120,000 deaths are attributed to chronic stress each year[1]. This episode tackles the widespread issue of burnout in the workforce. Brett, Taylor, and Ben share personal narratives of their own burnout experiences and explore the societal implications and impact on productivity and overall well-being.

The trio discusses necessary changes in work culture, advocating for better mental health support and mindfulness practices. They challenge traditional notions of success and highlight steps to mitigate the burnout epidemic.

We can do better. We should do better.

[1] https://psychcentral.com/stress/is-stress-the-number-one-killer

All this additional burnout since COVID.

I wonder if there is other underlying reasons

like working remote and that it's bad for burnout.

I'll say this.

I I'm sure it is because it's change.

Yeah, right.

And so we haven't really quite figured out how to live in that world.

But I think overall.

Skipping a 45 minute drive on four seven is not a bad thing.

Maybe at 5:00.

Here's another commitment you make. 5:00.

We should be done with work.

530, whenever it is.

I mean, you will go get in a car,

drive to the nearest car parked on the street, sit behind it,

honk at it, yell at it for 25 minutes, then go park back in her driveway.

Yeah.

They can see gestures at the windshield.

Yeah.

That's the way that I started thinking about.

Our burnout topic was just, you know, kind of try

to take the filters off and, you know, write down what I how I felt about it. And

things that I did, you know,

kind of just, you know, encountered with the concept of burnout.

Take the filters off.

Describe what you mean there.

Yeah. So burnout is bad. You know,

I don't like it.

I've and I've also actually experienced it most recently

here, too, you know, So it's like very fresh concept in my mind,

but got a lot of like, you know, very fresh ideas and thoughts around.

Yeah.

Preventing it and making sure it doesn't happen for, for me

but also like the people around me too, right?

It's that's just something that I've encountered.

My partner encounters it almost on a regular basis now.

My initial thought off the bat is were to do sensitized to it being a normal thing.

And it's all around us and it shouldn't be.

And there's a lot of complexities that go into burnout

that extend beyond the workplace.

And so I get really excited to talk about it

with all of that and get your takes on it And but yeah, like my general feel is

we've got to do something about it because there's too much of it around us.

Gotcha. Ben, what are your thoughts?

If that

was well stated and I and yeah, that was the,

the one of the very first things I thought of as I was like, holy cow.

Like, this is burnout is not an employee problem.

It's a people problem.

Yeah.

Like, I think. A society. Problem. Yeah.

I mean and you know an almost I mean, I try to go to bigger cause

you know, but like, like a human problem or at least like I said,

you know, United States, I can't talk for all nations.

And but I mean, I, I look at this and I'm like, like my kids and I think of like,

you know, between school and sports and social media and friends and

and parents to thoughts were

I think a lot of people are experiencing

burnout of all ages and working, you know, And then the second thing is

that I would surmise that a lot of people don't even know that they're in it

or that they are in it or experiencing burnout.

I agree.

I think my initial thought was, Ben, something you were just alluding to is

this is not isolated at work.

You know, burnout is not a work thing.

It is everything in your life throwing shit at you and you're

trying to get out of the way.

So it's a dance of of just trying to stay afloat necessarily.

So yeah.

I would love to break down like the different ways burnout looks

and something that I guess tears in.

Part of my thoughts are it's not proportional

to like the amount of time that you spend on anything, right?

I think there's this notion that, hey, I work 80 hours a week

and it's it's so much about all this responsibility or things to do.

And it's just more than I can manage in a week.

Right. And that is a form of burnout.

But Brett, knowing your situation and even even situations I've had in the past,

I've burnt out on like a regular 40 hour a week or even something less, right?

Like it's not necessarily proportional, just amount of time

that takes like it looks and forms differently.

And I think to your point and to what we've all said, it's

it's integrated with your life. It's not just work.

It's it's everything else that's happening.

So then from from that angle, then what?

How would you define burnout?

Because when I when I look at it, I don't necessarily know

that I could burnout in 40 weeks.

I can get really tired and be have zero productivity for a week.

Right. And I don't know that I would define that burnout.

So what do you think the definition is, or at least what is your definition?

Yeah, that's a great question, actually, you know, because I think I've actually,

you know, put put words to it because it's a feeling for me

and to try to put words to it, it's

waking up

and your soul's already crushed like.

Sounds like burnout.

And here's the again, kind of the personal bit for me, but like,

I recently just left a job where, I mean, that's literally what was happening.

I was going to bed stressed about the stuff that I had to do and

the timelines that were imposed upon me and they weren't

even ridiculous and they weren't even out of control or behind.

Right.

It was just I went to bed, you know, I'm like, okay,

I just got to do all this stuff tomorrow and this and that and whatever.

And I'd wake up and I'd be thinking about it

and I wouldn't be excited about it.

I think that was a very key element, and that's kind of the soul crush comes in.

It's like, I've got all this stuff to do and I've got all these

deliverables that I've got to pass on to other teams, you know?

So I want to be a good teammate

so there's no way I can just half assed it or anything.

And I'm generally not one to half ass anything as they're just feeling.

I had to bring my whole put, put all this effort, energy and focus

into something that I didn't care about that was taking up time in my brain

that I didn't want to do, you know, for it to be there, I couldn't like kind of

compartmentalize it and turn it off, which, you know, I'm really bad at that.

I actually realized I had a conversation with a friend earlier this week

and like, I'm not one of those people who can just my workday is done.

I'm going to go home to my family and I'm going to, you know, live that life.

And then when tomorrow comes around,

I'll just flip it back on like it's always with me.

And so in much shorter words, I guess

burnout is what invades your, you know, your personal comfort zone

or your your your psyche when you don't want it to.

Right.

It's like a loss of control almost over how you're

trying to be like a human being in any situation, know.

How about you, Ben?

What's your definition?

Well, I'm going to first read what the W.H.O.

finds as burnout.

You know, it's a state of vital exhaustion.

Vital exhaustion, Yes.

So life is being sucked out of.

You on that first set? Yeah.

I was like, wow, that's a that sounds really scary to me, you know, read that.

And I'm like, Wow.

Yeah.

I would say, you know, for for me personally, I'm listening to what you're

what's happening to you and what has happened to me and the both,

both professionally and personally.

I think burnout is when the

for lack of a better term, the stress stress starts

to affect your decision making and ability to do things.

Mm hmm. Your focus?

Yeah, that's that's kind of how I would describe burnout,

I think, you know, because we all most people I feel like,

have have almost too much on their plate right?

And then you're kind of going through that.

And in some ways you're like, oh, man, I'm,

you know, working hard and doing this.

But but then once you start either skipping things or pushing them out or,

you know, just saying, Yep, I can't do this,

I think that's when for me, like that's the definition of a burnout is

when it all, all that life gives you starts to negatively impact

what you're and I'm going to say this very specifically what you're doing.

Yeah I mean there's all that you can never get rid of all stress

and and some stress is good but when it starts to have an impact.

Yeah that's.

That's so important.

And just to double down on that, when you feel like

we all have ways of managing our stress right.

And I have my own too.

I like to like to stay fit and exercise and that's a stress management technique

I have.

And when I'm stressed out during my stress management thing, right,

because I'm thinking about the thing or it's in the way,

it's a good sign that you're probably burning.

I know.

My view.

I've thought about this probably way too much, but

if I look at this as

some sort of ebbing of flowing of stress and whatnot, I honestly feel like

when you start to burn out, it's when you don't have energy

to do the things that can fill your cup again, right?

So you start actually like losing ground

on on making forward progress for anything.

And I think that's your function been right.

So so

you just get so overwhelmed that you're just not making progress

in the right direction anymore and you're slipping backwards.

And then to top that off, now you're starting to dig a hole.

Getting out of that becomes part of the stress, you know?

Right.

And it just starts compounding all over the place.

So, yeah, definitely experience that.

Probably my time at Ticketmaster,

we were implementing some governance on our data warehouse for CCP,

which is a data protection Act that California enacted.

And it was just working with people

working overseas in the U.S.

so many hours across the day, couldn't function at home with my family.

And then, you know, it's it's

one of those things where sometimes you just start staring at the screen

and you don't even you can't even take that next step forward.

Right. And even yeah.

This was a really cool topic and I know I've been burnt out before.

I actually feel myself burning out right now at work.

I don't even know how to describe it.

So sometimes it's there's

a lot of extra stuff at home and so the families stressed.

We just had a dog almost.

I had to jump through hoops

to get the right medicine and that becomes then a financial issue.

And it started compounding at home

that affected work, but that wasn't the main reason, I think.

And it's really hard to identify

those sources of burnout or what's like the main contributors.

And I think for myself, that's the areas that I've been trying to really identify.

I know there's a model called Wiser.

I don't know if you guys have heard of this model.

No, but it's more about emotional intelligence

and how to recognize when things are going wrong.

Watch, interpret, select, engage and reflect.

And reflect. And reflect. Yeah.

So there's an article on the big think about the wiser model.

And I know about mindfulness.

I know you're supposed to stop and take note of things going on, but

sometimes stopping.

It's really hard to put yourself in the space to actually, again,

move forward from this. Right?

And then throwing a model on top of that is like,

Yeah, is the wiser model going to apply?

The wiser, Yeah. I feel good and.

I think a lot of people

are aware or, or they or

actually in one thing I was just thinking of as you were talking about that,

like, I don't know that I'm always self-aware to what's happening

and then it also gets messed with something else, right?

Like, you know, just like when somebody quits a job.

Why did you quit? Oh,

they were screwing me on my paycheck.

They're asking me to work too much or my boss.

My boss is a jerk.

Those might all be reasons, but at the end of the day, it was,

you know, probably a large, you know,

bucket of reasons that comes in again.

I bet a lot of people don't even know what they're experiencing is instead of

just being angered at working too much,

they're actually angered at burnout, which is a you know, again,

as we kind of talked about maybe a a sense of letting

the stress affect you, there's got to be a different way

to word that because, of course, stress affects you.

But like

you're saying, there's breadcrumbs along the way that are actively ignored.

Right. Exactly.

And well and even if you didn't or maybe didn't know.

It, not actively. Yeah. Yeah.

But just you didn't even know.

Well I think instead of Yeah.

Whether you don't do or don't ignore it, is it to normalize.

Like I just keep going back to that that feeling of

hey feeling the stress is, is just part of life, you know.

Oh I've got, I've had this job or I

maybe I want to be promoted or I want to advance my career.

Right.

So it's almost like,

you know, people who have that mentality, you know, put that on their shoulders

in the context of you have a family, you have a life that's not just work.

You've got issues that come up,

you know, you know, pets and family, like all these things are all part of it.

And so like, how much do you think the situation is?

Just people expect it.

And whether they call it burnout or not, just accept it as a part of life.

And I think that's kind of the crux of what we want to, you know,

get to the core of it.

Right, is like, should we is it okay?

Like, is there anything coming out of that?

Or why do we really need to find ways to essentially

rewire ourselves and

our people and our businesses to not think that this is an acceptable way of being?

Oh, this leads into I don't want to call it a rabbit hole

because it's it's just a lot of great topics kind of packed into one area.

Because from the perspective that I'm hearing right now, it's

we have to be better at identifying when it's coming

and then alleviating whatever the source of that is

or being more empathetic to other people going through it.

And I think that's that's missing for sure these days.

And I know as like a middle level manager, you know,

you get pressure from the top and and the bottom and it's almost impossible

to to to eliminate all the sources that it can be coming from.

So what without somebody actively

working on your behalf, your boss,

you know, who's probably going through their own shit.

Right. You know, like it's this nasty cycle.

On top of that, the business still needs to get run.

And and I don't want to start that topic now,

but this is into performance management and how that really does

not matter when it comes to allowing for burnout.

You know, failure, performance management is not a framework

that's going to work for any of that stuff. Yeah, totally.

I, I really like.

Would you touched on about that there's a also really good chance

that your your boss CEO h.R.

Person is also experiencing some type of burnout.

You know, the really the big question of their work has to go on.

You know, take it from your private part of life, right?

I mean, you you have to still show up for your family.

Got to pick your kids up from school.

You've still got to do that.

There is no like, hey, this is we're going to go

to, you know, a month retreat to get rid of burnout.

So then the question I'd like to ask you guys is that I don't think there's a

like a solution like, hey, do this to get out of burnout.

So then how do you tackle burnout?

I mean, what what are some of the what are some of the tools or techniques,

you know, some of the things that people can do to recognize burnout.

Right. Address it.

You know, get some help for it and and start to, you know, recover from it.

And then, you know, then also like a lot of mental health issues,

then to how do we help ourselves from getting back to that state again.

Yeah. And that's really it too, right?

Like mental health and I like the solution angle.

The rough part is, is some micro stress happens

just one and it's not enough to get you near the edge.

At some point you've reached your ability to cope.

And I would say that's probably the start of burnout.

Right?

And I would argue if you're just recognizing burnout

at that point, it's already too late because the work to climb out is greater

than it was just in some of the problems at the very beginning.

Two things there.

I think, again, if you if you just wait too long, it's a different problem.

That's why I'd like the total leadership model

and we'll share links in the in the show notes.

But it kind of addresses all angles of your life

so you can protect tively stop it from happening.

And I think that's the only way for some reason,

I mean, probably in the last two weeks I know I've come home from work

and just snapped at one of my kids immediately

just because, you know, the TV's on, they're talking to me.

Something's going on in the kitchen. The dogs are barking.

And very quickly,

I don't even know how to cope with the current world around me, you know?

And I'm like, Can everybody just please stop?

I have to go upstairs for for a minute.

And I'm like, like, holy crap, what just happened to me?

Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

I love that you bring up the total leadership model,

and I think we've all said it.

Burnout is an integrated thing, right?

And and, again,

this is a bit into your rabbit hole, Brett, of there's so many topics here,

but what I.

What I'm trying to get across is it's not it's funny that it's always

pronounced brought up.

It's always in this context of work right.

But you're right it's it's everything.

It's just everything around you.

And this the thing that I like to I think I think it actually

comes from the total leadership model.

If not, it's something that's been that

I've read or that we've experienced or kind of dove into in the past.

But it's pushing back against the term work life balance.

Right. And I really like that.

I can't I'll have to find where I read that.

We'll have to share it as well.

But pushing it back against the concept again of compartmentalizing.

You have work and you have life and they should be in balance

and no, it's like we need to find a way to integrate it.

And I think why the work comes up as a theme, even

with recognition of that, is because it's like one of the things that's honest.

It's like so important, but it's it's actually kind of

at the bottom of the list if you if you think about it right,

like your kids, your family, your pets, your own mental well-being.

Right.

All these things, in my opinion, should rank above what's happening at your job.

Right?

Your career's really important

in what you do with your career should be fulfilling

and it's I mean, something that's super important to me.

Like, I don't actually have kids, I've got pets.

But the thing that I've been wrestling with in my most

current bout of burnout is what's really important to me.

You know, I, I've got privileges that have let me push work away

for a little bit, but it's allowed me to tap into leadership.

I appreciate my relationship, right?

I like being able to do this with you.

Like I'd much rather spend energy and and stress, right?

Like if I have a stress bucket, I want to invest my stress bucket

into doing stuff that's this and fulfilling and meaningful.

And I would love for my workplace to,

to to understand that and recognize that and mesh into that.

And that's going to allow me to show up a lot better

to to, to fulfill the missions of the organization.

Right.

Like because that's kind of the thing that's got to happen that's important,

but it shouldn't come at the expense of what else is happening.

Right? Shouldn't be a balancing act.

It should be How do you weave this into everything else that is important to you?

One of my first thoughts when you said this earlier,

you had a friend that can compartmentalize work.

Know. I'm not that person either.

And my first thought was, man, he must have a perfect home life,

right?

If you can actually cut out of work,

then everything must be great where you're going.

And my life is messy.

Be honest. Right. So isn't that isn't all.

Are I cannot keep one from affecting the other.

It's just not going to happen.

And sometimes I think I'm not pushing myself hard enough

if I'm not feeling stressed out.

And I think that's something that that work puts on us from a

a pressure point, which is part of the problem also in a lot of cases.

And I want to go back to to this from a if I worked in a chicken plant,

what does this look like versus, you know, I'm an information worker, right.

And I still feel like I don't get enough time to sit down

and just think about what I'm doing and I can I should get paid to think.

I mean, that's that's what I'm what I'm getting paid for.

And I get paid for dealing with stress maybe.

I don't know.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think that probably a lot of us

have the ability to sit and think and be mindful that this is something

that I do sometimes instead of allowing myself that quiet moment,

I pick up the phone

or I look for the next task or email

or to do list item instead of saying

instead of getting, you know, like like, you know, you went to call early, right?

Somebody said, All right, guys, I'm going to give you 23 minutes of your day

back, you know? Right. And go get them.

And instead of saying, hey, I've got 23 minutes that I can now

take and focus and think and free,

free form, think about work or whatever we what do we do?

We take that extra 23 minutes and we jump to that.

That's what I do. I jump to the next thing, you know.

And so I think there has to be a lot of like there has to be

ownership taken a reckoning. Oh, yeah.

I think I mean, I think we have to take,

you know, as a as an employee, I have to take ownership of that.

And, you know, and again,

I as we're all trying

to figure this stuff out, I mean, your boss isn't always going to,

you know, or supervisors or whatever or, you know, with a top line management

is not always going to even be able to give you the best way to do that, right?

Mm hmm. I mean, you know, because.

Because it just doesn't work out for everyone the same way, right?

Well, hey, take take 30 minutes Monday morning and, you know, like,

like, meditate.

But, you know, that's not always realistic.

So I'm not sure.

I really like what you just said there.

I will commit to you guys that this week at some point will tell my team

just in the morning, make sure sometime in the middle of the day

you go for a walk, you get up from your chair.

Mm hmm.

Get away from.

Get away from the desk for a little bit.

Yeah. Don't take your phone either. Right.

Leave your phone at your desk or turn it off. Right.

And what's a are instructor Carry Plemons.

They always talked about the shower, Right?

Like that's

where your best ideas come from because you don't have anything bug in you.

You're just in there with shampoo.

And even that.

Right?

Like, so I love what you said, Bret, because I think it's

And Ben, you you were the one who brought the original point.

It's so easy to jump to the next thing or bring out your phone

to distract yourself. Right.

So and what made me think of that as like I took my phone in the shower.

Sometimes it's waterproof.

It's great time to listen to podcasts like you.

Really? I do. I really do.

And I try not I try to take those moments to be mindful because.

You're in there or something.

And I just, you know, it's like there's a little slot up on the wall

kind of away from the water, so it's like getting doused, you know, and yeah, so.

But you're not actively like swiping in the shower

room is Exactly.

Sometimes I got to, you know, skip the ads, you know, and I know

I'm just teasing, but I think I can say to merge

these points, I think it's important for for the leaders.

Right.

And I think to

to maybe bring us into this this area of like, okay, how are we going

to talk to our listeners and to folks who maybe are in positions of leadership

or to do something or even as an individual employee.

Right. Like, what can we do about this?

I think

the top to top line item is like culture, right?

What is the culture that hopefully your whole organization

is living right in terms of are they are

your leaders behaving and acting in a way that acknowledges that burnout is real?

It hits us differently and for different reasons.

And there's there should be allowances and acceptance of that happens

and we can work around that.

We will be a part of helping you get out of that hole and not make it deeper.

And I think you you're suggesting, Bret, as like, hey, for my team,

I want to start to build that culture and encourage them via an assignment, right.

That does have specific instructions, right.

Like and then for a point like it may not work for everybody.

I think just the practice of, hey, take this time

to think about what is important to you or like how you might do that differently.

That's the starting point, I think, for anything, right?

I think that's a starting point for you've got to take a step back

from yourself, look at your surroundings, do some introspection.

Right.

What's happening to me and my world around me

and really focusing on like what's important, What do I need

to be thinking about, what I need to be working on and not even work?

Right, Right. Just like in Denver.

Like what is what's driving the feelings that I'm feeling?

And that could be a way to help people recognize am burning out or

I'm at an organization that is tolerant of burnout

and just expects it, or maybe they don't recognize it.

So I think it's it's culture and it's, you know, where we,

you know, have some time and have done some thinking and have had some experience

and and pass on those learnings is is the thing for us to do is to

this is how you recognize it and these are some things that we might be able to do

as a as a group, as a business, as a team to

to not let this, you know, be a thing anymore and not to propagate.

Yeah, we got to stop saying the F-word.

I can't wait.

Okay, fine.

Fine, fine. Fine, fine.

How are you doing today?

I'm fine.

It's. Oh, hey, Did you get all your stuff done? Oh, yeah, I'm fine.

That's good.

It's the meme with the yellow dog sitting in the fire, right?

Oh, yeah. All room's burning, and it's like, it's fine. This is fine.

I honestly haven't seen that meme, but.

Yeah, but I.

But no, but that's.

But that's what we do, right.

We've and yes. Anybody. That's fine.

Yeah.

And it's hard to say what's going on and also scary.

How are you doing. Oh I'm actually doing really bad.

Some of them might even be like self-incriminating things.

Well, I kind of screwed up at home

and I blew off work and, you know, like, you know, I'm there, but.

Or whatever it is. But that's that's what we do.

There's a there's a check in text technique from from a leadership

training that I went to that was not, you know, how are you doing?

Let's get the pleasantries out of the way.

But it's really how are you doing?

Really, really.

And you just be quiet

and let somebody like, fill that quiet space with with the truth.

Hmm. Hmm. Hmm.

I mean, obviously, you have to start from a place of trust, as always.

But, yeah, I really enjoyed that concept of, like, how are you doing?

Really? Really.

And it actually gave me permission as a leader

to be more vulnerable and say, Hey, you know, what up?

I am not feeling motivated to date.

I'm just really not.

I'm probably going to go check out for an hour and see

if I can get back to where we're at and modeling that behavior.

But it's hard for me

to even recognize that I am stubborn in a way, pushing forward.

It takes somebody

to call it out and be like, Hey, are you like, How are you actually doing?

Do you need to go take time?

And that maybe that doesn't happen?

I don't know.

I'd also love to see how this applies though.

Back to like somebody working in a chicken plant, you know, pecked and chickens.

Does this fly there?

You know,

I think about as privileges, we are to say I want to go work and have purpose.

Yeah. How does that work in the chicken packing plant?

Why do you have to have the best leaders

in the world to make that, like a rewarding environment to go to?

Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

Purpose driven business is a big part of that. And

sticking with the chicken

packing example, you know, as a leader, putting.

Trying to put myself in the shoes of the executive

or a board executive officer for that type of organization,

you got to think the message would be, you know, you're not just packing chickens.

You're you're feeding families, you know, just producing units.

For us as an organization, you're providing health to, you know,

people who need it. Right?

And because because those those roles are important

and those those people deserve recognition and they deserve all the same

acknowledgment that your life we all encounter the same things in life.

You know, we all it all matters.

And the stressors might look different, but they hit us in very similar ways.

And to be able to allow a worker

who is packing chickens one day for him to be him or her to come in and say,

you know, like, hey, I'm dealing with a family issue right now

and I know I'm scheduled to work this eight hour shift or whatever it is.

And I just don't know if I can do that.

And and I think there's also things like safety around that, right?

Like, you know, you know, so so what else are you impacting?

And are you a leader who's going to be able to say, hey, yes,

the the units that you provide that you're supposed to manage today,

they're not more important than what you are dealing

with as a human being, as a person.

The the profit that we're going to forego or defer because of the situations

that are impacting you, my employee, we acknowledge it.

We'll take that on.

We'll push against the markets for that.

And we'll stand up to be a different type of leader

for for those type of situations.

I think it allows those employees

to show up, to be like, Hey, I am making a difference here.

You know, I'm not just doing this thing.

I'm making an actual difference.

And my my leaders actually live that they breathe that they support that.

And I know I feel safe to bring those up and I think is missing.

I think there's just so much of that missing.

And one of the questions I want to like from both of you perspectives currently

and maybe even historically is like, do you feel like your circle

specifically work provides that right?

Brett, You're good at living that culture in your own because you know better.

Does your organization believe that right then?

I don't know.

You know what it's like for you

in your professional situation, but do do your leadership and is your

your supervision, you know, would they be okay with that type of mentality

at any point in your your operations? Right.

What I

can say that is I think everybody wants that

execution on that is is a very different thing.

Let me like say one other thing to just to maybe give you some more permission.

And and I got this from a friend here recently as well,

is I think it's okay

and I think it should be the standard where you don't have to say why

like you don't have to give me or as a leader right to do,

you don't have to break anything down just to say, hey, I need any time.

I can't be here today, like I've got something going on

and I just need you to be okay with it, right sort of thing.

And I think that's the part that's missing, right?

It's like being vulnerable is hard. Like, Yeah.

Let alone with people you feel safe with.

Extend that to strangers and your boss, right?

It's like, no way.

Like, no way.

Like, people don't do that unless you have, like, a really safe spot.

So I think the M.O.

needs to be I don't need reasons and I don't need you to explain.

I don't need you to give me any depth.

You just need to tell me that you need X, Y, Z,

and we're going to help you get X, Y, Z.

Yes, I 100% think I could do that,

and I don't think it would be any questions asked or anything.

Right.

You know, if I said, hey, I mean, I, I need a personal day or something, right?

I'm, I'm out today or something.

I don't think anyone would question or ask and they would they could give that the

the problem and then the the chicken packer is, you know, the paid part.

And I'm sure I don't know, but I can only imagine

how much safety drives behaviors at meatpacking plant.

So I'm sure that they are very aware like, hey, you know this

this person's head is not screwed on street today, you know, whatever.

But we're we're going to give them a pass because we don't want anyone to get hurt.

Of course, then.

But you know.

But what does that do financially?

You know, if it eats into your PTO time or you're in or vacation

sick days or whatever, I mean, then now you're coming to cultural things.

Hey, I only have X amount of time off.

I want to take a vacation.

I want to do that.

I'm not going to waste one of those days on,

you know, feeling bad or sorry for myself.

I have follow up questions.

Yeah. So one being, huh?

So you feel safe doing that?

You feel that's something that anyone

in your organization feels like they could do?

I'm insulated from the factory workers.

Okay.

Okay. Which.

Which would be more like what we're talking about here, Right?

Okay.

I mean, using an example like that.

Sure.

And, and, you know, and my company offers unlimited PTO.

Oh, okay.

Which is that sneaky way of

being being very supportive,

but but also realizing that the culture

of American workers

is that they are not going to use all their vacation time.

Right. And

well, the culture of the company decides whether that's an actual benefit or not.

Yeah. Yeah.

So aside from that, though, so I'm insulated from

really what we're talking about here, right?

Because because what we're really talking about is for somebody

that does not have that flexibility right.

And they are, you know, it's like, hey,

you're you've you've got

14 days of vacation time. Mm hmm.

Mm hmm.

And and if they are not able to have a paid

absence due to mental health, now you're back to the thing.

Well, that that's that may be great that they recognize that

and that, but they also even add to more burnout

really is a mind shift that people need to recognize.

So it's probably on both parties from a business perspective.

You need to incentivize the company, Hey, why do you want to do this?

Because if you have, you know, people with better mental health,

they stay longer, they're more productive, you know, say, employee hours in a day.

But, you know, they're they're better.

They're this and that and and then also put

like I said, there has to be at least equal ownership

for the employee, the individual to recognize that this is happening.

And takes to kind of

get to a point to express that that negre.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

What do you think, Brett?

Brett Scott A very interesting look on his face.

Like he doesn't believe me at all.

Yeah, I think you really need to point some people in the right direction

sometimes. Yeah.

Almost like an addict in some ways.

I have no doubt there are people in the workforce

that will defend their work ethic and contain

you to burnout and expect others to burn out and call it work ethic.

You know, I kind of agree that it has to be equal parts on them.

There has to be some sort of catalyst to change that,

that view of people and present why this is better.

I read this book called The Burnout Fix of you've seen this up,

put that in the show notes. Do

was it a good book?

It was good. I you know, I cheated a little bit.

I used Blinkist just gives you like a summary of a book.

And I do that first and see if I like the book.

And then I'll go back and read the whole thing.

But good blank in that it mentions there's

120,000 deaths a year from chronic stress.

Really? That's a lot. That's a lot.

I don't even think I ever thought that stress would be like a reason for death.

Honestly, chronic stress like that.

I mean, this is crazy to think about.

Yeah, I mean, I have hypertension, right?

I'm I there's no doubt.

And I don't I

sometimes I don't know how to get out of the cycle,

you know, talking about needing other people's help.

You know, it's jumping out to me though, just hearing hearing you say that

and it's it's I am ever so slightly tongue in cheek

when I say this, but I actually feel like I sincerely feel this.

Everyone needs to go to therapy, everyone.

And I think it would be

it again

is maybe controversial even, but like

it's like mandatory therapy when you come to work for my company, right?

Like, yeah, we're going to schedule an hour in a month.

Here's some frequency right

where a therapist is going to come sit in your office or,

you know, you as an employee and they're just going to talk to you, right?

And you're going to get paid for it.

And it's just a space for you to express whatever you're feeling.

It's got all the confidentiality that normally come with a therapist

patient relationship being that catalyst for people, right.

Really pushing them into this this space where, hey, it's

okay for you to feel what you're feeling, Whatever it is you would want someone.

The way that I'm picturing this scenario in my head,

this therapist or team therapists would, you know, also have company culture

backing them in the sense that I want that employee

to feel like they they do have the space to.

Well let me let me.

Yeah yeah push.

On that or at least maybe throw this out there and see what you think.

But it's less about the company culture driving that.

Yeah, but that would actually be leadership's commitment

to changing culture because they would be

carving out the space and it would be an expectation for you.

Yeah.

To go get your head on straight and that nothing says that

leadership believes in something more than that type of commitment.

Mm hmm. Yeah.

I don't ever see that being a thing that happens for real.

I bet you there.

I bet you there's companies out there that do that.

I mean, I would love this.

Like, that's a good point.

Like, we should look in research and find examples because I just,

I think that there's ways to see it.

I think it's one it's like it'd be it's a very tangible example of how you could

demonstrate to your your organization that we see you as a whole person

and we don't want you just to balance your work and your life.

We want you to feel like

this is part of your life and you can manage with your life

and that this is important, but you've got the right level of importance around it.

And you're not using work either as a even as an escape right?

Right.

Then it goes back to the idea of, hey, I'm showing up to work

because I want my worth actually to stand out, right?

Like I only have to work 40 hours a week, but I'm going to put in 60

and I'm going to show them that I deserve that, you know?

You know what I mean? And

I think it's up to leadership in the culture

to kind of push back against that, if that's what you believe in. Right.

And if that's something you want to instill right.

You know, not this thing of like, hey, you're a great performer.

You work a lot of hours, You're you're you're here.

So, so many parts of the day.

You're answer emails on weekends.

You know, it's almost like you've got to be the one.

Hey, let's not let you not be rewarded for emailing on weekends.

You will not be looked at indifferently.

Your performance is not measured by the hours you work or you know

other things. Right.

And honestly, is there a way to like evaluate

your performance on how you're showing up as a whole person? Right. Right.

Which is, again, another weird concept, but,

you know, it's just like you've, I think as like a tip or like a thing

that I'm thinking of is like, how can you as leaders

implement things that people can see, feel, touch, that show that that

demonstrate that it's not just lip service or even if you mean it sincerely, right.

Like actions do speak louder than words and that's just kind of fun,

you know,

air quotes, you know, example of like a way to maybe do that.

Yeah, there are so many tools right now that revolve around workplace

mental health.

Modern health is one of those tools.

I've seen it a couple companies I've been at.

The part that is different is it all requires to you

know, it's getting to the earlier point is it takes you to to make that.

Move you have to make that action.

And it like I can see a company right now that's already established

saying we require you to go to therapy now or once a month.

Some people would probably quit. Oh yeah. Yeah.

Oh yeah. And, and be untrusting of it.

Yeah. Yeah.

And, and who who's who's that therapist That your therapist to.

Brainwash. Me. Yeah. Yeah. What are you trying to do now.

There would be a lot of people. Absolutely. And.

But I think like if you committed like if you were to say, our vision

and our purpose is to build the best human centric company to do this,

people would leave.

Would be the first step of that culture change, Right?

Yeah.

Well, there's a there's a book that's about leadership management,

and it says one of the biggest mistakes you can make in the business

is not pruning your first line managers, which is saying,

you know, we've given you an opportunity to manage people.

You're not doing a good job, you're no longer allowed to manage people.

But instead we pile more on these people.

We try to make up for it other ways.

Somebody above them leaves and then a year later

they're actually in a director level position.

You know.

They waited it out. Right.

And creating this great environment for burnout, just one person can do this.

And in a probably a fairly large company, two can affect a large amount of people.

So yeah, interesting thoughts.

Yeah, I just a close up on that thought was

you know it's reminds me of smokers and you know

everyone knows all the dangers of smoking

know there's still a lot of smokers out there for sure

I keep saying this over and over again, but that's also where

the employee or the other person has to take some responsibility.

Yeah.

And and no matter what you would, you're not going to get everyone to buy in.

You know, not everything works for everyone.

So it would never be a perfect system.

Never.

It's just a matter of giving somebody an additional tool to help

get out of it and and prevent future burnout.

Yeah. Yeah.

You know, to turn that on you to just shy of mandating

present an incentive that is too enticing to turn down.

Right.

And and you know, like I don't know if I've actually seen that

so the best example I can think of is one of the

like encounters I've had with many companies is they'll

pay you a like 150 bucks or something if you get your annual physical, right.

Just it's like a preventative measure.

You get your blood drawn like you talk to a doctor.

We don't need we don't need doing anything.

We just want you to do it and show that you did it.

And and then we will compensate you for That's beautiful.

And so I think if you do the same thing and really match the incentives

for employees. Right.

And again if I'm putting this together as I'm talking out loud, but I'd be like,

if you do it once a month, you get I will put an extra of like

50 bucks in your like,

you know, just every time you go to a session to some limit in a month,

like we will pay you per session almost rate as a way to just like

take that time unplug, talk to someone you know, piece it all together

and we're going to be there on the outside of that to help you

kind of manage or deal with whatever's happening as those sessions are happening.

So that's what I think of.

Yeah, I love the way you pulled that together because I was thinking earlier

I didn't know how to express it, but alignment is an issue

as a leader, I can expect you to go take time off.

But then I also am driving you to to meet

some sort of numbers or performance that you can't see.

Don't let the date slip, Right? Yep.

There's a complete misalignment of of expectations.

And I think what you did

is bring it back to incentives, which we talk about frequently.

If you align those incentives with the culture, you want to have them.

That's how you get it there.

You're not going to tell your people that they have to go to therapy,

but you're going to make it work.

Well, I am, yeah.

I'm going to make it so that it's hard for you to say no to that, right?

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. Love that.

Final thoughts for me.

And I teased it at the beginning, so just a kind of full circle.

I spent some time this week trying to explore benefits of burnout.

I wanted to see it so I know it's so commonplace.

It's something that we all deal with.

Is there is there a reason beyond like that's just the systems

we've built that have made that situation the way it is.

Through the stuff that I've researched so far, I have not found anything

that actually demonstrates or kind of makes an argument

for burnout in terms of, Hey, it's good to put extra stress on you.

You know, it's good to kind of push your boundaries.

All those things are true, right?

Kind of taking on responsibilities, getting out of your comfort zone

are good and developmental and are things that each person

should pursue to the point where it gets into the burnout.

But, you know, the spiraling whole of, hey,

I'm in this and I can't get out of it, hey, I wake up and my soul is crushed.

The minute consciousness

returns to me, you know, it's like there's no benefit to that.

And in any situation or context that I could yet find, which isn't surprising.

Right. I don't think that should be a surprising revelation.

But just for for the listeners and for us, you know, and trying to lean

into the challenging, ah, perspectives on some of these topics,

that's where I went and I really just landed at, you know, burnout is something

to be managed to minimize and to be eliminated where possible.

We have enough context to know how bad it is.

So I don't even want the feeling to be like,

Oh, you have to experience the bad to know what the good is.

I think we've got all the bad that we've we can do.

We've got all that right.

We have all the evidence and data we need to show that this is not something

that's helpful or supportive or productive.

And we've got to do better as a society and as especially as business community

to to not let this be something that is just seen as the status quo

and as a part of life.

We've got to we've got to turn this around intentionally.

So I think that burnout affects

a lot more people that they would acknowledge, you know?

Right.

I mean, I don't think enough people acknowledge this.

I think everyone has to, hopefully

with the help of their employer and also friends and family

and whatever else, you know, whatever else is out there,

you've got to look at what some of the signs are.

Look at, you know, some of the

just nice, easy how do I get out of this?

How do I deal with it and and acknowledge some of these things and instead of

just being so, you know,

motivated to to get to the next thing or get the next thing done

to be a little bit more more present in and what's going on with yourself.

Nice.

I think we

touched on a lot of this from a societal perspective,

but we have to unwind a lot of what we've created.

Business is personal.

Working smarter, not harder is is not a thing anymore.

Yeah.

Well, refer to the air show.

But we can we can argue that it's going to create a lot of stress.

Do we have to at some point step back and realize and acknowledge

that we are actively choosing profits over people

and there has to be some sort of line drawn when that's not okay

as a manager to it, I think I made a commitment already

to challenging my team

to get out of their chairs and just go think or walk or get away.

I would also encourage anybody else to to model the behavior they want to see.

I think that's super important.

I would as a board member, honestly, I would probably check in

with my leaders of my company and ask specifically what did you do today

that that

show showed a commitment to to this this new culture

or thinking and try to create some sort of accountability loop.

So 120,000 deaths.

Chronic stress.

Not okay.

Not. Good. Yeah, that's not good at all. Good.