Speaker 1: Pushkin. The COVID nineteen pandemic has brought lots of odd
Speaker 1: new expressions and concepts into the public consciousness, things like
Speaker 1: social distancing, variant of concern, flattening the curve fomites. But
Speaker 1: the new post COVID concept I want to focus on
Speaker 1: today is one that I find especially interesting from the
Speaker 1: perspective of thinking about our negative emotions. That concept is
Speaker 1: the great resignation. It's a term coined by Anthony Clots,
Speaker 1: an expert in organizational behavior at Texas A and M University.
Speaker 1: He used the term to describe the massive and historically
Speaker 1: unprecedented number of people who've decided to quit their jobs
Speaker 1: just over the last few years. Economists have been puzzled
Speaker 1: by many aspects of this resignation trend, especially when you
Speaker 1: take into account which workers seem to be bailing on
Speaker 1: their jobs in record numbers. Because research shows the massive
Speaker 1: exodus we're seeing is not just caused by low paid
Speaker 1: workers seeking a higher living wage or employees in their
Speaker 1: twenties seeking something new in a wide open job market.
Speaker 1: The Great Resignation seems to be driven instead by highly
Speaker 1: skilled and often well paid mid career workers. People in
Speaker 1: their late thirties and forties. They're the one, statistically speaking,
Speaker 1: who seem to be ditching their jobs in droves. But
Speaker 1: as a psychologist, I'm more interested in the emotional states
Speaker 1: that are driving so many people to just up and
Speaker 1: quit a career that many of them have had for
Speaker 1: over a decade. And if we look at the reason why,
Speaker 1: it's because a lot of us are just not feeling
Speaker 1: okay at work. And I really mean us as in
Speaker 1: me too. As a busy professor, researcher, head of college, speaker,
Speaker 1: and podcaster, I definitely know what it's like to feel
Speaker 1: physically and emotionally overwhelmed at the end of the week,
Speaker 1: to have so much stress that you react to the
Speaker 1: people around you with less empathy than you'd like to.
Speaker 1: I know what it feels like to worry that you're
Speaker 1: going to absolutely lose it if even one tiny new
Speaker 1: task gets added to your plate. And if you are
Speaker 1: feeling that way, please know it's not you. It's burnout. Burnout.
Speaker 1: This all too common overwhelmed psychological state is the feeling
Speaker 1: we'll be covering in this final episode on our series
Speaker 1: on Difficult Emotions. We're going to trace its origins way
Speaker 1: farther back in human history than the Great Resignation. But
Speaker 1: perhaps most importantly, we'll hear some strategies for navigating burnout
Speaker 1: and ideally getting rid of it for good. You're listening
Speaker 1: to the Happiness Lab with me, doctor Laurie Santos. One
Speaker 1: of the suckiest things about burnout is that the science
Speaker 1: shows that it can sneak up on you when your
Speaker 1: life is seemingly going really well. That's what happened to
Speaker 1: Jonathan Mollssic, author of the recent book The End of Burnout,
Speaker 1: Why Work Drains Us and How to build Better lives.
Speaker 1: Jonathan's burnout began soon after we got his dream job
Speaker 1: as a tenured college professor. I would wake up in
Speaker 1: the morning and dread having to go to work. My
Speaker 1: constant thought was, oh, not this again. Often I would
Speaker 1: get up and then a couple hours later I would
Speaker 1: have to go back to sleep. I was just that tired.
Speaker 1: I had a hard time preparing for class. All that
Speaker 1: stuff that I had taught myself to do to be
Speaker 1: an effective teacher was just gone from my brain. I
Speaker 1: just was not thinking straight, and I wasn't taking much
Speaker 1: satisfaction in the work anymore. At some point I took
Speaker 1: unpaid leave because I was just like, something is wrong
Speaker 1: and I didn't have a name for it. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what was wrong, but I thought, Okay, if I
Speaker 1: take a semester away from the college, I can rest,
Speaker 1: I can recharge and get a new perspective. And after
Speaker 1: that semester I came back and nothing changed, absolutely nothing.
Speaker 1: I was every bit as exhausted in this period. I
Speaker 1: stress eight, I stress drank, and I was just utterly
Speaker 1: miserable in my dream job. Eventually, my wife, who was
Speaker 1: also an academic, got a job offer far away from
Speaker 1: where we were living, and that was the perfect opportunity.
Speaker 1: I turned in my letter of resignation and well, honestly,
Speaker 1: that was the end of the burnout. Was utterly tied
Speaker 1: to the job. To actually figured out what was going
Speaker 1: on when you quit this dream job you had, But
Speaker 1: that was when you get some real insight, you know.
Speaker 1: So how did you learn what was going on? So
Speaker 1: being an academic, being a researcher, being ultimately a nerd
Speaker 1: at part, I went in a dove into the literature,
Speaker 1: and the name I kept seeing over and over again
Speaker 1: was Christina Maslac, a social psychologist at University of California, Berkeley,
Speaker 1: who had been writing about burnout for deck Gades. I
Speaker 1: read her first book. It read like my professional biography.
Speaker 1: It was a revelation. I suddenly knew that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just something wrong with me. I was part of the
Speaker 1: whole cultural problem of burnout that had been ongoing for decades.
Speaker 1: And so these days we talk about burnout a lot.
Speaker 1: And one of the things you talk about in the
Speaker 1: book is the fact that we kind of use this
Speaker 1: term sloppily. So tell me what you mean here and
Speaker 1: give me some examples. An example is that I ran
Speaker 1: across a not very scientific survey. Let's at ninety six
Speaker 1: percent of millennials are burned out, which is just a
Speaker 1: nonsense number. And part of the problem is that in
Speaker 1: a culture that really values work as one of the
Speaker 1: highest activities that a person can do. If you're working,
Speaker 1: if you're working hard, you simply are a meritorious person.
Speaker 1: Then claiming that you're burned out is kind of a
Speaker 1: status marker. It's a badge of honor. And this is
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that I think some scientists are
Speaker 1: really looking at right like, trying to come up with
Speaker 1: more of a scientific definition of burnout. So with the
Speaker 1: caveat there are a lot of different misconceptions about this concept.
Speaker 1: You know what do the scientists say, you know, what
Speaker 1: are the kind of parts of burnout we should be
Speaker 1: paying attention to. Yeah. The three main parts of burnout
Speaker 1: that Christina Maslack and her many co authors have been
Speaker 1: working with for decades are exhaustion sometimes called emotional exhaustion,
Speaker 1: cynicism sometimes called depersonalization, and a reduced sense of effectiveness.
Speaker 1: After I quit my job, I took the Maslack burnout inventory.
Speaker 1: I feel emotionally drained from my work every day. I
Speaker 1: scored in the ninety eight percent time on exhaustion and
Speaker 1: pretty high on the other two measures. I feel exhilarated
Speaker 1: after working closely with my students once a month. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm at the end of my rope a
Speaker 1: few times a week. I have to admit like I
Speaker 1: felt kind of out of myself for that. So four
Speaker 1: or five years later, when I was working on the book,
Speaker 1: I took the masle borout inventory again. I feel emotionally
Speaker 1: drained from my work once a month. I feel exhilarated
Speaker 1: after working closely with my students A few times a month,
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm at the end of my rope.
Speaker 1: Never the percentile scores were much much lower, you know,
Speaker 1: single digits, and on that scale things had had changed
Speaker 1: radically because so much of my working life had changed.
Speaker 1: So let's kind of jump into each of these elements
Speaker 1: because I think they're kind of important to understand, maybe
Speaker 1: starting with what might be the most obvious one culturally,
Speaker 1: which is this idea of exhaustion, right to talk about
Speaker 1: how exhaustion manifested in your situation. Exhaustion is not just tiredness.
Speaker 1: We all know what tiredness is like. At the end
Speaker 1: of the day. If you've been working hard, you're you're tired.
Speaker 1: While you're tired just being awake at the end of
Speaker 1: a project, you might feel like you really need a
Speaker 1: few days off in order to recharge and get back
Speaker 1: to work again at your normal capacity. The exhaustion of
Speaker 1: burnout is much more chronic than that. It isn't the
Speaker 1: kind of thing that a little bit of time off
Speaker 1: can cure. In my case, I took five months and
Speaker 1: it didn't make a dent in my exhaustion. As soon
Speaker 1: I was back in the context of my job, the
Speaker 1: exhaustion returned. And that's because burnout is something that has
Speaker 1: to do with your relationship to your job. It is
Speaker 1: caused by being stretched between your ideals for work and
Speaker 1: the reality of your job. If you just remove yourself
Speaker 1: from that situation, well the exhaustion is eventually going to
Speaker 1: go away. But if you go back to that situation
Speaker 1: and your job hasn't changed, well, no surprise, the exhaustion
Speaker 1: is going to return to. So that's the second part
Speaker 1: of burnout, according to the scientific definition, is this idea
Speaker 1: of depersonalization or cynicism. You know, how did this play
Speaker 1: out in your own job? In my case, I found
Speaker 1: myself getting irrationally angry at very minor perceived slights. My
Speaker 1: temper became very short. I had less patience for ordinary
Speaker 1: obstacles that students face. And yeah, I mean I saw
Speaker 1: the students as a problem. I saw the students as
Speaker 1: unwilling to learn, and that felt offensive to me. It
Speaker 1: felt like an attack on my personhood. And then the
Speaker 1: final way that burnout manifests beyond this idea of being
Speaker 1: emotionally exhausted and all the cynicism that comes up, is
Speaker 1: this idea of a reduced personal accomplishment. Again, what is
Speaker 1: this sort of in terms of burnout and how did
Speaker 1: this manifest in your own case? In general, this means
Speaker 1: that you feel like your work is not effective, that
Speaker 1: not doing a good job, and that's a feeling that
Speaker 1: can be totally detached from reality. In my case, I
Speaker 1: felt like a complete failure. You know. I perceived the
Speaker 1: students is not learning and simultaneously was frustrated with them,
Speaker 1: but also turned that frustration back on myself, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: what's wrong with me? It seemed like the students were
Speaker 1: learning nothing from me. That probably doesn't line up perfectly
Speaker 1: with reality. I probably was doing a better job than
Speaker 1: I realized. I continued to have a sympathetic department chair.
Speaker 1: She thought I was generally doing a good job, but
Speaker 1: I just couldn't see it. You've talked about the specifics
Speaker 1: of this phenomena of bran out playing out in other
Speaker 1: kinds of jobs where you're not even seeing that. I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about the paper pushers and the box tickers, you know,
Speaker 1: talk about how this can play out in the context
Speaker 1: of those kinds of jobs. In a large study of
Speaker 1: workers in a hospital system, it was found that administrative workers,
Speaker 1: so the people who know ever calls a hero. The
Speaker 1: people who don't get applause at seven pm to honor
Speaker 1: their work, they're more susceptible to the feeling of ineffectiveness
Speaker 1: than say, their colleagues who are physicians or nurses, who
Speaker 1: are more susceptible to the feelings of exhaustion. And I
Speaker 1: think that burnout research needs to take a closer look
Speaker 1: at the nuances of how people in different professions experience burnouts,
Speaker 1: because the overlooked administrative worker is likely to experience it
Speaker 1: differently than the nurse who is on her feet for
Speaker 1: twelve hours a day running around dealing with the severe illness.
Speaker 1: These symptoms may make burnout seem like it's a recent phenomenon,
Speaker 1: but when we get back from the break, we'll see
Speaker 1: that this awful feeling isn't brought on by post pandemic
Speaker 1: life or even the modern workplace. We'll see the understanding
Speaker 1: the history of this condition might be the key to
Speaker 1: mixing it. The happiness lab will be right back. These days,
Speaker 1: it can feel like so many of us are reaching
Speaker 1: the point of burnout, but author Jonathan Molessek argues that
Speaker 1: the phenomena of burnout itself isn't all that new, some
Speaker 1: kind of exhaustion that is more than physical tiredness has
Speaker 1: been part of the human condition for a very long time.
Speaker 1: One of the early documented exhaustion disorders is melancholia, which
Speaker 1: has roots in ancient Greek medicine, and you know the
Speaker 1: theory of the Four humors, and acida, which particularly was
Speaker 1: thought to afflict Christian monks, and a later version of
Speaker 1: melancholia that appeared in the Renaissance thought to afflict artistic elite.
Speaker 1: All of these disorders were thought to afflict the elite
Speaker 1: into exhaustion. That gets the attention is the exhaustion of
Speaker 1: the elite. So a great parallel with burnout is neurasthenia,
Speaker 1: or nervous exhaustion, which was first identified a hundred years
Speaker 1: prior to Maslac and Freudenberger identifying burnout. What neurasthenia looked
Speaker 1: like was this very broad array of potential symptoms from
Speaker 1: dyspepsia to I think baldness, and it became kind of
Speaker 1: a cultural phenomenon. Many writers both were diagnosed with neurasthenia
Speaker 1: and also wrote about neurasthenic characters. Virginia Woolf, Henry James,
Speaker 1: the Social theorist Max Weber, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Proust. You know,
Speaker 1: neurasthenia kind of went off the rails. It became considered
Speaker 1: so widespread as to become meaningless, and the cultural understanding
Speaker 1: of it went way beyond the scientific understanding. And my
Speaker 1: concern is that we could do the same with burnout
Speaker 1: if we don't get clear on what scientists are saying
Speaker 1: about it. And in that case, we'll just repeat the
Speaker 1: cycle over and over. We'll just never properly deal with
Speaker 1: this kind of exhaustion that causes people a lot of pain.
Speaker 1: And so I think really kind of coming to terms
Speaker 1: with this definition of burnout requires looking a little bit
Speaker 1: more historically what's going on, you know, so talk about
Speaker 1: where this idea came from. Burnout was first theorized in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. And at the same time that Maslac
Speaker 1: and Friedenberger are theorizing burnout, Bob Dylan is singing about burnout,
Speaker 1: Neil Young is singing about burnout. So there's something culturally
Speaker 1: in the air. And I think what it was was
Speaker 1: these massive changes in the American workforce that were underway
Speaker 1: that began in the nineteen sixties and really came to
Speaker 1: a head in the mid nineteen seventies. An old understanding
Speaker 1: of work was dying and a new understanding of work
Speaker 1: was being born. And then this new idea of work
Speaker 1: really had elements where interesting things were shifting. Before, companies
Speaker 1: kind of dealt with their risk of what was going
Speaker 1: on by kind of putting that all at risk in
Speaker 1: kind of a capital right, but there was kind of
Speaker 1: a shift to thinking about this risk for the workers, right.
Speaker 1: It was kind of the workers responsibility, you know, to
Speaker 1: talk about what this shift was and kind of how
Speaker 1: it affected sort of increases and burnout. If you look
Speaker 1: at a chart of workers productivity and their wages beginning
Speaker 1: in nineteen forty five, you see that as productivity increased,
Speaker 1: wages increased in exact proportion. Then you very suddenly see
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three or seventy four, productivity continuing to rise,
Speaker 1: wages become flat. So there's an increasing gap between what
Speaker 1: workers are producing for their employers and what they're getting
Speaker 1: in pay and benefits. That is one huge marker of
Speaker 1: a shift in economic thinking and business doctrines. And subsequent
Speaker 1: to that, companies began an official policy where there's a
Speaker 1: core of long term salaried employees, and then a periphery
Speaker 1: of contractors, part time workers in academia, adjuncts like me
Speaker 1: who have very little job security, often lower wages. But
Speaker 1: because they're not official employees, if you just let them go,
Speaker 1: no one notices. You know, like the Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: isn't going to report on the ending of a thousand
Speaker 1: workers contracts the way it would report on ten thousand
Speaker 1: people laid off from an auto plant in Ohio. So
Speaker 1: that was a big historical change in the way we
Speaker 1: think about work. But another one is that there was
Speaker 1: also kind of a historical change, maybe even a longer
Speaker 1: term one, from workers mostly doing manufacturing to kind of
Speaker 1: shifting to service work. And you've argued that this has
Speaker 1: some like pretty important psychological effects that might be related
Speaker 1: to burnout. You know. One is this idea of depersonalization,
Speaker 1: Like you know, you got to kind of get over
Speaker 1: the fact that service work can be emotionally exhausting. You know,
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about how this plays out. The
Speaker 1: six season seventies was when more workers were becoming college
Speaker 1: educated and going into service professions. You think about a
Speaker 1: psychologist or a social worker, or today virtually any kind
Speaker 1: of office worker. They're kind of always on the clock.
Speaker 1: The means of production for them is their own psychology,
Speaker 1: their own emotions awful. And so when your emotional life
Speaker 1: is on the line like that, when it's your tool
Speaker 1: for getting your job done, you're more and more exposed
Speaker 1: to those tensions between ideals and reality, and this notion
Speaker 1: of lofty ideals. I think it's to the second thing
Speaker 1: that might play out in the service procession, which is that,
Speaker 1: you know, we like to think that, you know, as
Speaker 1: educated workers, we're going to have this really meaningful job.
Speaker 1: But another trend over history is the proliferation of so
Speaker 1: called bullshit jobs. You know, so, what are bullshit jobs
Speaker 1: and how can this contribute to a sense of ineffectiveness
Speaker 1: on the job? Bullshit jobs is a term was coined
Speaker 1: by the anthropologist David Graver, who very sadly passed away
Speaker 1: about a year ago, and Graver defines bullshit jobs as
Speaker 1: jobs that no one can really say what you're doing,
Speaker 1: including the worker themselves. So you, as the employee can't
Speaker 1: even exactly say what the point of your job is.
Speaker 1: So people whose job is to assess the assessment protocols
Speaker 1: of some other industry, it seems like that work doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily need to be done. So it's very easy to
Speaker 1: see how someone who is in a bulshit job would
Speaker 1: feel a sense of ineffectiveness. And one of the ideas
Speaker 1: that's pretty hollow is just this notion that we are
Speaker 1: what our work is. You know, in some sense, we
Speaker 1: don't work to live, We wind up living to work.
Speaker 1: You know, did this kind of play out in your
Speaker 1: own case of feeling burnt out? Absolutely? Being an academic
Speaker 1: was a huge part of my identity for almost two
Speaker 1: decades of my life. So the time that I spent
Speaker 1: in graduate school and then the eleven years that I
Speaker 1: spent as a college professor, and I wouldn't have known
Speaker 1: what to do about myself. Are like, I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: known how to identify myself in the world without that
Speaker 1: job that I had become so attached to. I was
Speaker 1: a college professor, and when things were going well, that
Speaker 1: was a very satisfying identity to have. And so when
Speaker 1: the job kind of started to bill sour for me,
Speaker 1: that led to great questioning of who I am and
Speaker 1: what my whole purpose as a person was, what my
Speaker 1: identity was. When we get back from the break, will
Speaker 1: learn that Jonathan didn't always have a job that caused
Speaker 1: a crisis of identity or a purpose. Before he became
Speaker 1: a professor, he enjoyed a workplace that was so remarkable
Speaker 1: for its non burnout vibes that there's an entire documentary
Speaker 1: about it. We'll hear more about this workplace and what
Speaker 1: it can teach us about reducing burnout when the Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab returns in a moment. Long before Jonathan Molessing burned
Speaker 1: out as a tenured professor, he was an employee in
Speaker 1: a very different kind of job, one that brought him
Speaker 1: more inner peace and a brief brush with fame. My
Speaker 1: film debut was in a small documentary called The Parking
Speaker 1: Lot Movie. It is, as the title indicates, about a
Speaker 1: parking lot where I was an attendant after I finished
Speaker 1: graduate school. I'm in it for just a few seconds,
Speaker 1: just talking about the weird obsessions that as a parking
Speaker 1: lot attendant you can have with license. Please, if you
Speaker 1: haven't seen the film and hot tip, you totally should,
Speaker 1: because it's incredibly charming. The premise is pretty simple. The
Speaker 1: movie follows a group of parking lot attendants, including young Jonathan,
Speaker 1: as they go about their normal day to day tasks,
Speaker 1: seemingly having an amazing time. In between dealing with customers,
Speaker 1: they read books, they make up goofy games like playing
Speaker 1: ringtoss with traffic cones, and they spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time kicking up their heels and pondering the human condition.
Speaker 1: In other words, pretty much the opposite of burned out.
Speaker 1: It was the best job I'd had to that point.
Speaker 1: The pay was better than I had expected it would be.
Speaker 1: I had great co workers, I had a really wonderful boss,
Speaker 1: and I think most significantly, the job did not occupy
Speaker 1: my entire being. It was not all of who I was,
Speaker 1: and it didn't follow me home at the end of
Speaker 1: a shift that wasn't exhausted because the job didn't demand
Speaker 1: that I put my entire being into it. No one
Speaker 1: looks at their newborn child and things, boy, I hope
Speaker 1: that my son or daughter grows up to be a
Speaker 1: parking lot attendant. No one dream that's no one's dream job,
Speaker 1: and the fact that it's no one's dream job actually
Speaker 1: helps make it a really good job, at least that
Speaker 1: particular lot. Because you don't have these wild expectations about it.
Speaker 1: You don't expect to be totally fulfilled, you know, having
Speaker 1: seen the movie and having seen you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of chill vibe of all the attendance and sort of
Speaker 1: the wonderful message of work that comes from that movie.
Speaker 1: Some ways maybe ironic that you know you are now
Speaker 1: the poster child for burnout and then the fact that
Speaker 1: you went through this, and so what's that irony? Like,
Speaker 1: I guess what happened. I think that I didn't take
Speaker 1: the lesson of the parking lot seriously enough. I think
Speaker 1: that I probably just saw it as this break in
Speaker 1: my academic career, you know, this brief moment where I'm
Speaker 1: outside of my whole value system that I had been
Speaker 1: cultivating in graduate school. And then when I left the
Speaker 1: parking lot, I just picked up on that value system.
Speaker 1: And I shouldn't have done that. I should have taken
Speaker 1: more of the lesson of the parking Lot with me
Speaker 1: to my academic job, and I wish I had. And
Speaker 1: you've argued that this job kind of gives us some
Speaker 1: insight about the kinds of things that really can help
Speaker 1: us develop better work. Culture is elsewhere too, and so
Speaker 1: talk about this idea of finding different ways to get
Speaker 1: dignity in your life and dignities that come from outside
Speaker 1: of work. One of our noble lives in the United
Speaker 1: States culture is that you only count, you only have
Speaker 1: dignity if you have paid employment, and if you don't,
Speaker 1: if you've been laid off, or if you have a
Speaker 1: disability that keeps you from working, or you're caring for
Speaker 1: children full time, then you know you're sort of looked
Speaker 1: at with a little bit of suspicion. Why aren't you working,
Speaker 1: Why aren't you contributing like everyone else? And getting rid
Speaker 1: of that noble line is the first step towards building
Speaker 1: a better culture where work plays more of a supporting
Speaker 1: role in our lives, and then you know, we can
Speaker 1: have greater sense of flourishing beyond our jobs. What I
Speaker 1: think we need to replace that noble lie with is
Speaker 1: the idea that you everyone whoever we meet has dignity
Speaker 1: before they ever work, and even if they never work.
Speaker 1: Like let's think about that newborn who may or may
Speaker 1: not grow up to be a parking lot attendant. No
Speaker 1: one thinks that they're newborn is lacking dignity. We rightly
Speaker 1: cherish young children. We see them as having incredible value. Well,
Speaker 1: that child is going to grow up and become an
Speaker 1: adult and they didn't lose that value along the way.
Speaker 1: And the question is if everyone in society can recognize
Speaker 1: that dignity regardless of if the person is working or not.
Speaker 1: And so, what are some structural changes you think might
Speaker 1: help us get that notion of dignity back. You talk
Speaker 1: about a lot of these in your book, but I'm
Speaker 1: wondering if you have, you know, your top couple structural
Speaker 1: changes that you'd love to see kind of help producer
Speaker 1: and out work. Well, the first thing is, as I guess,
Speaker 1: like that intellectual shift, beginning to see that each one
Speaker 1: of us has dignity, and then we can build the
Speaker 1: structures that will honor and recognize that dignity. So when
Speaker 1: it comes to work, for example, seeing that because everyone
Speaker 1: before they even go to work already has dignity, then well,
Speaker 1: as a dignified person, they deserve a living wage regardless
Speaker 1: of the kind of work they do. They also deserve
Speaker 1: reasonable hours in a predictable schedule. I'm also an advocate
Speaker 1: for a certain measure of basic income again to recognize
Speaker 1: that as a living human being, you deserve some ability
Speaker 1: to support yourself whether you work or not. So those
Speaker 1: are kind of on the policy level ways that I
Speaker 1: think we can better honor the dignity that we all
Speaker 1: have regardless of our work steps. You know, this whole
Speaker 1: mini season is really about how we can productively use
Speaker 1: a lot of the negative experiences we have, and of
Speaker 1: course I put burnout and one of these categories. You know,
Speaker 1: it seems like you've learned so much from this experience,
Speaker 1: but it seems like the solution here isn't necessarily to
Speaker 1: do something different yourself. It's really to develop a new
Speaker 1: mindset or to make some you know, pretty radical individual
Speaker 1: changes here. So does that kind of fit with your
Speaker 1: interpretation of burnout and what you've learned from it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's burnout is not the kind of thing
Speaker 1: that I think we should make peace with. Though I
Speaker 1: think that getting over burnout as individuals and as a
Speaker 1: culture will require us to make peace with our finitude.
Speaker 1: I recently read this wonderful book by Oliver Berkman called
Speaker 1: four Thousand Weeks Time Management from Mortals, and the message
Speaker 1: there is recognize your finitude. You can't you literally cannot
Speaker 1: do everything in the time that you have. And I
Speaker 1: think that one thing that drives burnout culture is a
Speaker 1: belief in our infinitude is belief that we can do more,
Speaker 1: that this productivity hack will allow us to do more,
Speaker 1: or learning to say no can allow us to concentrate
Speaker 1: on the work that is more meaningful to us, Or
Speaker 1: if we rearrange our meal prep then we'll be able
Speaker 1: to get more done or something. And Berkmann's message is
Speaker 1: that we simply will never be able to do it all.
Speaker 1: We won't even be able to do a fraction of
Speaker 1: the things that we might like to do in our lives.
Speaker 1: And so I think that recognizing that affinity, recognizing that
Speaker 1: we will die is a great discipline to help us
Speaker 1: overcome burnout. Culture lives are limited, and that is something
Speaker 1: to carry with you, and so that's trying to us.
Speaker 1: Do you think we can use kind of at the
Speaker 1: individual level, because I agree those policy changes are going
Speaker 1: to be important, But many of the folks listening to
Speaker 1: this might be experiencing burnout like right now, right, and
Speaker 1: so what are changes that they can make locally to
Speaker 1: improve the situation. That's pretty tough because burnout, the causes
Speaker 1: of burnout are not just in you. The causes of
Speaker 1: burnout are in our culture, which is where we get
Speaker 1: our ideals for work, and we grow up with those
Speaker 1: from an early age. The other side of the causes
Speaker 1: is in our work environment, in our workplaces. So unless
Speaker 1: you are a sole proprietor, you don't have total control
Speaker 1: over your working conditions. Even if you are a sole proprietor,
Speaker 1: you may not have total control over your working conditions.
Speaker 1: But in order to prevent and heal and get over burnout,
Speaker 1: the changes have to be more than just individual, because
Speaker 1: the causes are more than just individual. You know, think
Speaker 1: about one common piece of advice that is given to
Speaker 1: people who might be suffering burnout as well, learned to
Speaker 1: say no. That was certainly something that I heard in academia.
Speaker 1: Me learning to say no to other people's demands doesn't
Speaker 1: reduce the number of demands in the world. It just
Speaker 1: shifts those that burden onto the next person over. So
Speaker 1: if we're going to really deal with burnout, it's going
Speaker 1: to take a recognition not just of our common dignity,
Speaker 1: but also of solidarity, recognizing that my burnout and also
Speaker 1: my flourishing are linked to burnout and your flourishing, and
Speaker 1: we're not going to unfortunately, you know that we're not
Speaker 1: going to get rid of burnout. Without more collective action,
Speaker 1: our cultures expectations around work can be pretty merciless, and
Speaker 1: changing these expectations is not something that any one person
Speaker 1: can do alone, but each and every one of us
Speaker 1: can start to make a difference in the local work
Speaker 1: cultures we take part in. I'm going to try to
Speaker 1: notice the things I do that unintentionally perpetuate burnout culture
Speaker 1: so that I can try to break the cycle. For example,
Speaker 1: I bet my students and colleagues would feel better about
Speaker 1: keeping more sane work hours if they saw me doing
Speaker 1: that too. I'm also going to keep an eye out
Speaker 1: for touchstones like the Parking Lot movie that I can
Speaker 1: return to when my identity and sense of purpose are
Speaker 1: getting a little too defined by my career. I'll use
Speaker 1: them as a needed reminder that another way of relating
Speaker 1: to work is possible, and that we can all make
Speaker 1: positive changes to make our work life balance a little
Speaker 1: bit healthier. Thank you so much for joining me for
Speaker 1: this season of the Happiness Lab. Nobody likes sitting with
Speaker 1: uncomfortable emotions, and even with all the new strategies we've
Speaker 1: learned to support ourselves, it's still going to take time
Speaker 1: and practice to put these into effect, so be patient
Speaker 1: and kind with yourself along the way. You and your
Speaker 1: well being are worth it. The team and I are
Speaker 1: already hard at work on the next full season of
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab, as well as some exciting bonus episodes
Speaker 1: along the way, so I hope you'll stay tuned. In
Speaker 1: the mean time, let us know how you like this season.
Speaker 1: Find me on social media and let me know how
Speaker 1: you're using the strategies you've learned in your day to
Speaker 1: day life. We always love to hear your insights too.
Speaker 1: Until next time, stay safe and stay happy. If you
Speaker 1: like this show and others from Pushkin Industries, consider subscribing
Speaker 1: to Pushkin Plus. As a special gift to Pushkin Plus subscribers,
Speaker 1: I'll be sharing a series of six guided meditations to
Speaker 1: help you practice the lessons we've learned from our experts.
Speaker 1: To check them out, look for Pushkin Plus on Apple
Speaker 1: podcast subscriptions. The Happiness Lab is co written and produced
Speaker 1: by Ryan Dilley, Emily Anne Vaughan, and Courtney Guerino. Our
Speaker 1: original music was composed by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing,
Speaker 1: and mastering by Evan Viola. Special thanks to Mialabelle Heather Faine,
Speaker 1: John Schnars, Carli Migliori, Christina Sullivan, Brandt Haines, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Nicole Morano, Royston Preserve, Jacob Weisberg, and my agent,
Speaker 1: Ben Davis. That Happiness Lab is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Pushkin Industries and me, Doctor Laurie Santos. To find more
Speaker 1: Pushkin podcasts, listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your podcasts,