Latest / Humanity Working / burnout

Transcript

burnout · Humanity Working

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, get us going, Matt.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we could just ramble on forever.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think we've got something in there.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hi everyone.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Matt here.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_01: A little while back we did a recording dealing with burnout.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Unfortunately, that day technology was not our friend, and we had quite a few audio problems.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_01: So much so that we even thought about not releasing this episode.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: But listening back, I think we got into some really interesting insights that are going to be of a lot of interest to you.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully you can put up with a few of the audio glitches and uh get a lot out of it.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: So enjoy.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, let's uh let's talk about burnout.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: First off, Paul, give us a definition of what you think burnout is.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I could give you my definition, but uh but uh it would probably be a little bit rambling like I am sometimes.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So I think um what I'll do instead is talk about how the the World Health Organization describes it.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, the World Health Organization doesn't have its its own uh uh separate definition.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's in the international classification of diseases.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So they do not describe it as a medical condition, um, but they describe it as a syndrome that's conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: And they describe it as categorized by three different dimensions: feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one's job, or feelings of negatives negativism or cynicism related to one's job, and reduced professional efficacy.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a few things to kind of pull out of that.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: So one is that at least um right now, um, it's not considered to be um a medical condition, but it is considered to be an occupational phenomenon.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, it is related to a bunch of other things that are absolutely considered to be medical conditions.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so the World Health Organization recently decided that this was going to be an area of specific uh research for them.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so they're now in the process of developing evidence-based guidelines on mental uh well-being in the workplace.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And this has just really happened over the course of the last, I would say, two to three years.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: The ICD 11 um is the international classification disease's most recent one, I think.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's only been since ICD 10 that it has has actually been considered to be um a phenomenon that is worth documenting.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that says a lot about the fact that um this is something that is really, really becoming um increasingly a concern.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and it's becoming uh more of a concern at the global level.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had no idea it was actually a defined uh issue like that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's amazing.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: Terrible, but amazing.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as I say, it's probably an indication of the fact of what a significant issue it is.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean, there's a whole bunch of stuff that goes on in the world that doesn't actually end up being documented in in ICD.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: So um so yeah, it's it's it's definitely an indication of something, some change that is happening in the world, I think.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that that's that's amazing.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: I did not know that.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: How severe I mean, obviously then it's a it's a severe, a severe problem.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, to make its way into beyond just a buzzword.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it it is severe.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_02: It's not exclusive to a specific culture.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so it is a worldwide issue.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's not just American, it's not just you know, British, it's not Australian, it's it's all over the entire world.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_02: HBR did a very good uh article on this.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, I think they turned it into a bit of a series that's that's tracking this.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_02: Um interestingly enough, the study was done before COVID.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_02: And so it wasn't like COVID was a trigger to going out and interviewing a bunch of people.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um we were seeing signs of rampant burnout uh well before the pandemic.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: And in a study which was global, um, 46 countries, I think it was 1,500 people, um, they had discovered that uh 89% of people uh say that their work experience is worse.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_02: That 85% say that their well-being has declined.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then when you dive into some of the specifics, um, you double-click into each one of those things, it's very interesting because one is very clearly um purely centered on work, so just work experience, and the other about well-being, which of course your well-being is across your entire life, not just your work life.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and when you look at some of those specifics um on the on the general well-being side, the major trend that really buttresses that stat is mental health.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_02: That the lion share, those respondents were indicating that mental health decline was uh the most uh critical reason why they answered the question the way that they did.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then if you look at just on the workplace side, it's this increased demand.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_02: Organizations are asking for people to do more in their jobs now more than ever.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, COVID obviously throws more complication.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's had to have it'll be interesting to see how the definition is switched because it's not like COVID is seemingly going away at any point in time.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's we're adapting it into our life now, and uh the impact on burnout has got to be very different.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean the data is still to a certain extent being collected.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I think what we have to be a little bit careful about is um you know what the anecdotal um responses are to uh COVID being thrown into the picture and and the data that has been gathered and processed and and and formally interpreted up to this point.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, all of that said, here's what here's what we do know.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um so many of the early studies on burnout focused uh specifically on the medical profession.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, they have some very specific challenges associated with this, right?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: In terms of increased risk of exposure and in terms of being faced on a day-to-day basis um with the true tragedy associated with the pandemic.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then of course having to uh to balance that against uh in often cases a transformed family experience as well.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Those studies, those early studies, showed very, very significant negative, um, negative effects.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But of course, for those of us that are a little bit more removed from the pandemic itself, in terms of the fact that, you know, perhaps some, you know, many of us do know somebody that has died from it, but a lot of us do not, right?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: And so for those of us that are not on the front line, it's really just a transformation in terms of our way of life and what is the impact of that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, um studies are starting to emerge that have uh that have looked at that um that explicitly, um, and they do appear to show uh that there has been a significant uptick in uh work-related burnout um when comparing it to the situation before the pandemic.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Um part of that, part of that appears to be related to the unique challenges associated with working from home.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where this gets difficult is that at least for the early part of the pandemic, many of us were dealing with challenges um that were uh unique, right?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, in the early stages of the pandemic, many of us were dealing with the challenges of having to be able to do our work effectively, maybe when instead of having one party occasionally working from home, both parties in a relationship were working from home and they were trying to do that while their kids were home from school and they were trying to homeschool their kids and things like that.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So those early stages presented a series of unique challenges.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: But even once you take that out, um, it does appear in terms of the early passing of the data that there has been an overall uptake um in workplace-related stress and burnout.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it does appear to be connected um with those unique challenges that are associated with working from home.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, if all you believed was the online chatter associated with working from home, many of us would believe that it's the it's the unambiguous greatest thing ever to happen in the history of the world.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it doesn't look as though it's exactly that that's exactly the case when it comes to things like uh like burnout and workplace-related stress.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: And hopefully during the time today, we can get into some of the reasons why that might be.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, maybe it's not that great for us, you know, across the board if we if we can't figure out how to balance things.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we know in general, that as a human species, we tend to like a lot of things that aren't that great for us, and we tend to do a lot of things that aren't that great for us.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: So just because many of us want to do it doesn't implicitly mean, doesn't explain, doesn't or implicitly or explicitly mean that it is good for us.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it all it tells us is that some of us like to do it.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, that's yeah, that's very interesting.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: It taps into different uh things that we like, but it might not be helping us in the long run.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's really yeah.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's making a statement about neuroreceptors than it is more about anything else.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds has taken over a dozen years of research into the habits of the most effective among us in this new world where work and life are merging.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: They've distilled it down into a 90-day program targeted at employees that do unstructured, ambiguous work.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Employees from five different countries around the world are using Billion Minds to help them start each day with a purpose and end it with accomplishment.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: If you or your team wants to discover how Billion Minds can help employees optimize their work in the context of their broader life, go to billionminds.com slash learn more today.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: That's billionminds.com slash L E A R N M O R E.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: So so why do you think working from home isn't that great for us?
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think there's probably a couple of reasons, but I think one of the main reasons why working from home is not that great of uh great for us is that it is this question of structure.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that that we know that we've spoken about in previous in previous podcasts, for example, is the idea that if we're doing um what we're supposed to be doing in the context in which we're supposed to be doing it, it gives us that um that sort of underlying underlying underpinning structure that helps us organize our day more effectively and that helps us, if you like, compartmentalize the different parts of our lives.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um if you work from home, and let's say, for example, you've never had a dedicated office, and now suddenly you create a dedicated office space for yourself, and it's your perfect space in which to do really good work, you've probably noticed the difference between doing that and then trying to make do in your bedroom or trying to make do with the rest of the world going on around you.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: What that is is an indication of the fact that having that structure, having that separate space, um is actually is actually pretty good for us and generally generates better results for us.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the ultimate structure is one that creates where you've got structure in terms of space and you've got structure in terms of time.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so a dedicated office that you visit on a on a regular basis, without you thinking anything more about it, creates that dedicated space and dedicated time in order to be able to do the work that you're doing.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it doesn't just help in the moment.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: What's really interesting about it is that it appears to help outside of the moment as well.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, if you do work in a dedicated space at a dedicated time, and then you leave that dedicated space, then you tend to be able to be able to pull away from it and switch off from it more effectively than you would do otherwise.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: One of the really interesting things associated with the with the findings around the um uh around the pandemic and the effect of the pandemic on on uh on burnout is that some of the people that struggled with it the most, ironically, were people that had actually been working from home for some time.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: So you might think that that's that seems odd, right?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: It would be the new people, the new people that are coming into it.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um but what it created, of course, for those people that have been doing it for some kind uh for some time is a further erosion of structure for those people.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because now everybody else around them is not working in it in as predictable a way as before.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_00: So those people have potentially become quite accustomed to to dealing with the erosion of structure that they have.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: But once it got eroded a little bit further, then it was even more difficult for them, uh for them to be able to cope.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: So it does appear to be related to this idea of structure of place and structure of time.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we've really got a couple of choices as individuals.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: So one is that we can either uh basically go back to the workplace if that's an option for us and have that structure reimposed on us, or uh we need to kind of create our own structure in order to be able to compensate for the structure that has disappeared around us.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: And Matt, I'll just add um something very, very simple.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of what Paul's describing is a set of skills.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: And it's like throwing somebody into a pool and they haven't developed a skill of swimming, right?
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's it's hard to say that working from home is bad because it's not working for somebody when they were just thrown into it.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so without the set of skills to do those things that Paul said.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's an often overlooked uh element of this is that um there was just this kind of expectation.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, okay, you were working here, now you're working here, go.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: And it's not that simple.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you have to you have to do those things that Paul just mentioned.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_02: You have to develop that structure, you have to develop a different set of habits, and that all comes down to a set of skills that you need to learn and need to practice.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's uh and and that just hasn't been made available to most people.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: I like what you I like what you said about that, Ryan, for a specific reason, which is that um it is a set of skills, and there is an assumption, probably an erroneous assumption, that people that in quotes have been working from home for some time automatically have those skills.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: And no, actually, what they've this if they've if they've developed a skill, it's a skill just to be able to cope with how it is.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean that that's a skill to be able to work from home well, right?
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: Those are those are two distinctly different things.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: And actually, there's probably even another aspect to it as well, which is what does working from home well even mean, right?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Does working from home well mean that you've just figured out what your day should look like or you you can figure out how to end the day, maybe, but maybe it's actually got multiple dimensions, right?
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: It goes beyond getting the job done that you were asked to do.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_00: It goes into getting the job that you're asked to do and feel good about doing it, right?
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: That is a skill that is necessary.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you don't feel good about doing it, then you're only going to be able to get what's done expected of you for a certain period of time, right?
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And your ability to be able to continue to do it is dependent upon your reserves, your coping skills, your reserves of being able to deal with it being terrible, versus actually transforming the experience to a point whereby you can finish each day going, yeah, that was really good.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: I enjoyed that day, and I'm looking forward to the next one.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: One of the other things that is related to this, which is rather interesting as well, it appears to be that because we lack this ability to be able to sort of separate the two things, what a lot of the people that we've been working with are reporting is that work has gone from a thing that you go to visit and enjoy to a continuous grind.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: And that appears to be related to the fact that it never really disappears, right?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: So um we'll we'll probably get into some of this in a little bit, but it's but this lack of this this business where work never disappears means that it's continuously familiar in a way that makes us feel like we're never getting any rest, right?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's never something that we can look forward to.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: One of the questions that we've asked people is, um, and we're still early on in our own research, but we're one of the questions we ask people is, do you look forward to going to work?
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: And that number, at least in the early stages of the of the discussions that we're having with people, seems to be dropping precipitously.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: And it's actually fairly obvious that you can think about that it would be like that, right?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Because one of the answers we get when we ask people if they look forward to going to work is I don't go to work.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always at work, right?
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: So there is no I look forward to going to work because there is nothing that you're going from.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I think this is all very striking.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, I think it's important to figure out, you know, let's let's talk about ways people can avoid burnout.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we've established it's a real problem, and uh how can we how can we avoid it?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_02: Well, if you go back to some of the elements of the research that I was describing before, if you look at some of the root cause, um, so there's the mental health decline, there was the increased job demands, um, there's also home life struggles are um really at the forefront of this as well.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in fact, it's interesting in the research that home life struggles came up as a topic on both sides.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, on general well-being and in workplace well-being, home life struggles was part of that.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_02: And I think what that tells us is that um we need to consider all the things in our life that burnout isn't just work burnout.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, burnout happens in the context of life, right?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and when you think of it that way, um, you can't just inspect, is it work from home or is it I'm in the right job function, or do I have the right colleagues?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_02: You have to look across all the elements of your life.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: If you're a husband, a father, um, if you're a philanthropist, if you're the captain of your basketball team, all the things that you have going on in your life, are you creating space for all those things?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, can you maintain a level of motivation across those different elements of your life?
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and that's really what it comes down to.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not uh excited to get up and go to work, are you excited to get up and go to being a dad or go to being that captain of your basketball team, right?
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_02: Or go to being a husband.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, those are all those things that exist in in real time as well.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: And you have to assess are you giving those things the space to be motivated by it?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_02: Are you just limping through it?
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: Are you just kind of slogging through each one of those things, just checking things off a list in each one of those areas of your life, or are you ignoring areas of the of your life altogether?
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so that's something to really consider is the the whole life picture, not just inspecting your job.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think the other aspect of it is that if you look into some of the research that's been done on this stuff over the last 10 to 15 years, and particularly how some of that research has been reported in the popular press, a lot of it came down to the things that Dan Pink talks about in his book Drive.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you'll remember he refers to um autonomy, mastery, and purpose as the key elements that are necessary for somebody to be personally motivated.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And it is certainly true that this whole uh autonomy, mastery, purpose thing is uh a necessary component to.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Be able to have work that motivates you, or indeed to be motivated in more or less anything that you do.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Just as a review for those people that are not really that familiar with it, you think of autonomy as being the ability to be able to be self-directed to a certain extent, right?
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: So not to be micromanaged, to be told the kind of things that are all need to be achieved, but uh for you to allow you to figure out exactly how to achieve them.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_00: You think of mastery as being good at what you do.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_00: So are you do you have a set of skills whereby when you put those skills to use, you feel confident that yeah, you actually are are accomplished at being able to do the thing that you do.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then purpose really in most cases talks about some kind of higher sense of purpose.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, if it's it's typically something that is outside of your own life.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, now this can be at a very, you know, micro level or very macro level.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, if you are a street cleaner, you actually do have significant purpose and you can see it every day because the clean the streets start dirty and then you make a difference and now the streets are clean.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a clear purpose that is associated with that.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you are, you know, a brain surgeon, then you're saving individual people's lives, right?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you work in, let's say, for example, public health, you might be saving, you know, thousands or even millions of people's lives.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're teaching kids, you're taking kids from you know your one level of education to another is one way of looking at it, but you're building careers for people, you're changing people's lives for your teaching.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: So there's different ways in which people encounter purpose, but having those three things and being able to state those three things is something that that has been known for some time is associated with motivation.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: But what we've discovered in our work is that that's part of the picture, um, but it's only part of the picture.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_00: And what is also needed is in addition to this autonomy, this mastery, and this purpose is this um ability to be able to do you to get through your day well.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost like not only are you mastering your domain, but you're mastering your ability to optimize your day, right?
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Mastering your ability to be able to go from 8 a.m.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: in the morning to 10 o'clock at night and do that really well, right?
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_00: If you can do that really well also, then that appears to be associated with lower levels of stress and lower levels of burnout.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's really interesting.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: If if and maybe just as a side, as you were talking about this, Paul, uh it'd be interesting since there seems to be a calculus to it, if you're if you're um monitoring all of these parts of your life, that you would also be able to monitor your risk level or your current level of burnout, almost like a you know, a meter.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're filling up a, you know, you're getting close based on because if if you don't think about these things all together as a unit, it's easy to say, well, you know, I'm doing fine at home, work's a little crazy, but it's really it's all one, and you have to kind of keep an eye on those levels at all times.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: So it might be, like I said, if you're if you're calculating them all, there's a formula, there's a way to keep an eye on it and keep it in check even and warn warning, you know, like the the check engine light uh yeah idea, right?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, funnily enough, we recommend um for folks that uh on that autonomy mastery purpose scale, we we recommend that people do do actually think about that part quite a lot quite a lot.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: And and I would say that for a good proportion of the people that we work with, um like understanding where you're at on each of those scales can be a really good clue as to why you're feeling like work is awesome or work is a bit of a funk for you right now.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: The other aspect that it does not deal with is that case which which we've experienced, right?
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_00: That case whereby you're actually scoring high on all three, and yet still you have this kind of like like low level of burnout feeling, even though you're scoring high on all three.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's when you really need to start to look at other aspects of your life, including about how you go about executing on your day, as it were.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you're right.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it's the intriguing thing about all of this, which is that um you don't want to get, as an individual, you don't want to get to a point where you're completely burned out before you discover that you're completely burned out.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you do, then your ability to be able to fix it is severe is severely diminished, right?
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: You do need that check engine light.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think you know, to go back to what Ryan was discussing at uh discussing early on, um Ryan and I often talk about this idea of, you know, if you're feeling this way, you're the normal one.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we we should acknowledge the fact that um all of us are at risk of getting to a point where we're severely burned out.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to make sure that you know folks act on that before they get to that point, not after they've reached that point.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Because then at that point, it's more expensive for you, it's more expensive for the organization in which you work, it's more expensive for society.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's it takes a significant toll to pull people back from that state versus present prevent people from getting into that state.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_02: And I would just add that um the check engine light only works because of all the sensors that are connected to the various thousands of different moving parts in an engine.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: And so the one thing that I would say, just as a starting point for everybody, is you have to have a complete inventory.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you have to understand all the different hats that you wear in your life and how complex those things are.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: We got to stop pretending like it's simple or or just holding all that complexity in our head.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's complicated.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: There's a your life is complicated, whether you know it, whether you like it, it's just a fact.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um, getting it out of your head and getting it into some kind of a system where you can start to organize and and triage those different elements is step one.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_02: You check engine light, that function doesn't even work unless you've got all those sensors out there.
• 28:56
  unknown: Yeah.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we spend a lot of time looking at um like what our lives are like now versus what they used to look like historically.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um for many of us, um it's not that we're necessarily working harder in a pure sense, as in if we look at if you look at our job, we might spend more time at work.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: That's different to how much we do when we're actually, you know, we're actually in quotes clocked on.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: We're not necessarily working hard, but what we are doing is to Ryan's point, dealing with an order of magnitude more complexity in our lives than we ever did before.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we're attempting, whether we acknowledge it or not, to manage all of that complexity.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: So let's take, for example, something like um something like doing chores around the house.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: All right, back in the 1950s or the 1960s, people were spending uh you know 50 plus hours a week doing chores around the house.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously that was predominantly falling, uh, that burden was predominantly falling on on women in the house.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um time has gone, as time has gone by and we've automated many of those processes.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: We have, for example, you know, replaced manual washing with washing machines, we've, you know, got vacuum cleaners, we've got dryers, we've got dishwashers, we've got all of these various things that that reduce that burden over time.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_00: But then what have we done with that time as a society?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: We've created more paid work.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: And in addition to that, the time that's been freed up has now been used to do many, many, many different things in our lives, all of which we transition from, yeah, you know, as we transition from one part of our lives to another, we attempt to accomplish all of them.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this sort of like um like almost societal requirement that we've created in all of us to do it all has created um a life in which we are rapidly jumping from one thing to another in order to be able to do it all.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so it is, it's this, it's it's not working harder as such, it's so many different things that we we we feel like we have to get done in our in our lives in general.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Ryan's dead on.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's it's it's never now just I'm stressed at work, so it's work, right?
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're all interconnected, and so anything we feel is interconnected to everything else that we do in these increasingly complicated, crazy lives that we have.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: Are you looking to hone the skills you need to thrive as work and the rest of our lives merge?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: If so, we can help.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: For the first time, Billion Minds has taken the program it offers to businesses and customize it for individuals in a program they call the Elements.
• 32:04
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• 32:09
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• 32:12
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• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, providing practical tools for our way too busy lives.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the the the genesis of all this stemmed from what was ostensibly a dream job for Paul and I.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um we were working together as co-founders of an internal startup at Microsoft and one that was specifically focused on clinical research, um, and more specifically uh advancing the pace with which clinical research happens with the use of technologies and get life-saving therapies to the patients that need them more quickly.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so big purpose um being in an internal startup was very autonomous.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, nobody told us how to go about it.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: We had to figure that out as we went, which was both challenging but also very rewarding.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we had to really become experts on I can't say experts, but we had to become you know really knowledgeable on the domain of clinical research.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_02: It's constantly evolving.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: I I think that's very difficult to call yourself an expert in almost anything, but um, but we so going back to what Paul had mentioned about autonomy, mastery, and purpose, we had those things.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_02: And so theoretically, motivation should have been through the roof uh for the both of us.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_02: And as it turns out, um it was very difficult.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, surprisingly so, that every time that we would have a conversation like over a beer, uh, or just you know, just casually you know, switching our switching ourselves off from the day, um, the things that we talked about were were not our cool jobs that we were doing.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_02: We weren't so grateful for them.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, we were talking about how difficult it was to do these things in the context of our broader lives, how we we didn't actually know the terminology back then, I don't think, Paul.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think we said low-level burnout, um, but that's what we were faced with is is some just just constant hum of stress and anxiety uh that was pervasive in both of us.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_02: And it was really fascinating that uh going back to Paul's point, even when you have all these things, you know, we it still it still was a struggle, and it was the realization uh that everybody was feeling that it wasn't just us, and it wasn't just the people that don't have those three elements of the Daniel Pink Triangle.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it's not the people that do, it's not the people that don't.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's it's kind of everybody.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so it was that realization that said, all right, well look, this isn't this is untenable.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: There's no way that um that we can really thrive as a species, for that matter, um, unless this is solved.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_02: And and so that's when we decided just to be part of the solution.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we need to we obviously need to be fairly careful here that this doesn't feel like very first world problemy.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um I will say that um that the challenges that we're talking about are they have different levels of degree, obviously depending upon where you are in in the in the wealth spectrum and in the spectrum of opportunity and all of this kind of stuff, right?
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: If you are um, let's say much uh much lower down the economic spectrum, or you don't have much uh uh much in the way of economic independence, the types of challenges that you face are much, much more um are much more difficult to deal with.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the idea of uh, for example being able to afford to get across town in order to do your job, or having to take three buses to get uh to get to your job and somehow get your kids ready for school at the same time, um maybe having to do all of that on your own as a single parent, those are those are very, very much um of a more pressing challenge for people.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it says a lot about our ability to cope as a human being, that many people do that every day and can uh and can cope with it every day.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I do think what is interesting about it is that there is a certain universality to this, and that's kind of what we're we're getting at here, right?
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in a sense that whether you are that single mom that is having to take three buses to get to work while you're trying to get your trying to get your kids in their two different schools, or whether you are a senior executive in a company that is trying to wrestle with the challenges of running your organization and you know a sick, uh, you know, a sick parent and kids, the only the only real difference between it is the specific nature of the challenges and the ability for you to basically kind of buy your way out of some of those challenges.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: The challenge with people low down the economic spectrum is there's very little they can do with money to buy their way out of some of the of some of those challenges.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: If you're further up the economic spectrum, then one of the tools that you have at your disposal is to be able to use money to be able to ameliorate some of the some of the challenges that are associated with it.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: So I think it's very important that we think about some of those things as we're as we're saying this, right?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_00: This is this is not just a rich person's problem or a poor person's problem.
• 38:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is a problem uh how people go about managing the different aspects of their lives and how those different parts of their lives intrude upon each other.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly how it gets manifested is different depending upon where you are in the economic spectrum.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_00: And obviously for people at the bottom of it, it is more challenging for them to be able to, if you like, manage their way out of it than you know the you know, folks like Ryan and I that you know had the luxury of working inside a major organization with a whole bunch of internal safety nets inside the organization.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the interesting things about working inside a large corporation is that there are actual implicit safety nets within the within the organization, everything from you know mental health support to you know child support, all these various different things that are that are there for you inside an organization that are not necessarily if you uh if you live in a different world.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um one thing I'll mention in terms of of my own experience with this.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I uh you know, we we had the collective shared experience, Ryan and I, in the in the context of um of our internal startup.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: About 15 years before that, I had, I think, what would be close to considered to be uh be considered to be you know real full-on burnout.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that I call it out is because um it one of the things that happened for me personally was that it was extraordinarily sudden.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I went from kind of like going to work with a spring in my step to like dreading going to work within 24 hours.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: There was nothing else that was an obvious trigger.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: There was no like there was no like situation where it was like, oh, this has changed and now I don't like this anymore.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly something changed in me whereby I didn't like this anymore.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so what I rec I recognized fairly early on that I needed to do something about that.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and in my case, what that resulted in was shifting from doing that work for another organization to starting a uh to starting a consultancy um and then having some autonomy over determining what the consultancy did.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I call that one out just because I think a lot of people think that you can always see the train coming.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in my experience, that's not true.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: You can you can think everything is fine and then suddenly something switches and now it's not.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so that goes back to that point that you said before, Matt, about the check engine.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I think that having vigilance and understanding that this might be something that is happening to you is something that you need to be very aware of.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: And as we said before, try to try to take some remedial action before it happens versus being in a point where you are mentally struggling and therefore unable to do something about it as effectively as you could do otherwise.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and just the self-awareness part, you know, like we we've had folks on the podcast before that talk about self-awareness, meditation, all those skills that, you know, even 15 or 20 years ago you probably didn't have at your disposal or or were using maybe as as effectively as you could or mature enough to think that way.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that speaks to a lot of people that don't have time to take that self-awareness seriously, especially then it's gonna hit you without warning.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's really that's really interesting.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, so what can we what can we do about it?
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: What can we do about it?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you just talked about one of them self-awareness, absolutely, is uh is definitely something it's a tool that that we have at our disposal.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: And it's so it's so interesting, actually.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: You bring up stuff like meditation, Matt, because I think that that um that is an example whereby for many, many years, things like meditation were not considered to be tools per se.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: They were considered to be, you know, things that you know people who sat in lotus positions for a hobby did, right?
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_00: As in it was just something that was it was a luxury that most of us wouldn't afford ourselves.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what we're starting to learn about things like meditation is that they actively are tools.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: They're tools to help you become much more aware of yourself in the moment and more aware of the challenges that you face and and the impact that those challenges that you face are having on you.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you can become, you can use a tool like that as a as in a very kind of practical way.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, at Billy Minds, we're actually all about practical tools.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so we think a lot about what are the the practical tools in which you at which you can adopt.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_00: And we've touched upon some of those things already.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: So the first thing is that if you do think about your life in terms of those autonomy, mastery, and purpose, a really good way to kind of like help you with your motivation is to actually go through a process of understanding what the autonomy, what level of autonomy you have today, what level of mastery you have today, what level of purpose you have today.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_00: And and then look at those three dimensions and then figure out how you can go about increasing each of those three dimensions.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what's really intriguing about this is that many people look at that and go, I'm in the wrong job, I need to go do another job.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_00: But actually, in many cases, you can change what's happening in those dimensions within your current job.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, on the mastery side, maybe you feel like you're not good enough at doing the thing that you're supposed to do.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: Well, potentially you can do training, you can do other uh other things which help you feel like your mastery in your Role has increased.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it could be mastery directly associated with your role, or maybe it could be mastery of personal effectiveness.
• 44:09
  SPEAKER_00: The thing we do at Billion Minds, right?
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be directly connected to the role.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_00: It has to do with how good you are at executing from, you know, eight in the morning till 10 o'clock at night.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: On the purpose side, we work many times with people on the purpose side whereby they don't think of their role as having any kind of high-level purpose.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: But in many cases it does.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just a question of like framing it in terms of the way that other people benefit from the work that you do.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so in most organizations, you can find a way to connect your role to that, uh, to that external purpose.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then on the autonomy side, it's extraordinary, actually.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in many cases, people determine for themselves that they have no autonomy, but in reality, um, they just by a simple conversation with a manager, a simple conversation with with uh colleagues, they can create more autonomy for themselves within the role that they have.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: So these things are absolutely adjustable.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, that's the first aspect of it.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: As I mentioned before, there's this other aspect, the aspect that we're really focused in on billion minds, which is what are the practical tools to help you get through your day?
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_00: And the practical tools to help you get through your day really are centered around this concept of with structure being eroded, how do you put just enough structure back in in order to be able to get through that day more effectively?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's one component, this organizational structure element that is absolutely necessary in our lives for us to be able to go through the day really well.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: The second aspect of it is do you have this kind of like repeatable method, right, that allows you to be able to execute effectively each and every day?
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have to be a prescribed method from somebody else.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: It needs to be your repeatable method that works for you.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then the third element that we look at is what is the degree of your ability to execute day in, day out?
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, are you as a human being, as a biological system, are you well prepared to execute day in, day out?
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_00: That includes anything associated with wellness.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: So sleep, uh, it can include things like meditation, it includes things like nutrition, it includes things like movement.
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_00: What we found among those people that really do consistently avoid burnout, that really are effective on a day-to-day basis is that they take care of those three things, that imposing of enough organizational structure, that repeatable method, and that um and that foundation, if you like, of wellness that provides you with the ability to execute.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you do those things well, then you are much more immune to burnout than others.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_00: And furthermore, when we've encountered people that are sort of on that cusp of burnout, almost invariably one or two or even three of those things are kind of broken, right?
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: They may not be getting enough sleep.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_00: They may not be their nutrition, may not be that great, they may uh, you know, this is obviously all on the wellness side, they may not, you know, move enough or regulate enough, right?
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: They may not be taking care of that.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Or they might have just not really got down this repeatable method.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_00: There's not really consistency in terms of how they approach each and every day.
• 47:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or the structure, right?
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: The structure that there's been eroded that isn't there now anymore.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_00: They've not done anything to replace that structure.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe they don't say, they don't get up at the same time every day, for example, or they don't have the same uh the same separation between that work and that non-work.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Or non-work is invading their workspace in a way that it was not before.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can almost always draw it down to those, uh, to those specific things.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_00: If you get those things right, then it often seems like you're much more immune to burnout than you would be otherwise.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then, Matt, there's an answer to that question.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_02: There's an answer to that question that is looking through the lens of the employer.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_02: Everything Paul said 100% accurate in terms of the individual.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, from an employer perspective, it's probably pretty simple.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_02: It's just be in recognition of that.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that you have to consider the whole person, um, that the the burnout challenge does extend beyond the workplace.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and in recognition of that, really re-examining readiness, uh, you know, thinking about uh the term we used earlier, that this really is a set of skills.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_02: Combating burnout requires the development of a set of skills.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_02: And once you recognize that, you recognize that developing skills requires training, requires readiness.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, and so as you're thinking about um what you arm your employees with, think about whole life skills, right?
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_02: Not just um things that are pertinent to their exact job function.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but considering the whole person and and and recognize that uh almost everybody's on the spectrum of burnout, whether it's low level or advanced state, and then recognition that help them develop a set of skills to combat it.
• 49:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, everything's part of the whole, right?
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_01: So as an organization, I mean it's almost it's probably worth a whole other podcast on what organizations need to do to make sure that this is in their uh in their mind as an organization.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as much as you can have your own personal check engine light, the organization runs on the people that work in the organization, and and it's their collective check engine light needs to be, uh they need to be aware of that too.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: But it it they bear a a new responsibility, maybe uh that they were not aware of, which is making sure that that is the case, which I think don't I don't believe historically was thought to be the organization's necessary responsibility to make sure that their people are okay, but I think maybe uh that that should and could change for the better if if uh we play our cards right.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_01: So let's let's think about that.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's do another podcast.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: I like it.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: You up for that, Ryan?
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_01: Let's do it.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, guys.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_01: This has been great.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: Cool.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, Matt.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Matt.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: The Way Too Busy podcast was presented and produced by me, Matt Neal, and was brought to you by Billion Minds.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to get in touch with us, tweet us at Rising Billion or email us at WayTooBusy at BillionMinds.com.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: Billion Minds, creating practical tools for our way too busy lives.