Why Are We Burnt Out? | DEEP DIVE

00:00:00.000 | [intro music]

00:00:04.760 | All right, well, I thought we'd get started today with something I haven't done in recent weeks, but I miss which is a deep dive.

00:00:11.440 | The deep dive I want to do today is on the question, why are we burnt out?

00:00:19.960 | Now this deep dive is drawing from a New Yorker article that I published a couple weeks ago,

00:00:27.600 | it was a New Yorker article where I was introducing to the New Yorker audience

00:00:31.400 | this idea of slow productivity that we have talked about here on this show,

00:00:36.280 | but I was also using this article as an excuse to help refine my thinking on that topic.

00:00:42.080 | Now I opened that article talking about a bill that has been proposed in the US Congress.

00:00:49.320 | It was originally written by a California representative, Mark Takano,

00:00:53.760 | and has since been endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, that's a hundred different congressmen and women.

00:00:59.840 | And this was a bill that was arguing that the federal work week,

00:01:04.640 | so the federally recognized work week, should go down from 40 hours to 32.

00:01:08.880 | I opened my article talking about this bill.

00:01:11.960 | Now, reducing the federally recognized work week down to roughly four days

00:01:16.720 | would most directly impact people who are hourly workers,

00:01:20.520 | because technically what that means is that if you work beyond the federal work week number of hours,

00:01:26.440 | you have to get paid overtime.

00:01:27.800 | So salaried workers, and most knowledge worker types are salaried,

00:01:32.200 | wouldn't be directly impacted by this law.

00:01:35.320 | But as Representative Takano made clear,

00:01:37.880 | he also had overworked computer screen and email types in his mind when he put together this bill.

00:01:47.120 | If you change the federally recognized work week,

00:01:49.120 | there would be a pressure even on salaried positions

00:01:51.920 | to think about reducing the length of the work week.

00:01:55.480 | There would be other things that would happen,

00:01:56.840 | such as many government knowledge worker style jobs would go to that work week.

00:02:00.040 | There would be a lot of pressures.

00:02:01.120 | And he acknowledged this in quotes he had about the bill,

00:02:04.800 | that he was keeping these computer screen and email style workers in mind when he proposed this bill.

00:02:10.920 | He actually responded to my New Yorker article and emphasized that point.

00:02:16.880 | Yes, he had knowledge workers in mind,

00:02:18.320 | among other constituencies, of course, when writing that bill.

00:02:21.920 | All right, so why are we considering potentially a four-day work week?

00:02:29.600 | Well, the issue is burnout.

00:02:31.120 | If you dive into the data on what they're calling the great resignation,

00:02:36.480 | something which I've written about before,

00:02:37.840 | but if you dive into the data, what you see is,

00:02:39.920 | yes, there's a lot of people who are quitting their jobs,

00:02:43.680 | but not really among the ranks of knowledge workers,

00:02:46.640 | the heavy turnover seems to be happening more in service and hospitality type sectors.

00:02:51.520 | What we are seeing, the data is clear about this,

00:02:53.760 | in the knowledge work sector, the sector of people who use Zoom all day,

00:02:58.480 | what you are seeing there is maybe not a huge rash of quitting, but burnout on the rise.

00:03:03.760 | There's many different ways you can measure this that all seem to be coming together to the same point,

00:03:08.080 | which is knowledge workers are burning out.

00:03:12.320 | And this burnout got much worse during the pandemic.

00:03:15.040 | So this four-day work week was being proposed in part

00:03:21.120 | in response to the burnout that you're seeing among knowledge workers.

00:03:26.880 | So I opened my article on that point, but then I gave the kicker,

00:03:31.600 | which is, I don't think it's going to help them.

00:03:34.080 | I think there are clearly other sectors of the economy

00:03:38.080 | where reducing the recognized work week would be useful,

00:03:41.840 | could create good, but it's not going to solve what is burning out knowledge workers.

00:03:47.920 | All right, so well, this brings us to the question of what is burning out knowledge workers?

00:03:52.640 | If it's not, they have to work too long.

00:03:55.200 | What is it that is burning out knowledge workers?

00:03:57.120 | And here my argument was that you need to look past

00:04:01.280 | how many hours are you expected to work and instead look at what I call work volume.

00:04:09.120 | If you take an individual worker, what is the total number of commitments

00:04:13.680 | that is currently on their plate, be them big or small, major projects,

00:04:17.360 | just need to get back with someone with some information and everything in between.

00:04:21.200 | What is the total amount of commitments on their plate?

00:04:24.400 | This is the work volume.

00:04:25.840 | My argument is that when work volume gets too large, burnout follows.

00:04:33.280 | There's two reasons for this.

00:04:35.680 | The first reason is neurological.

00:04:37.840 | We actually have in our brain, and by we, I mean our species,

00:04:41.440 | because this is unique to Homo sapiens as far as we're concerned.

00:04:44.320 | We've studied similar primate cousins like macaque monkeys

00:04:47.680 | and cannot find the same brain region.

00:04:49.520 | We have a region in our brain that finds what makes humans humans that specializes

00:04:54.960 | in looking at what we need to get done and making a long-term plan.

00:05:00.080 | You know, it's getting cold.

00:05:02.720 | We need our cave to be ready for the winter,

00:05:06.960 | whatever that means in 100,000 years ago.

00:05:09.520 | Let's make a plan.

00:05:10.240 | Let's execute the plan.

00:05:11.520 | We're motivated to actually pursue the plan.

00:05:13.600 | We feel good when the plan is executed.

00:05:15.920 | This is fundamental to human nature.

00:05:17.840 | It is why, in some sense, this fundamental neurological productivity,

00:05:21.680 | why we were able to leverage our brains to really separate from other species, right?

00:05:25.760 | So we're wired to figure out how to do things, how to get things done and to execute it.

00:05:30.800 | When you have excessive work volume, what happens is you have more on your plate

00:05:35.280 | than this region of your brain can reasonably actually consider and plan how to get it done.

00:05:41.680 | You short-circuit those planning circuits.

00:05:45.120 | And when you short-circuit that, it feels really bad.

00:05:48.240 | You feel anxious.

00:05:48.960 | You feel unnerved.

00:05:50.080 | It's just like how we crave sugar.

00:05:52.480 | The metabolic processes of our body crave sugar because we have a evolutionary reason to do so.

00:05:58.080 | But when we eat seven Snickers bars, it completely overloads our body and bad things happen.

00:06:02.640 | So the same thing.

00:06:03.280 | We crave, "Give me something to do.

00:06:04.880 | Let me make a plan and execute and feel good."

00:06:06.560 | But if we put 75 things on our to-do list,

00:06:09.520 | we can't even conceive of how we're going to get all of those things done.

00:06:14.720 | We feel bad.

00:06:16.240 | All right, so there's a neurological source of burnout here.

00:06:19.840 | My editor at The New Yorker wisely cut that out.

00:06:22.320 | I did actually get into some of the actual brain stuff going on in the article,

00:06:25.920 | but it got in the way of the narrative.

00:06:27.440 | We cut it out.

00:06:28.000 | But there is, let's just rest assured, good neurological backing to this point.

00:06:32.640 | The second issue with excessive work volume, and maybe even the worst issue,

00:06:37.440 | is what I dub the overhead spiral.

00:06:40.320 | So here's the thing.

00:06:42.480 | Most non-trivial commitments that you make in a knowledge work setting

00:06:46.560 | bring with it a fixed amount of overhead.

00:06:51.040 | A fixed amount of overhead that involves you needing to collaborate with other people to get

00:06:55.280 | that work done.

00:06:56.480 | So if there's some project that you're supposed to be doing,

00:06:59.600 | there's some number of meetings you probably have to have with people who are involved.

00:07:03.040 | There's some number of phone calls or emails that have to be sent to gather all the information

00:07:06.880 | you will need to get that project done.

00:07:09.360 | This, of course, is very reasonable.

00:07:11.360 | Hey, I work in an organization.

00:07:12.640 | I'm trying to do this.

00:07:13.440 | I'm going to need help from other people.

00:07:14.640 | I'm going to need information from other people.

00:07:16.240 | So I will have to send some emails.

00:07:18.240 | I'll have to have some meetings.

00:07:19.200 | Completely reasonable.

00:07:20.160 | The issue is everything you are committed to do, however, brings with it its own,

00:07:26.080 | in isolation, reasonable amount of this overhead.

00:07:29.680 | So if you increase the number of things that are on your plate,

00:07:33.600 | you are responsible for the amount of this overhead begins to grow until it takes over

00:07:40.240 | most of your schedule until most of your work.

00:07:43.120 | Most of your work time is actually being dedicated to a the meetings that have to happen to

00:07:48.400 | touch base on every one of these projects and the back and forth emails and phone calls needed

00:07:54.080 | to keep each of these projects moving.

00:07:55.840 | And soon you find yourself doing almost nothing but this overhead work and very little actually

00:08:00.240 | gets done.

00:08:00.800 | We saw this very clearly early in the pandemic where what happened is when we shifted and by

00:08:07.280 | we I'm talking again, knowledge workers right now people who work in offices.

00:08:10.880 | And the pandemic began, it created a sudden increase in work volumes because a lot of

00:08:18.320 | things had to be figured out and changed when companies went remote.

00:08:21.840 | How do we do this now?

00:08:22.640 | How do we do that now?

00:08:23.360 | Right? So there's a sudden increase in work volume.

00:08:25.040 | The, the metric here is the number of average number of commitments on each worker's plate

00:08:29.680 | really went up.

00:08:31.360 | So this raised the overhead, the number of meetings that had to happen in the number

00:08:34.240 | of emails that had to happen.

00:08:35.360 | What was the result?

00:08:36.160 | Quite a few office workers reported to me that they ended up having eight hours zoom days.

00:08:41.840 | Back to back to back to back to back to back meetings to talk about work.

00:08:46.160 | Why?

00:08:46.480 | Because each of these things they now have to do requires a meeting each week and they

00:08:50.800 | have enough of these things that those meetings all have to happen.

00:08:53.360 | And soon all they're doing is meetings and no work actually gets done.

00:08:58.080 | Well, this is incredibly frustrating and it also leads to burnout.

00:09:02.480 | So these two things, the short circuiting of our planning circuit and the overhead spiral,

00:09:06.000 | these two things that come along with increased work volume generates burnout.

00:09:12.800 | That's my argument.

00:09:14.160 | All right.

00:09:15.680 | So now if we look back at this proposition, well, what we need is a four day work week.

00:09:19.760 | That's not going to solve burnout because all of those issues of increased work volume

00:09:25.600 | are still there.

00:09:26.240 | If anything, they're going to get worse.

00:09:27.760 | If you take a day off of the week where none of this overhead can happen, then the other

00:09:34.160 | days are going to get even more crowded.

00:09:35.680 | And the stress you have from having more things on your plate than your brain can plan, nothing

00:09:41.280 | about that stress changes if you're not working on Mondays.

00:09:43.920 | You still have all those things.

00:09:45.760 | You still can't plan how it's going to get done.

00:09:48.480 | So my argument is the issue is not the number of hours we're expected to work.

00:09:53.120 | That is an industrial mindset.

00:09:54.640 | If we're looking at industrial work in which the worker has very little autonomy,

00:09:59.520 | where after the Taylorism revolution in the early 20th century, you have a small number

00:10:05.040 | of people who figure out the best way to execute the work, the best way to build the cars.

00:10:08.800 | They break it down in the steps, they optimize, and then the workers are just told, here's

00:10:11.840 | what you should do.

00:10:12.560 | Sit here on this assembly line, do that bolt, turn that wrench.

00:10:17.680 | In that type of work, where the worker is just doing the same task repetitively, the

00:10:23.280 | only knob you have to turn is the number of hours you work.

00:10:25.680 | And so if you are exhausted or burnt out from work, you need to do less work.

00:10:29.040 | Reduce the hours, pay more for the time.

00:10:30.640 | It makes complete sense.

00:10:32.000 | This does not translate to knowledge work.

00:10:33.920 | We are not stressed because nine to five is too many hours to be working.

00:10:37.920 | From a physical toil perspective, knowledge work is easy.

00:10:41.760 | You're in an air conditioned box on a $700 chair.

00:10:47.120 | Looking at a computer screen and doing social media on the side.

00:10:51.040 | It is not a toil on our body.

00:10:53.520 | Our problem is not I need to get away from that.

00:10:55.280 | It is the psychological and logistical weight of overload that comes from these work volumes

00:11:03.280 | getting too large.

00:11:04.560 | So the answer is reduce the work volumes.

00:11:09.600 | Not reduce the amount of work a company does.

00:11:13.200 | I'm not saying that you say, okay, we're going to drastically slash the number of clients

00:11:18.000 | we service.

00:11:18.560 | We're going to drastically decrease the rate at which our software is produced.

00:11:22.000 | No, don't get me wrong about that.

00:11:23.360 | What I'm saying is the amount of work that's on individuals' plates should be reduced down

00:11:29.120 | to the point at any one moment that they do not feel their short circuiting of their planning

00:11:33.200 | circuits and the overhead of what is currently on their plate is manageable.

00:11:37.600 | That means all of the other work that does still have to get done has to be stored somewhere.

00:11:43.600 | Else it is an idea I come back to again and again.

00:11:47.840 | It's an idea that is at the core of my most recent book, A World Without Email.

00:11:51.280 | Companies and organizations themselves have to do more work towards organizing work.

00:11:57.520 | All these different things that may or may not have to get done from the very small to

00:12:02.000 | the very big, don't put them on this person's plate.

00:12:06.000 | Have them in a system.

00:12:07.120 | And when that person's done with what they're working on, you give them a new thing.

00:12:10.080 | They only have one or two things on their plate at a time.

00:12:12.560 | You have a lot of admin forum, have admin blocks, you can come to them and sign up and

00:12:16.240 | take a slot and work with them to fill out forms.

00:12:18.240 | You can't just throw things on their plate.

00:12:19.920 | We cannot underestimate the toil and hardship that comes from just saying,

00:12:24.560 | let's distribute all work to individuals and let them figure it out.

00:12:27.520 | Reduce work volume, not the rate at which work is accomplished.

00:12:31.920 | If anything, people are going to produce more work at higher quality because there's no

00:12:35.360 | overhead spiral and they're not stressed out.

00:12:37.680 | But let them do what they do well and then give them the next thing.

00:12:42.000 | This is harder for managers.

00:12:43.440 | This is harder for organizations.

00:12:44.960 | Boo-hoo.

00:12:46.260 | Everything about work is hard.

00:12:48.160 | All right, we got to figure it out because what we're doing now is not working.

00:12:51.680 | All right, so that's my argument.

00:12:53.840 | So I called this approach, reducing the volume of work on people's plates, I called that

00:12:59.600 | in the New Yorker piece, slow productivity.

00:13:02.640 | And I contrasted this to strategies that are about more cruder approaches, like let's just

00:13:07.840 | reduce the number of hours you work.

00:13:09.600 | Let's give you more vacation days, et cetera.

00:13:12.160 | That, by contrast, already has a name.

00:13:14.560 | That's called slow work.

00:13:16.240 | Slow work is an industrial solution.

00:13:18.880 | When it comes to computer-aided knowledge work, those industrial solutions won't work.

00:13:23.440 | Slow work won't work.

00:13:24.400 | We need slow productivity.

00:13:25.520 | We have to actually open up the black box of workplaces, look inside that black box and

00:13:30.560 | say, OK, what is actually happening?

00:13:32.560 | What are you actually doing?

00:13:34.160 | Oh, it's overhead spirals.

00:13:35.760 | It's overloading to-do lists.

00:13:37.200 | Let's change how work is assigned.

00:13:38.720 | Let's change how much is on your plate.

00:13:41.520 | That is the revolution we think we need.

00:13:43.200 | Now, let me just add two quick points before I wrap up this deep dive.

00:13:45.760 | Reducing work volumes is not the totality of slow work.

00:13:50.160 | In my New Yorker piece, to keep things simple, I said, that's what I mean.

00:13:52.960 | Well, between me and you, we're podcast friends.

00:13:57.120 | So we can talk honestly.

00:13:58.880 | There's more to slow productivity than just that.

00:14:02.160 | I see the reducing of work volume as the foundation, foundational part of slow productivity.

00:14:09.600 | But I also see individuals slowing down in the moment, not trying to fill every minute

00:14:18.880 | of their day with work, slowing out the timelines on which big projects are executed, but compensating,

00:14:26.640 | compensating for the slowing down with an eye for detail, for craft, for producing work

00:14:33.920 | at a really high level of value.

00:14:35.360 | I think these should also be part of the slow productivity mindset.

00:14:39.120 | A small number of things at a time so you're not overloaded, at a natural pace, but steady,

00:14:44.240 | really high attention to craft.

00:14:47.600 | That I think is the sustainable model for doing work with your brain.

00:14:54.000 | And that is slow productivity.

00:14:55.280 | So that's why we're burnt out.

00:14:56.960 | And that is at a very high level what I think we should do about it.

00:15:01.520 | [MUSIC]

Why Are We Burnt Out? | DEEP DIVE | Episode 165

Chapters