This document is my notes on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqONINYF17M. If you’re interested feel free to watch the video instead of my notes because a lot gets lost in the conversion from video to text!
This is Dr. K reviewing what he currently thinks about burnout as a condition. It’s important to note he doesn’t give a magic bullet that’ll solve it immediately (especially because he works with a lot of people doing intense executive/finance jobs, and sometimes the job is the problem and no amount of introspective work can fix it the way that quitting can). With that said, he does offer a pretty deep understanding of what burnout is and what causes it, and this definitely does give a lot of tools that can help you chip away at the problem.
Setup
- Burnout is increasing, a lot of people are burnt out and don’t even know it
- People don’t understand what burnout looks/feels like, and we invalidate it a lot
- Burned out people will generally be like “oh my life is objectively good” and then use that as a way to say if they have stuff to be grateful for then they can’t be burnt out
- Generally have a routine like wake up, go to work, come home, exercise, video games, sleep, and rinse and repeat for forever
- No overt signs of mental illness like the stereotypical overworked alcoholic detective, so people just assume they aren’t burnt out
What Burnout Looks Like
- First experience: lack of energy despite the ability to do work/generally function
- People feel like they have low energy and they think it’s about other things (e.g. I need to meditate more, drink more water, do yoga, etc)
- You can get out of bed and go to work and have fun and etc, but life feels a little flat in general
- Second phase of burnout: lack of empathy, stop caring about other people (this stage can even come before lack of energy)
- V much “short fuse” type of vibe, not even necessarily that you’re exploding anger on people, but just getting annoyed/irritated more easily than you normally would too
- Manifests as a ton of cynicism (e.g. about their job, the world, etc)
- Most extreme is: “Everything is gonna go to shit no matter what I do”
- But even way smaller stuff like when colleague drops the ball, you have no energy to be empathetic for them
- Third phase of burnout: lack of enjoyment/fulfillment with activities (esp with job)
- People tend to devalue by being like “well at least I have a job bc some people don’t have a job that’s as easy as mine” (again, very easy to invalidate burnout)
- On paper they like their life/job/etc, but not deriving much/any actual enjoyment from it
- Losing sight of the people involved/what actually matters
Burnout Is Not Depression
- Depression = something that you carry with you, can be triggered by external circumstances but you continue to feel it even as circumstances change (e.g. breakup triggers sadness, but then even after you get into a new relationship you’re still sad, could be depression)
- Burnout Syndrome - Generally tied to work/occupation, but not necessarily bc there is an individual component as well
- Level of stress hormones in depressed person are elevated, but low/normal in burnout
- Implies things are less disturbed physiologically in a burnout state compared to depression
- Some people still believe burnout is under the umbrella of depression (e.g. occupational depression), still very much debated
- Dr. K believes they’re more discrete things even though there is probably overlap
- Anhedonia - Unable to find pleasure in things they would normally find pleasure in
- Medically specific to depression (e.g. really indicates depression)
- Burnout generally hasn’t reached anhedonia. The example being if you can get yourself to go to a party or play a video game it will bring you some joy, burnout just makes it really hard to find the motivation to do those things in the first place
- Globally, most common cause of burnout is someone who wants to work/enjoys working, but somehow can’t do it or runs into obstacles that keeps them from doing it (e.g. Dr. K likes working with patients but he has to do a million pieces of administrative work first)
- An individual that tries really hard against a system that doesn’t want your efforts to be seen (corporate red tape, office politics, etc.)
- Working really hard, but huge gap between effort being put in and the yield you’re getting, and that gap is burnout
- So it’s not being lazy, you’re trying hard and just not getting the yield
- Burnout generally also exists because of simultaneous external pressure being put on you (workplace/boss) and an internal pressure that you put on yourself (from certain emotional drives)
- The workload example below is illustrative
Six Factors that Lead to Burnout - (when there’s discrepancies between you and the workplace in these things)
- Workload
- There is a workplace contribution (workplace wanting you to work more bc of understaffing/etc)
- But there’s also an individual contribution at work (how much you’re taking on at work) and how much you’re taking on at home/etc
- There can be individual emotional drives that make you self-increase workload (e.g. you’re a people pleaser and need boss to love you, you’re conflict avoidant and can’t say no, you really want a promotion, etc) even though you’re already working too hard.
- Rectifications - Boundary setting, understanding and fixing your individual emotional drives that are causing you to act against your own best interest
- Control
- Can have a boss that’s naturally just a micromanager that gives you no control
- Or you’re just in a position where your job gives you no control, you’re just a cog in a big machine
- You could also be a control freak, you’re looking for way more control than is reasonable/appropriate in the role and what needs to be rectified can actually be on your end
- Again, can be a combination of internal and external things
- Reward
- Hourly+overtime gives you extra comp for working long hours, salary doesn’t
- You may actually be underpaid
- Or sometimes it’s internal and people care about it purely relatively (e.g. you don’t care how much you get, you just want to get more than your coworkers/the “most”)
- Community
- Community is critical, isolation leads to burnout and it’s possible your job isolates you in some ways
- On an individual level could be social anxiety, comparisons, avoiding social situations (e.g. “I don’t want to go to happy hour, how will I talk to people there”)
- Joining things like professional groups can also help alleviate
- Fairness
- If someone feels like they’re being treated unfairly, burnout spikes
- Real fairness doesn’t matter, perceptions of unfairness are what’s actually critical
- Usually manifests as feeling like you’re being taken advantage of, favoritsm, office politics, nepotism
- But this might actually be individual, you may perceive unfairness where there isn’t any
- When you do your roommate’s dishes it registers 1000% but when they do yours it doesn’t register at all
- Or if you’re particularly egotistical/narcissistic you may spike perception of unfairness more than normal
- Or you may be willing to be a doormat/conflict avoidant so you are being treated unfairly but you’re not pointing it out and so it continues
- Again understanding what’s external and what’s internal is useful, and working out the internal stuff can help
- Values
- Arguably the most important thing
- People want to be challenged and valued, people generally want to work and make an impact in the world
- When people are challenged and succeed and someone appreciates/recognizes it, that makes you feel fulfilled
- Discrepancy example, doctor cares about helping patients while hospital cares about billing
- Dr. K would say yes after a 24 hour shift to staying an hour to help someone who just had a suicide attempt because that connects to his sense of purpose/desire to be a doctor, he wouldn’t say yes to staying an hour to call insurance companies and figure out billing
- The discrepancy between what the company wants and why you show up causes burnout
- Very hard to internally/individually fix this, generally fixed via switching jobs (internally in the org or externally)
Medical Perspective
- So this is why it’s so hard to fix, it’s likely a combination of what’s going on on the company side and the individual side
- LinkedIn influencers always blame the individual, reddit always blames the corporation, usually it’s a little of both
- Examine your situation/the 6 factors and which are your issues
- E.g. you may feel overworked, and then look a little deeper and see why. Is the boss forcing you to work those hours or are you just unable to say no when you already have enough on your plate because you really want your boss to like you (or both)
- This can help you fix issues on your own individual end, and longer term can help you be deliberate with why/when to leave your current job and making sure your next job is more aligned
Questions
- Can burnout last really long?
- Burnout implies permanence while in reality it can obviously be repaired. But burnout isn’t a binary yes or no, there can be residual burnout that you’re feeling even when the problem is fixed that can last a while. But at the same time if the “residual” burnout is lasting forever maybe that means the source of the burnout hasn’t actually been addressed
- Can you be burnt out from life?
- Yes, you can have cynicism, lack of empathy, and lack of fulfilment in life. Burnout definitely fits
- Fixing this (especially lack of fulfilment in life) requires you to look inward and figure out what you want from life and then intentionally crafting your life around those things
- Without deliberate thought in this you’re just living your life at the whims of randomness