Frances Fry (2:20)

I will say that that third one hit a little close to home.

Anne Morris (2:26)

All right, Kelly, we're going to do some listener questions. Our audience was very excited you were coming on the show and Sent in a bunch of questions. So we pulled a couple that we thought we could wrestle with together. Let's start with a question about recognizing burnout.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (2:39)

I feel constantly overwhelmed at work, but I genuinely can't tell if this is normal stress or even good stress or a sign of early burnout. Is there a way to tell the difference? You know, burnout, the. The clear signal of burnout isn't necessarily feeling overwhelmed. It's feeling all of your systems beginning to disengage to protect yourself from the feeling of overwhelm. So, you know, some of the clear signals of burnout are you don't want to go to work. You wake up and you think, I don't want to do this. It is feeling disconnected from the meaning or purpose of what you do. So even as you go through whatever, even, like, the best parts of your job are the things that could make the biggest progress or difference, none of it feels like it matters. You are having a harder time connecting with or interacting with colleagues or coworkers or clients or other human beings you come into contact with. You just. They all feel like a nuisance. You're not able to connect. And then you're having, like, intrusive thoughts about your job that are hard to shut out, and you're starting to look for ways to shut them out, whether it's with substances or sleep aids. Because, like, you feel like you're being haunted by your work. Those are all a little different from just overwhelmed, because overwhelmed, there's a lot of different variations of it. And when you're in the burnout mode, you can't fix that with. You often need to replenish some real resources before you just find a way to engage better with the work stress. Whereas.

Anne Morris (4:29)

So this is not just like the Sunday Scaries.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (4:32)

No. And I guess I should say it's okay to use any word you want for anything. I'm not one of those people who feel like, no, this is this and this is this, and you can't ever use that language because. Wrong. I just think sometimes it's nice to have categories, because human experience has a lot of. There's a lot of range. And so I like using the word burnout to really talk about what is demanded of you has now just so exceeded your resources and your ability to recover that there aren't other things in your life sometimes that are replenishing you in a way that you're able to even go back in and face it again. That requires some kind of big reset or systemic change, whether it's in the workplace or in your life, it's just hard to cope through that in small, incremental ways. Whereas in being overwhelmed, sometimes little system changes can make you feel a little more in control. Sometimes increasing your positive social interactions at work give you a greater sense that, I don't have to do this all myself. If I needed help, people would support me. I'm going to get this wrong. But there's some Zen statement about how you should always be grateful if you have a long list of problems, because when the list is short, it's because you're dead. I'm sure it was said in a much more wise way than that. Like, you better hope your list never, never runs out. But sometimes we can just feel overwhelmed from the actual reality of the fact that if you have a job, this is same with other important roles and goals. It's just that list never ends. It always renews itself. And sometimes with new and unpredictable challenges that come to the list. And that can feel overwhelming. But that's sort of like that's the process is being in it.

Anne Morris (6:16)

That was super helpful guidance. Frances, you were going to jump in here?

Frances Fry (6:19)

Yeah. It's almost to me that stress is feeling over something and burnout is feeling under something and that like under connected. In burnout, I'm disassociating. Whereas overwhelmed, I'm over stressed, I'm over. So they're almost opposites. I don't think they're. I would be surprised if one was an early warning sign of the other.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (6:46)

It's actually. It's similar sort of to depression. A lot of times depression looks like burnout. Functionally. Grief can also. There are these modes of operation that our brain and body go into that it just feels so hard to engage with life now you can. I think you can actually over your way into burnout. So it could be possible to be in the over, over, over. And that could be a way you get to burnout. My understanding of the research is burnout is especially likely when you are in the over, over, over and your social context is just not supportive, whether it's in the workplace or maybe it's also at home. But it's. You know, burnout is especially likely when you're over, over, over because you care and things are hard and there's a lot to do and all of that. But then also some of the things that could protect against flipping into the being unable to cope are our social connections and our social resources and our social experiences that are really renewing. Cool. That's you know if someone is looking to avoid burnout. I think the things to look at are not just doing less at work, although that could when you can manage that, or that's great to try to work on that side, but also looking for the social experiences that are really meaningful or positive to you in or outside of the workplace. That would be something that really can be a protective resource.

Anne Morris (8:24)

Super helpful.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (8:25)

Foreign.

Anne Morris (8:30)

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Anne Morris (12:07)

We're here with Kelly McGonagall and she's answering your questions about stress and and work. All right, now for question two, let's listen.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (12:18)

Hi there. So I'm the parent of a child with some special health needs and I'm ready to go back to work after taking a few years off. I know that any job I take will come with some level of stress, but since there's already a fair amount of stress at home, I'm not sure what I'll be able to handle. So my question for you is how should I be thinking about the mix of job stress and home stress? And at this point, I honestly don't know how I'm going to react. Yeah. You know, the first thing I often will tell people is this person seems like they have this understanding. You give up the fantasy of a version of any of these roles or relationships where you're doing it well and you're not experiencing stress. You know, sometimes people really think there's a version of being a parent where I'm only experiencing the meaning and the joy and not the stress that the pressure, the fear or same thing about work. Like there's just a way to be so good at my job that I only experience the upside and I don't experience the stress side of it. That stress is read as a signal that you aren't adequate to this challenge

Anne Morris (13:21)

in your life or there's something wrong here. We see that story happening in workplaces a lot. Yeah.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (13:28)

So I think this is an accurate assessment. Any job you take is going to be Full of stress. And I've been in a situation, like when I was trying to finish my last book, where I had to step up in a very big way in my family when my father was diagnosed with a terminal cancer that couldn't be treated. And I had to radically shift some of my priorities without completely disengaging from work and caregiving and family. And I think that sometimes what you do is you have the sense of the stress that matters most in this moment. And there's a version of you that you save for that type of stress. Like, for me, I had to say that I'm gonna make choices that prioritize my family in this moment, even though I still have to deal with the stress of meeting some deadlines or teaching some classes and things like that. That stress, it didn't get all of me or the best of me. And I knew ways to just let it go if it wasn't gonna be perfect or I was gonna maybe disappoint others. I was doing what I could and what had to be done to fulfill those obligations the best that I could. But I gave my best stress self to the thing that mattered most. And that's how I might think about this. That there's a. And you can also think of. Work stress can be in service. If you take a job that doesn't feel like it's fulfilling, a deeply personal, meaningful contribution. Sometimes we do that too. We take on work stress. That it's in service of being able to show up in other areas of our life. And so I think that getting clear about what matters most and what's going to get the best version of you, and then also looking for the moments in both of those situations that we were talking about earlier as joy, that in every stressful situation that is serving some kind of purpose, there are going to be moments that uplift you that say, I do matter, that good things are possible, that I'm not alone, there's beauty in the world. All these little things look for them in both of those roles. And that's what often allows people to balance multiple stressful roles in relationships, is that there also are these moments of joy and meaning.

Anne Morris (15:50)

I don't know if the literature backs this up at all, but I have also found that it has sometimes been helpful to have a portfolio of stress in my life. So actually to balance the home stress, because the home stress can be all consuming to balance it with a little work stress, which also invites different parts of me to show up. And I'm allowed to reconnect with these different parts of me that were neglected with the home stress.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (16:14)

Yeah.

Anne Morris (16:15)

Does that resonate with the science, human complexity?

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (16:19)

It's great to have a diversity of roles and goals and relationships because in any goal or role or relationship, there are gonna be moments that are devastating. You know, I mean, like either really devastating or even just the daily form of devastation where you feel like you really screwed up or you feel really let down. And it is nice to have a mix that portfolio, as you said, of roles and relationships that are also sources of meaning or purpose or connection and

Anne Morris (16:51)

to what you have convinced me of that are meaningful enough to come with stress. Because if I care about what happens with them, then stress is gonna be part of it.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (16:58)

I know nobody's asked this question yet here, but I will say one of the questions that has haunted me the most is I was giving a corporate talk once and somebody in the audience after all this, everything I was talking about, they said, but isn't it really just better not to care? Because then if you don't care and they were really talking about work, but I mean if you don't care, then you don't experience the stress. And I just think for some joy, when you're getting stressed out in, you know, standing in line at the grocery store, that's a time to not care. But for the other stuff, you know, work stress, family stress, political stress, whatever the sources of stress are, if it's tapping into your values, who you are, what you want to see in the world, what you want to do in the world, it is absolutely going to be stressful. But it is better to care than to not care.

Anne Morris (17:54)

Because that's, that's where all the other stuff is. On the other side of care. All the good stuff is also on the other side of caring. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Anne Morris (19:16)

help you do more of what you love? Workday is the AI platform for HR and finance that actually knows your business. We help you handle the have to dos so you can focus on the can't wait to dos. It's a new workday. Now for our final question. This one is something many of us can relate to. Let's listen.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (19:50)

I'm a pretty disciplined person and generally good about limiting my tech use, including social media. But email is my kryptonite. I check it constantly during the day and secretly check it when I shouldn't be working, which makes me feel too terrible about myself. How do I deal with this bad habit? A couple of strategies to try. One is I often believe that people don't fully appreciate the harm of a behavior like this email checking. Sometimes you have to do like a personal reckoning with yourself. Whether you do this through writing or talking with someone you trust about it, but actually get out of your head into words why this thing is not good for you. When you catch yourself doing it, it needs to hit in a way where you feel this is inconsistent with what I want in life. This is inconsistent with who I want to be. You have to have a you have to have a clear belief that you can articulate about that because you need it to arise when you're trying to change your behavior. I don't really believe in like small hacks to trick yourself out of behaviors that are this sticky. Like just if you catch yourself emailing, then instead what you're going to do is chew gum. I don't know like what the but like the idea that you could just easily stop or substitute for behaviors like this. I think it often really requires you need to be frank with yourself. And then the other things I think about is you have to start to notice choice points. So if this is something you're doing regularly, there are moments when you are saying I'm going to check email. You have to get more clear about how that's happening and when in the process where you are in the process of that. So often you don't notice it until you're doing it. So one of the goals to set is to see if you can figure out when it starts, what is the impetus for the trigger? Can you catch yourself when you're going to check email rather than catch yourself while you're responding to email? And just setting the goal to do that kind of like primes yourself to have more flexible responding. The other thing I think is really good is you need to have an implementation intention for when you catch yourself doing this thing. And I made a joke about the. Instead of checking email, chew gum. That is probably not going to be the ideal one, but you have to break the cycle. You have to have like a switch that you are going to flip when you notice yourself. I'm doing it. I am secretly answering email. And I believe this is inconsistent with what I want in my life. What I'm going to do right now is. And it's really good if it's a physical action. So I don't know what kind of device you're on, but you can say to yourself, when I catch myself doing this, I am going to put my phone face down. And now this depends on how like, woo, woo. This listener is. Like, maybe put a hand on my body and be like, I deserve better than this, or I'm gonna take a breath. But there, there should be like a physical action, something you're going to do where you are. You are stopping and not just stopping and distracting yourself, but stopping and affirming that you want to do something different. And then it's. So it's this process of seeing how it gets started and deliberately stopping yourself and affirming what you want that's different, I think leads to real behavior change. It's how I broke my relationship with a social media site that I will not name that I was pretty very engaged with. And at a certain point when that social media site changed and I was like, I know this is bad for me. Also, while I was writing the book on Joy, I found I had to stop listening to certain podcasts. And I really wanted to stay off social media almost entirely. I had to be very honest about how those voices were incompatible with the message that I wanted to be able to share genuinely and confidently. And that was. It was interesting to me because when I realized that I haven't gone back to some of those, some of that behavior because I want to sustain my ability to be someone who believes what I believe about Joy. And there's a lot of stuff I was engaging with that just was too cynical or it was too disallowing of that aspect of human experience.

Anne Morris (24:30)

Yeah, yeah. What worked for you for the social media site, I just stopped. It's very Fry family, by the way. They should be on the COVID of your Willpower book.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (24:42)

No, the thing is, I felt. I let myself see how bad it was. I would go and I would feel worse. I would go to the site and I would feel worse. And it took me months to go cold turkey from that one. And then with this other stuff, I had to remove podcasts from my feed so that I didn't see them automatically, and I found that I wouldn't go searching for them. So sometimes it's easier. Sometimes you can do one small action that gets it out of your way. But for the thing where you're just like, pick up the phone, go to it, I had to go through the process of just being like, Kelly, when you do this, you feel worse. Get real. And then one of the things that since I wrote a book about willpower 15 years ago or longer, this good thing, you really do internalize some of these lessons. I've gotten much better about not being in denial about things that just are inconsistent with what I actually want, what I really want. So it's been a little easier to change habits, but you still. It takes time to figure it out.

Sponsor Representative (Bill.com) (25:45)

I don't.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (25:46)

I think AI, we're. We have to figure this out for AI. You know, we're going to be having this conversation 10 years from now, like we are about social media. I really hope we. We figure out some stuff in advance.

Anne Morris (25:57)

Yeah.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (25:57)

We're going to be.

Anne Morris (25:58)

In, like, 24 months. We're going to be having this conversation. Yeah.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (26:01)

Yeah.

Anne Morris (26:02)

Francis, you were gonna say something.

Frances Fry (26:03)

My favorite metric in the world, Kelly, is quality per unit time. It's just what I use for everything. Your quality per unit time was just off the charts, and I'm so grateful for it.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (26:19)

That is. I have to say, that is, like, the nicest compliment I've ever received. I always tell people that what my goal in life is to be dense. Like, my favorite type of dessert, whatever it is, like a cookie or a muffin, I always smush it more. Smush it, Smush it more. Like, make it denser. And I feel that way about books and conversations. I always think, like, I want a density that feels.

Frances Fry (26:43)

Well, now you have a metric for the density. It's quality per unit time. And you were off the charts.

Anne Morris (26:48)

Why eat a cupcake in a world where, like, brownies and ice cream exist?

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (26:54)

Yeah.

Anne Morris (26:55)

Yeah. Thank you for articulating that.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (26:57)

So clearly somebody's going to relate to that.

Anne Morris (27:01)

So in the last 20 years, Kelly, as You've done all of this amazing work. What has surprised you the most as you have explored these questions?

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (27:12)

Oh, gosh. I don't know that this necessarily surprises me, but the thing that I've experienced consistently that is kind of surprising and deeply satisfying is how, like really, I mean this, how wonderful human beings are if you just let them be themselves or you talk to them honestly. I don't mean every aspect of every person is wonderful, but the, you know, like. So this often comes from interviewing people for my books. And I just will end these interviews being like, wow, I love that person in some kind of platonic way. And then also at the same time, I will think, human beings are amazing. Human beings are incredible. And I mentioned the top of this conversation. Like, I'm interested in the two sides of human nature. And so I think the reason, the threads that I follow or the topics I follow or the communities I try to put myself into, it's the ones that make it easier to feel that way. And I actually, I believe science, like psychological science, it really does help me feel that way about humanity. But also there's a way of being open to other people that lets them be that version of themselves and, and learning how to do that so that I get to have these conversations with people where I leave feeling like every person is incredible and so interesting and so valuable that I love that. And I don't know that I would have expected that as somebody who, growing up, just was very scared of people.

Anne Morris (29:00)

What's one habit or practice that will give me immediate access to joy?

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (29:06)

Meet joy with joy. So this is the practice when you see other people showing joy or feeling joy, you have to let yourself catch it and be happy for them. For some people, this is easier than it is for others. But the easiest form is often, like, if you're out in public and you see an animal behaving in a joyful way or a child behaving in a joyful way, and it just kind of makes you smile or laugh and you feel like that is a good thing to exist in the world. And then start to extend that to when a coworker has good news to share or somebody in your family is looking forward to something and you're starting to worry, is it going to go well? But wait, they're so happy about it in this moment, or you see somebody win anything, just the person in that moment is having one of the best moments of their lives. To let yourself feel the joy, to catch it and show it. Because people do not want to Be alone in their joy. Everyone knows we don't want to be alone in our suffering. People radically underestimate how much people do not want to be alone in their happiness. You become somebody who other people can share good news with. You become somebody who laughs in response easily or smiles easily in response. You become somebody who, when somebody else is excited about something, you don't dismiss it or mock them, but you let them be excited and you ask them about it. These are all versions of what I call meet joy with joy. You're going to be people's favorite person, and that is going to bring you a lot more joy.

Anne Morris (30:38)

Oh, I love that. As a goal to be someone that other people want to share good news with. What a beautiful objective.

Frances Fry (30:45)

Yeah.

Anne Morris (30:46)

All right, final question we ask everyone. What is one thing that you are currently fixated on outside of work?

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (30:53)

Oh, okay. We have a bird nest in our front porch. And so ever since we moved into this house in 2017, we've had house finches that build a nest. And we have a little camera up. So I'm checking my blank many, many times a day to watch. We have four babies right now they're feeding and that's a wonderful. It's so much better than checking social media.

Anne Morris (31:16)

So.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (31:17)

So. And it's like one of the greatest things that has ever happened in my life to have a home with a that every year we get finches.

Anne Morris (31:25)

Oh, Kelly talking.

Frances Fry (31:28)

I watch the Cornell webcam, which has these owls that are in a. Somebody has kindly done this for the people that don't live in an area like that. And there's currently two owls that have just been born over the last. But I watch this every single year. And to have that at your house and your own camera and then to be amidst the birds.

Anne Morris (31:57)

When I checked on Frances in the middle of the night last night, she was checking in on mama owl, feeding the baby owls the other 50% of the time. Kelly McGonigal, you are awesome. Thank you so much for sharing all of your wisdom with us on Fixable.

Dr. Kelly McGonigal (32:13)

Yes, this is the best podcast I've ever done.

Anne Morris (32:16)

You are actually our favorite metric.

Frances Fry (32:23)

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. Your participation helps us make great episodes. So if you want to help, please follow the show, share an episode with a friend, leave a review. All of those are free and they totally help. Support us. If you want to figure out any questions about your workplace problem together, email us@fixableed.com.

Anne Morris (32:53)

Fixable is a podcast from Ted. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris and me, Frances Frey. This episode was produced by Rahima Nassa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Baloraiso and Roxanne hi Lash and

Frances Fry (33:11)

our show was mixed by Louis at Storyyard.

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