You Are Burned Out And Don't Even Know It

burnout is notoriously hard to treat and that i believe is because people are trying to fix it like sort of like in a medical way we tend to devalue a lot of what we go through and we tend to assume that if we have things to be grateful for then we can't be burnt out be thoughtful about okay what's leading to the burnout and then you can intervene on it is this a me component is there something i can work on here or do i need to set boundaries with my boss and saying hey you're asking too much of me all right so let's talk about burnout then so the first thing to understand is that like burnout is increasing and the reason i wanted to talk about it today is because i think a lot of people are actually burnt out and don't even realize it and that's because the term has been tossed around so much that everyone will just sort of say like oh my god i'm supported but the world health organization has actually like looked into this a fair amount there have been lots of researchers a guy named i think um freudenburg and then christina moslock there have been like lots of psychologists and stuff who really looked into this and burnout is absolutely like a real thing and i think the real challenge is that we don't really understand what burnout looks like or feels like and there tend to be a lot of things that we tell ourselves that invalidate our experiences of burnout so the first thing is that so a lot of people who are actually on the cusp of burnt out or are burnt out will say to themselves things like oh like my life is pretty good like i have a stable job i have a good relationship you know my boss is nice to me i'm not taken advantage of or whatever like they look at their life and their life is objectively good and when they look at their life and their life is objectively good they sort of assume that if things are good if i have stuff to be grateful for then i must not be burnt out so this is like the first thing that people run into which is that what i see time and time and time again is that someone has like a situation that's actually pretty good like either they're doing okay in school or they're going to work this is a very common scenario where it's i sort of like wake up i go to work i kind of like my job right like it's pretty interesting and i get compensated pretty well and then i kind of come home and i have a little bit of time to myself i may be game a little bit maybe i exercise a little bit and then it's like bedtime and then it's kind of like rinse and repeat for like the next 30 years and they kind of look at their life and they sort of feel like they don't have a right to complain and what they sort of feel is not something that is overtly mental illness so when we think a little bit about oh i'm really struggling at work or i'm stressed out at work people think about oh my god i'm losing my hair my hair is turning gray i have an ulcer um i have trouble getting out of bed in the morning morning like you know i'm gaining weight like i can't sleep like people look at all these inflated symptoms as signs of problems and once you get to that inflated symptom like oh my god i've gained 10 pounds i've got it all sir and i can't sleep at night now i need to go see a psychiatrist or now i need to go see a therapist the stress is getting to be too much and so we sort of have this picture about you know what is a problem like we have this kind of like idea of like oh my god right and this is like the detective who drinks a little bit too much and is always popping antacids and stuff like that in in the crime thriller movie sort of like that's what we sort of think of as someone who's burnt out right wrinkled clothes and kind of like you know works way too hard and stuff like that and a lot of people who are burnt out will will sort of they'll assume that because they work maybe 40 hours a week maybe 45 hours a week they're not working 80 hours a week they don't have all these different problems they must not be burnt out and so this is like a huge problem because i actually think there that burnout is increasing right so we sort of see that globally and part of the reason that it's increasing is because i i don't think people truly understand what burnout is or how vulnerable you are to it and furthermore how you could be exp you may not even realize what it looks like so the first thing that i'm going to do is sort of share with you all a little bit about what burnout looks like then we're going to talk a little bit about how we discovered what burnout looks like what burnout doesn't look like sort of the debate between what is burnout what is depression and then we're going to kind of get into some more individual factors about what have we learned contributes to burnout because this is the tricky thing is that when we talk a little bit about how to fix burnout some of the things are internal and some of the things are external and that's what makes it such a difficult problem to fix is because unlike other parts of mental health you can't sort of put responsibility entirely on one one side of that right so if i've got a toxic workplace environment let's say it's discriminatory that's not something that i have to deal with that's something that you know i mean i have to deal with it but it's not something that's my responsibility as someone who works there to fix that like that's that's their job so if we look at the way that mental health has been understood it's either their job like oh my god this person is a toxic box who is sexually harassing people that person needs to go and that's how we fix it it's the problems over there right which may be completely legitimate and then what we've got is stuff like depression which is like all over here and that's where the the employer is like oh no like we don't need to change anything at work we're going to give you a nice referral source we'll give you health insurance if you're in the u.s you know we're going to like give you all the stuff here you take the stuff and you go fix it over there and so we have this model where like we put a hundred percent of responsibility on on either the the person who's working or the person who's providing work and the tricky thing about burnout is that it's actually an intersection of the two which is part of the reason why the old systems that we have of addressing burnout are not really working because it's not like either or it's a combination of both so let's start with sort of understanding a little bit about where the where burnout comes from and what it looks like so the first thing to understand is that burnout a lot of times when people feel burnt out the first thing that they'll experience is a lack of energy and this and this is a really common problem with people who are burnt out is that they tend to devalue or kind of don't make excuses for what they experience so that's like kind of the first thing to understand about burnout so when i feel like i have low energy i don't think that this is workplace related burnout i may think because of you know the blowing up of the wellness industry the explosion of the wellness industry oh maybe i need to be like so you you'll have people say like oh i need to be meditating more i need to start doing yoga i need to start taking b12 oh like i need to start drinking juice right so we'll sort of look at all the like we'll kind of feel like low energy like i can get up but it's not really a problem because i can go to work i just feel kind of tired when i go to work it's not like i'm getting bad performance reviews you know i'm doing okay at work i kind of come home it's not like i can't have fun i do enjoy you know hanging out with my friends i kind of like kind of enjoy going for a walk but life kind of feels like flat with people who are burnt out so things aren't quite as exciting there isn't quite as much energy so that's like kind of the first thing to think about so if you're like if your primary experience is kind of just like not that anything is broken like people think like oh my god i can't get out of b bed because i'm so depressed and since they're not there they think like oh it's not really a problem right because i'm not so bad so just the first thing to understand is sort of like a general lack of energy the second thing this is what's really fascinating about what research has revealed is the first thing that happens the first phase of burnout is actually a lack of empathy so this is what we see is that like it's not that you can't take care of yourself it's not that your function is impaired it's that you stop caring about other people so what this sort of leads to what this manifests as is a bunch of cynicism so people have sort of found that people who are burnt out researchers have discovered that people who are burnt out tend to be very very cynical about their job right so like this is something that we see a lot with clients that we've had especially like who are in the tech industry and stuff like that at hg we've worked with a lot of people from you know major developers and things like that what we sort of see is that there's like this kind of like empathic lack of empathy that sort of results in kind of a negative view of the world so it's kind of like yeah i can still do my job but it's not going to go well stuff is going to get screwed there are going to be delays and all that stuff can be true right because that that can still be true but it's the cynicism with which you view it it's sort of like this fatalistic kind of hopeless not quite like i'm suicidal and despairing and i need to quit my job but it's like everything's just gonna go to [ __ ] no matter what i do kind of attitude and when you sort of have that cynicism it makes it very hard for you to be empathic towards other people right so when when your colleague like drops the ball it's very hard to sort of be empathic towards them because like you're just you have no bandwidth left right all your energy is already run out you're kind of like low on energy to begin with if we really think about empathy empathy requires energy for other people so the first thing is a lack of energy the second thing is a lack of empathy and cynicism okay the third thing that we tend to see with with burnout is um a sort of lack of enjoyment or sense of fulfillment with your job so this is where even though your performance may be okay and there are uh there is research that shows that performance can be kind of problematic but what i really look for when i'm looking for burnout is people who generally speaking on paper like their job but find it to be unfulfilling in some fundamental way so this is it and this is the the challenge here is we start to see like some of the challenges some of the things that we do to devalue our burnout which is that you know when i don't enjoy my job when i don't find it fulfilling and i'm kind of in this situation what i tend to do is devalue my own experience so this is where i'll say but i'm lucky to have a job right other people don't have a job as nice as i do oh i'm lucky enough to be working for amazon i'm lucky enough to be working for twitch i'm i'm i'm lucky right so i get paid so much why why am i complaining like i have no right to complain and so this is sort of what happens is when we when we find sort of a lack of fulfillment or enjoyment or things like that people who are burnt out once again remember there's a lack of empathy right so sometimes there can even be a lack of self-empathy there can be a lack of compassion towards oneself and we sort of do is like tell ourselves like why are we complaining so this is what i kind of think about these three things is like the classic occult burnout and what i mean by a cult is it's kind of hidden right it's sort of like you don't really realize that you're burnt out because you're not you're able to go to work every day you're able to do okay you know you maybe have a short fuse this is another thing that we tend to see a lot is a short fuse is a very very common sign of burnout so it's not depression it's not sadness it's not like inability to do work but i tend to have a short fuse i tend to be a little bit cynical you know we see this a lot in the medical profession where people stop caring about patients what it starts to become is like i need to get through this work and so i can go home for the day and i feel kind of wiped and then it's like get up tomorrow and rinse and repeat right but like somewhere along the way like especially caregivers lose the capacity to care for patients so it's i gotta give this medication i have to write this order i have to do this prescription i have to go see this person i have to call this person's family and and you lose sight of the patient and that's what what it looks like in medicine but we see that in other fields as well where you just sort of like lose sight of the people involved you lose sight and you stop kind of caring about you know what actually matters and so this is sort of what burnout looks like so if you're someone who kind of experiences these three things the first is a lack of energy despite the ability to do work and this is really tricky because it doesn't it doesn't a lot of people think like oh as long as i'm able to work i'm fine right so that's that's why the burnout is kind of like flying under the radar there so it's a lack of energy the second thing is a lack of empathy which tends to go first actually before you even run out of energy empathy is gonna be the first thing that goes sort of a cynical attitude and a lack of fulfillment despite on paper oftentimes enjoying your job okay so this is what characterizes burnout and when people were sort of looking into this in the ver very early stages i think maybe in the 80s or 90s when people were characterizing burnout i may be wrong on the time there what they sort of noticed is that this is a discreet thing from depression so when someone first kind of came out with the term burnout a lot of the academic community were like oh you're just describing depression right this is no different from depression this is where the researchers on burnout actually took a step back and said well no actually we think this is a discrete entity and the debate still goes on today we'll we'll kind of talk a little bit about that and so what they sort of noticed and this is what the world health organization ultimately decided on is that burnout is specifically related to to work stuff so if we think about what's the difference between depression and burnout depression is something that you carry with you right so we tend to think about depression as more of an organic or biologic sort of thing there's absolutely a psychological component but for example if you look at depression people posit that there's a disturbance of the serotonergic system within our brain we know that there there are changes to our hormonal levels and things like that there's evidence that there's increased inflammation in depression so we sort of think when i think about depression i think about something that you carry with you and even though depression can be triggered by external circumstances as a clinician when i really look for depression what i'm looking for is an independence of clinical stuff compared to circumstances so even though a breakup may trigger a depressive episode when i really think about depression what i think of is even if that person starts dating again and they're still depressed because now the circumstance has been fixed that's when i really think about clinical depression it may have been caused by a breakup but then like you know a couple months later i'm dating again and then like i'm still kind of depressed like that sort of suggests that there's something independent even though it can be triggered by something so originally there was debate about whether depression is similar or the same as burnout ultimately the world health organization and other definitions have kind of come out that it's it's occupational related so this is where you know not necessarily changing your occupation because there are internal components which we'll kind of get to but that this is this is really something that's heavily influenced by your work and that unlike depression which affects every dimension of your life burnout kind of has a focal point with being sort of occupational in nature now i think that even today now that that's sort of changing the way that i've sort of understood burnout is that it's more than just work it's really the intersection of life with work and it does it's not just work related that's kind of one of the problems i was talking about earlier is that it's i mean it's sort of caused by work sure but there's like an individual component which i've come to appreciate so this is where people sort of discovered this thing called the burnout syndrome there's now been research on it there's actually a really interesting study um some people just to give you all a sense of the debate some people still believe that burnout is essentially under the umbrella of depression so that we have depression and then there can be like an occupational depression versus other kinds of depressions the really interesting thing is that there are a couple of studies that have looked at hormonal levels so we know that um depression or clinical depression is a stressful state physiologically so for example our levels of acth adrenocorticoid adrenocorticote hormone i think is what acth is our levels of cortisol are actually high in depression so we're in sort of a high stress state whereas our hormonal levels in burnout are actually neutral or low so this is kind of interesting because if you look at the the levels of stress hormones in a depressed person they're elevated whereas they're low or even completely normal or like not different from the average population in a burn-up scenario and so that's where um it's kind of interesting because it sort of implies that physiologically things are less disturbed in a burnout state compared to a depressed state so it's kind of interesting because there's there's evidence that burnout and depression overlap in some uh you know situations and the people who believe that they're essentially the same thing or variants of each other like have good data to support it and the people who believe that burnout is a discrete syndrome from depression there's actually physiologic evidence for that too i personally believe i treat burnout is somewhat different from depression and there's even some evidence that the hormonal profiles for burnout more overlap with something called atypical depression which is in dr k's guide and we kind of talk about that what i call congruent depression the point here is that you know we're still figuring this stuff out um there's probably some degree of overlap but i sort of treat them as is quite discreet because i find that from a a treatment perspective or even like a coaching perspective or corporate consulting perspective that treating burnout as its own thing with its own influences and causes is like far more effective than just assuming it's depression the other way to kind of simply put that is when someone comes into my office with burnout i start thinking about acting from a burnout perspective as opposed to prescribing antidepressant medication which may or may not help but depending on the situation so that sort of touches on you know is depression burnout is a burnout depression it turns out that in my opinion they're actually quite different things okay so now just to kind of recap we've talked a little bit about work what burnout is we've talked a little bit about you know why burnout is so easy to miss if you are experiencing it and the key things there are that we tend to devalue a lot of what we go through and we tend to assume that if we have things to be grateful for then we can't be burnt out the other issue there is that when we think about burnout we'll oftentimes think about what depression looks like so i have difficulty getting out of bed i have no energy whatsoever whereas a lot of times people who are burnt out are able to perform at a relatively normal level the challenge is that they just don't feel a whole lot of energy on the inside they have they're cynical they don't have empathy they don't find any sense of fulfillment from their work which on paper they like and it's really that discrepancy which i think really clues me into burnout which is that on paper if your life looks good but you yourself don't seem to be enjoying it then you should definitely think about burnout also on the differential there could be something like depression right so we know that for example major depressive disorder which is a clinical illness is sort of marked by something called anhedonia it's one of the most specific features of depression so let's talk about this for a second when we're talking about something like a clinical illness there are some features which are common and some features with which are specific so what specific means is that it's more likely to be in depression than in anything else and so anhedonia is one of the specific features of depression which means that people who are depressed are unable to enjoy or find pleasure in activities that normally would be pleasurable right so i normally love playing video games but when i have a clinical depression i games just don't feel as fun to me whereas that's also a somewhat of a difference between depression and burnout in terms of what i've seen is that people who are burnt out usually don't get to the level of an hedonic they may they may be energetic they may have low energy but if you can actually like get somewhere like if you can go to a party if you can actually take a weekend off and like load up a video game you can actually still have fun but you your motivation is sort of lacking okay and then so we dug into a little bit about the different differences between depression and burnout so now kind of what i want to get to is a little bit about like okay so if i'm burnt out or if this describes me how do i sort of tackle it how do i understand how to fix this problem and this is what's kind of interesting about burnout is that it's one of these things that's an intersection between what you can do and what can be done at the workplace and generally speaking i think the most common cause of burnout is globally and we'll kind of build up to this in a second the most common cause of burnout is essentially someone who wants to work enjoys working but is somehow unable to or runs into obstacles when they try to work right so what this means is that i like my job i like working with patients i enjoy doing what i do i like being able to help people right so i can enjoy all of those things so on paper i really like my job but something happens in my workplace that gets in the way of me being able to do that and so usually when i think about burnout what i really think about is an individual who's trying really hard against a system that doesn't let them and so this is where we can kind of get into some of the details of what are the specific features of burnout because if you find yourself to be in that situation then how can you start to approach fixing things and this is where at hg you know we have a very common saying which is borrowed from the practice of clinical medicine which is that good diagnosis precedes good treatment and so in order to understand how to fix burnout what we really need to do is understand what are the contributors to burnout so remember burnout is caused by an individual and their connection with a company or workplace usually i think situation also applies here or environment and why do i sort of expand it like this it's because we can look at things like caregiver burnout so we know that for example like family members of people who have cancer oftentimes will experience burnout because that once again is a scenario where you care about your loved one you're trying to do really right by them right you're trying to pick up their medication you go with them to chemo and you do this and you do that and you're kind of trying to do everything that you can but because of the nature of the cancer because of the intensiveness of it because of the mental health impact on them you're you have a bunch of effort but there's a discrepancy between effort and yield so what you sort of see is that like what you get out of it is down here and this is really where the burnout comes from so this is the effort you put in this is the yield you get and what i tend to see in people who are burnt out is that they try way harder than what they get and so this is like running into a system that doesn't allow your efforts to be seen and this is sort of why you don't feel kind of inspired and stuff at work is because like this is where your inspiration is this is where your desire is and yet despite the fact that you're putting in all the effort you're you're getting a low yield which means that this gap over here is where burnout kind of enters because you're trying really really hard and this is the other thing about burnout is people sort of assume for a moment like sometimes especially like the boomer generation and stuff will sort of assume that people are burnt out are lazy but i think what they don't really realize is it's not like it's not that people are lazy it's that there's a huge gap between the amount of effort that you put in and the yield that you get so let's kind of look at what are the different things that result in this gap okay where where where does this kind of gap come from and this is what's cool is that um mozlok who is one of the the central researchers developed a lot of the core research on on burnout sort of isolated six factors that result in burnout okay hold on a second i don't know if you guys can you all can see that just realized okay yeah you all can see it okay so let's talk a little bit about the six factors and this is where um that lead to burnout this is where as we think about these factors we can sort of think a little bit about is this a problem in my situation and then we can target our solutions okay so the first is workload the second is control third is reward fourth is community fifth is fairness and the sixth is values so when we're talking about burnout what we tend to find is when there's a discrepancy between your workplace and you in these dimensions this is where the gap of burnout comes from now it's also important to remember for a moment that this is part of the reason why burnout is hard to fix because some of these things may be workplace related but some of them are actually internal and that's what i'd really like to go through today with y'all so the first is that you know there's a workload related aspect of burnout so the simplest is that people are overworked okay so like you know very very common contributor to burnout is like you know i i'm salaried at 40 hours i used to be hourly i used to get paid overtime um and now i'm salaried but like my work my work is increasing so i'm not getting any bonuses i'm not getting any overtime maybe that's reward we'll get to that in a second but oftentimes if people are overworked you know and there's a work there's a discrepancy between how much you're willing to work and how much your employment overworks you and this can sort of contribute to burnout right so a lot of people may say that okay the solution is that the workplace should decrease the amount that they they make me work which is a totally valid solution the point here is that there could be an individual component here as well we had an interview a couple weeks ago with a software developer who was sort of saying i'm incredibly burnt out and this is where sometimes it's important to understand that if you're overworked at work there's a workplace contribution and there could be an individual contribution and what does that mean well sometimes the reason we're overworked is because we kind of like take on additional projects and stuff right so this is where we can even go a little bit beyond the workplace we can think about your home situation you know how many things are you managing around the house do you have side projects do you have side hustles gigs you know working 24 7. sometimes for example we'll also see internal emotional drives that lead to overwork so this isn't the kind of thing where your boss is abusive or taking advantage of you but you yourself really really want your boss to like you you want your boss to think that you're the best worker you need to feel like the best worker you want to be the best worker and so since you want to be the best worker at work that emotional drive causes you to individually contribute to your own workload so you volunteer for more projects you show up early you stay late you do all this kind of stuff and then that increases your workload so this is where this is i think a prime example of why burnout is so tricky is because what some people will do is they'll kind of say like some people will say like oh my god my workplace is so toxic they take advantage of me but what i've often times found is that when people are actually when you're looking at burnout that there's a workplace contribution and there's a you contribution so this is where solutions could be boundary setting right so you can let your your your boss know hey i'm actually not available to do overtime on short notice it could be sort of working on your emotional drives but workload is absolutely a big piece of it the other issue with burnout is that as we sort of look at these factors oftentimes what makes it hard to deal with is people will say oh change your job right so that's what the solution will come to because if you're at a place where you're overworked you may change your job but the tricky thing is that some of your individual emotional drives may follow you this is why changing your job doesn't necessarily fix all your problems because sometimes you take your problems with you okay second thing that leads to burnout is is control and specifically a discrepancy between how much control you want and how much control you have so in the workplace this for example can be someone who micromanages you right so like you want to work your particular way and you're like yeah this is what i'm going to do i don't want to do this i want to do it this way and then your boss is like no i want you to do it this way and they're kind of breathing down your neck and stuff like that so micromanaging um can absolutely be a cause for you know uh discrepancy in control at work but the flip side of this is also true where sometimes you'll have people who are kind of control freaks right so on the one hand you've got a manager who's kind of like really into your business and on the other hand you're someone who is such a control freak that everything needs to happen a particular way and you may want to do things your way but there may be other company considerations that allow make it so that actually you doing it your way is like not really appropriate so when i work with people who are burnt out what we generally try to do is try to understand okay what's the discrepancy in control you know what amount of this is really coming from them and what amount of this this is really coming from you another big factor for burnout is reward so this is where we were talking a little bit about you know moving from hourly and overtime to salaried right or just kind of what kind of compensation you're kind of looking for and why do i sort of list this as an individual problem i'll give you guys kind of like an example so you know if you're someone who wants to be the best at work that's something where like if someone else you know gets paid potentially more than you do or gets a bigger we see this a lot in finance where people will kind of get paid bonuses and then what matters to some people that i've worked with is not actually the amount of bonus that they get paid but the amount of bonus they get paid in relation to other people and so this is kind of tricky but like even reward is not something so simple this is where a lot of people like will say like oh what needs to happen is like my company just needs to pay me more like that's i'm under i'm underpaid which could be true right and there definitely are companies that will sort of try to take advantage to people by moving them to salary etc but the truth is that the way that you experience a reward for your work at work has an individual component as well so like this is where ego or being the best can kind of come in do you get paid the most right so i'm kind of recalling a joke from the office where michael scott in lieu of a raise got two plaques for employee of the year right so they're like you're such an employee of the year that you were gonna give you two plaques instead of a raise so this is where the reward that you may be looking for may not be entirely appropriate which i know is like shocking in the anti-work era but this is where when i work with people in finance like we start to ask like serious questions about what is the what is the reward you actually want to what's important is it is it a particular dollar value does it just need to be bigger than it was before is it just never enough what would be enough and as we start to look into this we also run into things like you know do you need to be better than your peers so sometimes i'll talk to people and i'll be like well how happy are you with your compensation it'll be like it's terrible it's like okay well how much is it and they'll toss out a number and like okay what's the problem with it well so and so gets paid more and so that's really the problem and so if we're thinking a little bit about why you're burnt out related to reward is there a company component absolutely is it possible that you're being underpaid absolutely and at the same time there may be a certain amount of lack of contentment there may be a certain amount of ego there may be a certain amount of like you losing sight of actually what's important in terms of reward right maybe it doesn't matter that you're better than your peers maybe the most important thing is the dollar value and this is where a lot of people may assume oh yeah the most important thing is the dollar value but when it actually comes to human beings and compensation and psychology the truth is we're not all just robots making financial transactions right we want to be liked we want to be revered we want to be successful we want to be viewed as by our peers as intelligent i saw a study recently that showed that the most important thing is not what your boss thinks of your competence but what your peers think of your competence so if there's a discrepancy in reward between what you're looking for and what your company is is providing that could also lead to burnout so another important thing is community so this is where sometimes you know we we live in or our workplace you know some people will sort of say like oh you know this we really think of our employees as family members and things like that that can be both a good thing or a bad thing sometimes increasingly so unfortunately that is viewed as um that is language that's used to tell people we're gonna try to take advantage of you in the same way that family members don't set good boundaries and take advantage for of each other but the truth is that isolation leads to burnout so depending on your your job like what kind of community there is right like that could contribute to your um sense of burnout this is where it's kind of a double-edged sword because it's it's not just your your job but oftentimes like joining professional organizations and things like that can help alleviate that but human beings are fundamentally we're community organisms right we're like tribal in nature we're not designed to be on our own now what about the individual contributions so let's say that your company you know does do a lot for community doesn't do a whole lot for community but is there an interview individual contribution or not absolutely so there are all kinds of things like social anxiety comparisons the desire to isolate so i see this a lot in terms of individual contributions of burnout where i feel isolated do you want to be isolated no i don't want to be isolated i hate being isolated well why don't you go to work events because i don't want to because i don't know if people i'm gonna talk to anyone there i don't know if people are gonna like me there i don't know like this other person is so much funnier than i am right so when it comes to isolation like sure your community may be able i mean your company may be able to do things like happy hours and things like that but at the end of the day there's an individual contribution to community as well how do you participate in the community and in drastic situations i've even seen some people who will sort of take the lead in this kind of thing right where they sort of recognize that community is something that i can contribute to as well so they'll host a barbecue or they'll invite people over they'll start a book club or they'll start playing d d with co-workers and things like that gotta be careful about that sort of thing so you know be careful about boundaries so the next thing that we sort of have to consider in terms of burnout is fairness this one is huge probably in my sense like even the biggest one even more important than workload um in terms of my personal experience with people that i've worked with is that there has to be a culture of fairness at work so if if someone feels like they're being treated unfairly it's gonna spike their burnout through the roof now this is what's kind of interesting is that you know work should be fair this is what's really fascinating we've seen this a lot in our coaching program but there could be perceptions of a lack of fairness this is critical so unfortunately i hate to say this i hate to admit this but just because you think things are unfair doesn't mean that things are actually unfair right so the human mind is super tricky in the sense that like i'll give you guys like the one of my favorite examples of roommates and dishes so every time one of your roommates does one of your dishes it doesn't register 100 but every time that you do one of your roommates dishes it registers a thousand percent so human beings have an internal bias where they tend to overestimate their extra contributions and underestimate other people's contributions so this is where feeling taken for granted can sometimes come from right like you're doing a bunch of stuff that no one else at work is doing you're the one who always gets coffee in the morning and no one else ever does that that's unfair this is going to cause i guarantee you a disproportionate sense of burnout if you feel like you're being treated unfairly now the challenge is that there is actual unfair treatment at work right like this is the kind of thing where it's like of course there's unfair treatment at work i mean no one's no one's perfect and everyone's human so there could be people playing politics there could be nepotism right there could be like favoritism there could be like oh like i play this game i'm a dota player and my boss is a dota player and this other person is a league player therefore the league player feels like they're left out because we're playing dota et cetera et cetera so there are going to be issues of fairness in the workplace the challenge is that sometimes especially depending on how egotistical or if you think about a narcissist at work the perception of unfairness is going to be through the roof even though things may not be unfair so even in the situation of fairness ideally your workplace is fair it's not going to be 100 but you have an intro individual contribution to that as well this is something that we've worked on a lot in terms of coaching where you know we've even taught our coaches how to discern and what questions to ask to gauge whether the perception of fairness is within the mind of the person or at the workplace right because these are two very different things and if we think about fixing this problem do you advocate at work for more fair conditions because the problem here is that if stuff is actually fair and you make a claim that it's unfair because you're egotistical and narcissistic and can't see other people's perspectives it's gonna actually backfire and you'll do worse at work because then everyone's gonna be like this person is complaining about something that is completely inappropriate versus if you feel like things are you know maybe you're we've seen the opposite of this as well where you're willing to be a doormat at work so you don't advocate for yourself you don't you know you don't stand up for yourself and your actual workplace is unfair but you're not able to advocate for yourself because of internal emotional drives so are things that work farewell not really but i don't want people to think that i'm whiny i want to be seen as a team player i want to get promoted i want my boss to like me right there are all kinds of internal things that will allow you to tolerate and even positively reinforce an unfair work environment so there's absolutely an intra individual contribution when it comes to fairness and burnout and that individual contribution can go either way either it can create unfair situations out of fair situations right because you're not level-headed up here you're maybe jealous or you're maybe insecure or it can do the opposite where your inability to set boundaries propagates an unfair situation at work right so this is tricky but this absolutely needs to burn out so what we sort of know is that when employees feel like they're being treated unfairly they're much more likely to burn out right because this is where if we kind of go back to our yield graph right this is where you are there's the effort that you're putting in and then this is like the yield that someone else gets for the same effort and then this gap right here is going to burn people out even more if that kind of makes sense you'll get that so when you're putting in a certain amount of work and someone else is putting in the same amount of work and they get twice the yield and you get half the yield that is much more likely for you to burn out and remember what are going to be the the signs of burnout like let's kind of think through this a little bit right it's a lack of empathy like of course i'm not going to care about my co-worker who's working half as hard as i am and they're getting like you know they're getting rewarded just as much as i'm like screw them it's gonna make me cynical about the workplace like why would i be excited to work at a place where some people are doing half the work and getting paid the same and i'm doing twice the work and i'm getting paid the same like why would i do that so that leads to cynicism would it lead to a sense of fulfillment with your work of course not because even if you're doing work that's amazing if you're like you know performing surgery on people who have cancer and you're like saving lives day in and day out like that work is impactful but your mind is so caught up on this discrepancy between how much you work and how much they work that you're not able to appreciate the aspects of your job and then if someone asks you hey do you like your job and you can say like yeah i actually like you maybe not this one in particular but i love what i do i love saving lives i love doing surgery it's exciting and blah blah blah yadda yadda and that's what happens is people love what they do and yet they can still feel burned out and that's really internally confusing for them so they kind of conclude is like uh i must not be burnt out it's just it'll get better eventually okay so last thing arguably the most important thing is a discrepancy in values so in my experience of working with consulting with corporations you know having worked with people myself what people want is to be challenged and want to be valued that's what i try to do with like in terms of the the guidance that i try to provide for people people don't i i mean maybe people do want this but in my experience people actually want to work right so like people want to make an impact on the world like they want to do something that's challenging they don't just want to sit around an afk all day we have tons of people in our community who are sitting around and afking all day and they post all the time about hey i'm tired of afk and i want to do something with my life so people want to do something impactful so people want to be they want to be challenged and they want to be valued so when you are challenged and you succeed this leads to a sense of fulfillment when you are challenged and you succeed and someone notices that when someone says damn you did awesome today like strong work right when people appreciate what you do they appreciate the effort that you put in whether it's your clients or your you know whatever like like if you're making burgers like it doesn't matter like if you make a really good burger and someone comes up to you is like man that burger was awesome right that's gonna make you feel fulfilled so in terms of values what i tend to advocate for in terms of when i work with you know a company is is like to try to help them understand that like if you want to get the best out of your employees like you need to actually challenge them in a way that they're okay with right not not just like make life hard for them but like you know push them like let them let them grow as people let them do better you know let the challenge them to do more um and also value them appropriately so if they if they do excel like reward them right it's not just a plaque give them a bonus give them a raise whatever right this is what people want is to be valued and challenged the challenge lies where when we're talking about kind of the company versus the individual if there's a discrepancy in values this can lead to a huge amount of burnout so we're going to talk about medicine here so what does a doctor care about helping a patient what does like a hospital system care about billing and money right so we'll see this especially with like for-profit medical institutions right so it's like there's a guy who's got an mba who's like ceo of the hospital system and he's like you've never taken care of a patient in his life he's interested in maximizing money that's what they're hired to do right he's not a bad person it's just like that's what the system is designed for right so when you see a discrepancy in these kinds of values because sometimes these come into conflict where you know and this is what kind of leads to burnout so like when when physicians are sort of told to emphasize billing over patient care because physicians are okay billing like it's fine to build for your services but when there's a discrepancy between you know sacrificing actually helping a person for the sake of making money this is what burns people way out in medicine so this is where like as a as a doctor i'll just share my own experience i can work a 30-hour shift like helping human beings i can do that no problem you can you can come and get me at 23 hours at 23 hours and 59 minutes and you can say dr konoja i know you're about to clock out of your shift in in 60 seconds but someone has just come into the emergency room after a suicide attempt would you please be willing to see them before you leave so and so is running late and we really need this person needs your help and i'd be like absolutely because that's what i'm there to do what am i not there to do dr kanoje it's one minute you have one minute of your shift left we need you to call the insurance companies so that we can get paid for this service that we're providing and they're saying they're not going to cover it will you call them and that's when i kind of say politely go [ __ ] yourself right so it's like it's dealing with insurance companies in that moment which is not something that i want to do it's okay to deal with insurance companies but it's like when when like you know i'm here to help people not talk to someone at an insurance company to get compensated that's not what excites me about my job and so even then i'm happy to do that at times right like i understand it's part of the it's part of the process and it's not all bad by any means but in terms of like the value discrepancy between why i show up and why my job wants me there the more that that value discrepancy changes the more likely i am to burn out right and so this is kind of what was is crucial is that when you're thinking a little bit about your burnout how do your values align with the job that you're doing and for a lot of people who are especially in entry-level positions it's like it's hard to really align your values with what you're supposed to be doing because you're kind of learning you're kind of like a peon you're kind of like an intro person you know you're an analyst in an investment bank and that's it's hard because it's a lot of grunt work so think a little bit about your values and think a little bit about you know what what needs to be kind of fixed here um this is absolutely where you know sometimes if the values of the organization of the culture of the organization is really just not a good fit i do think it's actually a good idea to move jobs but sometimes this is also where you can kind of like do some internal work and try to figure out a little bit about okay what do i care about should i be caring about different things what's my dharma in this situation right and so you can kind of work on your values some as well but this is the kind of thing where i think that it's very very hard uh to internally fix this problem especially when it comes to values you can advocate for some kind of change in your company um and that absolutely can happen but like this one i think is the biggest one where ideally the job that you have aligns with the values that you have and if these two things are in alignment you're in a really really good situation so let's kind of summarize so if we look at these if we look at burnout burnout is characterized by a couple of things lack of energy lack of empathy lack of fulfillment these three things in turn will lead to cynicism and when a lot of people think about burnout they don't think about cynicism as like the primary experience but as we sort of look at the cynicism we can see where this comes from right because there's an unfair environment our values aren't aligned i'm not getting rewarded i'm isolated right we've got these different factors i'm overworked and i'm i have there's a lack of control so we can see that this is where it ends up now the interesting thing is that a lot of people struggle with burnout so burnout is notoriously hard to treat okay people have been trying for decades and it's notoriously hard to fix and that i believe is because people are trying to fix it like sort of like in a medical way it's sort of like here's the work environment and what we're really good at with western science is i'm going to take you know a pair a scalpel and i'm going to cut here i'm going to cut here and i'm going to excise the tumor and then it'll be fine right so if i if you're depressed i'm going to let's fix that with an ssri it's like a medical interventions like we're going to go in we're going to fix this thing okay we've got sexual harassment problems at the workplace we're going to call in this expert who's going to do a training then we're going to give everyone a test and then it's going to be fixed this is how corporations function they're like oh we've got a problem let's hire someone to just like just take care of it right here and then the rest of this is going to stay the same we're not going to fix any of that that's too do much work fixed we like these surgical interventions now the challenge with burnout is that like it's not just here right because it's it's all these different things it's are you rewarded do you have control are you egotistical you know what part of this is coming from you because now this is the thing that companies don't usually work like very highly individually with people to manage their burnout right it's like oh we're gonna fix some things in the company and then we're gonna outsource some of the stuff but there's no integration of the two and so when it comes to fixing burnout i think it ultimately results in kind of this table so you have to go through if you find yourself in this situation if you find yourself being cynical and this is the real problem is that you may change jobs and it could fix some of it but then like even if you change jobs are you intentionally realizing what about the new job fixes it because most people don't this is why they kind of like move around randomly without sort of like i'm not happy here let me apply somewhere else maybe the grass is greener on the other side grass is greener on this other side grass is greener on the other side until they find a company that does align with their values and they're like okay this company's great but even in that process they're not thinking intentionally about okay what is it about this company that i dislike so what i'd recommend to you if you're burnt out is go through this list and like address each one of these issues what's the issue here is my environment unfair is this a value discrepancy am i being inappropriately or other people being inappropriately rewarded do i feel like i should be getting more money do i feel isolated is it a lack of control what what is going on and then for each of these dimensions think a little bit about because this is the other thing that's tending to happen nowadays right so when you have some of these echo chambers forming especially around work stuff like if you go on linkedin you'll get all kinds of like tone-deaf posts from managers talking about how employees need to learn how to work more and things like that so they're completely missing the point and then you'll also see things like the anti-work subreddit where people i think are also missing the point where they there's no understanding that there could be individual contributions to this right it's always the company's fault and so on linkedin it's always the employee's fault these whiny little employees and then on some of the anarcho subreddits it's always the evil corporation and in my experience like working with actual humans it's both right that's why this is so hard to fix it's because you can't solve half of the problem so this is where like if you have issues with control how much of this is like you need to surrender your control or like you know you need to really be like you need to set limits around micromanaging because the other thing is the remember that the boss can be burnt out too so why is the boss burnt out because the boss micromanages too damn much you all get that it's just like oh my god like i can't relax why can't you relax well guy i have 14 employees and i have to spell check every single one of their reports because they could make a mistake and it's like well then you need to take a step back right and so what i recommend to people who are burnt out is to recognize that there are you know first of all it's a real thing recognize that there are six major contributors to it and then be like specific with your approach to it start to really think a little bit about okay which one of these things is the problem and then once you sort of start to figure out okay i really do feel like i'm unfairly compensated or maybe the reason is because you don't have you're not good at setting limits because you want your boss to like you your boss went out on a limb and got you this job and they recommended you for promotion above all of your colleagues and you don't want to disappoint them and since you don't want to disappoint them you can't say no to them right and then you feel like you're unfairly compensated because you're never saying no and you're getting paid the same amount it's like what's the solution there is it to get a raise like maybe but that's also where there could be an individual component so if you really want to understand how to approach burnout it's like be scientific about it be clinical about it like look at your situation which one of these applies to me and then even if you want to change jobs now at least you know what to look for right so like oh like if your situation is that you're isolated at work can you tell me a little bit now in the interview when they ask that question do you have any questions for us yeah what is your what is the work culture like what is the work community like do people hang out together do are people friends like what's that like so now you can start making directed decisions about finding a work environment that's more conducive to you right and you can even it can even be questions like for people who are willing to work extra hard and go the extra mile what kind of how does the company reward people who do that and that's where they say you get a plaque if you work extra extra hard you get two plaques or is it like we have a aggressive bonus bonus structure based on quality metrics and the people who do a better job get paid more like what's the answer that you get right so once you understand why you're burnt out instead of just like going and seeing a psychiatrist and getting an ssri which could be an appropriate thing to do by the way because you could have major depressive disorder right so it's not a bad idea to get clinically evaluated but be thoughtful about okay what's leading to the burnout and then you can intervene on it is this a me component is there something i can work on here or is this something that i need to set boundaries with myself for not taking work and learning how to say no or do i need to set boundaries with my boss and saying hey you're asking too much of me and that's ultimately like what leads to the best results is is an understanding of both the individual components and the work contributors because that's what happens with burnout it's a it's an intersectional problem so we have to look at both pieces of the puzzle i think part of the reason that people are struggling so much is because everyone is usually looking at only one piece of the puzzle and they're kind of ignoring the other part and it's really an intersection of those two that's how you make two puzzle pieces fit together right so hopefully that's helpful questions i feel just like the left plant yeah i hear you it's calculated to demonstrate to illustrate the point so this is a good question can burnout last really long yes so here's one thing that we have to say about burnout so burn out implies a sense of permanence right so like this log is burnt out like you can't get any more fire out of it is what it implies so burnout can absolutely be repaired like 100 like you can go from completely burnt out to not burnt out at all in loving life i've seen it happen time and time and time again the thing is burnout can also last for a while but the biggest thing about the propagation of burnout is i don't want you all to think about burnout like a binary thing which is even how our terminology is right it's like binary are you burnt out are you not burnt out burnout is a is a is a condition that is propagated so it's sort of like you know saying does thirst last forever and it's kind of like well like are you thirsty yes or no well that sort of depends on how much water you drink and how much you exercise right so in the same way burnout is going to propagate unless you address these factors and this is why it feels like it lasts so damn long is because people don't realize what is the contributing factor to burnout they don't they haven't figured out okay these are the two or three things that really burn me out so in my case dealing with insurance company and this is what we'll see is that it's not the hours that you work it's the quality of the hour that you work that having to deal with this crap for two hours a day is way worse than having to do work that you enjoy for 10 hours a day and so everyone sort of focuses on the quantifiable aspects without sort of focusing on the quantity i mean the quality so if you're burnt out for a long time can it last for a while yes but if it's lasting for a while you've got to be careful because how much of this is residual and how much of it is ongoing because of your daily influences and generally speaking fixing it involves really fixing the daily influences then you kind of got to ride out the residual burnout and then you should be good can you be burned out from life absolutely so this is where i think the definition of burnout needs to expand a little bit but i think when you look at all these different factors right so can you be cynical about life can you lack empathy can you have a low level level of energy and lack fulfillment in life absolutely can those things also relate to a sense of community fairness reward control absolutely right so i think the label fits on pretty well this is why in our coaching program we don't just look at improvements in like depression and anxiety which i recognize it's not a clinical program but you can still get improvements right this is just the same way that i can go out exercising every day and i can get an improvement in my cholesterol even though exercise is not a treatment for cholesterol like it's not like a medical intervention for cholesterol right so in the same way what we try to emphasize at hg is like life purpose figuring out who you are learning to introspect how do you answer those internal questions about yourself and as you answer those internal questions about what you want in the world then you can start intentionally crafting it because right now what happens is we live based on rng it's like loot boxes right and left we never use the crafting menu in life we just go grind and try to open up random ass loot and we hope that one day we'll land in a situation that we enjoy so instead what you need to do is like craft right it requires more intention but it's actually like easier from an effort standpoint just craft the life that you want to but that starts with understanding okay what is it that i want yeah that's how people live what seriously it's like rng i don't like this work let me just move i've seen this in esports too if you look at like people just you know they just shift around teams until they find something that clicks because there isn't an intentional process of like diagnosis and understanding i mean there is actually but i think you can be much more sophisticated right thoughts on burnout for people being fulfilled by their work and what research or other information are you basing your model off of great question so let's talk about um burnout for people being fulfilled so this is common actually is that oftentimes the people who are burnt out are the ones who get fulfilled from their work but then what happens is all these other factors start to interfere with that crap right so i enjoy working with patients but it's the insurance stuff that burns me out so even though you you love the work in fact that's common right so at the very beginning i sort of said the weird thing about burnout the reason so many people miss it is because they do enjoy their job but other factors get in the way that prevent you from enjoying it and the research that i'm drawing on is like varied right but it starts with people like freudenberg and um you know mozlok is central to this i think loiter i don't know how to pronounce the name you know the spelling um you know their work is very central to this it's a lot of the work that i've seen i mean different papers and stuff like that you can also look at you know uh some of the validated instruments like the well-being index um the mozlok burnout inventory the oldenburg uh oldenburg is kind of dated so you can that's where a lot of this stuff is coming from in terms of when people when people develop instruments they look at okay what are the things that we should ask about okay these are the things that correlate with burnout you

Channel: HealthyGamerGG

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Keywords: mental health, drk, dr kanojia, healthygamergg, healthy gamer gg, twitch, psychiatrist

Id: jqONINYF17M

Length: 63min 20sec (3800 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 29 2022