Latest / The Burnout Podcast with Fexingo: Workplace Exhaustion, Recovery, and Sustainable Careers / The Burnout of Making Everyone Else Happy
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a specific kind of burnout that doesn't come from having too much work on your plate. It comes from the emotional cost of always saying yes. Luna: The people-pleaser burnout. I think a lot of us recognize that pattern — the colleague who volunteers for everything and ends up completely drained. Lucas: Exactly. And it's not just about being nice. There's real psychology behind it, and there's a real cost. A 2023 piece in Harvard Business Review called it 'the high cost of low disagreeableness.' The authors argued that people who score low on disagreeableness — which is a polite way of saying they're highly agreeable — end up taking on more work, more emotional labor, and ultimately more burnout, all because they avoid the short-term discomfort of saying no. Luna: I love that framing — 'low disagreeableness.' It reframes the problem. It's not that you're too nice; it's that you're not practicing the muscle of pushing back. Lucas: Right. And the research shows that these people are often high performers in their early careers — they get praised for being team players. But over time, the accumulation of uncompensated emotional and task labor catches up. There was a study in the Journal of Applied Psychology that found that people who suppress their authentic preferences at work — nodding along when they disagree, volunteering for things they don't want — report 23 percent higher emotional exhaustion after two years. Luna: Twenty-three percent — that's massive. And it's self-reinforcing, because the more you say yes, the more people expect you to say yes. You get trapped in a reputation of being the reliable one. Lucas: So let's talk about a real case. I spoke to a marketing coordinator — I'll call her Priya — who worked at a mid-sized software company. She was in her second year out of college, and she described herself as someone who had always been the 'go-to person' in every group project. At work, she said yes to every meeting invite, every last-minute request from the sales team, every 'hey can you look at this deck?' By month 18, she was waking up at 3 A.M. with her heart racing, dreading Slack messages. Luna: That sounds like classic burnout, but with a people-pleasing flavor. She wasn't burning out because she had a bad manager or an impossible workload. She was burning out because she couldn't set boundaries. Lucas: Exactly. Her manager actually told her she was doing great work. But she had no idea how much Priya was taking on outside her core responsibilities. And Priya felt like if she pushed back, she'd be seen as lazy or uncommitted. Luna: If today's episode is resonating with you — if you've ever felt that tension between wanting to be helpful and feeling completely spent — this is exactly the kind of thing we dig into on this show. And the reason we can keep doing it ad-free is because of listener support. If you found this useful, you can buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's a low-key way to keep the conversation going. Lucas: Yeah, and it genuinely helps. We don't do sponsors, so it's listeners like you who make this possible. Anyway — back to Priya. Lucas: So Priya's breaking point came when she was asked to help onboard a new intern — on top of three other projects — and she said yes without even checking her calendar. She ended up working two weekends in a row, and then she got a cold that wouldn't go away for three weeks. That's when she started therapy. Luna: Her body forced the boundary that her brain couldn't. I think a lot of people-pleasers end up getting sick before they change. Lucas: So what did she do? Her therapist gave her a simple rule: before you say yes to anything, say 'let me check my calendar and get back to you.' That 30-minute delay was enough to break the reflex. She started to realize that she was saying yes because she wanted to be liked, not because the task was important or even doable. Luna: That delay tactic is one of the classic strategies. Another one I've seen is the 'no-but' — saying no but offering an alternative. 'I can't take that on, but I can help you brainstorm who might be able to.' Lucas: Those are tactical. But I think the deeper issue is identity. People-pleasers often tie their self-worth to being seen as helpful. So the fix isn't just behavioral — it's about separating your value as a person from your output at work. Luna: That's harder. That's long-term work. But there's also a structural angle — companies that reward 'being a team player' above all else are inadvertently selecting for people who will burn out. If your performance review asks 'how often do you go above and beyond?' that's a red flag. Lucas: There's some good data on this from a 2022 study in the Academy of Management Journal. Researchers looked at what they called 'organizational citizenship behavior' — that's the formal term for going above and beyond — and found that employees who engaged in high levels of it had a 15 percent higher turnover rate after three years. The ones who stayed were the ones who learned to strategically pick their moments. Luna: Strategic citizenship — I like that. Not saying no to everything, but saying yes to the things that matter for your development, and letting the rest go. Lucas: Right. Priya eventually started doing that. She identified the two or three projects per quarter that aligned with her career goals, and she poured herself into those. Everything else, she either delegated or declined. And you know what? Nothing bad happened. No one thought she was lazy. Her manager actually said she seemed more focused. Luna: That's the irony. The people we're afraid of disappointing are often not even paying that close attention. Lucas: There's also a really interesting gender dimension here. Multiple studies show that women are more likely to be expected to take on non-promotable tasks — the office housework — and also more penalized when they say no. A 2018 study by Linda Babcock and her colleagues at Carnegie Mellon found that women were asked to volunteer for administrative tasks 44 percent more often than men, and they said yes more often too. Luna: That's a systemic problem. It's not just individual psychology. If you're a woman in a workplace that expects you to be the note-taker, the organizer, the emotional support, then people-pleasing isn't just a habit — it's a survival strategy. Lucas: Exactly. And that's why the solution has to be both individual and collective. On the individual level, you can practice saying no. On the collective level, managers need to distribute non-promotable tasks transparently. Some companies now have 'office housework trackers' — a shared spreadsheet where everyone can see who's volunteering for what, so it doesn't fall on the same people. Luna: That's a great idea. It makes the invisible visible. I've also heard of managers who explicitly say 'this task is not career-enhancing, so I'm going to rotate it' — which takes the pressure off the people who would normally feel compelled to raise their hand. Lucas: Let's bring it back to the listener who might be in the middle of this. If you suspect you're burning out from people-pleasing, there are a few concrete things to try. First: the delay tactic we mentioned. Second: practice micro-no's. Say no to small things — 'no, I can't make that meeting,' or 'no, I don't have bandwidth for that request.' Build the muscle. Luna: And third: audit your 'yeses' for a week. Write down every time you say yes to something, and then ask yourself: did I really want to do that? Did it serve my goals? Or was I just avoiding discomfort? Lucas: That audit can be revealing. Priya did it and found that 70 percent of her yeses were to requests that had nothing to do with her actual job. No wonder she was exhausted. Luna: So the takeaway isn't 'stop being nice.' It's 'be strategic with your yes.' Save your energy for the things that matter — for you and for the team. Lucas: Exactly. And if you're a manager listening, the takeaway is: check in on the people who never say no. They might be the ones who need protection from themselves. Luna: I think that's a good place to leave it. Next time, I want to talk about burnout and impostor syndrome — how the feeling of not belonging can actually accelerate exhaustion. Lucas: That's a great one. See you then.