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- [00:04]
Podcast Host/Announcer
Happy Sunday. Elise Hu here Today we're bringing you a Sunday pick where we share an episode of another podcast from ted, handpicked by us for you. Do you feel like work is taking over your life? Today we're sharing an episode of Fixable to dig into something we all face. Burnout Guy Winch is a psychologist and author of the book Mind over how to Break Free when work hijacks your life. In this episode, host Anne Morris sits down with Guy while they're both at TED 2026 to discuss the insidious ways work can follow you home and how to set boundaries to avoid burnout. They dig into the harmful effects of after hours rumination, share practical rituals to help you separate work from the rest of your life, and offer tips on how to take a truly restorative vacation. Whatever you're dealing with at work, Fixable is there to help, offering actionable insights to create meaningful change in your life and workplace. Listen to Fixable wherever you get your podcasts and if you have a problem want fixed, you can call their hotline at 234-fixable. That's 234-349-2253 to leave Anne and Francis a voicemail with your workplace problem. Learn more about all of Ted's podcasts@podcasts.ted.com now on to the episode right after a quick break.
- [01:31]
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- [02:04]
Podcast Host/Announcer
This episode is brought to you by Amazon Health AI. Let me ask you something. Why does getting care so often start with paperwork forms that ask for the same information over and over, as if your story has to be retold from scratch every time? We've come to accept that friction as part of the process. But it doesn't have to be. Amazon Health AI is built to change that. It can understand your health history so you can spend less time repeating yourself and more time actually getting the care you need. Amazon Health AI Healthcare just got less painful. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money and momentum a good hire. They can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, according to LinkedIn, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com TED Talk. Terms and conditions apply.
- [03:37]
Anne Morris
Welcome everyone. I'm Anne Morris and this is Fixable. This is the show where we tackle the problems at work that seem unfixable. Problems like burnout. There was a time when work was a place we went to. Now work follows us home, crawls into bed with us, and hijacks our minds. Today's master fixer believes we aren't just working too hard, we're letting our jobs hold our lives hostage. There's some strong language ahead, folks, and for good reason. Dr. Guy Winch is a psychologist, a best selling author, and the man behind three TED talks with over 35 million views. His latest book is Mind Over Grinding how to break free when work hijacks your life. We recorded this conversation at the TED Conference in Vancouver, the birthplace of big ideas and some of your favorite TED talks. Guy and I sat down to deconstruct the autopilot state that leads to burnout, the specific brain hacks that can recharge your battery, and why leadership's greatest responsibility isn't quarterly profits, it's protecting the human beings behind the work. Let's dive in, Guy. Welcome to Fixable. Please save us from ourselves.
- [04:55]
Dr. Guy Winch
Thank you for having me.
- [04:56]
Anne Morris
I want to start with this idea of work hijacking our lives, which is such a vivid framing of the problem. How do I know if work has hijacked life? Like, what does it look and feel like in practice when this happens?
- [05:12]
Dr. Guy Winch
So some of it we know, but a lot of it we don't realize that's what's actually going on. For example, when you come home after a very challenging, difficult day at work because this irritating thing happened and that frustrating thing happened and that really stressful thing happened, it's gonna be very natural for you to ruminate about it, to brood about it, to dwell about it, to replay certain things after work when you're home. To have fantasy arguments about turning someone off and all the mic drop moments you envision having, which you'll never have. Cause you're never gonna do it. But that can take hours out of our evening. That's one of the ways work will hijack our thoughts. For example, there's research that shows that if one person is very stressed at work, their partner can develop symptoms of burnout. One of the ways work will hijack our relationships. Work also hijacks our leisure, our coping mechanisms, our emotional intelligence. On and on and on.
- [06:08]
Anne Morris
Tell me some of the warning signs to look for in ourselves and our loved ones.
- [06:13]
Dr. Guy Winch
So one of the warning signs to look for in yourself, you know, at work, for example, is do you approach your very difficult work days of I need to get through. This is the day I need to get through. You just put your head down on autopilot and you go from task to task to task. You're not actually thinking in any deliberate or intentional way about, well, how do I manage this day? How do I build in some actual useful breaks, non useful ones, that is social media. And so that, you know, that's one thing when you just feel like days that you have to get through, weeks, periods, entire periods you have to get through, that's a warning sign. When you get home and you're not really present, you're checked out, you really have trouble switching off. Or the opposite thing in that all you can think to do is I need to veg out for four to five hours cause I'm drained. Let me just plop myself on the couch and binge screens for however long. That's another sign that something is going wrong. Because that's not a very helpful thing to do.
- [07:08]
Anne Morris
And why is that? Not just recovery from a hard day's work. How do I know when it tips into this idea of burnout?
- [07:17]
Dr. Guy Winch
Well, first of all, those are two different questions I wanna answer one at a time, please. Recovery. Actually, the science of how to recover from the workday is a little bit more than just resting. That's one component and there are two others that you really need to hit. Resting will prevent your batteries from being depleted further, but it won't recharge them. To recharge them, you actually have to do an activity that you find personally recharging. None of those happen on the couch.
- [07:42]
Anne Morris
Yeah.
- [07:42]
Dr. Guy Winch
So that's unless we get a little
- [07:45]
Anne Morris
bit more creative with the couch. Yeah, it's not happening.
- [07:47]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yes, you can get creative with the couch, and those are recharging things that can happen. But other than those, most things you need to do in a way that, you know, the kinds of activities you feel like, oh, I don't feel like doing that. But when you force yourself, you come back with a second wind, because it actually. And the third thing is you need to feel autonomy, like you are in control of your time. And again, if you're mindless on a couch watching screens, you're likely to wake up feeling tired the next day. Burnout is a different thing that we can talk about.
- [08:16]
Anne Morris
Yeah, I want to get to the definition, and then we're going to get to some solutions. So you described kind of an autopilot mode at work. I'm coming home. I'm not reconnecting with the people that I love. Are there any other signs I should look out for?
- [08:30]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yes. The way you feel about your job, if it was exciting, interesting, meaningful, engaging, it's not anymore. You're so overladen that you just want to get through it. You numb out to those sensations and those feelings that actually kept us motivated and going and made it exciting and something that we wanted to do. This is especially difficult for people who are very passionate about what they do, because you lose the passion, and then they're questioning what they're doing. It's the burnout. It's not that they've lost the touch. They've become numb to it. And the main feature is this feeling of exhaustion, of fatigue. You just feel tired and you feel cynical towards what you're doing. And a good night's rest isn't gonna do it. And even a weekend's rest, if you can get it, is not gonna do it. There's something bone tight. I got burnt out in year one after one year of my profession. Somebody who's an early achiever and wants to achieve quick. I achieved burnout quick for sure. And the thing is, I felt like I'd been doing it for 30 years.
- [09:31]
Anne Morris
This was your practicing as a psychologist.
- [09:34]
Dr. Guy Winch
And I felt like I'd been doing it for 40 years. I felt like, oh, I'm just going to the office again, more of this. But I had just started. I was living the dream that I wanted to have for so long. I lost all sentiment for it because I was so burnt out, jaded, exhausted.
- [09:49]
Anne Morris
And what I'm feeling, that story and what I'm in touch with is you have made such an extraordinary contribution to the world, like the cost of Leaving you in that state is a high cost for you and it's a high cost for the rest of us.
- [10:04]
Dr. Guy Winch
Absolutely. I really just.
- [10:05]
Anne Morris
Have you tried to quantify this at all? Like the kind of the stakes of this phenomenon for the world?
- [10:11]
Dr. Guy Winch
Look, I don't know. I haven't done the research in terms of the numbers globally. But I've worked with so many people who are questioning, am I in the right? Am I doing the right thing? And they were doing important work. And actually people who are doing really important work tend to get burnt out because it's important, because they keep saying yes, because they really want to help and they want to do something meaningful, that they're much more at risk for this burnout. And then they start questioning, does it matter what I'm doing? Yes, it does. But you need to take care of yourself in order to keep going.
- [10:42]
Anne Morris
When this subject traditionally comes up, we are quick to blame systems and organizations and the leaders of those systems. One thing I love about your message is you are also pointing out that we have a tremendous amount of personal agency too. So with the power and agency I do have, what is my first move? If I suspect I might be in the state that you're describing? Coach me through it. What's my first step? How do I think about pulling myself out of this?
- [11:10]
Dr. Guy Winch
I want to be clear with people that I work with. A lot of the employers, with the founders, with the CEOs, they're not having a great time.
- [11:17]
Anne Morris
Many of them are burnt out.
- [11:19]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yeah, they're also burnt out. I mean, it's not like, oh, we don't work and we make it. They're working just as hard or more so. They're also very vulnerable. But one of the things that we need to catch is that when we are stressed out, the bell curve of how we deal with stress and performance is such that it goes. The more stress we have, we start to perform better. Because if there's not enough, we don't have skin in the game. The stakes are low, we don't try as hard. There's this Goldilocks area.
- [11:43]
Anne Morris
I love that.
- [11:44]
Dr. Guy Winch
You know, in which kind of like the stress is just right.
- [11:47]
Anne Morris
Yes.
- [11:47]
Dr. Guy Winch
For us to perform at our best without getting exhausted, overtaxed. But once we pass that area, the then we start to mismanage the stress, then we start to make things worse for ourselves. We start to self sabotage. We don't take the breaks we need to do. We don't recover well. We don't switch off. We allow us.
- [12:06]
Anne Morris
We're in that autopilot state where we're
- [12:08]
Dr. Guy Winch
not making good decisions because when we're very stressed out, we need to allocate a lot of our mental and emotional resources towards handling the stress so we don't experience it in the moment, so our emotions don't flood us, so we don't become dysregulated. That leaves less leftover with which to do our jobs. We start making mistakes, we start deferring to automatic coping mechanisms that just, you know, those are the ones that are gonna tell you, oh, you have five minutes. You should look at social media. That will be the right thing to do. It is not. But that's what your unconscious mind is gonna tell you.
- [12:38]
Anne Morris
And your point, if I'm hearing you correctly, is that we actually don't have the cognitive bandwidth in that state to solve this problem.
- [12:46]
Dr. Guy Winch
We don't have the awareness that we need to disengage the autopilot if we knew what to do. Actually take a moment. It takes five minutes before a day to look at your day and schedule like, here's what I need to do here, here's what I need to do there. Here, this will be fun to do. That'll help me recover from that. It takes five minutes. We don't have the awareness, we just want to keep going. But our cognitive and all our abilities start going down the hill during the day. And then, you know, we're much less effective. We start to make mistakes, we're less creative, less productive. So it's not a smart way to manage ourselves. But it's the autopilot way.
- [13:17]
Anne Morris
So let's imagine a world where I feel myself getting pulled in. It almost feels like a gravitational force that you're describing. I feel this happening. What is my first move?
- [13:29]
Dr. Guy Winch
First move is understand that you need to put on a self management hat. You need to have a role in your head of let me figure out how to manage myself and manage the stress and take a few minutes from my day, from my evening, the day before, the night before, from the morning, to strategize how to get through this specific day, to figure out how to recover well when I'm at home, to really prioritize my life. When you talk about work, life, balance, people always say, oh, I added an hour of yoga. And I'm like, okay, that's great, I'm all for yoga. But that's not what the life part. The life part means being present and putting the kids to bed and having dinner with your partner and hanging out with your friends, just being present and being able to enjoy that, that's what people start to lose touch with.
- [14:27]
Podcast Host/Announcer
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- [15:32]
Capital One Advertiser
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- [16:08]
Anne Morris
When you've done this research, what are the decisions that you see people make that have the biggest difference when it comes to burnout?
- [16:15]
Dr. Guy Winch
Okay. So first of all, understand that in order to recover from the workday, the first thing that has to happen that you have to detach from work. In other words, if you are thinking about work when you're at home, you're
- [16:27]
Anne Morris
at work, how do I stop thinking about work?
- [16:29]
Dr. Guy Winch
Well, first of all, be aware that you need to.
- [16:31]
Anne Morris
Okay.
- [16:31]
Dr. Guy Winch
And so I mean I have a very strict rule. When I finish my day, I announce to myself the evening begins. And by the way, doesn't have to be exciting at all, but I'm just announcing that the workday is over. So I'm setting up a barrier where I am resistant to the idea of dealing or thinking about work. So first of all, be aware it's not useful for you to do that once you need some time off. I develop and I suggest developing a ritual to transition from your work mode, which is battle ready, mindset, fight or flight of the workday into a relaxed or it can be exciting, but it's not in fight or flight, you're not feeling threatened, you're feeling engaged. So that's different.
- [17:10]
Anne Morris
One CEO I know used to just walk out of his house, walk around the block, come back in, and that was his ritual.
- [17:16]
Dr. Guy Winch
Great. One element.
- [17:18]
Anne Morris
Yeah. Okay. So that's a starting place.
- [17:20]
Dr. Guy Winch
Because the ritual, the goal of the ritual is to train your brain. Our brain is a prediction machine. If you can train it to anticipate what's coming next and if it knows oh, when you start doing this, I'm supposed to get into home mode. I'm supposed to relax. I'm supposed to re. Engage with my family duties, my friend duties, my alone duties, whatever they are. But like, that's a different mode. You can teach it. And so you want to involve as many of the senses. Music, sound music is very evocative. Have the song, have the playlist, Change clothes. We are very tactile and clothes are very.
- [17:49]
Anne Morris
I love that one. Take off your battle gear.
- [17:53]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yeah. There's a reason power suits are called power suits. They're supposed to make you. And leisure wear is supposed to make you feel relaxed. Once you switch into that, we're in a different mode. You really have to train your brain to come down because when we're activated, we're in fight or flight. No one leaves the battlefield and switches on a dime into relaxed mode. It takes a while, you know. And so you want to train your brain to do that, to see that that's what's coming. So that ritual is very important as well.
- [18:15]
Anne Morris
These are end of day rituals.
- [18:17]
Dr. Guy Winch
End of day rituals.
- [18:18]
Anne Morris
What have you seen worked for? End of week rituals?
- [18:21]
Dr. Guy Winch
End of week rituals. Like, okay, so first of all, what are the things that, you know, the recharging activities and they're activities that they're also people. Like, our identity becomes shrunken when we're all about work because it's just duty, duty, duty, and we get home and if we're parents, it's duty, duty, duty. Where is us? Like, you know, where's the part of you that's funny or goofy or irreverent or whatever? The thing is that you don't get to express during the workday. Who are the people in your life that bring that out of you that you don't have time for anymore? It's not the people you don't have time for. It's aspects of yourself that you are allowing to wither. And so you want to give oxygen to those Parts of yourself, of your personality, of your identity, of your life that don't get an expression during the workday. That's what's gonna fulfill you. That's what's gonna create some kind of resistance to stress and burnout. Because there's another part of your life that's robust enough and you are not.
- [19:14]
Anne Morris
Your work.
- [19:14]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yes. Not just your work. It's fine to be devoted to work. Most of us are. But it's not. I say to people, if work was taken away tomorrow, who would you be? Who are you if not work? And a lot of people struggle with that question.
- [19:25]
Anne Morris
That's a positive question.
- [19:26]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yeah, yeah.
- [19:27]
Anne Morris
What about longer breaks? How do you incorporate vacation or end of year rituals? How critical is it for me to take my two weeks off? And how does this fit into your burnout?
- [19:43]
Dr. Guy Winch
Well, there's a whole science about vacations, actually, and how to make them restorative. Shorter vacations are better because the benefits of a vacation start to fade after a week. So if you're taking two or three weeks at once, you're kind of missing out on the benefit of it. So shorter vacations are better, but also give some thought to what you need. A lot of people who have young kids are like, I am so burnt out. I'm taking the kids to some kind of theme park. And I'm like. And that's.
- [20:08]
Anne Morris
That's the most stressful. That was the most stressful three days of my life.
- [20:11]
Dr. Guy Winch
I know, right? I mean, that's not the right thing. The five year olds are not burnt out. Yeah, you're the one that's burnt out now. You need to occupy them. But think of both your needs. But the biggest advice I have to people is that get to your vacation rested. Everyone likes to work up until the last hour to get ahead and this. And they get. I know. I was like that. I got to vaca. It took me three to four days to relax enough to be in vacation mode. I was still so hyped up and thinking about work I couldn't enjoy. Really. I didn't feel relaxed. Now I relaxed a couple of days before I try to end work early, really have restful evenings pack ahead of time so that I don't have to do it last minute. And it's amazing. When I started doing it the first day of vacation, I felt rested. I'm like, oh, my God, I feel on vacation. And it's day one. It usually takes me half the vacation. Then it's almost over. So you want to really do that. You want to triple dip on vacations. Vacations can give you three times the pleasure if you get excited about it as anticipate, you know, like, get excited about what you're going to do, who you're going to see, where you're going to see, where you're going to go. You know, don't get too much spoilers in. Right. If you're going to the Eiffel Tower, don't look at the panoramic views online. Save those for yourself. Read some of the history. Get excited. Get the kids excited about the animals they're gonna see in the animal park, whatever the thing is. So get the run up. And our brain interprets anticipation almost as good as the event. So you'll richly. You'll feel excited. You'll feel, you know, imagine the beach and the quiet and the sea and, you know, you'll literally start feeling calm. Then build in time to document. If you don't, you're gonna document instead of being present. I've been to so many places where I see people march in, take pictures and leave. They're not aware of what they saw, why they're there. They didn't get any of the benefit, but they can show it to their
- [22:00]
Anne Morris
friends, schedule it and contain it.
- [22:02]
Dr. Guy Winch
Schedule, present, document, then document. Documentation's important because then when you get back, you can relive the entire thing through that media, create little albums. You can print them out. It's not expensive. Or create them online. But when you do that, two things happen. Number one, you have a great memory. And number two, if you had a headache, it's not gonna be in the pictures. You know, if things went wrong at the hotel and you were irritable, you won't see it in the pictures.
- [22:25]
Anne Morris
You can just quickly romanticize what a great.
- [22:27]
Dr. Guy Winch
It's not just that you are relaying down memories that will remember the vacation. Without those things, you will literally, in time, forget the headache, the annoying, you know, busboy, whatever the thing is. And you'll just be like, look how happy I was. Because you won't see the irritation. So you're curating your memories. I love that. Not just your experiences.
- [22:46]
Anne Morris
So take us back to a young Dr. Winch, your first year, and you suspect something is not right. How did you pull yourself out of that?
- [22:58]
Dr. Guy Winch
What happened was like, it was literally my anniversary, my first year in my practice, Friday night, get home and I get in the elevator with a neighbor who is a doctor in an er, and then elevator starts to rise and then it shudders and stalls between floors and My neighbor, who does deal with emergencies for a living, went into a panic and he started hitting all the buttons, there were many, and pounding the door and saying, oh, this is my nightmare, this is my nightmare. And I look at how many buttons, now I'm gonna have to stop at his floor. And what came out of my mouth was, and this is my nightmare. And it was funny in my head, but it was so cruel. And he looked at me and he was so offended. And I realized, oh wow, that was very out of character.
- [23:37]
Anne Morris
That's how he became a psychologist.
- [23:38]
Dr. Guy Winch
It's out of character when you find yourself, no matter what the situation, doing something that's out of be very curious about what's going on because something that's
- [23:47]
Anne Morris
such an important cow.
- [23:49]
Dr. Guy Winch
And I went home and I was like, what's going on? And I realized I was burnt out. I realized I felt like I'd been doing it for so long, I wasn't enjoying it, I was jaded. I was just going through the motions. And it was one year. But you can get burnt out very, very quickly and that's what alerted me. And then I realized, oh wow, I really, really need to make changes. I am way too early in this. It took me a while to really figure out that I still liked it. But the minute I wasn't burnt out, I'm like, oh yeah, I love it. But when I was burnt out, I had no idea whether I liked it at all.
- [24:28]
Anne Morris
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- [24:57]
Podcast Host/Announcer
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- [25:28]
Capital One Advertiser
With no fees or minimums on checking accounts, it's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep. Even on weekends, it's pretty much all he talks about. In a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.com bank capital1, NA member FDIC.
- [26:04]
Anne Morris
Today, fast forward. What are the rituals and practices that you rely on now to not become burnt out?
- [26:11]
Dr. Guy Winch
I use a brain hack. That's stupid. Telling you now it's stupid, but it really works. Our brains, for some reason, take calendars super seriously. If it's in. If you say it, not so much. But if it's in your calendar, wow, this is true. It's there.
- [26:25]
Anne Morris
It's very serious.
- [26:26]
Dr. Guy Winch
It must mean something. So I will write in my calendar in the evening what the evening's about, and I'll just use an example of one at which there are no plans. And I'll say, watch TV for two hours, because you'll really, you know, binge the show that you really like for two hours. And then I'll write, Enjoy it. That last part is important.
- [26:44]
Anne Morris
It sounds like the opposite of stupid.
- [26:46]
Dr. Guy Winch
Okay, well, no, it does work. It's smart in that way. But, you know, like, really write. Enjoy the TV show.
- [26:51]
Anne Morris
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [26:52]
Dr. Guy Winch
Because when your brain sees it, it's like, oh, I actually have a task. I have a thing to do now. I know what to do. Cause your unconscious mind is like, hey, let's enjoy it. Then, you know, and then it's all game. So I use my calendar to direct my unconscious mind, my brain, to, like, here's what you're doing now. Here's. And, you know, be present. Enjoy this. And I do a mindfulness exercise almost in everything I do. I did one before I came in to this studio. Like, enjoy this podcast. We're at TED 2026.
- [27:20]
Anne Morris
Will you do it with me? Can we do it right now?
- [27:22]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yes.
- [27:22]
Anne Morris
Whatever you did, do it now.
- [27:23]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yes. Okay. We're at TED 2026. You may if it'll help you. Okay. We're at TED 2026. This is our last year in Vancouver. It is a beautiful city. This is a beautiful convention center. This is the start of the week. It's an exciting week. And you're starting with an interview that's going to be really fun for both of us. So be present. Enjoy the interview. This is the kickoff of a really exciting, meaningful week.
- [27:50]
Anne Morris
Did you speak or you just. That was just an internal.
- [27:54]
Dr. Guy Winch
I did that. I took a minute before walking in to do it. I Always like.
- [27:58]
Anne Morris
And you were just thinking these thoughts you weren't saying, or you were saying them?
- [28:01]
Dr. Guy Winch
No, in my head, there are people around. You know, the mumbling aloud doesn't always look good, but if there are people around, you know, sometimes I'll say it aloud. Like, I work from home. There's a door I can close to the office that's a little separate from the rest of the home. And so I will literally say evening time as if I'm announcing an event and they're off. You know, evening time. So good, I announce it. You know? You know what I also announce again? Lunch. I, you know, I take short lunches, but I really enjoy them, and I make sure to enjoy them. I don't do work during lunch. I really try and recharge. It's midday, and I have lunches that I like and I enjoy. And I'm like, oh, I'm looking forward to lunch. Enjoy lunch now. And I have a certain ritual that I do during lunch. I enjoy it. It's gonna be 15 minutes.
- [28:43]
Anne Morris
What is the ritual you do during lunch?
- [28:45]
Dr. Guy Winch
The wordle spelling bee. So. And I enjoy it, and it's relaxing and recharging for me. So I look forward to.
- [28:52]
Anne Morris
And you will announce lunch. It's lunchtime.
- [28:55]
Dr. Guy Winch
I literally announce lunch. I'm like a butler with a bell in my head. Like a tea is served kind of situation.
- [29:02]
Anne Morris
Yeah, yeah. It's so much more exciting that way. I love it. So a lot of people who listen to this show do have some power inside systems, but what is your advice to people who are responsible and do have some power to change the way we work?
- [29:19]
Dr. Guy Winch
So, first of all, it's a win win. Because the less burnt out your workforce is, the more engaged they are, the more loyal and the more productive. And therefore, they will stay longer. You have less retraining, rehiring costs, you know, and all of those things work in your benefit. Right. And so you want to be smart about it. Again, our instinct is to think if you just keep going, like overworking, if you just, you know, there's research, for example, that shows that when employers or managers are looking at two people who do the same task and end with the exact same product, and one of them stayed 10 hours to do it, and the other did it in the eight hours allotted, they will evaluate the person who needed 10 hours as a better employee because they put in the work, they're less efficient so that they're not a better employee. So to actually understand that overworking is not helping. It's Helping them get burnt out, if that's what you want to do, that's terrific. But it's not really, really helping them.
- [30:14]
Anne Morris
So really putting boundaries around the workday.
- [30:16]
Dr. Guy Winch
Putting boundaries around the workday. Encouraging breaks within the workday. There are companies, for example, whose screens go dark every 55 minutes. It's useful now. The employees get really annoyed. I was in the middle of something like, you're not embracing the idea of take the five minutes, don't just sit there frustrated and reboot, you know, kind of thing. But because it's useful and we have, you know, two, three, four good hours of deep work in us a day, like unless we recover and recharge, it's super important to do.
- [30:44]
Anne Morris
Yeah. Are you watching the Pit? Do you know this show?
- [30:47]
Dr. Guy Winch
I am, yeah.
- [30:49]
Anne Morris
What I think is I love the show. I do think it's directionally how work feels for a lot of people, even who aren't in emergency rooms, that they are good people themselves. They're surrounded by good people, talented people. They're trying to get it right. And they are also at the mercy of forces beyond their control that have a major impact on their experience of work. Does that resonate with you?
- [31:14]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yeah. But the thing about the Pit that I'm more interested in, when they get home, how quickly can they switch off? How much rest do they get? How do they recover from those brutal shifts is what really interests me. In an er, you can't really plan your breaks.
- [31:28]
Anne Morris
Yeah.
- [31:29]
Dr. Guy Winch
You know, unfortunately, again, there are characters who do the thing of smoking, which is not a good thing to do. But the smoking forces them to go outside and reboot For a minute, they have the excuse they need to go smoke. I wish other characters would go outside without the cigarette.
- [31:41]
Anne Morris
I think we needed ritual to replace cigarettes. Cause I think that they really played that role inside organisms.
- [31:48]
Dr. Guy Winch
And it's social also, because they're such pariahs, unfortunately, people are like, so let me talk to you, even though I don't know you, because we have this
- [31:53]
Anne Morris
one thing in common now more than ever. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [31:56]
Dr. Guy Winch
But it forces breaks, you know, And I wish we could do without cigarettes.
- [32:00]
Anne Morris
Yeah. We do a lot of work in healthcare, and head of a ICU nurse came to us the other day. She said, I now have 110, I think, direct reports. A lot of organizations are moving to these flatter organizations where suddenly they have a lot more people that they are technically responsible for. So in her case, and I think it's useful to learn in these extremes and then take the lessons Back for the rest of us. But in her case, how does she even begin to mind over grind her life?
- [32:37]
Dr. Guy Winch
Well, it's much more important for her to do at work. For example, if you have 100 reports, you really wanna try and create some esprit de corps, some real, you know, feeling, and then find those people that you can delegate certain things to. You need lieutenants, you can't do it alone. Yeah, you need lieutenants and you need reliable ones. But if everyone's more bonded, then, you know, people will accept the authority of the lieutenants that, you know, get branded lieutenants, et cetera, et cetera. Lieutenants will wanna take on those duties because it helps. You know, there'll be much more of a we're in this together vibe, which in healthcare, you are against the system, you are against regulations, you are against all these different shifting ground that is so difficult to manage. But also, again, take the breaks during the day. Be a leader in doing that. Have a open discussion about what do you find recharging in the book? I have sections about how to recharge in five minutes. But ask people, what do you do in five minutes that you actually find restful or recharging or revitalizing? Let's share our tips, let's pool our resources, let's have that as an open discussion so that if you get the five minutes, what do you do with them? If you get 10 minutes, what do you do with it? Like start a conversation, an open dialogue about we are under it, under the gun here, we're under pressure here. Let's help each other manage these pressures because let's pool our resources, let's pool our know how. Like really start working together, which would be good for us because the more bonded we feel, the more we feel in the workplace. It is a great mental health boost to feel that sense of belonging and camaraderie and togetherness. So it works on all fronts.
- [34:10]
Anne Morris
Yeah. And I think there are two points there that are really resonating. One, if you are in that situation, like that head nurse, there might not be formal structure, but you have to add some informal structure below you and put your high performers to work. And then the idea that isolation really is our enemy, when we are deep
- [34:31]
Dr. Guy Winch
in this experience, it's beyond enemy. It is incredibly painful and damaging people when they feel ostracized at work. Not even ostracized, but they don't feel a part of the group. People will leave. I always say to people, when you're looking to jump, it is the people that Matter more than your comp. If the diff. If the difference in comp is minor, but the difference in camaraderie, in the feeling of who you're working with, it just matters so much for your mental health, for your physical health, for your longevity, truly, for your, truly your physical health, that matters a ton. So feeling bonded. And again, just find your work tribe, your mini work tribe, your team within the team. That's why office politics, when people are pitted against one another and they are too much today because these companies merge, people see it coming like a year away and then you have two competing departments. Half of the people are not gonna survive. They know it. And meanwhile, you guys need to work together till we figure that out. So you're literally creating this gladiatorial situation which is so hostile and tense. And people go to work, they're in a real battle mode all day. It is devastatingly bad for them, for their mental health, for their physical health. They will get sick. They will. You know, like the World Health Organization, for example, says that around 750,000 people a year die from overworking. Just they overwork themselves to death. The stakes are high.
- [35:57]
Anne Morris
Yeah. What advice do you have for people walking into systems like that or industries like that?
- [36:04]
Dr. Guy Winch
First of all, your awareness needs to be higher. But think about what weight people, because people don't challenge it. No one goes to the bosses and says, hey, this is not reasonable for us. It takes really literally acts of congress kind of thing to challenge. But in fact, there could be more of a groundswell. Stress and burnout in the workplace are at higher levels now in 2026 than they were before the pandemic. Still, it's been five or six years where the workplace remains very unhealthy. It remains unhealthy. There's room for people to organize and say, like, this is not reasonable. This is not okay. And again, to the employers, I say it benefits you to have healthier employees, both physically and mentally and emotionally. You will get more out of them. You will save money in the long term. You really need to have that long term vision now.
- [36:56]
Anne Morris
What is your beautiful mind thinking about now after burnout?
- [37:00]
Dr. Guy Winch
I think that I would like to go more towards how leaders and managers, you know, I see they're in the worst straits, you know, and I see
- [37:11]
Anne Morris
the many of them are burnt out trying to solve this problem at their point.
- [37:13]
Dr. Guy Winch
Yeah, look, I talk in the book about, you know, a major founder of a major company. Everyone knows the name, I won't mention it. Who got scurvy Working on a startup scurvy is what the sailors got in 18th century, you know, when they were like sailing for two or three months. Because vitamin C, the deficiency is what creates a Flintstones vitamin, would have saved that person. But there's so many people that are just so dedicated. They don't.
- [37:35]
Anne Morris
We see a lot of that. We work in a lot of founder led companies.
- [37:38]
Dr. Guy Winch
Do you know what? I have to ask a lot of my clients these days, which is embarrassing to ask, but I do, like, I'm sorry, Mr. Majorly Famous CEO, when's the last time you saw a doctor? Yeah, you know, and they always look at me like, I'll have to ask my assistant. I'm like, if you don't know, that's a problem. That awareness is something that we, if we can instill it at the top, it will filter down. But it needs to be instilled at the top too.
- [38:03]
Anne Morris
Yeah, Guy, what are you fixated on right now?
- [38:06]
Dr. Guy Winch
Look, we're in April and I live in New York. It's a new season. I'm a Mets fan.
- [38:14]
Anne Morris
It's not easy to be a Mets fan.
- [38:16]
Dr. Guy Winch
It is not.
- [38:16]
Anne Morris
There's a lot of heartbreak.
- [38:17]
Dr. Guy Winch
There's a lot. But there's also a lot of promise because every year is a new is a new season. I believe in the team, I believe in the owners of the team really wanting this team to succeed. And so I'm excited for the season.
- [38:31]
Anne Morris
Some of my favorite people in my life are Mets fans. So I'm thrilled to add you to the list.
- [38:36]
Dr. Guy Winch
Resilience, but also hope.
- [38:38]
Anne Morris
Dr. Guy Winch. Thank you for coming on Fixable. It's been such a privilege to have this conversation with you.
- [38:43]
Dr. Guy Winch
Thank you so much for having me.
- [38:53]
Anne Morris
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. 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 our show was mixed by Louis at Storyyard.
- [39:56]
Podcast Host/Announcer
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