like with your like your podcast and
• 53:48
  Speaker 4: your series, this is like this is the platform for
• 53:51
  Speaker 4: you to be able to do that.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Does that make sense?
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I mean I don't really write columns on this topic.
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: I mean that's what I love about the podcast is
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: that it's allowed me to cover different topics and issues
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: that I normally wouldn't get into. And it's been really
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: I feel like the podcast platform this burnout topic has
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: been it's been really it's been really effective. You know,
• 54:17
  Speaker 3: talking about it.
• 54:18
  Speaker 4: Have you heard from audiences or your listeners about this?
• 54:21
  Speaker 3: I have, Yeah, I have. I have heard from audiences
• 54:24
  Speaker 3: and listeners. And because I think everybody's gone through this,
• 54:28
  Speaker 3: it's not like a tiny segment is feeling burned out.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: A lot of people felt burnt out during the pandemic
• 54:34
  Speaker 3: and they don't know what to do. I mean, I
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: think a lot of people are like me, can I
• 54:38
  Speaker 3: get back to my old self? Does that even? Can
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: I even remember it? Or does it even make sense anymore?
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: I think where I landed was maybe it doesn't make
• 54:46
  Speaker 3: sense for me to be my old self. The pandemic
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: has changed me. You know, it's not realistic, and so
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: what is my new kind of happy medium? Like? What
• 54:57
  Speaker 3: does that look like?
• 54:59
  Speaker 2: One of the things that you talked about in the
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: podcast that I'm really interested in if you could give
• 55:04
  Speaker 2: like a brief explanation. I love science, and you have
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: an episode about the science of burnout right there.
• 55:11
  Speaker 3: Also we had an episode about the science of happiness
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: too as well. That was really interesting too. But yeah,
• 55:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, I mean I guess the science and that
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: you know, it's a This is with probably referring to
• 55:24
  Speaker 3: the Harvard medical school doctor Addie Nurcar, and she she
• 55:30
  Speaker 3: has been on the forefront of studying the science of stress.
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: I mean, she herself went through a very burnt out
• 55:39
  Speaker 3: or panic episode when she was a medical school student
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: and she suddenly, you know, it was working all these
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: hours and then she was exhausted and tired and she
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: couldn't get out of bed. She felt like I think
• 55:52
  Speaker 3: she talked about she felt like a stampede of horses
• 55:55
  Speaker 3: were on her chest. And she went to see a
• 55:58
  Speaker 3: doctor and did a battery of tech y and her
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: doctor said to her, congratulations, is just stress and and
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: so just take some time off and you know, go
• 56:08
  Speaker 3: to the SPA, go on vacation. And she was so
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: dissatisfied with that answer. That really inspired her to kind
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: of study the science of stress. And She's like, I
• 56:21
  Speaker 3: needed and she wanted to become the doctor she wished
• 56:25
  Speaker 3: she had seen. You know, someone could be like, Okay,
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: it is actually there's something physical, there's something mental going on,
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: and you need to address it. I Mean, what I've
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: also learned and from others, is that the idea is
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: that you can't self care your way out of stress.
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: No number of SPA visits or vacation days will take
• 56:48
  Speaker 3: away your stress. You need to get at the root
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: cause of your stress. You probably do need to say
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: no more. You need to take more breaks during the day.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: You need more phi. Everyone talked about physical activity, Everyone
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: talked about taking deep breaths. So I was like, never
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: heard so many people talk about you need to take
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: more breaths, deep breaths. I was like, okay. And then
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: and then also getting quiet, the power of quiet. That
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: was the other thing I didn't think about, and I do.
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: I practice this a lot now, which is kind of
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: the because you're on social media, you have so much
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: stuffed in your brain and you can't even think straight right,
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: and so you need time to just clear your mind.
• 57:27
  Speaker 3: So sometimes when I walk the dog, I don't listen
• 57:31
  Speaker 3: to a podcast because I need to clear my brain. Now,
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: when I'm in the car, I try not to turn
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: on the radio or listen to a podcast. I just
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: need moments, you know, even minutes, twenty minutes, fifteen minutes
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: where there's just nothing, just me and my thoughts and
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: that's it. And so so I feel like there is
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: something to this whole I stress isn't just in our heads.
• 57:58
  Speaker 3: I mean we kind of need to. We almost almost
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: need to think about it from a almost a scientific manner,
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: you know, like dissecting it and picking it apart. It's
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: just not in our head and it's not it's it's
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: not just going to the spa, you know.
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, yes, we have talked about that numerous times on
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: this podcast. Stress does have physical impacts on you. It
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: has it can we joke about it a lot, but
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: it can shorten your life span, it can impact your health.
• 58:30
  Speaker 2: So it is it is something serious and something we
• 58:36
  Speaker 2: should look at scientifically and should investigate more because, as
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: you said, we all experience it. Probably most of us
• 58:44
  Speaker 2: have experienced burnout, so it would be nice to know,
• 58:50
  Speaker 2: certainly for people like me, like, here's your scientific reason
• 58:55
  Speaker 2: this is this is happening.
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: Well, I think it's it's I mean for me, I
• 59:00
  Speaker 3: thought was so interesting talking to all these experts is
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: that it was almost like like, for example, like uh,
• 59:06
  Speaker 3: productivity and doing laundry, right, I was thinking. Even even
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: doctor Neuerkar talked to me about laundry, she she had
• 59:16
  Speaker 3: because she was saying that, you know, one of the
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: scientific things that she talked about with me was about
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: how only uh, you know, a lot of us pride
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: ourselves in multitasking, right we can, and and the science
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: shows that only two percent of us can actually truly multitask.
• 59:35
  Speaker 3: We're actually not really multitasking. We'rek was a task switching, right,
• 59:41
  Speaker 3: And so doctor Neuerkar talked to me about we all
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: need to be doing more mono tasking, doing one thing
• 59:48
  Speaker 3: at a time. So one of so, I said, how
• 59:50
  Speaker 3: do you deal with laundry? And she says to me,
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: she only does she she she takes all her chores,
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: her household chores, and she does it like Wednesday evening.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: And so so now for me, I only do laundry
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: on Wednesdays and the weekend. That's it. And I mean, yes,
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 3: I do. I sit around with piles of laundry not folded,
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 3: clean but not folded. I've got one upstairs right now. Yes,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: But win like this morning, my son was like, Mom,
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 3: I don't have any shorts. I was like, oh, go
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: look through that basket upstick, go.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 1: To the clean pile.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: There's a clean pile exactly. But I'm willing to. I'm
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 3: willing to if that's the price I have to pay,
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: It's okay, right for my for my mental health.
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: A win is a win. I'm just saying, chests.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: I okay, this is so fascinating to me because I
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: have started doing the quiet time before I even knew this,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: just naturally because I've been so stressed and I also
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 2: have this is when I do my jars.
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so so so right so so, I mean some
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: of the stuff I did already, but now you understand it,
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: and then now you'll keep doing it right, You'll be
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: That's That's what happened to me, is like, oh, yeah,
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: like this, this is why I should keep keep at
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 3: it or do things a certain way. This is why
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: I need to you know, I knew that the phone
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: like that. Now when I go to sleep at night,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 3: I keep my phone is not in arms reach, it is,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 3: you know, halfway across the room in another room. And
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 3: so and I also now when I wake up in
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 3: the morning, I make sure I used to just like
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 3: go on my computer right away, right, And now I
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 3: was like, okay, the first half hour, forty five minutes,
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 3: it's me, it's me time. I'm sitting on my deck.
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: I'm you know, listening to the birds. I'm you know,
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 3: watering the plants and my flowers and my basil plants,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: you know, and and so I'm I'm just kind of
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: you know, taking that time for me.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 2: Well, Shirley, thank you so much for being here. You're
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: officially a Sminty friend.
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 3: Oh this is great.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, you're welcome back anytime. If you're ever in Atlanta,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: if you're ever in Boston, yes, yes, and thank you
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: for the free therapy.
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: In the mail voices.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 2: Well, where can the good listeners find you?
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 3: You can find me well, it's called say More. Just
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: look up Say More Boston Globe or say More with
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: Shirley Leung l e U n g uh. You can
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 3: find us at Globe dot com, slash say More or
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: wherever you find your podcast. And if you guys are
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: on X or whatever you call it now, I'm at
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 3: l e U n g I'm on LinkedIn as well.
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 3: So but yeah, I'm I'm I'm reachable.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, well, thank you so much for coming on. And
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: listeners please go check all that stuff out. If you
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: would like to find us, listeners, you can or email
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 2: Stuff India mom Stuff at iHeartMedia dot com. You can
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: find us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcasts, or in't
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: Instagram and TikTok at stuff when Never Told You. We
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: also have a YouTube, a tea public store, and we
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: have a book you can get where you get your books.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 2: Thanks as always here at super producer Christina or executive
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 2: producer My and our contributor Joey. Thank you and thanks
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: to you for listening. Stuff I Never Told You is
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: projection of iHeart Radio. For more podcast from my Heart Radio,
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: you can check out the ihart radio app, Apple Podcasts,
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,