Mini-Ep 465: Burnout Stories
Listeners send in their thoughtful notes about dealing with, moving through, and getting to the other side of burnout – especially when you like your job and your company.
To leave a voicemail or text for a future episode, reach them at 781-591-0390. You can also email the podcast at forever35podcast@gmail.com.
Visit forever35podcast.com for links to everything they mention on the show or shopmyshelf.us/forever35.
Follow the podcast on Instagram (@Forever35Podcast) and join the Forever35 Patreon.
Sign up for the newsletter! At forever35podcast.com/newsletter.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links.
Transcript
This episode transcript is AI generated.
Doree Shafrir (00:10):
Hello and welcome to February 35, a podcast about the things we do to take care of ourselves. I'm Doree Shafrir.
Elise Hu (00:17):
And I'm Elise Hu. And we're just two friends who like to talk a lot about serums,
Doree Shafrir (00:20):
And this is a mini episode where we hear from you, we share your comments and your thoughts, and we answer your questions to the best of our ability. But please remember, we are not experts. We're podcast hosts and we always encourage you to seek support first and foremost, from a medical and or mental health professional as needed.
Elise Hu (00:37):
Give me the rundown. What's on tap for the weekend for you?
Doree Shafrir (00:41):
What is on tap for the weekend? Just some Henry activities. Not a ton.
Elise Hu (00:54):
Your parents are in town, I thought, right?
Doree Shafrir (00:55):
No, next week.
Elise Hu (00:57):
Oh, okay. Okay, gotcha. Yeah. So this weekend is just prep.
Doree Shafrir (01:01):
Yeah, this weekend is prep. Exactly.
Elise Hu (01:04):
Okay. Okay. I'm thankfully free of any volleyball commitments this weekend. Oh my. Due to the ankle, but I had gotten this mini package of season tickets for Angel City earlier in the year thinking, oh my gosh, I should totally get the girls to see women's soccer, professional women's soccer more. And I got tickets to four or five games and have of those tickets been to one game? Oh,
Doree Shafrir (01:32):
No.
Elise Hu (01:32):
Oh, at the very beginning of the season, you have to sign up for certain games, but I often have travel that comes up last minute or I have other things that come up, but then I've been able to give them away to my friends who could enjoy them, a set of four tickets. And finally, I think these are our last ticket. This is our last ticket set for Sunday's game, and I can actually go and I'm going to try and get two, if not three of the girls, to go and actually use these tickets that I purchased for the full season. Amazing. Yes. Yay. That is what that main objective. But otherwise, nothing huge. Nothing huge. I think it's going to be pretty quiet. The usual sports stuff for Luna, no volleyball due to the injury and the soccer. I don't know. They play on Saturday, they play on Sunday. It's just going to be some driving around. It's a lot. And then we go watch soccer Sunday night, but no EDM festivals. It's going to be chill. I think for the most part. I drove myself out to Silver Lake for comedy last night, and after I got there, I was like, I have left town and I'm on another coast. It felt so far away.
Doree Shafrir (02:54):
How long did it take you to get there?
Elise Hu (02:56):
An hour and 10 minutes, which was much than the hour and 30 that was projected when I was trying to decide whether to go and my friend Elsa was going with me. And so sometimes I lock myself into situations where I can't back out because I have invited someone to go, and so then I can't not go.
Doree Shafrir (03:18):
Yes.
Elise Hu (03:18):
But it's kind of a good mechanism. It's a forcing mechanism because I have been to Silver Lake about twice in the seven years I've lived in Los Angeles. Are you serious? I very rarely go to that part of town. Yeah. I've never been to,
Doree Shafrir (03:34):
Oh my gosh,
Elise Hu (03:34):
I think I've been to Burbank once.
Doree Shafrir (03:36):
Wow.
Elise Hu (03:36):
No, no, no, no. I had a series of LinkedIn lives that I had to tape in a studio in Burbank for an exorbitant amount of money and drove there for that, but only for an exorbitant amount of money, and it was like five 30 in the morning, so it wasn't Burbank even by day.
Doree Shafrir (03:54):
Otherwise,
Elise Hu (03:54):
I haven't been to Burbank.
Doree Shafrir (03:56):
That's like Naomi, I don't get out of bed for less than $10,000 a day.
Elise Hu (04:02):
I like that.
Doree Shafrir (04:03):
I like that. I be that. I mean, I think she said that in the nineties. I wonder what her
Elise Hu (04:08):
With inflation, what that is.
Doree Shafrir (04:09):
Yeah. What is her current $10,000? I'm curious. Naomi, if you're listening, let us know. Yeah, it's so funny just by nature of how much traffic there is, people really stay within their radio and I feel like you are better than most people about getting outside of your radius. You will go to
Elise Hu (04:38):
Other
Doree Shafrir (04:38):
Neighborhoods, some
Elise Hu (04:39):
Park. Oh, for sure, for sure. I spent, I'm in KTown every other day it seems like that's like my hood. That's my favorite Los Angeles hood. But I just really moren by night, not by day now that I'm thinking about it. I like K-Town at night. I don't really love K-Town during the day because kind of gritty, but I am there a lot. And then there's certain places that don't feel far because I have driven there during hours where there isn't really bad traffic. I go to Altadena in Pasadena a lot now to film the documentary, and that is very far from me, but not if you don't drive at 4:00 PM on a Thursday. So there's places that I've gotten over the emotional Barrick barrier, but then there's other places in LA that still feel very far for me, like Silver Lake or Echo Park. Never go there.
Doree Shafrir (05:34):
This is just funny to me because those neighborhoods are relatively close to me and I have a lot of friends who live over there, so it's, I'm there a lot I should say. So it's just funny to get that text from you last night being like, I'm in another country.
Elise Hu (05:53):
Yep. Everyone dresses different too. Like me and Elsa got there and Elsa was all dressed up. I was in my athleisure as usual, but there, it's kind of like a New York vibe I think, but very dressed down, very dressed down. I could see that compared to going out in Menace and then no valet anywhere. You had to park yourself on the street. So there was just a different kind of culture. It's like different subcultures in different parts of the Federation of Los Angeles.
Doree Shafrir (06:25):
So true. That's true. Well, Elise, we had a question recently about burnout. Yes. And I think we had a couple of responses last week, but this week the responses really came flooding in.
Elise Hu (06:45):
So we'll make today's episode about burnout.
Doree Shafrir (06:48):
Yeah, I think most of the emails and texts and calls we got were about burnout. So there's going to be, we have a couple other topics that we're going to cover, but there's a lot about burnout, a lot of really interesting perspectives, and we are still taking your thoughts. So if you want to email them to us, you can do that at Forever35podcast@gmail.com. You can text us at 5 9 1 0 3 9 0 and you can also leave us a voicemail at that number 7 8 1 5 9 1 0 3 9 0 or email us a voice memo, my preferred method of communication at Forever35podcast@gmail.com, and just a few other reminders. Our website is Forever35 podcast.com. We have links there to everything we mentioned on the show. We are on Instagram at Forever35 Podcast. Our newsletter is Forever35podcast.com/newsletter. And our favorite products are Shop my us slash forever three five. And I also just want to give another plug for our Patreon, which is at patreon.com/forever35. We do our weekly casual chats. We do our monthly pop culture recommendation episodes. We also have add free episodes at the $10 level. So there's a lot going on and you can do a seven day free trial to check that out. So I would recommend doing that patreon com slash forever three five. And after the break, we have some burnout stuff.
Elise Hu (08:16):
Okay. We'll talk to you after the break.
Doree Shafrir (08:26):
Okay, we are back. This first listener suggested that I personally look into Skillshare to teach classes without having to handle the marketing. So interesting. I'll check that out. They also say yes to quiet, quitting. I stopped stressing over my job months ago after an upsetting annual review. I show up, do my work, go home, not asking for more work. If I finish up my tasks, they wouldn't blink an eye to let me go if the company was struggling financially. So I'm not going to go above and beyond. I realized I'm at a point in my career where I kind of don't care anymore about getting my identity as an interior designer from my work. Rather, my low key, low stress job is providing me the income and brain space to get my creative outlet outside the office, focus on my family and resetting my nervous system, which has been in chronic fight or flight.
Elise Hu (09:15):
Yeah. Yeah. Good.
Doree Shafrir (09:17):
Love that for you.
Elise Hu (09:19):
I have been reading the philosophy of the Korean philosopher Han, which some of you will know if it's a little bit obscure, but he lives in Germany and his whole thing is kind of like Jenny O'Dell's book, how to Do Nothing's the Anti Calvinist work ethic in which you really can't live life unless you are doing nothing and you're just kind of allowing for life to surprise you. And yeah, it's great to reflect on this philosophy. I mean, I aspire to live a bhan life. The only thing that holds me back are my bills, and so being part of the system is a big problem, but I like the idea of being able to kind of step back and just say, you know what? This isn't good for my body or my soul. So
Doree Shafrir (10:14):
Yeah.
Elise Hu (10:16):
Good on you.
Doree Shafrir (10:17):
Elise, do you want to read the next message? Sure.
Elise Hu (10:20):
Hi, this message is for Dory. I think I may have said this a long time ago on your old newsletter, but I think you would do really well with private investigation and intelligence with your background in journalism. It would be a direction I believe you could follow. This is a total shot in the dark, but thought I would share. Best of luck to you sending good vibes. I've been out of a job since May, and the experience is beyond humbling. We got this also, Elise, the topicals faded is a great serum for dark spots. I use it in the evening and vitamin C in the am. It's extremely effective. Thanks so much to both of you. And that's from our listener, Sarah. Okay. Have you ever thought about this being a PI door?
Doree Shafrir (11:03):
Yes, because a woman I know did this, like a former, actually two people, two former journalists I know have gotten their PI licenses. So yeah, I have thought about it. It's definitely interesting.
Elise Hu (11:21):
I do think you could be very good at that. You could just go on a deep dive on whatever you're tasked with. See what it turns up.
Doree Shafrir (11:29):
Yeah, I have to talk to her because I'm looking at the requirements for California and it says you have to have at least three years of compensated experience in investigative work or have a law degree or completed a four year course in police science plus two years of experience or have an associate degree in police science, criminal law, or justice at two and a half years of experience. So if she was able to get the journalism career counted as investigative
Elise Hu (11:59):
Work,
Doree Shafrir (12:00):
I imagine. But yes, this is intriguing. So we have some voicemails and a couple of emails specifically about burnout, not career suggestions for me, although I feel like it's all sort of connected, but so this is a long one. Just want to give that caveat. People had a lot to say about this, so here we go.
Listener Voicemail (12:25):
Okay, this was supposed to be an email so I could write it out and it be eloquent and not rambly, but I have two kids and I work a full-time job and my kids are five and three, and that's just not going to happen. So anyways, this is about burnout, and one thing that I really want to emphasize as someone who's working and has kids is you cannot heal your burnout. You cannot recover from it. If you are still on fire, if you are still smoldering, if there is still something that is burning, you won't heal from it. So one of the things that you really have to do if you're truly in burnout is you have to stop the fires. You have to stop what's going on. You have to take a break, you have to step away, not a vacation where you pack everything for your kids and remember all their activity things and bustle them on planes, but something where you just stop, you step away, you are not working, and if you can step away from family for a minute, just to go to a hotel, go to a friend's house, just take a couple days to be somewhere where all of those responsibilities are not yours and then layer it back in.
(13:37):
But you can't do it if you're still sort of sitting on hot coal. And then the other thing about work boundaries is one thing to reframe it is to not put the onus on you to keep the boundary. So a lot of advice is to set your boundaries and you're not going to be responding to slacks after five, and I would encourage you to talk to your boss about switching it so that this is a team wide effort. Like, no, this team does not slack after five. We do not send messages or contact colleagues after five. It is for the group. It is a boundary that we all set, that we hold for each other, and people that slack while they're on PTO or after office hours, we'll be told to knock it off repeat offenders. Maybe they're put on a performance improvement plan because that's not how this team operates.
(14:29):
I work with a team that will privately slack you if you respond to an email while you're out of office and say, Hey, knock it off, get out of here. Because that is our culture. We do not contact each other when we know the other person is out of office when it is after work hours. It is a collective effort. Don't just put it on you to maintain this boundary, engage your boss because it's not just you, right? You're probably not the only one that's experiencing this burnout. It's probably happening to all team members. Nobody likes a slack at 7:00 PM I don't care if you don't have kids or a family, if you're just a solo person, knock that shit off and good luck and all the mom stuff is a separate conversation. But anyway, okay, thanks. Great advice.
Elise Hu (15:19):
Yeah, we were alluding to that too, sort of like, Hey, if you have a great relationship with your boss as our original caller or correspondent did, then work with the boss to set boundaries that apply across the board, not just for you, because if they applied just for you, then it creates this bifurcation or separate a double standard or whatever. So
Doree Shafrir (15:40):
Yep.
Elise Hu (15:40):
Love that. Alright.
Doree Shafrir (15:42):
Okay. We got this great email about burnout. Hi, do Elise responding to the guest asking about burnout, how to handle it. I've dealt with this a lot, especially since the pandemic. You all mentioned this, but it's setting boundaries and being the example to your coworkers. It's also having the boss be the person to tell everyone just a reminder work-life balance is important and everyone needs to be able to step away from work after hours, hours. In my day-to-day, when I go to lunch, I don't respond to any messages or emails. Once I sign off for the day, I don't check my emails or messages either. Another big one is any day you're not working. I mean, this is what the caller was just saying, be an example for your team that it's okay to take off for the rest of the day. Let yourself rest up, get better, et cetera. If something's absolutely urgent, that's what a phone call is for. Remember the phone?
Elise Hu (16:29):
How about that?
Doree Shafrir (16:30):
They also said that they opened up their Forever35 podcast feed search for burnout and re-listened to those episodes. I mean, yeah, this is something that has come up several times over the years that we've been doing this show. I think burnout is just one of those perpetual things that sometimes it's flaring up for some people and sometimes is kind of dormant and then you just feel it again. This listener goes on to say, it made me feel like I was doing something and take care of myself. I think I've listened to every episode of this podcast and somehow it still came as a surprise to me that I was experiencing burnout. Thank you to the Forever35 community for being a space to discuss these things. Sometimes the message has to wash over you many times to get it.
Elise Hu (17:11):
Yeah, that's true.
Doree Shafrir (17:12):
This listener also says, I have a hobby sewing that is easy for me to turn into work and project management, and I do enough of that at my job, even though hobbies are supposed to be restorative. I have put this one on the back burner for now. It's okay for my hobbies to be spending time with family, watching tv, napping, listening to podcasts and stretching for a bit. That is already five things. I love this. As someone who has turned my hobby into work and project management, I really relate to this. Okay, I gave one household task to my husband, planning dinner for a month. I'm happy to make dinner, but I need to reduce my decision making load. Just doing that one small thing has helped and I feel more appreciated for taking it on for so long. After taking these steps, I realized there will always be more work that I'm legitimately am interested in doing than time to do it. Something finally just clicked that I only have so many hours and I just can't work beyond that. Even if it is on things that I enjoy working on things you enjoy is still work. I feel less guilt because there's no need to feel guilt about not being able to do an impossible task. Not no guilt yet, but it is a work in progress. I'm not recovered yet, but even taking small steps has felt good.
Elise Hu (18:20):
Something I have answered when I first came on the show and did the Forever35 questionnaire is the book that I recommend to everybody and the book that I recommend everybody is called 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman, and he has a supplemental book to that that's out I think this month called Meditations for Mortals. And 4,000 Weeks is an anti productivity book. It basically acknowledges that there will never be a point where you can conquer your to-do list. And it's liberating once you give up that quest that essentially life is more meaningful when you make choices. Knowing that we have complete freedom to make any choice we want, it's we have to kind of bear the consequences of it. And so I could just decide, I don't want to not have dinner as a family, I want to have dinner as a family every night, and that could be a thing that I decide, but that means we give up all the other things that the kids do and we just have to be okay with those choices. And so I think this burnout conversation is addressed by a lot of those ideas. And so yeah, 4,000 weeks the book, I recommend everybody. I just want to recommend one more time.
Doree Shafrir (19:36):
Love that. All right, we are going to take another break and when we come back we have a couple more voicemails about burnout, so we'll be right back. Alright, we are back. Here are a couple more voicemails. Like I said, this topic, people have a lot of feelings about this topic. It's
Elise Hu (20:03):
Generative. Yes,
Listener Voicemail (20:05):
For the caller who called in about burnout, having a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old. And if you can recover from that, I can talk about this for half an hour, so I'm going to try to be as brief as possible, but I feel like I went through exactly what you are going through. I also had kids almost the exact same age and worked a really stressful job for many years in politics and government. And after having two kids was just completely at my wits end and didn't know what to do or if I just felt like I wasn't even cut out from my job anymore and I was so stressed. And there were a couple things that I did to help come out of burnout, but I'll preface this by I left my job and came back two years later. I did a different job and then I came back.
(20:53):
But I think you can do it in your job too. So the first things I would say is I think it's important to recognize that this is just a really difficult season of life when you have kids at this age. And so part of it is knowing that whatever changes you make right now in your life or whatever you do to fix this burnout problem for yourself, it's going to look different. Your life will look different. You will feel different in only just two or three years when your kids get into grade school. And recognizing that really helped me while I was doing the second thing, which is really realizing that I was at a stage where I was reinventing myself as a mom, as a working mom, and really facing some of the really toxic narratives I had built around what made me worthy or valuable before kids. And it essentially built this narrative that my quality of my work and my output and my dedication to my job and working whatever hours I need to work was what made me worthy and not just my inherent worthiness. And I hadn't really stopped to realize how much of a badass I had become and where I was at my career, which was at a place that I could do the same amount of work, higher quality work than young people. And I could do that within work hours.
(22:15):
The things I thought were the most helpful for me. Therapy, I started therapy for the first time in my life and I have continued it. It has been so helpful to change those narratives I've built around myself. I took a month, I would recommend taking a month off and not like a family vacation month. This is a month for you. Maybe you can do a vacation in there for a week. But for me it was about sitting with myself, finding some quiet time to journal, take walks and figure out where was I spending all my time, what did I actually enjoy doing about my job and what was I resentful about doing because it was taking away time from my family and the things that I really wanted and figuring out what were my principles. So after you have some quiet time with yourself, come back with new boundaries.
(23:06):
For me it was, I'm not going to answer emails after hours. I am not going to worry about all my emails being answered all the time, and I have to say no to more of the work, travel and then find a mentor at work that's not your boss, that is above you. Maybe someone who's about to retire or someone who can help you really see your own worth and to help keep you honest on your boundaries that you're setting. And then talk to your boss. It sounds like your boss is really supportive and talk to him about your new boundaries and have him help keep you honest. Because once you set that tenor with him, her, they will be able to say, Hey, aren't you supposed to be gone? Aren't you supposed to have left at five if they're a good boss? And that's really supportive because it doesn't feel like every time you have to ask permission to leave on time and talk about it with others in your office and say, oh, I'm leaving. I got to go pick up my kid. Or I'm working in the classroom today. Because the more you say it out loud, the more people respond to you too. And you'll hear people say, good for you. Yes, go do that. And you're also giving permission to the people next in line under you to see that they can do that too. So you can do it. It's a really rough time in life, but it'll bring you out the other side. So much more powerful and self-aware, self-loving. So good luck.
Elise Hu (24:35):
It is true that because of the underpinnings of America and because of this economic system that we're under, so many of us have learned to tie our self-esteem to productivity or realizing our so-called potential. But if you're trying to realize your potential, then you can never stop because what if there's more potential to realize? So I really like what she had to say about just taking a beat and really reflecting.
Doree Shafrir (25:04):
Yes. All right, we're just going to play one more voicemail. I did want to get to all of these.
Listener Voicemail (25:11):
Hi, I'm calling in. I was listening to mini 63 and you had a caller who was in the advertising space with two young children and a role and career that she was facing burnout as someone who was in advertising for a very long time, and I was in a senior management position where I had a large team. If one of my employees, especially if you have been there a long time, you're a high performer, came to me and was saying that they're facing burnout, I would do so much for them to try to retain that employee. So I think if you have a good relationship with your boss, please go to her because having employees who are performing well and have a history of that, as a manager, you want to protect those employees and their mental wellbeing. I have done things where you delegate parts of the role that are specifically stressful to employees.
(26:21):
I have done things for my team where we add head count because it's just too demanding overall for the team. We've reimagined roles and responsibilities 10 different ways, 10 different times. So based on the feedback that you give your boss, there's oftentimes levers that they can pull within the team team or within the structural between departments to help ease the stress of the role. And absolutely those norms like slack in the middle of the night. No, I would put up a boundary there. And any other thing that stressing you out that's not really contributing to your performance, that's just noise, get rid of it. Best of luck to you. I know there are a lot of highs and lows in advertising too, so you can just ride it out and take the vacation, ask for the change that you need. If it's a company that you like and a role and position that you really like, the grass is not greener. Probably if you went somewhere else, the would probably still be there. So my advice would be to find a way to continue in a role and at a company that you like while also maintaining your mental wellbeing. So best of luck and hope you feel better soon.
Doree Shafrir (27:51):
Very sweet. I really was thrilled to get all of these voicemails and texts and emails and I think it just highlights how pervasive a problem this is, but that a lot of people were saying it's important to set boundaries and communicate. I think that's the big lesson. So I don't know, original listener, let us know how it goes. If you talk to your boss, please do if you set those boundaries. Alright, well thanks everyone for listening and we will talk to you soon. Okay, talk to you next time. Bye.