 What is yours? Thank you. Hi everyone. My name is Claire Asagi and we're going to talk about burnout today. So let me first start sharing my slides. One second. As some of you guys have probably seen this talk before, just note that this material also contains today's talk, that means has new stuff in it. So I'm looking forward to sharing this with you guys. So let's dive into this. Now the first thing to note is that this might be an emotional talk for you guys. So if you are starting to feel like heavy emotions or you need to take a pause or whatnot like that, I recommend doing the following steps, which is to take six breaths within the one minute. So breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth or vice versa. Do that six times within a minute and that should help calm your nerves. It is a good trick to have when you feel like your anxiety is pretty high. All right. So welcome to the art of balancing a burnout talk. If you're wondering why the art of balancing because burnout usually happens when we're not balancing our personal life and our work life. On top of that, it also happens when we don't take care of ourselves. So let's dive in it, shall we? So if you don't know who I am, my name is Claire Asagi once again, and I'm the VP of strategy over at point three security. And when I'm not that I'm ethical hacker advocate. In other words, I'm trying to push for rights for us if that means changing legislation, updating it and so on. Also know find the media if they have our image down wrong or using the wrong term, such as hacker instead of what they should be using cyber criminal for any terrible malicious acts. But also trying to do my best to also help the community if that means pushing for mental health. Also, that means trying to bring diversity and inclusion into the field a little bit more. And with that, I'm also the president and co-founder of Rosette, which is women of security. And when I'm not doing that, I'm also the founder of your hackers, formerly known as women hackers. Also the hacker book club organizer. We basically we read a new book every month. And every week at Tuesday at five p.m. Pacific time, we all meet virtually to talk about what we read. Yes, the authors do attend. And yes, people mentioned in the books do attend as well. And if your owner was called the hacker book club is because we actually read books ran by people within our community. And you know, the hacker community reads them with them. So it's pretty fun. We're going to be doing the tribe of hackers red team addition coming up next. So feel free to join us. Um, also I TSP magazines uncommon journey podcaster. I do this with Phil Wiley, which I think he spoke a little bit earlier with you guys, and also a listen Miller. That is my website. If you want to find out anything about me, it's most likely on there. I'm including my personal details. Um, my Twitter and Instagram is there. Feel free to follow or like to reach out anytime. My DMs are open. Now let's dive into this stuff. I'm going to paint some scenarios for you. And these are experiences that you may have gone through. But this is usually a good way to know whether or not you are dealing burnout or you did have burnout at one point of your time. So these examples, I want you to try to pretend that you're in this situation. So the first one I want you to think of pretend you're driving in your car. And while you're driving in your car, you need to merge into the left lane. And at that moment you think to yourself, should I look at my side mirror? Because maybe if I get a car accident, I don't have to go to that place or don't have to get that task done, or I don't need to do that project, or I don't have to have that awkward moment. I feel so much better if I just get a car accident. The one thing you should note is that burnout causes this feeling of being trapped. And most of these examples are going to demonstrate that. Or perhaps you're one of those people that it used to take you a few minutes to respond to an email. Now it takes 10 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, now an hour, maybe a day, maybe days, sometimes weeks to just respond to a short little email. Next thing you know, your inbox is flooded and it's overwhelming. And every time you get in your inbox, you have this feeling of being trapped, that this is all that you have, and you have to do it. And you're so behind on everything, but you don't even have the energy or the rush to try to get through your emails. Or perhaps you've been in this situation before, where you have friends and families or colleagues, they call you, but you decline their call, not because you're busy. It's because you see them as another task, as another thing that you have to complete or a thing that you need to get done. And you just don't have the bandwidth for it. You can't hear them talk about their emotional stuff because you're emotionally not doing well. Something's off about you. And you can't really do anything. And you're also concerned that they're going to ask you to do something for them when you can't keep giving anymore because you're not doing well yourself. So burnout causes these feelings where you have like sudden sadness to sudden anger. Like, for example, you see a tweet and you're like, are you kidding me? And like, you just get suddenly really angry, really fast, or you get sad by watching a commercial and there's some puppy in it. And you don't know why, but you just feel like you're hopeless. And like, once again, that term trap comes often. And you feel maybe empty. You might be experiencing more anxiety or depression as well. You just feel like you're all over the place emotionally, or you just don't understand why you're reacting so harsh suddenly. Or perhaps you've been in a situation where, you know, something is due, but you procrastinate till the last minute because you can't focus until then. Yeah, I've been there before. Definitely college. I'm like, you know what? I'm going to write that essay the night before, or I'm going to stay for the exam the night before. Actually, I'm going to study like two hours before I take the test. Now the thing is, though, is that when you're dealing with burnout, you will do whatever you can to push out a date. So you're like, well, I don't really need to do that because I could just keep pushing it out. It's fine. So you might be late for your work, or you might be late for trying to attend something, or you might miss things because you don't want to be there or you just can't do it. Because once again, there's this feeling of hopelessness, and you feel overwhelmed and that you are drowning pretty much. You're just in that water just trying your best to breathe. But over a lot of times, when people think of burnout, it's just that they feel so tired. No matter how many hours of sleep at night you get, you just feel so tired and exhausted. And it's just like you reach maybe more for caffeine, but the thing is, you just feel so tired and there's nothing you can do to change that. One of the things about burnout you should note about is it's very similar in some ways to stress, where when you're stressed out, what do we tend to do? You might reach for, you know, to get high, you might reach to get a drink and buy a drink, maybe more than just one drink, let's be real. Or maybe you're like, you know what, I think I want to go back to smoking, or you're smoking a little bit more, or you're drinking a lot more caffeine. Now the thing is, is that when you're burned out, you're trying to compensate for the fact that you have no more energy and you feel burned out already. So how are you going to do that is by going to different things. So for example, wanting something salty or sweet, so snacking a lot more than usual, or the fact that like you crave cigarettes a lot more often, or getting high is something that you need to do at the end of the day to just feel better, or perhaps drinking a lot more than usual, or also drinking lots of caffeine. So the one thing that I'll definitely tell you is that when I know that I'm starting to do too much, I tend to crave more caffeine. So I'll drink five cups of tea versus just two cups of tea. That usually lets me know that I'm entering some sort of burnout phase if I don't take care of myself. But also snacking is something that we do when we're stressed. We've been to eat some of us or we don't eat at all. Instead, we go to other substances. Overall, burnout just feels kind of like this image where you're just like, I just can't do this. I can't do this. I need a break. I need to take time off. I can't focus. I can't do anything. I just feel like I'm not myself anymore. Overall, burnout feels it's like, you know, a battery. You're like a device. You're like your cell phone, but you haven't charged it for quite some time and it's dying. It's on red and whatnot. That's what kind of burnout feels is like you have this battery, but it's kind of depleted. I want to start diving into now you've seen these examples and hopefully, or maybe they might resonate with you, but that's okay. It's good to see if something connects with you because that's the first step to making sure you get better or take the preventative steps possible to get better. The first thing I want to let you guys know is that I'm not a therapist, but I have dealt with burnout. I definitely, the first time I dealt with burnout and here comes a personal story was back in 2013. I did teach for America. I was supposed to be a special ed teacher. When I first started, the thing is, is that how it works is that you go to school for like four weeks before you start being an official teacher. That's right. You probably have had no experience with kids at all, and you haven't ever taken courses on being a teacher, but for those four weeks, they try to train you in every single way possible, how to be a full-time professional teacher. And the thing is, is that once that training was over, I went into Oakland school district in the east side. And one of the things was that I had, I was stationed at one school and I had a caseload of 20 students and students that actually witnessed their parents being stabbed multiple times or having kids that have undiagnosed mental health issues, but they didn't know what to do with them in the system. So they just put them in special ed when they don't have like dyslexia or any of those things. The thing was that they weren't getting proper mental health coverage or anything like that. And then a few months down the road, at the same time, I had to go to another school district, not another school district, another school within the school district. So now at a caseload of 30 students, now as approaching 80 students, a someone who isn't licensed yet, someone who's had no training nor experience in special ed. And at the same time, every one or two days per week, I would have to go continue my education at night. And the other thing was that Teacher America didn't tell me all these things up front. So what happened was that you basically sign an IOU, which is basically if I were to leave this program within the first two years of it, I owe them anywhere from $60,000 to $80,000. As a teacher, you're making anywhere between $32,000 to $40,000. And you're barely getting by in the Bay Area paying for your rent for your apartment. So if you think about it, at that moment, I wasn't doing well because I wasn't trained to take care of kids and their mental health issues because I wasn't a psychologist. I was someone who was taught how to teach people that were dyslexic or ADD or ADHD students. And the thing was that no one taught us this and no one taught us how to take care of ourselves. So at that time, I remember I was driving in my car and I felt so stuck because I tried to get out and Teacher America said, I couldn't leave if I did, I would owe them a significant amount of money and I would go in debt. And I remember when I was driving, like, okay, maybe I won't look in my side mirror because if I don't look in my side mirror, then I don't have to go to this program. I could get out and then maybe I can then find another way how to try to push for them to accept the idea of me leaving earlier from the program because I'm not doing well. And I mean, thankfully, no car hit me when I did do that. But the thing is, is that it was a realization moment. The fact that I was willing to lose my life because of debt was something that I could not believe happened. And I remember going to my parents and saying, I'm not mentally doing well. I've never felt this way before. And this was the first time I've ever heard the term burned out. It got so bad that there was no support. And when I went to approach them, they make me feel guilty for how I felt saying, don't you care about your kids? But the thing was that they kept using the term kids instead of students to remind us that by quitting, we're quitting all the people who are failing ourselves and them, and that no one's going to watch over them. And it's your fault. It was constantly your fault when in reality, they didn't teach us anything. And they were just putting in this program, fixing a basically a very, very broken school system with a bandaid that didn't help anyone. And I just remember just at that moment, I had to leave and I quit. And when I quit, I was, they then put a lawsuit against me forcing me to pay more than $10,000 for leaving for health reasons. And I, and those are the things that I want you to know, is that with burnout, when you leave unchecked, and you don't have support, it puts you into a really, really bad place where it can take you many, many months to sometimes years to get over and to get back to normal. So I just wanted to share that with you is that don't let burnout dictate your life. You got to invest in yourself when you know that something is wrong. Here are these symptoms here are the things that you can do. Okay, so let's go to the next thing. Another thing to remind yourself is that if you're feeling burned out, you should go see a doctor. And the reason for that is they should test you for your vitals. So for example, getting your blood checked, when you're feeling low in energy is probably a good thing because sometimes that's a sign of having low iron or low vitamin D. So I highly recommend you guys getting checked out on those kind of things. So do go see a doctor, get your vitals checked if you can, just to make sure that there's nothing else wrong. Because sometimes people that are burned out, low in energy, there's something else happening in their body. So remember mental health is totally connected to your body and so forth. So what is burnout? So burnout is a state of emotional, physical, mental exhaustion caused by an excessive prolonged stress. It occurs when you feel overwhelmed, emotionally drained, and unable to meet constant demands. Now, there is a quiz right there for you, the burnout index, which is wonderful. But I have to let you guys know that if you love your job and you love what you do chances are that quiz isn't going to work really well for you. It has to work better for those that are a little bit skeptical about whether or not they like their job or don't like their job. I highly recommend checking out. It's a good way to kind of check to see if you already there. Now the thing to note about COVID-19 I want to talk to you guys about is because even though burnout is something that us in the hacker community have dealt with before, COVID-19 with COVID-19 it puts on a whole different side where you have emotional burnout as well. So emotional burnout with COVID-19 these are usually the signs that you get. I don't know about you but what happened was that right when COVID-19 started coming about I didn't feel burned out at all before them but I started feeling a little bit I don't know how to describe it. It just I just didn't feel good in a sense. What happened was that I went to RSA conference in San Francisco this year and I decided just to be on the same side that I would stay at home and basically kind of just make sure that no one gets it in case if I carried it or anything like that and I was like okay 12th day I'm like all right I think I'm okay. That changed drastically. By the day 13 suddenly I felt like as if there was a hand on my chest just putting down pressure and I remember just like it just felt very weird and then I got really lethargic and I got headaches like body aches everywhere and I was just like okay this is weird how could I have gone this and I guess I got from RSA and everything like that but I remember having to try to call a doctor at that time because you couldn't get checked out unless you had a pre-existing condition which I did not fit those terms so I remember calling around asking to get tested and it it took three hours but no one really knew work for me to get it tested not even the doctors not even my insurance not even the emergency room at that time and I just remember just being like this is terrible we have nothing set up and at the point of being sick for like five days symptoms went away and then a couple days later a new symptom came in which was just this dry dry cough for about five weeks out and still at that time though was like I I kind of figured at that point like way before when I started in the symptoms of body aches and everything I was like okay I need to revisit my will and then other things I couldn't sleep because all I was thinking was like is there any chance that my parents got it and I'm pretty sure maybe some of you guys also haven't freaking out about someone else your loved ones getting this and it does keep you up at night and it's really hard because you're also having to work through the emotions with yourself it's not something like oh you can call a therapist because a lot of therapists right now are full and so it's really hard at this moment and you know I just want you guys to know you're not alone um and please wear a mask I cannot force that enough please wear a mask because it is not something you want to get and it's definitely something that you don't want to give to someone else even if you don't show any symptoms because it does sneak up on you like I said I didn't feel anything until the 12 13th day of nothing so please be careful by wearing mask and you know try to get your convince your friends and family and colleagues to also wear masks because I'm not kidding you it's not fun to go with it took about two and a half months to get back to normal so be careful with each other love each other and everything possible please wear a mask so let's go into the next thing so usually when we go to like how to prevent burnout usually people recommend you know exercise get it eat a balanced diet practice good sleep habits ask for help but the thing is is that the end of the day is that exercise is wonderful however your gyms are closed or maybe for you you can't really go walking around because your health is in jeopardy so I do recommend like you know listen to music find some other ways to find exercise there's plenty of youtube videos to try to do that eating a balanced diet is also very hard when you're burned out because the remember when I said when you're stressed you're going to probably stress eat so you're going to go for like the salty sweet things or you might not even want to eat like you have you don't crave any food and that does happen so you want to do is kind of keep kind of a record of how much calories you're taking in and making sure you hit your correct amount of calories and I hate tracking calories and you shouldn't have to do that but if you're one of those people that like you're you're really struggling to eat do keep a basically track of your calories making sure you've hit it at least because when you have low calories you're more susceptible to having a lower immune system so it's really smart to like try to make sure that you're eating proper amount of calories but also make sure that it's healthy we know what's healthy right it's not candy or junk food so just remember that practice good sleep happens it's very hard because like I said earlier is that dealing with COVID-19 the fears of losing someone or you giving to someone and they die it's it's something that's really hard or not knowing when things are going to change because humans were kind of silly in some ways because we we feel like we could pretty much predict every day we can predict that we can go on a vacation about three four months nothing's going to happen the thoughts don't even cross our mind but now we're in a situation where we don't even know what's going to happen the next day and because of that that can cause us to have insomnia it can make us even feel more stressed out more anxious it can also cause episodic depression as well so it's really important to try to remember is to try to stay as happy as possible during this hard time and there are ways how to do it one trick that I do is I think of three things I'm grateful for first thing in the morning and when I go to bed and switch up don't do the same ones um but that really does help because it reminds you that you have something that's good in your life and that's the thing that we need to be reminded of more today than ever before because it seems like the world's on fire asking for help is something I can still do no matter what which is great all right so let's dive into first is self-awareness so the difference between stress and you know burnout is there's two different things and I like to use this example often when you're stressed out you're like okay I'll feel better if I take a bubble bath or I'll feel better if I do some yoga or I'll feel better if I have that glass of wine when you're burned out you can do all those things and more and you still don't feel any different so that's the difference now self-awareness is the hardest part the good news is that you now know of the term burnout which is great because by knowing what the word is and the symptoms you're able to kind of have a better idea if you're entering that zone so the ones I tend to find most often is when I'm doing my inbox if it takes me longer than 10 minutes to respond to an email and I'm not busy that's that's a sign no matter how much hours of sleep I get um that's a sign when I'm drinking more caffeine that's a sign and when I decide I want to have another glass of wine or a couple more that's a sign um these are all types of signs that you can realize and from all those previous examples the other thing is knowing that your emotions feel kind of all over the place a little bit but it's really important is to try to identify if you're feeling trapped or you feel overwhelmed that's going to be the first step because once you have that self-awareness that you're entering into a burnout phase you start realizing immediately that these are the preventive ways that you can do and prevent it also there are ways how to reduce it significantly and fast so the first thing I always tell people is to journal because the thing is is that we're not able sometimes to listen what's going on in our own head in our own body and how we're feeling deep down inside because let's be real um we are kind of at a point where when we're not feeling well we put on the tv or we listen to music or we um go on social media or we do those kind of things or read a book the thing is we're constantly escaping from what's knowing what's actually happening on in here um so journaling is really good and I recommend doing it by hand because it's something about is a little bit more therapeutic versus typing if you can um so here you get to see my my journal um little friends of course um but what I do is I tend to journal at least once a week um and I don't have any music playing I need to have my own space to do so and usually it's one the pups are sleeping to be honest um but journaling is really good because what happens is that when you write in there and you go back in your previous pages you'll find trends and patterns and we love trends and patterns right in infosec and so when you're able to pick up on those trends and patterns you're able then to realize you have a situation and you need to deal with um one of the things that I realized when I was dealing with burnout or felt like I was getting close to burnout I kept seeing the term trapped or felt like yeah pretty much it was the word trap that kept showing up in a couple of them and so I realized okay I need to I need to do something about that so it's really important as the journal you recall the diary whatever whatever works for you okay the thing is that this is a time where you need to know what's going on emotionally for you especially if you can't see a therapist at this time um at least keeping some sort of record with yourself and I do recommend um trying to do it daily if you can if not weekly it's really fine um on that front now the other thing that I tend to do is I do a break I take a break from infosec at least once a week for one day a week I take a break from my devices so phones off computers off and I will do anything that's not infosec related if that means volunteering that means volunteering if that means um going for a hike for the day that means going for a hike for the day if that means visiting family that means visiting family or if you ever wanted to learn how to paint or draw this is the perfect time to do so but taking one day off from infosec is really really important for you to start trying to get that balance and to keep that balance there um and if you are one of those people that you can't stay away from your devices in case of loved ones contact you or whatnot that's okay one of the things that I tend to do is that I will let them know that I'm going to be taking a break between these hours and in case of emergency that you reach me this is where they can contact me um it's really important to do that to let them know so then they're not worried about you at this time um but doing it every week is really good even if it's just for four hours still it's very good because you want to do preventative and yes you have to take a break from infosec twitter okay I know it's hard believe me it is hard but you have to do it once a week and no I don't mean you have to throw your phone on the ground or whatnot don't be silly even though there's times where I read something on twitter and I'm just like are you kidding me but anyway the other thing to do besides dirling is to keep a to-do list so I have I have a to-do list and basically what I do is that I write down everything that I need to do um any tasks that I need to be on top of um and I write it down and this could be personal stuff this could be work stuff but the thing is I take this list everywhere I go in the house um also if I was on the road I'd take it on the road the reason for that is because it kind of empties out space in your heads you're able to think about other things and be kind of more connected to have that self-awareness of what you're what you're going through um so it's really therapeutic to write down all these things so you feel like you have more space in your head it unclutters it um it's also really good if you are someone who struggles to sleep at night having a to-do list is going to be really helpful for you once again it's something that has to be written um by hand and there's a reason for that because sometimes we have a to-do list on our phones and or on our laptops and that's great and everything but the thing is is you know when you're about to fall asleep and you're like okay I'm going to go to sleep and then recently you're like oh my god I forgot to send that email or oh that was such a great idea I need it I need to like ah and then just keep thinking about it over and over and over and this is the reason why it's harder for you to fall asleep so one thing to do is have a to-do list so have it by your bed in case and you know a middle night you wake up like oh my god I forgot to do something just write it down and you'll do it in the morning review that list in the morning too when you're ready um that means you know when you're drinking your coffee or your tea or afterwards whenever you feel like you're in that space to remember what you need to do but it's very good because when I first started I was very very overly anxious thinking that this is going to be hard because it is overwhelming when you see that list but think about this when I first started it was five pages long usually and that's when I realized I got to fix something about myself and also I need to fix my situation that I'm in um so now it's at one page so it's always at one page now and that's the thing is just be on top of it and plus it feels really good to cross out things you're just like yes um so I really recommend this plus your memory might not be so great sometimes so it's really good to remember that way now be a good manager is one of those things I like to tell people because um if you're a bad manager you're going to make your people feel terrible too what that means is you should be doing everything possible to understand mental health is an issue even if it looks invisible and if you're wondering what you mean by invisible for example if I had a broken arm I would have a cast on you would see you have a broken arm and you would understand that there's something wrong the thing is the mental health is it's not visible usually and because it's not visible um they think that you are making it up sometimes or they just don't consider it as a high priority versus because they can't see it and so that is one of the issues is with mental health and for officers to take it seriously is because it's invisible it's an invisible danger and so the thing is also to note about the invisible danger I'm very glad that COVID-19 is forcing companies to finally recognize mental health and especially burnout if you're a good manager what you should do is make sure you give one mental health break day per month and I asked to do it on a Friday or Monday there's a reason for that um it gives them a chance to have a three-day weekend because we love three-day weekends it's a good time for us to you know catch up on all the things you want to so doing something like that's really beneficial to your employees is giving one day off per a month for everyone and you can call these like self-worth days or something I don't know you can figure something out but basically you give an option saying you can either do anything that will help you in your career or you can take the day off to relax and recharge that's really good the other thing is having one-on-ones weekly with your with your employees about 15 minutes to 20 minutes per week should be good enough it's a good time to visit all the things that you have to do all the assignments and work with your manager to prioritize which things are more more of the things that need to get done or put more attention to so it helps with prioritization but also is a good note to know how the employee is doing um with burnout and all that this is also a good way to note also if if your employee isn't responding to emails as fast as usual um and they seem a little bit different emotionally on a phone call or something like that this might be a good time to remind them like you know you can take time off if you need to take time off um it's important for you to do that and the thing that you can do is to may enforce a no meetings day policy per week so every week at a certain day no one can book meetings on that day for anyone on the team so this is a day kind of like to catch up on anything or to focus on certain things that you need to get focused on so no meetings so you're able to focus on whatever you need to get down for that week it's really beneficial so those are some good tips I have for you and also just be a good person um if you do have an employee that comes to you saying I'm not doing so well emotionally I need to take some time off don't discourage it don't guilt them into you well what about your team that's not your response that's not the right response to do the right response is to be like okay what days in the next one to two weeks work best for you and to remember that if the person needs to take a break you don't have to always you know let them tell you why they need to if if they need to otherwise don't ask right now this time because chances are it's emotional thing I think that's really important is to remember try to remind your uh your employees that it's okay for them to take a break they need to so now we're going to talk about how to bounce back those are all preventative things that you can do if you're starting to feel like your game burn out or you want to avoid burnout now we're going to talk about what to do if you're already burned out you gotta take time off I hate to break it to you but you had to take time off that means you have to take um at least three business days off to recharge your batteries how bad it is that means like a whole week um and the reason I say three business days is because you want to take it near your weekend so you actually get five days off right um it's really important for you to get the time off that you need to recharge and I know that we tend to feel guilty about taking time off because our team members need us and all that but let me remind you is that when you are burned out you're not 100% you you're not even close to the percentage of usual you and because of that taking time off is really important because you need to recharge your battery so you can go back to being who you usually are and this is good for your team taking time off is so important on this and other things I know that we stress as like well I'm going to come back with so many things and it's going to be overwhelming I'm going to give you some tricks so the first trick I have for you is to make sure that when you have your in at like out of office message put it as your date two days later than what you're actually returning so for example if I'm returning on the 14th I'm gonna let people know that I'm coming back on the 16th this gives me two days of having to like respond to emails the other thing that you should do is put a hold on your calendar for the first two days that you're back so no meetings at all just block it so then you're able to catch up on everything if you could use two days great if only one day just do it it's going to help you so then you're able to bounce back I did take my first vacation ever for one week in the past two and a half years and I made sure to block that and it worked really real well because I did return to like I think it was it was definitely over a thousand emails but it was definitely stressed a lot I came back but I also felt better so I was able to respond a lot faster when you do come back though I do recommend in the afternoon on your first day back is to message your teammates and ask if there's anything that is urgent that needs to be done so you're able to kind of prioritize and get everything done and also you don't get lost in your inbox it's also important to let people know is to ccu in everything and to keep it online communication channel meaning if you have something that I need to be aware of keep it via email don't do it by slack because having multiple places to check for communication around things while you're gone is really stressful for everyone because things are you're probably not going to catch that it's going to be too much because there's just so much different types of communication so just keep one long email chain for each thing also having a project management system is going to really important to to help you be able to prioritize and know what is on your plate now before you take the time off just note for the first few days or that week before you will probably have to work a little bit extra to make sure that you have that zero inbox if you can but also to be on top of any assignments that are kind of needed to be done within the week those are my tips that I have for taking time off also learning to you say no so when I had that to-do list the first time there was five pages long I realized I had to learn how to say no because constantly over juggling every different thing is very exhausting so it's really important to learn when's a good time to go on something new when is not I know that sometimes when we have a job or whatnot we need to accept assignments but if it's not part of your job you do not need to accept those assignments and if they give you problems with that let me tell you how you do this keep an email chain keeping your your like a paper trail of all the emails is really important and I do recommend that also when you tell your manager you need to take time off send out a quick email saying thanks for me with me and talking to me about this I will I really appreciate that and I'll take off these days you want to keep a record of all your conversations if you definitely have a terrible workplace because this will protect you in case HR needs to get involved for you to be like what are you talking about you knew about my issue here's the paper trail here you go also whenever someone puts a task under you that's not part of your job remind them politely hey I already have too many things and this is not usually part of my job I recommend you reaching out to this person instead so hopefully that person is your manager so you have to learn to say no and it is hard if you're a high performer because the chances are if you're a high performer they're gonna be like oh great you got that deck here some more stuff for you it's a great reward right so just keep that in mind I will definitely also share with you is that if you're someone who feels like you know there's no one on the team that looks like you or or acts like you on your team that there's a part of you that feels like you don't belong and you constantly have to prove over and over that you belong to be there you're gonna get a little bit more burned out because chances are they're gonna always see you as kind of someone else and if you're wondering what do you mean by that okay so I had one of my jobs I was you know a marketing manager or whatnot but every time we go into a meeting the executives returned to me and said Chloe you got that you got the notes down and I remember just being like why am I taking down notes and like oh can you go get a glass of water for me oh can you give me a cup of coffee for me and the thing was that I kept doing those things because I knew that I could lose my job if I didn't or if I caused a problem because they were already seeing me as that woman who causes problems if I were to speak out so if you're in that situation please note that there are plenty of companies out there that will allow to have you and you should not be working there and what I meant on that one is like some of us we deal with we have to be perfect because we're we're gonna lose our job so we accept whatever treatment we accept the extra job duty it's on top of a job that isn't supposed to have anything to do with those things we're conflict on being bombarding with projects from our teamwork I mean our team basically our team members we constantly have to accept it because if we don't we're really we're gonna lose our job and that's a real fear especially right now with the economic situation we're constantly like I have to do whatever I can to keep my job I have to do everything I can to keep my job because there are hardly any jobs out there and I can't afford that right now I have to make sure I take care of someone at this time I can't handle all this I have to do whatever I can please know you're an infosec there is definitely a shortage of personnel and there are definitely openings out there and if you're looking for a role DEF CON is the place once again to look for that there's plenty of us that have connections that can help you get in the door you should not be putting up with that and if you have that fear of losing your job all the time that means you're not working in a good collaborative environment or you have a really bad manager and which is the case we need to talk about you need to start learning how to invest in yourself one of the things about burnout is that when we're not balancing our work and personal life it also means that we're not investing in ourselves we're not taking care of our needs and that's a really scary thing because if we're constantly doing everything we can then backwards for our team members or for our families our friends the thing is is that you're giving so much that you forgot to take care of you and right now you need to invest in yourself because clearly you already are in burn to out at that point so it's really important to invest in yourself take some time for yourself daily um put limits to different if you need to call someone be like okay i can talk for like this in this time um but i need to take a i need to make sure that i get off the fun at this time for personal reasons then just let the person know ahead of time about that um it's really important that we start really respecting other people at least saying like i can't talk right now or like i need to take a break respect that at this time because chances are they're trying to figure out how to reinvest in themselves and your manager should invest in yourself so if you have a manager that isn't investing in you i want to just also look you know about that is that a good manager wants you to thrive they want to see you go be on them and if you don't have that type of manager it's time to look elsewhere and you can still work at the same job but also look on the side reach out to some recruiters they're always looking to help people find something and also people in the community and infosec twitter it actually helps out quite a bit the main takeaway from this i hope you have is when you feel overwhelmed do a device detox remember you want to do more than four hours per week get away from infosec once a week do other things when you feel overwhelmed invest in yourself that means do something that's going to make you feel happy and better because the chances are you're feeling burned out or you're getting close to being burned out is because you're not taking time for you when you feel overwhelmed ask for help infosec twitter is an amazing place to ask for help def con is a wonderful place to ask for help um mental health hackers is a wonderful place to ask for help um the thing is is like the community i wouldn't be where i am today if i didn't ask for help and so that's really important to know is that the community has your back they're there to support you so ask for the help it's okay and i know it's scary to ask for help sometimes but just do it because they're there for you too when you feel overwhelmed write it down remember to have a to-do list through your journaling this is going to be really helpful for you do it by hand and paper please don't do your computer or your phone or whatnot like that because that is not going to help you at all because what happens is that when i pick up my phone i'm like i'm going to get this email done i'm going to go to another app and then another one and then another one next thing i know it's been an hour when i was only playing you spend maybe like five or ten minutes on my phone so the thing is make sure you do that when you feel overwhelmed take a break remember if you are starting to feel like you're getting burned at or you are in burned out make sure that you take at least three business days off also making sure that you take a weekly day off for that device detox that also means getting away from social media and when i just want to put out here beforehand if you're going to take time off for work that means you got to get off of social media and infosec twitter that means you need to get off your devices too so how burnout works when you want to get back to normal you actually have to take those days off as if you are doing a huge device detox i've done it it works like a charm let me tell you two days of just a device detox and i felt 100% almost better so i really do recommend it when you feel overwhelmed put yourself first and i want to really let you guys know about this is that when you're not taking care of yourself you cannot be there for others when you're mentally not well you cannot be mentally there to support someone else that's why it's important if you care about the person that you're trying to be there for you also need to keep yourself in check and have that self-awareness and do whatever is needed to make you feel happy and if you're wondering i don't know what makes me happy anymore these days right um i'm all about writing i do a t chart so basically a t chart like this and i have one column that is things that i love about infosec things that i love outside of infosec and then i look over it and see what are the things that i'm doing what are the things i'm not doing and the things that used to make me happy i try to do those things all over or i try to learn something new because there's plenty of things to do out there i mean youtube google it's all there you can find out anything and learn how to do anything these days when you feel overwhelmed know that you're not alone i really want to push this forward it's so important for you guys to know that you are not alone i there has been one part in my career well i felt very isolated from everyone because i didn't know twitter infosec really existed yet because it was in my first year in infosec but i remember feeling very isolated alone and wanting to leave infosec permanently because i didn't know that there was such a great community here that has each other's back and when i did find that community oh my god i it was like as if um i've seen everything like black and white and gray shades and everything and then suddenly became something like hd in color the thing is is that there are so many great organizations here and everyone has their back at the end of the day there are a lot more good people in the world than bad people and i try to remind that quite often most importantly though how you can tell if you're if you're burned out is always ask the questions am i balancing my working personal life if not take the steps to fix it if that means that you only have you have two devices so for example um having two different phones one for work one for personal life i highly do recommend if you can do that um because what you can do is stay away from your personal device and then during the times that you usually work you only have your work device near you and in when you're done with work for the day take a one hour kind of like break to yourself do whatever you need to do um and then go on your personal device and you know take your calls you know text and do all that um i do this so i separate my personal life from our work life it's really good to try to separate the two because it does help with understanding how much balancing i'm doing you know make sure you're doing kind of more of personal hours or same amount of personal hours as your work and i just want to let you guys i did have burnout i've had burnout a few times you can definitely get back to normal um with your break it's just important is that to remember these preventive like techniques and whatnot and also if you're already burnt out now you know what to do and if you need any help i'm here for you i'm also here to do q and a for you and everything and also i ask for one favor from all of you guys if you guys can take a quick screenshot copy of this page you don't know you might be helping or saving someone else's life by simply just sharing this it's good for you to have this wherever you go um have it on your phone have it on your computer whatnot send it to your loved one so then they're aware that they have this because maybe they don't need it but maybe someone that they know are talking to you they now know these these are really important resources to have um especially at this time this was a list per basically provided from the cdc so please go ahead and use it and last but not least i just want to also let you guys know um a lot of questions i tend to get are about drinking how much is drinking um it's okay how much is not okay um and i do recommend doing the following things which is don't ever drink by yourself um meaning have a virtual one-on-one or be on the phone with someone else who's having to drink with you never drink by yourself set certain days as the day that you can drink and never go past two drinks for that day um don't drink of course during any time of work hours but do it in the like late afternoon or evening it's okay so please remember um that's how you practice good drinking habits if you want to drink um definitely on that front and just remember if you're drinking or you have the urge to drink a lot more and it maybe it's a time for you to look for help um or to tell someone about that because this is i know it's a hard time right now but drinking is not going to solve that for you if anything it's going to make you feel worse especially if you are burned out i hate to break it to you but alcohol is just going to make you feel 10 times worse afterwards because you have this drop um you experience a drop of and sometimes you get experiencing like this kind of like depression symptoms so i really recommend you not doing that anyway i just want to say thank you guys for existing um if you have any questions at all feel free to reach out to me i am here i'm also here take any live q and a um i'm gonna turn off my slides so then um i can you guys can i don't know we'll we'll just i'll turn off my slides now hold it