Speaker 1: How I Work is having a little break over the
Speaker 1: festive season, so I've picked a handful of my absolute
Speaker 1: favorite episodes from the last eighteen months to play for
Speaker 1: you in this best of series. I hope you enjoy,
Speaker 1: and I'll be back with new episodes twice weekly from
Speaker 1: January twenty eight. Earlier this year, I hit burnout, and
Speaker 1: to be honest, in my friendship circle, I don't know
Speaker 1: too many people who haven't had that experience in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years. So when I knew I was
Speaker 1: having Adam Grant back on How I Work, I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask him for advice. Adam is a world renowned
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and a professor at Wharton, as well as
Speaker 1: being a New York Times bestselling author of six books
Speaker 1: and the host of the incredibly popular work life podcast
Speaker 1: by Ted. Perhaps surprisingly, Adam has had his own experience
Speaker 1: with burnout, despite the fact that he has researched and
Speaker 1: written about the topic for years. So what does Adam
Speaker 1: recommend to prevent burnout? And what changes did he make
Speaker 1: to his own life? And if you're feeling burnt out
Speaker 1: right now, what strategies can you put in place to recover?
Speaker 1: Welcome to how I work a show about habits, rituals,
Speaker 1: and strategies for optimizing your day. I'm your host, doctor
Speaker 1: Amantha Imber. Adam is someone who I feel like operates
Speaker 1: at two hundred percent productivity all the time. So I
Speaker 1: wanted to know has Adam ever experienced burnout?
Speaker 2: Definitely.
Speaker 3: I feel pretty lucky that I get to design my
Speaker 3: own job, and so if I burned out for a
Speaker 3: day or two, Wow, my boss made some really bad
Speaker 3: design choice. Oh wait, that was me. I need to
Speaker 3: rethink how I spend my time to try to get reenergized.
Speaker 3: But when I had a real job, I definitely experienced burnout.
Speaker 3: And then I've had some acute moments of burnout. So
Speaker 3: one of the times when I actually felt the most
Speaker 3: burned out was when I was writing my first book.
Speaker 3: I don't think I've ever been more fired up for
Speaker 3: a project in my entire life. So to set the
Speaker 3: scene a little bit, this is twenty eleven. I got
Speaker 3: tenure and I realized I don't have to worry about
Speaker 3: job security anymore, and I'm not going to let down
Speaker 3: by my family by forcing them to move and pulling
Speaker 3: our kids out of school.
Speaker 2: And it was this euphoric.
Speaker 3: Sense that now I had freedom also to think about
Speaker 3: long term what impact I wanted to have. And a
Speaker 3: group of students talked me into writing a book. I
Speaker 3: had a vision. I sat down and the ideas just
Speaker 3: poured out of me. I was supposed to be writing
Speaker 3: a book proposal, and I got so excited about the
Speaker 3: vision that I accidentally wrote the entire book. Basically, I
Speaker 3: started writing in May and by August I had over
Speaker 3: one hundred thousand words. Then I sent them to my
Speaker 3: literary agent and he came back to me and told
Speaker 3: me that he didn't even think my academic.
Speaker 2: Colleagues would make it through the whole book.
Speaker 3: Wow, it was that boring, And I think my first
Speaker 3: reaction was just deep dejection, like I wasted an entire summer,
Speaker 3: And then it was a lot of self doubt, can
Speaker 3: I ever do this? And then eventually my agent, Richard, said,
Speaker 3: you can do this. Just write like you teach, not
Speaker 3: like you do research. When I sat down to do it,
Speaker 3: it just it was not measuring up to my image
Speaker 3: of what it was going to be. And it was
Speaker 3: like what Irad Glass talks about when there's a gap
Speaker 3: between your skill and your taste. I knew what a
Speaker 3: great book read like, and the words that were appearing
Speaker 3: on my screen were not that. And I just felt like, Okay,
Speaker 3: I'm not working hard enough, and so I started pushing
Speaker 3: myself harder and I would go outside in the morning
Speaker 3: and write until it was dark. It was just exhausting,
Speaker 3: and eventually I felt like it was time to give up.
Speaker 1: Wow, what made you push through?
Speaker 2: I don't honestly remember what was I thinking.
Speaker 3: I think it was a combination of things. One thing
Speaker 3: that happened was I came across a new study that
Speaker 3: I was really excited to tell people about, and then
Speaker 3: as I listened to myself explaining it, I was like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's how I need to write it.
Speaker 2: And so.
Speaker 3: I think I produced a couple of paragraphs that sounded
Speaker 3: to me pretty good, and that was a little bit
Speaker 3: of a boost of confidence and energy. I guess it
Speaker 3: was a small win. And then the other thing that
Speaker 3: happened was I started giving my shitty drafts to a
Speaker 3: group of undergrad students who told me to write the
Speaker 3: book in the first place, and I had them do
Speaker 3: ratings of each draft, and a lot of the ratings
Speaker 3: were like three four and a half two but they
Speaker 3: also weren't zero, and after I made sure that they
Speaker 3: were being honest with me, that gave me hope that,
Speaker 3: in fact, there was a gem worth polishing here, and
Speaker 3: I think I didn't want to let them down, and
Speaker 3: that gave me an extra kick to keep going.
Speaker 1: So on the topic of burnout, what were the symptoms
Speaker 1: that you were experiencing that made you think this is
Speaker 1: something close to maybe what I've read about or lectured about,
Speaker 1: because I imagine being an organizational psychology lecturer, you've probably
Speaker 1: read a lot about burnout and maybe even taught it well.
Speaker 2: Amantha.
Speaker 3: What was really disappointing about this experience was I had
Speaker 3: published multiple papers on burnout by this point, I had
Speaker 3: measured burnout in dozens of jobs, I had analyzed all
Speaker 3: the predictors of it. I'd even run experiments and organizations
Speaker 3: that successfully reduced burnout, and I taught classes about how
Speaker 3: to do that. And here I was experiencing the very
Speaker 3: symptoms that I knew how to treat and cure. And
Speaker 3: I felt like an idiot, like I'm supposed to be
Speaker 3: a burnout expert. Why am I burning out? And what
Speaker 3: it felt like first was just the sheer emotional exhaustion.
Speaker 3: I felt like I was beating my head against a
Speaker 3: brick wall over and over and over again, and the
Speaker 3: harder I pushed the the more it hurt. And with
Speaker 3: that came a sense of dread that instead of looking
Speaker 3: forward to waking up and working on a chapter, I
Speaker 3: was avoiding it. I was starting to procrastinate, which was
Speaker 3: very out of character for me, as you know. And
Speaker 3: I think the last thing was the persistent can I
Speaker 3: do this? Do I want to do this? The questioning
Speaker 3: of my capabilities and my motivation.
Speaker 2: That was not fun at all.
Speaker 1: If you could go back and coach yourself from ten
Speaker 1: twelve years ago when that was what would you have
Speaker 1: told yourself to do differently?
Speaker 3: I think the main advice I would have given that
Speaker 3: version of myself was start sharing the drafts a lot earlier.
Speaker 3: I think that I was worried about embarrassing myself and
Speaker 3: I didn't want to waste other people's time. But the
Speaker 3: reality is it's really hard to judge your own work,
Speaker 3: and it's also very difficult to see the problems in
Speaker 3: your own.
Speaker 2: Work because you're too close to it.
Speaker 3: And so I needed people who had a little bit
Speaker 3: of distance who could sort of zoom out and tell
Speaker 3: me here's what's broken, and then often when they diagnosed
Speaker 3: the bug, I actually had an idea for how to
Speaker 3: fix it. There are a lot of reasons why people
Speaker 3: hesitate to share their drafts, and it's not just about
Speaker 3: the fear of embarrassment. There's also this concern that somebody
Speaker 3: else might steal your ideas, either on purpose or by accident.
Speaker 3: I think, if you're that afraid that somebody's going to
Speaker 3: steal your ideas, you don't have that many ideas.
Speaker 2: Which is not a great a great place to be.
Speaker 3: But I was thinking about all the downsides of putting
Speaker 3: my work out there, and what I failed to consider
Speaker 3: was the fact that if I didn't put it out there,
Speaker 3: it wasn't going to get better. And also I was
Speaker 3: going to end up depriving people who could benefit from
Speaker 3: it of ever engaging with it. And I would have
Speaker 3: just said, look, get over all of that. You can
Speaker 3: choose the audience you're comfortable sharing it with early, but
Speaker 3: you've got to get somebody else's eyes in front of it.
Speaker 1: What else would you done, even just to maintain energy
Speaker 1: and try to get back some of that enthusiasm on
Speaker 1: a day to day level.
Speaker 3: Well, you wrote the book on this quite literally, so
Speaker 3: I'm inclined to ask you, Matt, that what should I
Speaker 3: have done. I can tell you what my instincts are now,
Speaker 3: but you've spent a lot more time thinking about this
Speaker 3: than I have.
Speaker 2: So you tell me, well, here's the irony, Adam.
Speaker 1: I mean, probably it would have been three weeks ago now,
Speaker 1: because I've just spent two weeks on leave and over
Speaker 1: in Vietnam, having the most amazing holiday. The week before
Speaker 1: I left, I realized I hit burnout. I can relate
Speaker 1: to you in terms of the energy and enthusiasm and
Speaker 1: passion that you have for your work and sharing ideas.
Speaker 1: And I know a bit about burnout. I haven't published
Speaker 1: papers on burnout, but I'd like to think, as an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist that's fairly well read and also that has
Speaker 1: just released a book about health habits, that surely I
Speaker 1: can not be someone the guests burnout. But I did.
Speaker 1: I found in that week where I'm like, I've hit it.
Speaker 1: It's happened to me. I felt like crying all day
Speaker 1: and in between meetings, that's pretty much what I was doing,
Speaker 1: just sitting at my desk being just so so sad
Speaker 1: and so stressed, and just feeling like an out of
Speaker 1: failure because I just spent the last five months as
Speaker 1: being acting CEO of Inventium, and there was certainly moments
Speaker 1: where I felt like, yeah, I'm doing a great job,
Speaker 1: but I think right at the end and I found
Speaker 1: an amazing person to actually step in and be the permanency,
Speaker 1: I just felt like I could just see everything I'd
Speaker 1: done wrong. I was scoring myself in that week. I
Speaker 1: feel like I'd give myself a one out of ten
Speaker 1: if that, and I could see all the mistakes and
Speaker 1: I couldn't say anything good. I'd invested so much time
Speaker 1: in deepening relationships with people and building trust. I'd had
Speaker 1: a couple of conversations in that last week where I
Speaker 1: was just at rock bottom, where I didn't bring enough
Speaker 1: empathy to the conversation, and I'm like, did I just
Speaker 1: destroy all the trust and goodwill that I had built
Speaker 1: over the last few months. And I remember that first
Speaker 1: week on holidays in Vietnam, and I was having the
Speaker 1: most amazing time. But whenever I thought about work and
Speaker 1: the idea of returning to work in two weeks, I
Speaker 1: just felt such anxiety and I thought Oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: what has happened to me? And how do I get
Speaker 1: out of it? And I just felt really lost. If
Speaker 1: I were, say, writing a piece to help other people,
Speaker 1: I just felt stuck in terms of what on earth
Speaker 1: do I do other than take time off? What would
Speaker 1: you advise me? Adam hearing where I was asked.
Speaker 3: Well, you're not answering my question, You're trying to make
Speaker 3: me answer it. I'm sorry to hear that you went
Speaker 3: through that, and I do think that it's I don't
Speaker 3: want to say that it's actually good for us, but
Speaker 3: sometimes it's necessary to live what we study and write
Speaker 3: about in order to remember what it's like and to
Speaker 3: make sure we're not just approaching it from the point
Speaker 3: of view of theory and data, but we're really getting
Speaker 3: close to what people's lived experiences are like. And no
Speaker 3: better way to get close to an experience than to
Speaker 3: live it. So if you want to become a burner expert,
Speaker 3: you should go and burn out as often as possible.
Speaker 2: No, at least once.
Speaker 3: In your case, it sounds to me like like some
Speaker 3: boundaries were missing and you were just stretching yourself very thin.
Speaker 3: One of the things that I've both found in my
Speaker 3: research and learned through experience over time, is I've got
Speaker 3: to start by asking what's the most important project to
Speaker 3: me in a given week and prioritize that, and then
Speaker 3: if they're not in a hierarchy, I end up just
Speaker 3: trying to juggle too much at once. Whereas if I
Speaker 3: know what the number one priority is for the week,
Speaker 3: I'm willing to accept that some of the others might
Speaker 3: fall on the back burner a little bit. That would
Speaker 3: I guess that would be my first piece of advice,
Speaker 3: and it really for me. It stems from the classic
Speaker 3: research on the role try out of burnout. What causes
Speaker 3: people to get extremely stressed out at work is when
Speaker 3: they experience role overload and role conflict and role ambiguity.
Speaker 3: To apply those to your situation, it sounds like you
Speaker 3: had too much to do, you were being dragged in
Speaker 3: too many different directions, and also you didn't have clarity
Speaker 3: and what success looked like. That would start there and ask, well,
Speaker 3: how do you solve those problems?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting hearing you talk about just thinking what
Speaker 1: is your most important project or priority for the week,
Speaker 1: and I should have done that, and I felt like
Speaker 1: I wanted to do all this stuff. I know you're
Speaker 1: a fan of the musical Hamilton, and there's a lyric
Speaker 1: in Hamilton about how he's running out of time. He's
Speaker 1: writing like he's running out of time.
Speaker 2: Why do you write like you're running out of time? Yes, yes, yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: And I had that line going through my brain almost
Speaker 1: every week. I felt like there was so much that
Speaker 1: I wanted to do when I stepped back into my
Speaker 1: company in this leadership role, and I could see all
Speaker 1: these things that needed fixing and needed doing, and I
Speaker 1: knew that I was only in this role for a
Speaker 1: finite period of time, and I found it so hard
Speaker 1: to prioritize because I just wanted to do everything and
Speaker 1: I had so much passion and so much enthusiasm. And ironically,
Speaker 1: I remember probably about two months months before I had
Speaker 1: this week where I just felt like I hit burnout.
Speaker 1: I went for a walk with a girlfriend who's a
Speaker 1: clinical psychologist, and I was saying to her, I'm getting
Speaker 1: really frustrated because people on my team are telling me
Speaker 1: that I'm working two long hours and that I'm setting
Speaker 1: a bad example. And I've said to my team, I
Speaker 1: don't expect you to do what I do, and I'm
Speaker 1: really energized by the hours that I'm working, and I
Speaker 1: felt so good and like I was achieving so much.
Speaker 1: And then I thought about that conversation when I hit
Speaker 1: that week, and I thought, was I just delusional? Was
Speaker 1: I Adam? Was I just living in some fantasy world
Speaker 1: where I thought this was sustainable just because I felt
Speaker 1: really energetic in that moment.
Speaker 3: Entirely passable. I don't know, I wasn't in your head.
Speaker 3: You tell me, I do.
Speaker 1: Wonder, I do wonder, and that I wonder maybe if
Speaker 1: I would have made some different choices between April and June,
Speaker 1: perhaps I wouldn't have hit burnout and I would have
Speaker 1: actually sustained that kind of high performance where I felt
Speaker 1: like I.
Speaker 2: Was ass Yeah, I wonder.
Speaker 3: It sounds like you're a frequent victim like me, of
Speaker 3: the planning fallacy, where you just underestimate how long different
Speaker 3: things are going to take, and when you're looking at
Speaker 3: a blue sky calendar a few months down the road, yeah,
Speaker 3: of course I can do all that, and then you
Speaker 3: forget to do the three x or four x multiple
Speaker 3: for the unexpected extra tasks that get added on or
Speaker 3: that need to be redone or done differently. And then
Speaker 3: you realize you've just overcommitted yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like that was definitely happening. What I
Speaker 1: also struggled with is back to your strategy of what's
Speaker 1: the most important project for the week. I just couldn't
Speaker 1: determine that. And so in your life, how do you
Speaker 1: do that? Because that's easier said than done when you're
Speaker 1: excited about lots of things, as I know you are,
Speaker 1: So how do you pick that one project and stay
Speaker 1: true to that vision at least for a week?
Speaker 3: I think for me that's evolved over time. So it
Speaker 3: used to just be what other people needed from me,
Speaker 3: and then gained enough freedom to also ask what am
Speaker 3: I excited about? And over time I've learned that's not
Speaker 3: enough either for me to really want to make a
Speaker 3: project a top priority, It's got to matter to other people,
Speaker 3: it's got to be interesting to me. But also I
Speaker 3: have to feel like I'm making a unique contribution, that
Speaker 3: what I'm doing is not easily substitutable or replaceable. And
Speaker 3: I remember reading some of the early research on this.
Speaker 3: It was in the social loafing literature, where the classic
Speaker 3: finding that many hands often make light the work, and
Speaker 3: if you add a sixth or seventh person to a team.
Speaker 3: Then each person tends to contribute a little bit less
Speaker 3: because they diffuse responsibility and assume that somebody else is
Speaker 3: going to pick up the slack. Only then everybody just
Speaker 3: ends up doing a little more slack. And one of
Speaker 3: the antidotes to that problem was task uniqueness, the idea
Speaker 3: that I have a distinctive role to play and that
Speaker 3: nobody else can bring what I'm adding to the table.
Speaker 3: And when you do that, people don't just assume that
Speaker 3: everybody else is going to carry the weight. I found
Speaker 3: that that for me is a really big factor. And
Speaker 3: it's not just a motivator because it prevents me from
Speaker 3: just relying on somebody else to do it.
Speaker 2: It's a motivator.
Speaker 3: Because I feel like I make a difference, that it's
Speaker 3: not just the position I happen to be in. So
Speaker 3: often people do jobs that have an impact on others,
Speaker 3: but they don't feel like they're delivering that impact. They
Speaker 3: feel like they're just a cog in a machine. And
Speaker 3: if a leader or a manager goes that extra step
Speaker 3: and helps people think about not just who would be
Speaker 3: worse off if your job didn't exist, but who would
Speaker 3: be worse off if you were not doing this role.
Speaker 3: That becomes a major source of energy.
Speaker 1: I like that we have a thing at Inventium, which
Speaker 1: I think a lot of companies have adopted now called
Speaker 1: a one page operating manual, and one of the questions
Speaker 1: that we ask is what would be missing if you
Speaker 1: weren't here or if your job wasn't here. So it
Speaker 1: just reminds me of that, aside from thinking about what's
Speaker 1: just one project you can prioritize for the week, what
Speaker 1: else do you do to make sure well to try
Speaker 1: to prevent burnout in your own life.
Speaker 3: It's a good question. There's some healthy habits that I
Speaker 3: think are just table stakes, right. So I'm pretty obsessive
Speaker 3: about working out six days a week. There's an element
Speaker 3: of joy and play that I try to build into
Speaker 3: my schedule. I made the mistake for a long time
Speaker 3: of treating fun as a reward for finishing my to
Speaker 3: do list, and now it's actually on my to do list.
Speaker 3: So I try to have one thing that I'm looking
Speaker 3: forward to that's not work every day. A lot of
Speaker 3: that is kid centric. In some cases, we might end
Speaker 3: up playing soccer or playing Mario Kart and just knowing
Speaker 3: that that's on the calendar fires me up to both
Speaker 3: be focused and productive in my work and also to
Speaker 3: not feel the dread of this day.
Speaker 2: Is all work.
Speaker 3: And then I think maybe the one of the more
Speaker 3: novel things that I've picked up over time is so
Speaker 3: Paul Graham came up with this distinction. I really like
Speaker 3: that you're familiar with the maker days and manager days.
Speaker 3: And the aha moment for me when I read that was, Oh,
Speaker 3: we all have manager tasks that we have to do
Speaker 3: that are administrative, that are exhausting, zoom meetings, and we
Speaker 3: also have maker roles and activities where we're creating stuff,
Speaker 3: we're solving problems, we're making choices. And the recommendation of
Speaker 3: Hall was you should divide your days, get the manager
Speaker 3: stuff out of the way one day, and then you
Speaker 3: can experience the full joy of the maker tasks on
Speaker 3: a different day. In some ways, that's still an ideal
Speaker 3: for me, but I've also found that it's pretty exhausting
Speaker 3: to have an entire manager day. I just don't like managing.
Speaker 3: I like creating. So what I've learned is if I
Speaker 3: actually put those manager tasks in a particular block of
Speaker 3: the day, I don't mind them as much and they
Speaker 3: don't deplete me as much.
Speaker 2: And I think the.
Speaker 3: Reason I like that so much is that I know
Speaker 3: I'm not doing my best creative or analytical work then,
Speaker 3: because there's a circadian rhythm, dip and energy that you're
Speaker 3: familiar with. And also I have I've blocked out enough
Speaker 3: time in the morning then that i can feel like
Speaker 3: I accomplish something and I'm less annoyed by the fact
Speaker 3: that the administrative work is interfering with my desire to
Speaker 3: do something more magical. So that's probably my if I
Speaker 3: had a hack, I hate I actually don't believe in
Speaker 3: productivity hacks. I think most things that we do require
Speaker 3: a real effort and work and there's not an easy shortcut.
Speaker 3: But if I had a hack, it would be like
Speaker 3: afternoons our manager time.
Speaker 1: I love that and I can relate. I've got my
Speaker 1: calendar up on a different screen in my setup here,
Speaker 1: and my meetings are yeah, always in the afternoon. I
Speaker 1: feel like it is the best way to get good
Speaker 1: maker time in a day. We will be back with
Speaker 1: Adam soon where he talks me through his approach to
Speaker 1: scheduling and taking holidays and time off. If you're looking
Speaker 1: for more tips to improve the way you work can live.
Speaker 1: I write a short weekly newsletter that contains tactics I've
Speaker 1: discovered that have helped me personally. You can sign up
Speaker 1: for that at Amantha dot com. That's Amantha dot com.
Speaker 1: I want to know about holidays and what is your
Speaker 1: approach to taking time off because you never seem to
Speaker 1: be off, certainly in terms of your prolific presence on
Speaker 1: social media, but what is your approach to taking holidays
Speaker 1: or even just mini breaks.
Speaker 3: Well, this is definitely evolved over time. I used to
Speaker 3: be against breaks and I thought, if I've optimized my day,
Speaker 3: then every minute will be used effectively, and that one
Speaker 3: that's just not sustainable for any immortal and two it
Speaker 3: also fails to give you the downtime that you need.
Speaker 2: For energy and creativity. What does this look like for me? Now?
Speaker 3: What it looks like is I use exercise as a
Speaker 3: built in break during the day. I'll run round noon
Speaker 3: and that kind of splits up the morning and then
Speaker 3: after the run is when I move into the manager time.
Speaker 3: Let me just tell you what I do, which is
Speaker 3: during the school year, I start working when our kids
Speaker 3: leave for school, and I stop when they get home,
Speaker 3: and that is really energetic focus time. And my goal
Speaker 3: is to not work once they're home, but if I'm
Speaker 3: behind on anything or there's a deadline, sometimes I'll pick
Speaker 3: it up after they go to bed. Increasingly, my goal
Speaker 3: is to not even do that, so I actually get
Speaker 3: an evening break and I can read or watch TV
Speaker 3: or whatever won't annoy my wife, who's even more introverted
Speaker 3: than I am. What's useful about that for me is
Speaker 3: it creates a rhythm, and I know that they are
Speaker 3: going to be focused work times and then there are
Speaker 3: going to be times to detach and enjoy the moment,
Speaker 3: which is not something I've been historically that could at.
Speaker 3: So that's I guess that's the micro side. How does
Speaker 3: that track with what you do and what you advise.
Speaker 1: On a day to day level? And I would say
Speaker 1: all my routines just went out the door for the
Speaker 1: first half of this year, where I felt like I
Speaker 1: was in a dual role. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: obviously doing the CEO role. But then the health habit
Speaker 1: launched in January, so there was a lot of publicity
Speaker 1: on either side of that, and also feelings of resentment
Speaker 1: that I was in this CEO role when I just
Speaker 1: wanted to be fully invested in. As you can appreciate,
Speaker 1: when you put all this work into researching and writing
Speaker 1: and editing a book, you want to give it your
Speaker 1: role when it's out in the world. And then I
Speaker 1: was still doing my individual thought leadership work, which is
Speaker 1: the keynote speaking and the podcasting and the writing and
Speaker 1: all that. And so because nothing gave, I did sit
Speaker 1: down and think what am I going to say no to?
Speaker 1: But it wasn't enough because all the things that I
Speaker 1: was saying yes to, I thought it'll be fine. I'll
Speaker 1: just be hyper productive and I'm good at that. It
Speaker 1: turns out not so much. I had a big think about, Okay,
Speaker 1: what are the new rituals and rules that I'm going
Speaker 1: to have for myself. And I'm getting back into just
Speaker 1: not checking digital communication before I've at least done a
Speaker 1: couple of hours of deep work. So I was just
Speaker 1: getting into really bad habits of when I get out
Speaker 1: of bed. I had Microsoft Teams and I had email
Speaker 1: outlook on my phone, and they would get checked before
Speaker 1: anything else happened workwise, which is something I advise against
Speaker 1: because it just sets you up to be reactive, So
Speaker 1: I've just deleted those apps from my phone. As I
Speaker 1: know you believe will power is overrated, So let's just
Speaker 1: set up the systems in the environment so that it's
Speaker 1: easy to have those good habits. I'm also giving myself
Speaker 1: just a hard stop at five PM as well, which
Speaker 1: I find really hard, and I am also planning for
Speaker 1: longer holidays. It occurred to me when I took these
Speaker 1: two weeks off and I was completely off all digital communication.
Speaker 1: It was the first two week period that I'd been
Speaker 1: completely uncontactable from work in probably years, which is kind
Speaker 1: of scary. What about you on that macro level.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so this is interesting in two ways. The first
Speaker 3: one is that we know better when it comes to technology.
Speaker 3: No one in their right mind waits till their phone
Speaker 3: battery is at one percent before they plug it in.
Speaker 3: They're start charging it when it begins to look depleted,
Speaker 3: and I think I'll be We need to do the
Speaker 3: same thing with our bodies and our brains, but we
Speaker 3: forget that that's necessary because we're not walking around with
Speaker 3: a battery meter.
Speaker 2: We did a podcast episode last.
Speaker 3: Year on work Life about the science of recharging on
Speaker 3: weekends and vacations. And one of the things I learned
Speaker 3: through reviewing the latest evidence and talking with a series
Speaker 3: of experts is it's more restorative to have more frequent,
Speaker 3: short vacations than it is to have longer ones that
Speaker 3: are less frequent. So if you had a choice between
Speaker 3: one week vacation every month or a two week holiday
Speaker 3: every other month, the first option is better than the second.
Speaker 3: So I've tried to adopt that and say, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: why not take the advice to treat our weekends as
Speaker 3: many vacations. This is something that our mutual colleague, reb
Speaker 3: Rebelly first introduced me to. He said, look, you know,
Speaker 3: very few people have the luxury of going on holiday
Speaker 3: every week. Most people can't get the time off from work,
Speaker 3: most people can't afford it. But you do have this
Speaker 3: thing called a weekend. And if you treat your weekend
Speaker 3: like a holiday. Instead of saying, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 3: spend Saturday catching up on all the work that I
Speaker 3: didn't finish, and then Sunday I'm just going to sleep
Speaker 3: because I was so tired, and then the whole thing
Speaker 3: starts over again, that's not going to.
Speaker 2: Work that well.
Speaker 3: So I love this idea of weekends as vacations, and
Speaker 3: we've been doing more of that as a family.
Speaker 1: It's so funny because I am very aware of this research,
Speaker 1: and I was actually working on a project where I
Speaker 1: was reacquainting myself with this research literally a few weeks ago.
Speaker 1: And if I think about the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: I'm really good at the mini break. My partner and
Speaker 1: I are really good at going, Okay, every eight weeks,
Speaker 1: we're going to do a mini weekend away somewhere, typically
Speaker 1: in regional Victoria, and we'll take a couple of days
Speaker 1: off work. So it's a four day time off period.
Speaker 1: And so that's what I've been doing. And I hadn't
Speaker 1: been taking those long breaks because I've read that research
Speaker 1: and I listened to it. But sometimes you know, you
Speaker 1: do read research and go that just pride it and
Speaker 1: doesn't gell. But do you all say take longer breaks
Speaker 1: at them?
Speaker 3: Well, first of all, Amantha, what I love about what
Speaker 3: you just said is that, I mean, you just responded
Speaker 3: exactly like a great organizational psychologist would and should. I
Speaker 3: have encountered too many people who read the research that
Speaker 3: conflicts with their experience and say, well, the evidence is wrong,
Speaker 3: and what you said was not that you said. I
Speaker 3: might be an outlier, and I do think that's a
Speaker 3: healthy way to respond to data. So the first thing
Speaker 3: I would wonder about is what are you doing during
Speaker 3: your holidays and are you actually spending those in an
Speaker 3: effective way? We could think about that through all sorts
Speaker 3: of different lenses. One of my favorite findings that I
Speaker 3: stumbled across recently is this growing body of evidence that
Speaker 3: although most of us have said, well, being in nature
Speaker 3: is really what recharges us, and you want to be
Speaker 3: in a green space if you can around a forest
Speaker 3: or grass or trees, blue spaces.
Speaker 2: Are even better.
Speaker 3: That water is more relaxing, and especially wide bodies of water, oceans,
Speaker 3: big lakes, rivers, they bring extra tranquility. And there's a
Speaker 3: huge commount of speculation about why that is and whether
Speaker 3: we've evolved to experience this sort of relief when we're
Speaker 3: near water, because prehistorically we would have dehydrated if we
Speaker 3: couldn't get to water. But I think there's something to
Speaker 3: be said for Okay, are you doing enough beach vacation?
Speaker 3: So are you spending enough time by the pool? As
Speaker 3: just as one small example, right, So i'd want to
Speaker 3: break down how are you spending those holidays. I'd also
Speaker 3: want to look at what are you doing over the
Speaker 3: course of your work weeks that is pushing you to
Speaker 3: need that long to recover. Are you draining your battery
Speaker 3: to the very bottom? Maybe that's another cause here. So
Speaker 3: how much do you think this is your personality versus
Speaker 3: how much do you think it's the habits you've adopted
Speaker 3: for both your work and your holidays.
Speaker 1: What what happened this year is that typically I've got
Speaker 1: good habits. I've got good habits around how I work,
Speaker 1: around productivity, and around health, and I also feel incredibly
Speaker 1: guilty when I don't stick to those habits because I
Speaker 1: hate being someone that writes and talks about things the
Speaker 1: classic plumber with the blocked pipes hate. I hate that
Speaker 1: so much. And I've really felt that this year where
Speaker 1: a lot of the things that I talk and write
Speaker 1: about I've been doing the opposite and that's made me
Speaker 1: feel terrible, which is probably contributed to the problem. And
Speaker 1: so I feel like, normally my habits are good. And
Speaker 1: what I've also felt is that this two week circuit
Speaker 1: breaker almost, which I think is what you get when
Speaker 1: you take more than a week of leave, I was
Speaker 1: completely in nature. I was also spending really great time
Speaker 1: with my daughter as well, and just really just hyper
Speaker 1: present in a way that I hadn't been for months.
Speaker 1: And I think now that I'm back, I've got habits
Speaker 1: that I can now put in place, and I'm not
Speaker 1: dragged back by these really unhealthy and unproductive habits that
Speaker 1: I had in the first half of the year.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 3: That makes me think of Wendy Wood's research on habit
Speaker 3: formation and change and the myth that it takes a
Speaker 3: month to change a habit. And I got such a
Speaker 3: kick out of Wendy's finding that depending on the person
Speaker 3: and the habit and the approach they take, it could
Speaker 3: take many months, or it could take a day, and
Speaker 3: it could be anything in between, and there's huge variation there.
Speaker 3: And I think what you're highlighting that builds on that
Speaker 3: is that the first step toward changing a habit is
Speaker 3: to become aware of it.
Speaker 2: It's hard to pack.
Speaker 3: Into a week, which is something that one of our
Speaker 3: star doctoral students, Marissa Schandell, highlighted for me. Marissa said,
Speaker 3: everybody thinks about vacation as unplugging, but you also have
Speaker 3: to think about it as plugging into sources of meaning
Speaker 3: and joy. And that was such a powerful statement for
Speaker 3: me because I'm not a detaching person like that sounds
Speaker 3: like boredom to me. But the idea that I could
Speaker 3: connect to different things that fire me up, that give
Speaker 3: me purpose, or some level of joy that's exciting, and
Speaker 3: that's something I could look forward to. And so it
Speaker 3: sounds to me like you have too pronged approach, which
Speaker 3: is the first part of the holiday is you're decompressing,
Speaker 3: and then the second part is you're getting quality time
Speaker 3: with people you care about.
Speaker 1: One percent. I would love to know what haven't we
Speaker 1: talked about about burnout that you think that you've come
Speaker 1: across in research or that you've experienced for yourself, that
Speaker 1: you think, if people listening can relate to feelings of
Speaker 1: burnout or just exhaustion at work, what should they be
Speaker 1: doing well.
Speaker 3: I think we've we've talked a bunch about individual changes,
Speaker 3: but we have to also recognize that a lot of
Speaker 3: burnout is organizational. If you're in a team or in
Speaker 3: a job where you're not the only one who's feeling burnout,
Speaker 3: guess what, that is not a problem in your head
Speaker 3: it's a problem in your circumstances, and that means that
Speaker 3: there's an opportunity for rethinking roles and redesigning jobs to
Speaker 3: try to reduce demands or over load or conflict or ambiguity.
Speaker 3: It means there's a chance to think about we may
Speaker 3: not be able to eliminate all the stressors in our jobs,
Speaker 3: but we can try to gain more control over them.
Speaker 3: We can get more choices about what we do when
Speaker 3: and who we do it with. And it especially means
Speaker 3: we can think about how to provide people with support.
Speaker 3: And I keep coming back to something I learned about
Speaker 3: during COVID, which was a manager who said to a team, look,
Speaker 3: it's okay to call in sick. It's also okay to
Speaker 3: call in sad. And I thought that was compelling way
Speaker 3: to frame this that, yeah, of course you would take
Speaker 3: time off if you got the flu or if you
Speaker 3: sprained your ankle. Well, guess what, if you're feeling burned out,
Speaker 3: we want you to prioritize mental health same way you
Speaker 3: would physical health. And I think it's good for managers
Speaker 3: to obviously to say it, but what ultimately matters is
Speaker 3: whether they walk the talk. So one of the things
Speaker 3: I've been encouraging leaders and managers do is to make
Speaker 3: it clear to their teams, I'm going to be taking
Speaker 3: a recharge week, I'm going to be taking a mental
Speaker 3: health day and normalize that behavior. And what that does
Speaker 3: is it gives people across the organization the support they need,
Speaker 3: the permission they need to prioritize their own well being.
Speaker 3: And I don't think we can underscore that enough.
Speaker 1: It's funny, I've heard that advice before, and I was
Speaker 1: thinking about that a lot, like in the few weeks
Speaker 1: leading up to my holiday, and I just felt like
Speaker 1: I so desperately needed to take a sad day or
Speaker 1: a recharge day, and I reckon, I've rebably spent hours
Speaker 1: thinking about that in the back of my head. Could
Speaker 1: I take it? How would I frame that? And I
Speaker 1: ended up discroing, you just need to push through because
Speaker 1: right now, like you're the leader and people need to
Speaker 1: have confidence in you. Absolutely there's a place for vulnerability,
Speaker 1: but I also don't want to compromise the confidence that
Speaker 1: people have. Even though I've pushed through all this change,
Speaker 1: I'm okay. I didn't want the team worrying about me,
Speaker 1: and I was really worried about the signal that would
Speaker 1: stand at that moment.
Speaker 3: I think that that's a really common challenge for leaders,
Speaker 3: and I think it's a totally reasonable concern to have.
Speaker 2: For me.
Speaker 3: What matters here is how you delivered the message, not
Speaker 3: when you deliver it. So the danger of waiting until
Speaker 3: after you've recovered is that it might take longer to recover.
Speaker 3: And also you might be perpetuating the burnout of your
Speaker 3: team right because you haven't given them the leeway to
Speaker 3: do what they need to do to maximize or maintain
Speaker 3: their energy. So what I would wonder is, of course,
Speaker 3: you don't want to go in and say, hey, I'm
Speaker 3: really sorry to let you all know this, but I'm
Speaker 3: completely burned out. I have no energy, I haven't had
Speaker 3: an original thought in months on the verge of quitting,
Speaker 3: and I hope you all can you just cover for
Speaker 3: me while I disappear for an unlimited amount of time.
Speaker 2: You would not do that.
Speaker 3: What you might do is say, I don't know if
Speaker 3: you've noticed, but I've been picking up on a little
Speaker 3: bit of a dip in my energy. And as somebody
Speaker 3: who writes and speaks and teaches on this topic, it's
Speaker 3: really important to me to pay attention to those signals
Speaker 3: and also to model the very things that I'm trying
Speaker 3: to educate around. And so I'm gonna you know, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna be taking a few days just to recharge. Nothing
Speaker 3: to worry about, but I want you to have, you know,
Speaker 3: the freshest, most enthusiastic version of me. And I also
Speaker 3: want you all to know that when you're in that zone,
Speaker 3: this is what I expect of you. Do I doubt
Speaker 3: your confidence if you say that, No, I actually have
Speaker 3: more faith that you're telling me the truth.
Speaker 1: Adam. I'm going to transcribe this interview and I'm going
Speaker 1: to just sniff out that little beat and I'm going
Speaker 1: to put it in a note, and next time I'm
Speaker 1: feeling exhausted, that is what I'm going to say to
Speaker 1: my team. That's gold.
Speaker 3: I'm watching a growing number of leaders who I would
Speaker 3: consider to be on the enlightened end of the emotional
Speaker 3: intelligence spectrum say we're going to do just a pulse
Speaker 3: check once a week. And as a leader, it's my
Speaker 3: job ask my team how's my energy? Because I don't
Speaker 3: always notice it, and even when I think I'm in
Speaker 3: a good place, I don't always know the impact I
Speaker 3: have on others, and so getting a little bit of
Speaker 3: that quick feedback. If a bunch of people tell me
Speaker 3: that I'm dragging or I seem exhausted, that's helpful information
Speaker 3: for me. And then guess what, It's not coming from me,
Speaker 3: It's coming from my team.
Speaker 1: How do they do that energy check out of interest?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that a survey? Is that a synchronous discussion?
Speaker 3: I think it depends on the psychological safety in the team.
Speaker 3: I think when in teams that have strong norms of
Speaker 3: candor and honesty, where a lot of trust has been developed.
Speaker 3: I've seen it done as just a okay, let's go
Speaker 3: around the room, quick energy check zero to ten, how
Speaker 3: is my energy today or how is my energy this week?
Speaker 3: And if the leader asks first, sometimes you know other
Speaker 3: people will will pose the question. Sometimes it's just feedback
Speaker 3: for the leader saying, look, my job is to energize
Speaker 3: the room, not to enervate or exhaust room, and so
Speaker 3: I just want that feedback, and then people may choose
Speaker 3: to have that conversation with each other in pairs or
Speaker 3: in smaller groups. I think when psychological safety is lower,
Speaker 3: I've seen it done very much as a pul survey
Speaker 3: where there's a daily or a weekly or a monthly,
Speaker 3: kind of the same way that a lot of companies
Speaker 3: do quarterly or annual engagement surveys.
Speaker 1: I wish we'd had this chat a few months ago
Speaker 1: before I'd hit burnout. I personally found it so useful.
Speaker 1: It has been brilliant just to hear your thoughts on
Speaker 1: burnout in holidays, and I'm hoping that for the second
Speaker 1: half of the year I can be back to being
Speaker 1: energetic and enthusiastic and not get anywhere near burnt out.
Speaker 1: So thank you so much for your time well.
Speaker 3: As always thank you for having me in for both
Speaker 3: the thoughtful questions and also the generative stories which always
Speaker 3: make me think. I do think your team is going
Speaker 3: to hold you accountable now, like you've gone public with
Speaker 3: the fact that you burned out. You've admitted that you
Speaker 3: felt like you we're a hypocrite, so obviously no one
Speaker 3: can let you do that.
Speaker 1: Again, which I think is a good thing. I hope
Speaker 1: you liked my chat with Adam about burnout, and if
Speaker 1: you know someone who might be in need of hearing
Speaker 1: these strategies to help cope with stress and burnout, please
Speaker 1: share this episode with them by clicking on the share
Speaker 1: icon wherever you listen to this podcast from To find
Speaker 1: out more about Adam hop onto Adamgrant dot net and
Speaker 1: his latest book, Hidden Potential, is out nowt wherever you
Speaker 1: buy books. If you like Today's Joe, make sure you
Speaker 1: hit follow on your podcast app to be alerted when
Speaker 1: new episodes drop. How I Work was recorded on the
Speaker 1: traditional land of the Warrenery people, part of the kuol
Speaker 1: And Nation. A big thank you to my editor Rowena
Speaker 1: Murray and Martin Nimmer for doing the sound mix.