Speaker 1: Ug another cold open. I am so over this, I
Speaker 1: am so burnt out. This week on game Plan, we're
Speaker 1: talking about burnout, how it happens and how we can
Speaker 1: get over it. Hi, I'm Rebecca Greenfield and I'm Francesco Weavie,
Speaker 1: And this week on game Plan, we are talking about
Speaker 1: burnout and I agree with your sentiment very ug. Well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so when we talk about burnout, everyone everyone uses the
Speaker 1: expression now and then I'm so burnt out right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: like I say it to my friends, I'm so burned
Speaker 1: out of this thing. But it's actually a specific thing
Speaker 1: with a history and a meaning. There was this great
Speaker 1: episode of Planet Money that went into the history of
Speaker 1: burnout that talked about this man, Herbert Freudenberger, who coined
Speaker 1: the term. Okay, so what is it if it's not
Speaker 1: this general term that we all use. According to him,
Speaker 1: it's a response to stress and frustration and a demand
Speaker 1: on yourself that you feel like you can't ever meet,
Speaker 1: like a perfectionism and a drive, and you feel like
Speaker 1: you're you can't get there, so you feel burnt out.
Speaker 1: And there are you were saying, there are certain professions
Speaker 1: that are more prone to burn out. I think doctors
Speaker 1: are really prone to burnout. There was a business Seek
Speaker 1: article from a few years ago about doctor burnout and
Speaker 1: the dangers of it, because obviously you don't want like
Speaker 1: a surgeon, you don't want out. You don't want to
Speaker 1: burntout doctor. No. No, there's a fifty percent chance then
Speaker 1: a doctor is burnt out, which is ten percent higher
Speaker 1: than the general working population. That's terrifying. And you can
Speaker 1: see why, Like they're in a high stress field and
Speaker 1: they want, you know, they always want to do the
Speaker 1: best for their patients ideally, right. It's associated with not
Speaker 1: only people who work hard, but people who are in
Speaker 1: fields where they work a lot with people, right, and
Speaker 1: have kind of a lot of emotional investment in their job. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another example in that Planet Many episode was customer service workers.
Speaker 1: I guess I know there's a very high turnover rate
Speaker 1: at call centers because it's a really high stress job
Speaker 1: and you're failing you right, Your whole job is just
Speaker 1: to hear people's file and anger at you. And if
Speaker 1: you think about it's kind of these jobs where you
Speaker 1: can't ever do it perfectly. There's always going to be
Speaker 1: somebody who's mad at the customer service person. There's always
Speaker 1: going to be a problem and with a patient. It's
Speaker 1: not just like you know, you're filling out some spreadsheet
Speaker 1: and you do it and you're done and yeah, you finished.
Speaker 1: Although that's a nice segue into the more general use
Speaker 1: of the term, because you can feel burned out in
Speaker 1: in any kind of job, right Like, you don't have
Speaker 1: to be a humanitarian on the front lines or service
Speaker 1: employee who's dealing with people all day. You can you
Speaker 1: can get burnt out of that spreadsheet job. Is there
Speaker 1: something you'd like to share with that ever in a
Speaker 1: moment you felt burnt out? I have. I definitely feel
Speaker 1: like I usually just like hit a point in time
Speaker 1: after being at any job for about like two years
Speaker 1: where I hit some kind of wall and I start
Speaker 1: to feel a little burnt out, even if the job
Speaker 1: hasn't changed that much. I think, especially if the job
Speaker 1: hasn't changed that much, and then you know, you either
Speaker 1: push through it or you kind of re evaluate whether
Speaker 1: that's the job for you. But it does seem to
Speaker 1: be like a creeping thing that happens to me over time.
Speaker 1: I don't know, do you do you ever feel burnt out?
Speaker 1: So I think people who work in online media, like
Speaker 1: we do do get burnt out pretty easily because the
Speaker 1: Internet is so all consuming and stressful and you feel
Speaker 1: like there's always a news story that you have to
Speaker 1: be responding to and the internet doesn't sleep. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: very demanding, and you're you're like only as good as
Speaker 1: your last I mean as a reporter or an editor,
Speaker 1: you're kind of only as good as your last story,
Speaker 1: the last thing that you produced, and so it's not
Speaker 1: like you can ever really rest on your your laurels. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I felt the most burnt out in my first writing job,
Speaker 1: which was one of those like NonStop blogging jobs. Um,
Speaker 1: that was just like you wrote sex posts today and
Speaker 1: went home and did it all over again, and that
Speaker 1: seemed unsustainable. Yeah, it's really hard, And I think that
Speaker 1: the thing about burnout is that it's to me, it's
Speaker 1: like a feeling. You know, it can lead to other
Speaker 1: things that can lead to you not being as good
Speaker 1: at your job, or you're not trying as hard, or
Speaker 1: you know, because that lack, you know, you can feel
Speaker 1: less committed to it and then less inclined to try
Speaker 1: really hard at it. But it starts as just like
Speaker 1: kind of like a nagging feeling in the in the
Speaker 1: back of your mind where you used to be more
Speaker 1: excited to get up in the morning and go to work,
Speaker 1: and then it slowly builds up, Like the longer you
Speaker 1: go without dealing with it, the more it's likely to
Speaker 1: actually affect your work. And that's the problem, right, Like
Speaker 1: the problem with the doctor burnout, for example, is you know,
Speaker 1: then they make more mistakes and nobody wants to be
Speaker 1: in that position. But yeah, and then I want to
Speaker 1: turn out doctor or airline pilot. No, but and then
Speaker 1: like the stakes are lower for someone like us, but yeah,
Speaker 1: then I start writing less. My stories are not as
Speaker 1: good ideas or anybody in any office. You know. There's
Speaker 1: the this term that hr people love engagement, which I
Speaker 1: hate that term, but yeah, it's it's a buzzy word
Speaker 1: for just like how emotionally invested in your job you are,
Speaker 1: and the more people are engaged, the better companies tend
Speaker 1: to do. So I imagine if you're burnt out, your
Speaker 1: engagement is pretty low. Right, Engagement is important, and so
Speaker 1: is not doing more than you can handle doing. And
Speaker 1: sometimes it's really hard at jobs because so many demands
Speaker 1: are put on you. But then there's like a type
Speaker 1: of person that puts a lot of demands on themselves
Speaker 1: and ends up burnt out. And it's actually what our
Speaker 1: guest today has written extensively about and done tons of
Speaker 1: research on. Yeah. So, Adam Grant as our guest today,
Speaker 1: and he is a wark and professor and the author
Speaker 1: of a super popular book from a few years ago,
Speaker 1: Give and Take and and It. He talks about the
Speaker 1: two general types of people at work, the givers and
Speaker 1: the takers. The givers tend to be better workers and
Speaker 1: better for companies. And you can imagine they're the type
Speaker 1: of people who give in an office, Like you said,
Speaker 1: they might be prone to burn out because they overextend themselves.
Speaker 1: And that is what Adam has done follow up research
Speaker 1: on that we are going to talk about with him today.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, Adam, Thank you for having me. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: you've found that givers tend to be better workers than takers.
Speaker 1: But after you published your book, you've got a lot
Speaker 1: of feedback from givers who suggested it wasn't that simple.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us some of the things that you
Speaker 1: learned from the people who reached out to you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's funny because I guess at some
Speaker 1: level it's an indication that people don't always read a
Speaker 1: book from start to finish. Oh yeah, we're familiar with
Speaker 1: that phenomenon. Never happened to anyone here, right, of course,
Speaker 1: we read your book from start to finish, but others
Speaker 1: other people do that. Um. You know, it was funny
Speaker 1: because I originally read the book, you know, with this
Speaker 1: paradox as the as the hook, and I said, look,
Speaker 1: you know, if you compare givers and takers, and you know,
Speaker 1: most people falling somewhere in the middle, as as matchers saying,
Speaker 1: you know, I try to trade favors evenly, and I'll
Speaker 1: do something for you if you do something for me. Um.
Speaker 1: What I'd found across studying engineers and salespeople and medical
Speaker 1: students was that the givers were actually the worst performers
Speaker 1: and the best performers, and they tended to be overrepresented
Speaker 1: on both extremes. And I started the book with that paradox,
Speaker 1: and then, you know, originally had written the second chapter
Speaker 1: about why so many givers burn out? And the consistent
Speaker 1: feedback then was that it's that people read to be
Speaker 1: inspired and uplifted, and they really don't want to open
Speaker 1: a book talking about burnout. So I moved it to
Speaker 1: chapter six, and then a bunch of people didn't read
Speaker 1: chapter six, which was all about the differences between you know,
Speaker 1: why some givers burn out and others are on fire.
Speaker 1: So when that feedback came in, I was like, please
Speaker 1: skip ahead a few chapters, so can you tell us
Speaker 1: why givers burnout? I think there are three systematic mistakes
Speaker 1: that the givers make, and this is where my thinking
Speaker 1: scotten refined quite a bit since writing the book. So
Speaker 1: if I had been clear about it, then I would
Speaker 1: have said, basically, the differences are about who you help,
Speaker 1: how you help, and when you help. So what we
Speaker 1: see with with failed givers is that they want to
Speaker 1: be generous and they end up helping all the people
Speaker 1: all the time, with all the requests, which is a
Speaker 1: great way to exhaust yourself completely right. You never have
Speaker 1: time to get any of your own work done. You're overextended.
Speaker 1: As you start helping, you get a reputation for being
Speaker 1: a nice person, and then pretty soon no goodtied goes unpunished.
Speaker 1: And so what we see with successful givers is that
Speaker 1: they make thoughtful choices about who they want to help.
Speaker 1: So they say, look, you know, I'm not gonna help
Speaker 1: everybody equally. There are takers out there, and they're willing
Speaker 1: to take as much as I'm willing to give, regardless
Speaker 1: of whether that's fair. So if somebody has a history
Speaker 1: or reputation of selfish behavior, I'm going to be more
Speaker 1: cautious with them and reserve. You know, my biggest act
Speaker 1: of generosity for people who are generous are fair themselves.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the first distinction that's critical, right,
Speaker 1: don't help everyone equally. I was curious if it matters,
Speaker 1: because it sounds like, you know, one of the key
Speaker 1: things is deciding whom you want to give to. Um.
Speaker 1: Does it matter why you give? Like, does it matter
Speaker 1: if you're doing it for totally altruistic reasons, if you
Speaker 1: just love the idea of helping other people, or if
Speaker 1: you're if you're doing it like, will you be more
Speaker 1: burnt out if you're giving for one reason versus another? Yeah?
Speaker 1: So this actually is a nice segue to the second factor.
Speaker 1: So the people who give out of a sense of
Speaker 1: obligation or out of a sense of altruism are much
Speaker 1: more likely to burn out than the ones who who
Speaker 1: give because they enjoy it and because they care about
Speaker 1: the people that they're trying to help. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that that altruism turns out to be a
Speaker 1: huge mistake because people just end up sacrificing themselves for
Speaker 1: others and they say, yeah, you know, I realized that
Speaker 1: this might hurt me, but it just it helps other
Speaker 1: people so much. And the sad reality is that the
Speaker 1: more altruistically you give, the less you're able to give,
Speaker 1: because you end up exhausting yourself. And the people who
Speaker 1: gave the most consistently were the ones who said, look,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna zoom in on the two or three ways
Speaker 1: of helping that I enjoy an excel ad so that
Speaker 1: giving becomes more energizing than exhausting, but also so that
Speaker 1: I'm making a unique contribution and I'm helping in a
Speaker 1: way that's it's meaningful and effective relative to my knowledge
Speaker 1: and skills. And when they did that, they were able
Speaker 1: to sustain their energy, they had more to give, they
Speaker 1: gave in ways that had a bigger impact, and they
Speaker 1: also had a different reputation because instead of being known
Speaker 1: as a jack of all trades, somebody that you could
Speaker 1: bother any time, they got known as somebody who had
Speaker 1: really specific expertise, and you only wanted to go to
Speaker 1: them when you were seeking something that they could offer
Speaker 1: that was really valuable. In a regular work environment, it
Speaker 1: seems like you can get pigeonholed. And it's not even
Speaker 1: necessarily about selfness. Listen, like, if people realize that you're
Speaker 1: good at something, they're going to ask you to do
Speaker 1: more of that thing that you're good at, and that
Speaker 1: might not be your favorite thing to do. So how
Speaker 1: can people in their jobs make their jobs more about
Speaker 1: doing what they want to do and there thereby steer
Speaker 1: themselves away from burnout? But I think the key is
Speaker 1: to figure out the overlap between what you enjoyed giving
Speaker 1: and what other people need. And it's not always the
Speaker 1: first set of request that you get right. So you know,
Speaker 1: especially if you look at the data, women are particularly
Speaker 1: likely to get stuck with the office, housework, the taking notes,
Speaker 1: the planning meetings. And the sad reality of that is
Speaker 1: that I don't know very many people who enjoy doing
Speaker 1: that work. But when you're new and you come in
Speaker 1: and you know maybe you're the lowest status or most
Speaker 1: junior person in the group, you know that that has
Speaker 1: tense to fall to you and then people find that
Speaker 1: you're organized and meticulous, and then you just get stuck
Speaker 1: with it. Right. There's also like a sense of obligation
Speaker 1: to sometimes when you see something isn't being organized, well,
Speaker 1: you just want to go in and fix it. And
Speaker 1: then everyone's like, oh, that person is the organizer. But
Speaker 1: it could just be that kind of that kind of
Speaker 1: obligatory selflessness you were talking about that you you kind
Speaker 1: of want to avoid. Yeah, I think that there there
Speaker 1: are a few ways to try to get around that.
Speaker 1: One is it's always easier to say no when you
Speaker 1: have another offer to make, right, So if you if
Speaker 1: you follow Adam's lead. You know, I see this really
Speaker 1: frequently in my own daily inbox, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: people will reach out all the time for career advice
Speaker 1: and I'll write back and say, look, I don't I
Speaker 1: don't even feel comfortable giving advice to people that I know.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think that if you're interested in help,
Speaker 1: here are the three ways that I feel like I
Speaker 1: have something to offer. And if you have that list,
Speaker 1: handy people respond pretty favorably, you know, because because you're
Speaker 1: not being rude, you're not being unwilling to help, You're
Speaker 1: just trying to redirect what you have to add. I
Speaker 1: think a second thing you can do is you can
Speaker 1: go to the people that you've helped in the past
Speaker 1: and ask them to pay it forward. So you know,
Speaker 1: all too often we end up, you know, if you,
Speaker 1: let's say you get known as the organizer, you end up,
Speaker 1: you know, doing that for a bunch of people, and
Speaker 1: then you get more and more of those requests piling up. Well,
Speaker 1: the first thing you should do is you should go
Speaker 1: to the people that you've helped organize things in the past,
Speaker 1: and you should ask them then if you know, if
Speaker 1: they're willing to step up and pay it back, if not,
Speaker 1: pay it forward. Um. I think maybe a third thing
Speaker 1: that that I would like to see more people do
Speaker 1: is when requests come in, you should start looking at
Speaker 1: at trying to batch them together. So you might have
Speaker 1: seven or eight people ask for your insight on the
Speaker 1: same topic, and instead of having one on one conversations
Speaker 1: with each of them, you should invite them all to
Speaker 1: lunch and answer all their questions. And not only are
Speaker 1: you then having the conversation once as opposed to many times,
Speaker 1: you're also connecting them together and trying to build a
Speaker 1: community of people who are interested in, you know, in
Speaker 1: tackling the same problem which can help them even more.
Speaker 1: One thing that interested me from your work is that
Speaker 1: you talk about how sometimes that type of giving that
Speaker 1: we like to do and that we do a lot of,
Speaker 1: can actually lead to bad outcomes. And you did a
Speaker 1: study on that with teachers. Can you get into that
Speaker 1: so short version of the story is Red Reveilly and
Speaker 1: I did this study with that with a group of
Speaker 1: teachers across the United States where we served them on
Speaker 1: how selfless they were. And the general assumption and teaching
Speaker 1: is the more selfless, the better, right, That's that's what
Speaker 1: this job is all about. You're supposed to put your
Speaker 1: students first. It's all about service, and you're there to
Speaker 1: make a difference. And yet we found that of course,
Speaker 1: you know, most teachers are givers, they're passionate about helping
Speaker 1: and they care a lot about the success their students.
Speaker 1: But the more selfless they were, the worst their students
Speaker 1: did unstandardized achievement test and that was particularly true for
Speaker 1: teachers whose students had struggled the previous year. So what
Speaker 1: happens is, you know, when when teachers are really motivated
Speaker 1: to help students um And it's especially when there's students
Speaker 1: have been you know, underperforming, they end up doubling down
Speaker 1: and saying, I will do whatever it takes to make
Speaker 1: students successful and to help them solve their problems. And
Speaker 1: that means that they do all of this one on
Speaker 1: one helping and firefighting. Sometimes they end up helping students
Speaker 1: who aren't even in their classes. Sometimes you know, they're
Speaker 1: burning the midnight oil handling requests from you know, administration,
Speaker 1: and that takes away from time that they could invest
Speaker 1: in energy they could put into improving their lesson plans
Speaker 1: and helping their students as a group. And yeah, the
Speaker 1: sad reality of that is when we track what happens
Speaker 1: to the teachers, then they're less engaged in their everyday
Speaker 1: classroom work when coaches come in to observe them and
Speaker 1: evaluate them and give them feedback. And so, you know,
Speaker 1: I think that that this is how so many people
Speaker 1: justify it being generous, right is well, you know, but
Speaker 1: the benefits to you know, to my students outweigh the
Speaker 1: cost to me or the contributions that I make to
Speaker 1: the school, you know, are are worth all the sacrifices
Speaker 1: I'm making and our data show that's not true. Actually,
Speaker 1: that that if you can set some boundaries right and
Speaker 1: sort of take the airplane analogy as far as it
Speaker 1: can be stretched and say, look, if you can take
Speaker 1: the advice we're always given on an airplane seriously and
Speaker 1: secure your oxygen masks before helping others, you feel like
Speaker 1: you're contributing less, but you're actually doing more good that way.
Speaker 1: The teachers who were able to put their own lessons
Speaker 1: plans first, who focused primarily on making sure that their
Speaker 1: students as a group were able to learn everything they
Speaker 1: needed to know, we're less likely to burn out, more
Speaker 1: likely to stay engaged, and had a greater impact that way.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a lesson we can probably all
Speaker 1: apply to our work lives. Yeah. Sometimes I think we
Speaker 1: like doing the things that make us burn out. I
Speaker 1: know I do, like I'm think, and then I convince
Speaker 1: myself that it's good for my job. But I think
Speaker 1: your research is really interesting to show us that it's
Speaker 1: it's not the best way to get your work done always. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think I think for most people that just
Speaker 1: means taking a step back and saying, you know, what
Speaker 1: impact to my trying to have and then making sure
Speaker 1: that I'm not just doing the things that I enjoy,
Speaker 1: uh that you know that divert from that. That's that's
Speaker 1: another trap that we see failed givers running into, is
Speaker 1: they forget to think about organizational goals and about who
Speaker 1: they're really trying to help um. And you know, if
Speaker 1: if you make sure that what you enjoy is better
Speaker 1: aligned with what you're actually trying to accomplish, it becomes
Speaker 1: much more sustainable that way. One thing I'm curious about,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if your research has really gotten
Speaker 1: at this that much, but can you It seems to
Speaker 1: me that burnout is something that most people experience at
Speaker 1: some point or another in their career to some extent.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if you can still get burnt out
Speaker 1: even if you do make all the right choices about
Speaker 1: how to allocate your time and whom to help and
Speaker 1: not to help, Like, is there an element of burnout
Speaker 1: that just has to do with time? Like you do
Speaker 1: something long enough and you start to feel burnt out? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so, I think it depends. Let me let
Speaker 1: me think about actually what the what the data would
Speaker 1: say about this? So in general, people don't burn out
Speaker 1: because they're giving too much. Time wise, they tend to
Speaker 1: burn out when they feel like they're giving a lot,
Speaker 1: but they don't think it's having an impact. So I
Speaker 1: saw this, for example, with with fundraising callers, people who
Speaker 1: are trying to raise money for their university. So this
Speaker 1: is you know, not the easiest or most enjoyable job
Speaker 1: for for a typical fundraiser, but it is really meaningful.
Speaker 1: And the consistent finding was that fundraisers didn't know where
Speaker 1: the money they were raising actually went, and they had
Speaker 1: no sense of what good they were doing, and so
Speaker 1: they were dropping like flies. And I found in a
Speaker 1: series of experiments that if we just connected them to
Speaker 1: one scholarship student who benefited from their work and got
Speaker 1: to see, you know, here's where this money is really
Speaker 1: making a difference, there was a dramatic spike in their motivation.
Speaker 1: So we saw a hundred forty increase in weekly minutes
Speaker 1: on the phone and a hundred increase in weekly money
Speaker 1: raised caller by caller, And you know, in some ways
Speaker 1: you could say they were already making all the right choices.
Speaker 1: They were making the calls they were supposed to do,
Speaker 1: they were applying the strategies that were most effective for
Speaker 1: collect connecting with alumni, but they just didn't feel like
Speaker 1: they were able to connect the dots and answer the
Speaker 1: question of you know, why is this important and how
Speaker 1: is this work really going to influence other people's lives?
Speaker 1: And once they saw that, you know, it's not like
Speaker 1: they they actually approached their calls differently. It was just
Speaker 1: that they were able to think about the purpose of
Speaker 1: their work differently. That instead of harassing alumni, now they're
Speaker 1: getting on the phone and thinking about this is making
Speaker 1: scholarships possible for students who are in need. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's that's a shift that that applies to
Speaker 1: so many different jobs, right, Yeah, that's that seems like
Speaker 1: you could make that work for you in almost anything,
Speaker 1: Like even if you don't have the data to prove
Speaker 1: that what you're doing as a direct effect, you can
Speaker 1: just sort reframe your thinking even a little bit too
Speaker 1: make your day to day job connect to some larger cause.
Speaker 1: If you just remind yourself of that, it might help
Speaker 1: with burnout. Yeah. That was actually a follow up experiment
Speaker 1: that Jane Dutton and I did. We had people just
Speaker 1: keep a journal for four days, fifteen minutes a day
Speaker 1: about the contributions they made that day, So who did
Speaker 1: you help? How did your work have an impact? And
Speaker 1: after that, we saw a major increase in the amount
Speaker 1: of effort that people brought to their jobs and they
Speaker 1: ended up significantly increasing in the sense that their work
Speaker 1: was valued by others. And you know that's not just
Speaker 1: clients or customers, right, It could be the co workers
Speaker 1: that benefit from the work that you do. It could
Speaker 1: be your boss's boss that you don't see every day. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes those small reminders of of why you're doing what
Speaker 1: you're doing and who it ultimately helps can be a
Speaker 1: huge factor in helping to prevent or overcome burn up.
Speaker 1: So I follow you and your work, and I know
Speaker 1: that you do a lot. I'm wondering if you learned
Speaker 1: anything about yourself this research and how you avoid burnout? Me? Yeah,
Speaker 1: or maybe you're burnt out and you want to talk
Speaker 1: it out on the show. Well, I think I think
Speaker 1: burnout is definitely something that will acts in weighns in
Speaker 1: my life, and it's it's largely a function of whether
Speaker 1: I've been careful about following my own advice, which I
Speaker 1: don't always do. So you know, I think I think
Speaker 1: for me what matters most is this this third choice
Speaker 1: that we didn't talk about yet. So we we talked about,
Speaker 1: you know, being careful about who you help and how
Speaker 1: you help. I feel like I've gotten pretty clear about
Speaker 1: my priorities there. So you know, I put family first,
Speaker 1: student second, colleagues third, and everyone else fourth. And you
Speaker 1: know that's led to some hard choices, right If if
Speaker 1: you ask some of my colleagues, they'd probably say I
Speaker 1: was less of a giver than my students would. And
Speaker 1: you know, I had to realize that I don't have
Speaker 1: enough hours in the day to help everybody who asks,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, when I have to make the choice.
Speaker 1: I didnt become a professor to help other professors. I
Speaker 1: became a professor because I wanted to have an impact
Speaker 1: on students. Um So that part is clear, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of how I help, I've you know, I
Speaker 1: basically identified two things that I love to do. One
Speaker 1: is that I really enjoy sharing knowledge about work in psychology,
Speaker 1: and I spend way too many hours reading esoteric journal
Speaker 1: articles about you know, studies. And I feel like if
Speaker 1: somebody has a question like has anybody ever done research
Speaker 1: on if that has to do with work or human behavior,
Speaker 1: there's a good chance to run across it at some point,
Speaker 1: and it makes me feel like I'm not wasting my
Speaker 1: time reading, you know, reading these arcane pieces of data.
Speaker 1: Um and then the others. I also really enjoy making introductions.
Speaker 1: If there are two people that can help each other,
Speaker 1: I feel like I get to you know, I end
Speaker 1: up connecting with a lot of industries, and very frequently
Speaker 1: I can find somebody in you know, in a field
Speaker 1: or in an organization that somebody else is excited to
Speaker 1: learn from and vice versa. The place where I feel
Speaker 1: like I often struggle is the question of of when
Speaker 1: I help. So you know, I've learned over and again
Speaker 1: in my own research, and there are lots of other
Speaker 1: scholars who have documented this as well, that successful givers
Speaker 1: set aside blocks of time where they're going to get
Speaker 1: their own work done and they don't allow interruptions, right,
Speaker 1: no no calls, no meetings, no answering email during periods
Speaker 1: where they're trying to be productive, and then they have
Speaker 1: separate when windows set aside to try to be helpful.
Speaker 1: And the way that that I've tried to manage that is,
Speaker 1: you know, I basically only go into campus when I'm
Speaker 1: teaching or I have an event, and the other days
Speaker 1: I work from home and that helps a lot, but
Speaker 1: even then there's still lots of requests for you know,
Speaker 1: for phone calls, for interviews, for podcast interviews, yeah occasionally,
Speaker 1: and then there's also you know, the challenge that when
Speaker 1: I am on campus, there are more requests than I
Speaker 1: have time for in the day. So what I often
Speaker 1: end up doing is just expanding office hours on those days,
Speaker 1: and that means, you know, after our kids go to school,
Speaker 1: I leave the house, so you know, I might head
Speaker 1: in to campus around eight am, and I'll stay there
Speaker 1: into the afternoon, and I don't even have a minute free,
Speaker 1: um forgetting any lunch. I have a minute free to
Speaker 1: like to check my email or find out if there's
Speaker 1: anything I need to catch up on. And so I
Speaker 1: get home at night after our kids are asleep, and
Speaker 1: I have three or four hours of emails to answer
Speaker 1: and then you know, I basically playing catch up the
Speaker 1: whole next day as opposed to doing the work that
Speaker 1: I was supposed to do. And so I think what
Speaker 1: I need to do moving forward is is be more
Speaker 1: proactive about saying, look, I need to schedule you know,
Speaker 1: stop times as well as start times for meetings. I
Speaker 1: need to make sure that you know, I have time
Speaker 1: set aside even during those you know, busy days Paul
Speaker 1: Graham would call them manager days as opposed to make
Speaker 1: your days, you know where you're back to back in meetings.
Speaker 1: I need time to check email, um, and to you know,
Speaker 1: sort of firefight day by day. And then I probably
Speaker 1: also need to have like some calibration on how many
Speaker 1: hours in those days I can handle for meetings, which
Speaker 1: I'm not good at forecasting at all. That all sounds
Speaker 1: very stressful and I am shocked that you're not more
Speaker 1: burnt out, um, And really thank you for taking the
Speaker 1: time to make time for this. Yeah, this was really helpful.
Speaker 1: One thing that really struck me about that interview was
Speaker 1: Adam talking about how useful it can be to write
Speaker 1: down who you helped that day. I feel like that
Speaker 1: resonated with me because that's something that you can do
Speaker 1: even if nothing about your actual job is going to change.
Speaker 1: Like for me, I can feel burnout creeping in, you
Speaker 1: know about jobs that I was once really excited about,
Speaker 1: and it's just like the passage of time and doing
Speaker 1: them every day, you know, you get more and more
Speaker 1: removed from the rewards of the job. And if you
Speaker 1: just make a little point of doing this exercise where
Speaker 1: you're saying, oh, I I helped like three people the
Speaker 1: following way, I feel like that could really benefit almost
Speaker 1: anybody who's feeling burnout. It's funny because when I heard
Speaker 1: him talking about that, in my head, I was like, oh, so, basically,
Speaker 1: you're just telling me not to become synuncle about my job,
Speaker 1: which that sounds great, but it's really hard. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: totally impossible. Yea. And not everyone's job has purpose. But
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It's like, you can you can probably
Speaker 1: find it, and most people aren't taking the time to
Speaker 1: look for it that hard, and it might not be
Speaker 1: in the obvious ways that you're thinking of, Like, yes,
Speaker 1: you're gonna keep having the frustrations that you have about
Speaker 1: your job, and your job is not always going to
Speaker 1: feel that important, and not every job is as important
Speaker 1: as every other job. But I could sit down and
Speaker 1: write down like today I helped another editor come up
Speaker 1: with a headline for a story, and I don't know,
Speaker 1: probably two of those things, but then they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been things that I normally think about at the end
Speaker 1: of the day. And like pat myself on the back. Four.
Speaker 1: So maybe just like building up those little bits of
Speaker 1: self feedback over the time would be enough to to
Speaker 1: kind of reset my thinking about it. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I haven't tried it, all right, I'll try not to
Speaker 1: be so negative about this Strategyca, be more like Adam,
Speaker 1: Be more like Adam. All right, and now it's time
Speaker 1: for hat big takes, happy fake takes. All right, Francesca,
Speaker 1: what is your not fully formed idea for this week? Okay,
Speaker 1: my half big take is a modest proposal. Perhaps you've
Speaker 1: heard of summer Fridays. I have, yeah, the leeway some
Speaker 1: people get during the summer months to take the occasional
Speaker 1: Friday afternoon off. Well, I have a possibly even better
Speaker 1: idea than summer Fridays. It's called winter Mondays go on
Speaker 1: for many many professionals were now entering a stretch of
Speaker 1: the winter that is not only like the bleakest time
Speaker 1: of the year weatherwise, but it is this long period
Speaker 1: where President's Day has just passed and we don't get
Speaker 1: any real like federal holidays off until um Memorial Day.
Speaker 1: Possibly some people get good Friday out, but anyway, it's
Speaker 1: it's a bad time, there's like a lot of cold,
Speaker 1: a lot of hours to work, and no holidays. If
Speaker 1: you have vacation days, use them for at least two
Speaker 1: Mondays during the stretch, and you will reward yourself with
Speaker 1: a couple of long weekends you can look forward to
Speaker 1: during this very sad time of year. And they should
Speaker 1: be Mondays and not Fridays, because that's a double reward.
Speaker 1: You get back to work and you only have to
Speaker 1: work four days winter Mondays. Think about it. I think
Speaker 1: you could really take off what Pecca is your decent idea.
Speaker 1: That's not that great. I love your half big take,
Speaker 1: by the way, thank you, because I love vacation. My
Speaker 1: half big take is um an amendment on an old
Speaker 1: half big take that I did already. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: don't remember if you were around for this, but I
Speaker 1: had a half big take about how you have to
Speaker 1: have a strategy when choosing a stall in the bathroom
Speaker 1: remind remind us. So basically I was like, if you
Speaker 1: have a stall, like I have a strategy where like
Speaker 1: I'll go to the end one on certain occasions, in
Speaker 1: the middle one on other occasions, and try to space
Speaker 1: it out. My amendment is that it is rude. If
Speaker 1: you are going into the bathroom and there are many
Speaker 1: stalls available to sit next to me, right next to
Speaker 1: me in the stall that I picked, pick ustall, that's
Speaker 1: at least one away. Yeah, that's a it's an invasion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't do that. So that's my like the buffer stall up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the buffer st all you need to have, you mean
Speaker 1: a buffer stall. So that's my I guess, like refining
Speaker 1: of a hat pick take. Yeah, you're becoming quarter. It's dangerous,
Speaker 1: like getting close to a take. Yeah, okay, I'll stop.
Speaker 1: You'll stop right there. No more on that, otherwise you're
Speaker 1: gonna have to actually write a story about it. Oh man, Okay,
Speaker 1: And that was half big Takes, half Baked Takes. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening to another episode of game Plan. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Twitter. I'm at RZ Greenfield and
Speaker 1: I'm at Francesca today. You can tweet your half Bake
Speaker 1: Takes two at game Plan or you can call our
Speaker 1: brand spanking new half Bake hotline at two and two
Speaker 1: six seven zero one six. And if you like the show,
Speaker 1: please head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts to rate and review and subscribe. We read
Speaker 1: every single one of them. There was a new one recently.
Speaker 1: We loved it. It was great. We loved it. This
Speaker 1: podcast was produced by Liz Smith and Magnus Hendrickson. Head
Speaker 1: of Podcasts is Alec McCabe. And we'll see you next week.
Speaker 1: Bye two one to six one seven oh one six six.
Speaker 1: I'm sure I stold that it's a half baked hot line. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it.