 Here we are in the in the middle of of just the madness and the flurry of activity Trying to find time to talk about burnout and the irony being that we had scheduling confusion About the meeting itself and we're rushed to finish within the time we have so it seems absolutely Perfect, but I actually want to start with a really easy question, which is what is burning? I? would say that burnout is it's an experience of Kind of a range of kinds of exhaustion that pile on top of each other, so it's physical It's emotional psychological and it happens when People are operating at a capacity at a very high capacity Over an extended period of time, and I think it's exacerbated by things like uncertainty and stress and Ambiguity so all of those are things that of course are in Happening in spades right now The phenomenon of burnout I think is most insidious because oftentimes you don't know when you've crossed over from Super adrenaline fueled productivity to oh my goodness burnout Have you experienced it and have you were you aware when you crossed the line or when you've seen it in your staff? Yeah, so I absolutely have experienced burnout I think it's interestingly because of the prolonged nature of what we're going through right now I feel like I feel it kind of come and go and it's often and I've heard this from from many colleagues that it's it can be kind of unexpected when you find yourself there and It's not necessarily it can be sustained it can happen I think the experience and the feeling of burnout which which shows up often as struggling to Kind of find energy and find creativity and the things that I think many of us in higher ed Really Pride ourself on bringing to our work So if you know you've crossed over into burnout or you your staff are Exhibiting symptoms of burnout. What do you do or what do you do for those who work for you? There are so many things that we can do at work that help people have a healthier experience of their Entire lives right of our days our nights our weekends and so I think that first of all It's really important that we acknowledge that that people feel comfortable and we make a point of talking about the fact that Burnout is something real that people are experiencing We're really trying to structure some of our work differently So thinking this to me is a year where we have to think differently about what our goals are really? What is most important to accomplish in our community and how do we do that work while taking care of ourselves in each other? We have something we use called that didn't do it list So we're actually capturing and sharing publicly with each other the things that we've determined We're not doing right now, which I think is helpful. It creates a sense of permission around not doing everything So I think we've actually adjusted our annual goals to reflect the fact that people should not be aiming to Deliver on four to six primary goals over the course of the year But maybe more like two or three goals. We've shifted what are typically professional development goals into What we're calling personal care. So how are we thinking about taking care of ourselves in each other? So so I think in part it's being explicit about the fact that this is a real intense Factor overwhelm and stress exhaustion fear. Those are, you know, financial insecurity The impact right now too of the really important conversations around racial injustice These things are all adding intensity and stress and and struggle to our days at home and at work Is there a element of this where supervisors might be great about caring for their staff? But they don't put on their oxygen mask first and they and they violate that rule on and taking care of themselves Absolutely. I mean, I think I think that's very common and I think it also It can muddle the message right because what we what we hear others saying that we should do Is hard to believe if we don't see people doing that too I really feel like we should be creating spaces to have some conversations around how what burnout looks like Right now this year and how we how we are going to really what aside from kind of all the pat lists of things I can suggest How do we really need to think about this differently and what can we do and then also how how can Maybe some of the changes that we're we're making or that we are being pressured to make to create more sustainable work Lives, how are those things that could help shift some of our long-term models for how we work and how we relate to the amount of work that we're trying to do Thank you for making time during your own Wild wild period of trying to get everything done and spinning plates and juggling and all of that It means a lot to me that you took time to chat with our community about burnout and what can be done about burnout And I suppose now we both need to get back to work Yes, absolutely. Thanks for having me. It was great to talk to you, John