The Burnout Gamble | Hamza Khan | TEDxUTSC

are you an overachiever if all you do is win win win no matter what and if you've got money or some other benchmark of success on your mind and you can never get enough and if for whatever reason every time you step up in the building and everybody's hands go up please raise your hands and make them stay there make them stay there and if you feel so inclined up down up down up down my name is Hamza and I have some advice for all you overachievers in the audience alright stop I mean it I'm serious being an overachiever is overrated it's counterproductive and if you haven't already you are going to hurt yourself in the process I need you to trust me I'm a recovering overachiever myself I'm a full one year sober actually there used to be a time in my life where I would enjoy the moniker of a robot of a machine of a cyborg when people would describe me as such it was a badge of honor it would make my circuits tingle I was a human doing I pride myself on sheer output I would burn the midnight oil I would burn the candle on both ends I would fire on all cannons I was on fire and 2014 was an exceptional year for me that year I accomplished more than I ever thought I could I ran two simultaneous agencies I wrote I taught I spoke I did all of these things for a living at the same time and that year in the summer I told myself at the end of the year I would take an epic vacation because I needed it I could see the signs I could see the wear and tear I said I would go hard for the next six months and in December I would take off now here's the thing about being an overachiever it doesn't just stop in the professional you overachieve even when it comes to leisure look at this ridiculous itinerary I kid you not Toronto - New York New York - Milan Milan - Prague Prague - Amsterdam Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur I have the ticket stubs to prove it my Airbnb --zz were booked I had ten things I wanted to do in each city I was going to jam pack this trip with more things to do and on top of that I was somehow gonna write a book called getting more things done I know I know now middle of December it's time to go my bags are packed I've called everyone I needed to call I'm ready to leave and then this happens cold feet suddenly my head my heart my body are completely out of sync I'm sitting there with my boarding pass printed in hand stuffing the last few things into my bags and I look at the clock and there's two hours to go I can still make it I drag my feet I've got one hour to go maybe if I hop in the cab and book it I can still make it half an hour to go maybe home alone style I could run right to the terminal and grease the attendant get in didn't happen five four three two one I watched the clock countdown and that flight left I didn't go on the trip I didn't go on the trip and I could not for the life of me understand why so for the next thirty days I had to ask myself some really tough questions because I was mad I was sad I was resentful I was confused I was ashamed I felt this cocktail of emotions that I had never felt before what happened what the hell happened why did this happen something wrong with me how could I prevented this how did I see this coming was this inevitable and am I alone and so I spent the next 30 days doing some research while at home I looked up the term burnout now I had heard of burnout before I've heard it used in different contexts I never wrap my head around what burnout actually meant and then I discovered the 12 stages of burnout by herbert freud and Berger and Gayle north and once it was visualized for me as such it completely reframed the way that I saw myself in the context of my work my success and ultimately my happiness it always starts out the same the compulsion to prove yourself came up that's all me no help that's all me all me for real me against the world I'm gonna hustle hard I have so much to prove and that leads perfectly into working harder the 9 to 5 becomes the 9 to 7 becomes the 9 to 9 and before you know it you're neglecting all of your needs your sleep your food your family your friends the things that are supposed to give you the energy to work hard you are now sacrificing for short-term gain and this is where things start to get ugly after this stage you start to displace conflicts thumbs up we have to talk right now all right now I got too much on the go thumbs up but we really really need to talk I can't I can't talk about this right now and then you start to revise your values the things that are supposed to be the foundations of your person the values the attributes the beliefs that you hold dear suddenly become malleable you know you start off every day with a finite amount of willpower and with every decision you make during that day some of that willpower is eroded this is a concept known as ego depletion now imagine being in a state of ego depletion perpetually and then you start to deny the problems that you're having um so your work is suffering no it's not what are you talking about Hamzah you're not pulling your weight yes I am people become antagonistic to you and then you begin to withdraw naturally you pull away from work you pull away from your family you pull away from your friends and before you know it a certain randomness begins to creep into your life you start drinking maybe you start smoking maybe maybe not things that you didn't think you would do you're certainly starting to exhibit now you're starting to do things that people are noticing is odd and then you begin to diminish and devalue the role of people in your lives your co-workers your family your friends are less than humans now they're just these nagging voices in your life that you want to get away from nobody's good enough and then comes the inner emptiness everybody's got goals their own definitions of success for the most part you're able to visualize them but when you're in this stage stage 10 those goals become obscure you don't know where you're going you don't know where you are you begin to question everything and then comes the depression this is different than sadness this is a deep dark pinging throbbing pain a hollowness and emptiness a perpetual haze over your life and before you know it you're burnt out physically mentally and emotionally you're gone it hurts it's embarrassing especially if you're an overachiever like me now here's the thing in seeing the visualization of the 12 stages of burnout I realized that this wasn't my first rodeo I'd been here before in different degrees I had flirted flirted with burnout at almost every professional milestone in my career first as a student right here like a lot of the students in this room I wasn't satisfied with simply one student organization I threw myself at ten didn't just take four courses I maxed out I took seven I took eight I threw myself at my academics at my extracurriculars I tried to cram in as many lifetimes as possible into a singular life span and I'm never going to be able to live down the manifestation of this burnout it was two weeks before a major conference and I was a publication - manager I was responsible for turning in print materials and two weeks before I just wasn't in the right headspace didn't have the work done I was too embarrassed to tell people about it and so what did I do I pulled out I let my team down and I've never been able to reconcile with those negative feelings and it happened again as an intern I was working at a record label and I was so eager to please my boss I would work 15 hour workdays and then after that I would go help my boss at shows and there was one particular stretch of 72 hours where I might have slept maybe 3-4 hours I woke up at the end of this bender to the wrapping of the door in the office bathroom I was passed out in the office bathroom for eight hours deeply embarrassing deeply shameful just not me not the brand not Who I am and it continued to happen it happened to me as an employee it happened to me as a founder I was predisposed to burning out something had to change so I needed to look at the root cause of my burnout and I discovered that I had a very unhealthy relationship with stress now we're going to define stress as the result produced when a structure system or organism is acted upon by forces that disrupt equilibrium or produce strain I had an unhealthy relationship with stress but I wasn't alone we are arguably in the golden age of stress this is possibly the most stressful we have ever been as a species in fact 69% of employees reported that work was a significant source of stress for them we all feel this relentless pressure to perform and there's multiple stressors that contribute to this feeling the fear of job redundancy layoffs increased demands for overtime but it's not just affecting us personally is affecting the entire economy we're losing 300 billion dollars a year in lost productivity caused by absenteeism turnover and health care expenditures that also include death I kid you not the Japanese call it Hiroshi the Chinese called goooo Lao si these words literally mean death by work death by work take that in 1600 people in China every day die from work I'm not talking about laboring in the fields I'm not talking about working in a factory I'm talking about sitting behind a desk staring at a screen for upwards of 10 12 15 hours a day dying because of hemorrhage internal failures seizures it's brutal and the kicker the most stressed of this multi-generational workforce me millenials a lot of you in the audience today now I had to dive even deeper why was I so predisposed to stress why was I so predisposed to burnout 50% of it was external factors outside of my control first generation student from a lower middle class family and a racialized minority my father wanted me to fit conveniently inside the Career Trinity dr. Loy an engineer you can imagine his dismay when I said I want to be a marketer back was against the wall and I had more to prove from the jump but then the other 50% was me indulging in these feelings I began to like being an overachiever the dopamine release wasn't it was intense with every number I put on the board every achievement I built a certain momentum and I began to relate to quotes like this from mr. Kobe Bryant to think of me as a person that over achieved that would mean a lot to me that means I put a lot of work in except in the last two years of my career and squeeze every ounce of juice out of this orange that I could and then I began to see it I saw it clearly in December of 2014 while I was recovering from burnout I saw that every single day for the last however many years I'd been working and studying I was gambling I was gambling with my health and my well-being I wanted success however I defined it and success requires effort effort induces stress and unregulated stress can lead to burnout now some of the variables over here would never gonna change I still had a lot to accomplish but maybe just maybe I could change my response to stress and so I applied a simple risk assessment framework to the solution to this problem could I reduce the impact of stress and could I reduce the probability of stress and I looked at the 12 stages of burnout again where did things start to get ugly for me Stage four in fact I was at my most productive when I was in the first two stages and I could sustainably operate within them every now and then I have to dip into stage 3 but as soon as I touch stage 4 that's when I went all the way down the dark hole of burnout dare to know this you can avoid burnout you can make the transition from overachiever to high performer and have all of the benefits of being an overachiever without all of the downside it's going to require you to make the transition and develop a state of productive anxiety now special cloth filler I'm going to give you some major keys I'm going to give you some major keys not going to leave you hanging I promise the first thing you need to do is to unlearn stress in its entirety and regain control of the situation unlearn stress and consider this the reason why you get up out of bed every morning according to Thomas Hobbes the engine of the human is appetite and a version we're drawn to things and repelled from things and what are we repelled from pain hurt stress if I asked you do you want two more to be a stressful day everyone in here is going to say hell no but according to dr. Kelly McGonigal author of the upside of stress there's two types of stress there's good stress and there's bad stress in fact simply reframing a stressful situation is one in which you're experiencing good stress is enough to change your mood and your opinion and your attitude in that moment instead of looking at stress is what we defined it as above maybe it's time to look at stress is this a measurement of how engaged you are with the things that bring love and growth into your life another one major key number to become a high performer and reduce the probability of stressful situations in your life now some stress is inevitable maybe you can call it good stress maybe some of it is bad but overall you can reduce the probability of it happening if you're not familiar with the Icarus myth let me give you the sparknotes version Daedalus and a son Icarus are trapped on the island of Crete now in order to escape they're surrounded by water datalist builds two contraptions two sets of wings made of wood wax and feathers they fly out and Daedalus tells Icarus don't fly too low because if you get close enough to the ocean the foam in the mist is going to make your wing soggy and you'll sink to your death at the same time don't fly too high because what's going to happen the wings are going to burn they're going to melt they're going to fall off and you'll die so they began to fly they find a nice altitude and what is it giris do he gets confident he gets cocky he flies too high the wings melt they burn any plummets to his death Daedalus on the other hand makes it all the way like Daedalus I want you to find a new altitude find that perfect space find that sweet spot of productive anxiety for me it was the first three stages for you could be different whatever it is it's going to keep you in perpetual productivity with a little bit of anxiety another one major key number three reduce the impact of stress a year and a half ago a couple of friends and I got together and we wrote a blog we produced a blog called year one and what we did is we reverse engineered the careers of a hundred and seventy-five people who we deemed to be extremely successful athletes politicians artists activists you name it and we distill their careers down to a very early point in their lives to hone in on one particular attribute something that has guaranteed them lasting success and overwhelmingly we found that one value gave the most guarantee of lasting success resilience resilience is your ability to adapt to stress now how do you develop resilience the Greeks had a solution for this as well or Mises our Mises describes the process by which you consume a small amount of poison which is otherwise lethal for you and could kill you in a full dose and small administered doses and doing so actually builds up your tolerance to that very toxin how do you manifest this now as a human being instead of running and dashing and flying and bounding towards your comfort zone and outside of it take baby steps do something every day that scares you step outside of your comfort zone gradually because burnout occurs when you're continuously far beyond your comfort zone that's a high risk activity when you are an overachiever you are always engaging in high-risk activity and there's diminishing returns what you really want to do is remain slightly uncomfortable all the time and thereby Rees entering your risk factor initially you have moderate risk because you've diminished and reduced the probability and the impact of stress and overtime as you build up more resilience as you continue to relearn stress as you continue to make that transition from overachiever to high performer you will gradually move back to a place where eventually hopefully stress in your life is rare and trivial now this is the trip I'm taking one leg short told myself let's take it easy let's not go as hard as we did last time not a lot plan to be honest I'm still going to be doing some of the things that I wanted to do in the previous trip but for the most part I'm going to relax I'm going to recharge I'm going to restore because I've made the transition from human doing back to human being and that came from my rethinking at a very comprehensive level burn out burn out just look at that word take burn out it's not the fire that's the problem it's the absence of the fire that's the issue the fire the symbol the metaphor for passion for desire for action for activity for movement for fuel once that's extinguished that's the real problem so if you're going to take anything away from this it's simply burn bright not out thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 214,636

Rating: 4.8946724 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Canada, Business, Behavior, Emotions, Positive Thinking, Psychology, Start-up, Struggle

Id: iEjukHJybm8

Length: 20min 36sec (1236 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 07 2016