 Hello everyone. Welcome to the now 12-13 talk on Stage A on Burnout and your Meek computer. It is about to be given by Jessica Rose, technical manager at FutureLearn, host of the Pursuit podcast and running karaoke here at camp. But before we dive into this talk, just a brief little reminder that we could use more volunteers. You could be the awesome person up here having technical difficulties. Or doing something else and having tons and tons of fun. Please go to the website and sign up and volunteer and help make EFMF an absolutely incredible experience. Thank you so much. Good morning, love. Oh my. Hello. It is not even remotely morning. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm so excited to be here with you today. And I'm going to be talking to you about burnout. I'm going to be talking to you about burnout while extremely burned out. So this is going to feel a little bit like bad performance art. This is going to feel a little bit like performance art. Just to get things started, I was going to introduce myself, even though I've gotten a fantastic intro from RMC. My name is Jessica Rose. I do get to manage some fantastic engineers over at FutureLearn. But I also travel and give talks and I do this podcast and I do this other stuff. I do too much all the time and everything is just fine. But some of you, especially some of you who came to this for that really hands on great stuff was like just because we're on a first name basis, you say, yes, that's great. You're going to talk about burnout. I've opted into this talk. But really, why are you bringing a talk about burnout to EMF? We're going to be making things and breaking things. Why should I care about my brain? I hope you care about your brain because it's part of you. Your brain is absolutely magical and your brain is going to keep you from making cool stuff or breaking cool stuff. Your brain is this teeny, it's so small. It's a tiny wet bag of meat soaked in chemicals and you keep it trapped in a bone prison. Your brain gives you everything you've ever loved, everything you've ever feared. That weird thing that happened in middle school that wakes you up at three in the morning. That's your brain. Your brain is fantastic. Your brain is mundane. Your brain is beautiful and your brain is so, so fragile and easy to break. I'm going to be talking to you today about occupational burnout, a way to break your brain and hopefully some ways to not break your brain. So I'm in technology, but I'm absolutely obsessed with cognitive psychology and cognitive psychology sort of became a thing in the 60s where people started studying the brain and studying the brain's processes as though they were computers. They say, wow, we've got these computers. They're so modern. They fill a room. They're the future. Let's look at our brains as though there are these computers. And there are two big concepts I want to talk to you about today. The first one should feel really familiar to most of us. Working memory is the cognitive psychology concept of sort of how much working memory we have. It's how big a hard drive you've got, but wet bag of meat terms. It's the space you've got to work with right now. Whereas cognitive load is how much of that working memory you've got taken up right now. And you might think, well, I'm not thinking about that much. I'm not doing that much now. I'm just watching a talk. The cool thing about cognitive load is it's not just the very conscious thoughts on your mind right now. It's that email in your inbox you've been ignoring. It's that brown letter from HMRC. It's that, oh my God, did I lock the door? Every single process running in the background fills up part of your cognitive load. And to make this more challenging, the amount of working memory you have changes all the time. If you're a bright, happy, young 20-something and you didn't drink last night and you've got a great night's sleep, you might have this giant beaker of capacity. You might be ready to go. You say, wow, I have all of this glorious working memory to fill with processes. If you're my age and you were up drinking last night, maybe you were at the karaoke tent. Maybe we're still that little guy around noon today. But it's not just about how you feel right now. Age, impairment, injury, burnout can all change the amount of energy you have. So as this is an all ages show, I got to take all of the swears out of this talk. So I thought I would swap by drinking on stage instead. We're okay with the idea that this is sort of like the conceptual amount of that tiny beaker, right? We're a long way from home, most of us, right? Okay, I got to get back. I eventually have to get back. Sunday, Monday, I'm going to have to take a train back and, oh my God, I have to go to work. Oh, is that meeting still on? Oh my God, one of my reports needs a new computer. And it just goes and goes. You get every single thing that you're concerned about until you hit the top. The really, really crappy thing about emptying your working memory is you don't get to just drink bubbles on stage. You need to clear these things. You need to get rid of stuff that you're thinking about. I want everyone here to not think about axolotls. Don't think about salamanders at all. Oh, everybody's fine, right? You've consciously willed yourself to clear that from your plate. Perfect. So we've talked about these two big cognitive psychology idea. We've got working memory and cognitive process. What's burnout? So occupational burnout has been a concept since the 70s. And occupational burnout is just exhaustion. It's both physical and mental exhaustion. And it's exhaustion that you get from doing too much. People find themselves burned out when they find themselves facing protracted, ongoing stress that they feel is inescapable. So it might not be that you're working very, very hard. I imagine all of you today are working very hard. Yes. I mean, this is being live stream, y'all fake it like you all work very hard. Yes. There's somebody at the back just going, no, I'm not going to comply. If that stress feels inescapable, if it feels like you can't get away from it, it can make things worse. Even if you're not working hard, if you're in a toxic environment, if you're in a toxic home environment, that's still stress that can contribute towards burnout. It's not just doing too much. It's doing too much that hurts you. The best thing about burnout, the most exciting thing about burnout, the most wonderful thing about burnout is it's absolutely terrible. It's symptoms mirror classical symptoms of depression. And as an added bonus, occupational burnout can trigger full bone depression, even in folks who don't have a history or propensity for it. For folks watching on the live stream, we just got to, I guess folks who are really into psychology going, yay. Or like folks who are not very into the human condition. So you say, yes, that's fantastic because we're on a first name basis. We've drank together. How do I know if I'm burned out? And we're all very cool. Most of us are adults. We're not going to raise our hands. Please look visibly distressed. And I understand that we all live in Britain. Most of us live in Britain. It's 2018. This has sort of become the standard. Maybe up that a little more. Look visibly upset. Instead of raising your hand something like this. If these points apply to you. Hey, my loves, my doves, my darlings, have you become cynical or critical at work? Like don't raise your hands for the folks on the live stream. There's somebody up in the front row jazz hands and get over there. Do you just drag yourself to work? And then once you're there, you're like, Oh, come on. Have you become irritable or impatient with humans? Become like if you started that way, that's not on me. Do you lack the energy to be consistently productive? Like the people who wrote this, I got a little bit of suspicion because consistently productive sounds very sort of Horatio Alger work yourself out of debt kind of thing. But who lacks the energy to be consistently productive? You're not able to see yourself in your successes. Are you not able to feel good about the stuff that does get done? Oh, no. Do you feel disillusioned about your job? For folks on the live stream, that was a loud drawn out moan. Have you, my dear audience or my dear listener, have you been using booze, food, snacks, escapes to stop feeling or to feel something different? This live stream is gonna look so weird because there's tons of people just going, yeah, booze and food, or drugs as well, like you do you. Have your sleep habits or appetite markedly changed? Aside from camping? Are you troubled by unexplained headaches, back aches, insomnia? Some of this is just getting old, but like unrelated to age this stuff. Cool. So you've kept a very, very careful tally because I'm not counting for you. You say, Well, you know, Jess, I only got four of those. So I feel like I'm completely fine. I got some real exciting news. This survey was developed by the Mayo Clinic. And if you've answered one of these or more, you may be suffering from occupational burnout. We haven't miked the audience. So it's just gonna look like I'm just like really suspicious of y'all over here. Say, Okay, all of that sucks. Good job. How do I fix it? The one thing I would warn is I am not a therapist. I'm not a doctor. And I'm especially not your doctor. I would have you drink and then sleep it off. In real life. I like officially not a doctor. Please, please, if you are suffering from anything that feels like this, immediately talk to your doctor, go and see your GP. We for those of you in the UK, like enjoy the NHS while we have it, go and speak to a medical professional. The one thing I would warn is that recovering from burnout is going to take a long time. I burned out spectacularly a year ago. And I'm still drinking and swearing on stage like give yourself the time and the patience to sort of ease into it. And I'm gonna break these two sets of tips down into two different things. So anybody here who here is burned out and you've got time and you could just afford to take a big chunk of time off work. Fab, I have no idea what to say to you people like, take some time off work, go, I don't know ride your horses or whatever rich people do like, I genuinely don't know what rich people do. If you could take a giant chunk of time off work, just like seriously, go do whatever weird thing makes you happy. Like, it's not that I don't care. It's just that your problems aren't actually that bad. You got horses for God's sake, just go. If you're not super rich, and you can't take a huge chunk of time off work to recover. There are a couple little things you can do. If you can't stop doing that thing, if you can't leave your job, if you can't leave the family life that's hurting you, if you can't remove that inescapable stressor, let's look at small things you can do. Please do less in ways that aren't going to damage your life. I want you to do emotional energy triage. Oh, wow, I've got a list of all of these things to do that are destroying me. Which of these things can you put off? Or which of these things can you ignore without damaging your life? You probably got to pay rent. I bet you got to pay your taxes. Please eat food and please shower. But like outside of that, what can you just sort of push under the duvet for a little while? If you've got either the cash on hand, or the social capital, start outsourcing some of the stuff that exhausts you. Outsourcing doesn't just have to be something you do with cash. This Christmas I got my husband who better be in this damn talk. To do all of the Christmas shopping and all of the holiday things. Just taking someone that you love, I hope, or who cares about you, I hope, and getting them to share the load a little bit more, redistributing some of that work can be an incredible way to sort of give yourself a little bit more emotional space. Everybody repeat after me and say no. Hey, can you do that thing? No. It feels... There's very clearly like a small pocket of glorious contrarians over here. Saying no is fantastic. A lot of people I see burn themselves out or become burned out. Whether or not we want a passive or active voice that. They do it because they're helping so many people. They're helping people do things. They're saying yes to other things. They're helping people and they're doing such a good job and it's wonderful and oh God if I say no, I'm going to be a bad person. What will they do without me? It's so good to help people. But you can't help people if you destroy yourself. You really need your meat computer to be, yeah, not on fire right now. If you are burning yourself out by doing too much and helping other people too much, I'm going to beg you, plead with you, fuss at you kindly to put on your own safety mask before helping others. Yeah, you can't really do much for other people if you've destroyed yourself. Selectively emotionally invest. This is my favorite thing. I've only recently learned how to do it and it's like absolutely cracking the code to something glorious. And when I say selectively emotionally invest, I mean something really specific. But as we've already mentioned, this is an all ages talk. Does anybody know what mom swears are? Oh heck. So mom swears are when you really want to say the thing but you don't want to teach small people to say the thing. When I talk about selective emotional investment, I'm talking to you about sitting down and counting out how many hex. You've got left in your inventory. And those hex, they're yours. You only got somebody left. You're only going to pass them out when you genuinely care. If somebody comes up to you says, Hey, hey, Jess, we're all on first name basis. I've got this ridiculous thing and I need you to do it now. And it's got a lot of urgency. I'll say, Wow, that sounds like a terrible problem that I have no emotional connection to. I really hope that works out for you. And it ties right in there with saying, No, it feels really gross the first couple of times. But then as the last fragments of your soul slip away, it feels so good. Because you do have to be nice. If you want to outsource, if you want people to help you, you probably need to keep some of your social contacts going. So maybe don't say the, Wow, that sounds like your problem. Say it inside. Ask for help when you can. When you're burned out, it can feel like you're drowning. It can feel like there's nothing left for you to hold on to. Don't come to someone and say, Hi, here's the problem that is my whole life. Please. And thank you. Please fix it. That's not super actionable, but saying, Hey, I need a little bit more time at work. I need longer weekends. I need a break around the house. Selectively asking for help can really give you a little tiny bit more room if you don't have the cash and if you don't have the horses to take a proper rich person break. Recharge the whole point behind trying to recover from burnout is trying to give yourself a break from those intense, inescapable feelings of stress. If you're super into board game, is there board games here? Do you must today? Apparently those, those two people are board games. Read, go running, do the things that legitimately feel good to you. It'll feel like escapism at first, but you've earned yourself a little bit of an escape. I think one of the most important things here is to start to practice forgiveness specifically for yourself. When we talked about ways to detect burnout, one of the big ones was you're unable to see your own successes. Folks who get burned out, it feels like depression. It is often depression. You don't feel good about yourself. You're hurting yourself with more work. Everything's terrible. And it's an inescapable loop of me not swearing on stage. Hi, cute little kid. Get patient with yourself, forgive yourself. You're going to screw up, but you're caring a lot more about your mistakes than you usually would. Forgive yourself. It's okay. Statistically, everything's probably on an individual and small scale. Okay. Globally, that's not on you. Medium term for yourself, try not to be a jerk. You're exhausted. You can't do the emotional energy of like helping other people and fixing their lives. But man, you're going to be burned out for a while. You're going to need some friends along the way. Try not to hurt yourself by lashing out at yourself. And try not to hurt other people. It's a really fantastic opportunity to look around you and see what people in your life maybe aren't contributing in positive ways. But the folks who are there, the folks who are helping, be good to them with the energy you do have. So for burnout, please, please, please, if you can, do less. Reduce whatever stressors you can. This is not an invitation for murder. This is not an arson thing. Dramatically reduce your stressors without doing crimes. And take the energy you have and invest that really selectively. So this talk has been an incredible downer so far. Say, hey, burn out something. You could break your brain. If you break it, it's broken a long time. But I want to stop for a second and tell you a short story and maybe suggest that being burned out can give you some magic powers. So for a really quick detour, I'm going to tell you about the weird magical superpowers I got from being extremely burned out. I get to give a lot of talks, strongly recommend talks. You can do essentially whatever you want. You can get them to bring you booze on stage, like please see me after class if you want to get into public speaking. But I was in an event last year when I was very burned out and I had a contact. Somebody I'd met once or twice came up and said, yes, how are you doing? Oh, wow, I didn't know you were pregnant. But back in the day, before I got burned out, I might have been really upset. I'd be like, oh my god, like, did I get fat? Is it this dress? Oh, man, should I not be on stage? What am I doing? But like, burn out Jess does not care about any of that. So instead of freaking out, instead of getting flustered, burn out Jess was just like, oh, anybody who wants a hack for punishing other people in social situations. Oh, all of you Britishers, you will love this. If somebody says something that is just beyond the pale, look at them with a completely neutral expression and stay quiet for at least three seconds. I didn't know you were pregnant. This kid doubled down. Like, because you can repeat that pause, it is devastating. Oh, no, I suppose it just happens with age, you know? And eventually this talk is going to get around and they're going to see this and they're just going to go, this talk is better with swears. My suggestion is that if you do wind up burned out, that glorious recovery zone gives you the incredible opportunity to get on stage if you're afraid of it, drink obnoxious fruity booze while doing something professional and just not giving the hex when you don't have them to pass out. Even if you are burned out, even if everything's terrible, even if it's going to be terrible for a while for a year, for however long it takes you to save up for those horses, I want you to be gloriously forgiving to your brain. Even when it's a little bit broken, it still loves you. Thank you very much. I've got time for a couple of questions from the audience, so I'm going to throw this blue cube back and hopefully it will work. It actually works. Mine's not a question but I'm going to give it to my friend after quickly for a question is just that I'm also past a part of the first stage. I've been with Saint John ambulance, I've been with Saint John ambulance for a while. I've been around mental health nurses and doctor for a while and even though I'm not qualified, I have a message from them is what first one is the fact that it is important to know that at least that we know of one out of four people in the whole world will go through some mental illness, most of them depression, even if they don't know it through their lives. So it's completely okay to be to recognize that you're depressed. It's not abnormal, you're not different from anyone, you're not it's not the end of the world. Everyone, almost everyone will go through it at a stage in their life. So it's very important to know that. I'm sorry it really got through me to learn that statistic so I thought I would share it. That's one and two it takes a lot of effort to recognize that something's wrong with you and rather than be proud it's like no I'm okay like you were saying it's actually are you proud of yourself when you're not okay and you go through a burnout or you're proud of yourself to recognize I have a problem and I went to work on it and I went to see my GP or some sort of mental health professional. There is no stigma about or there is a huge stigma about mental health and there shouldn't be because depression is a normal fact of life. So please, please please look after yourself. Thank you that was lovely. I have a question for you Jess. Oh I don't know where you are. I'm here. Oh hello. Hello. Do you consider complacency a form of depression and if yes how would you suggest a reasonable alternative to it? Like I feel like I'm gonna stay with this bottle come and get me in a little while like I'm going to need to ponder a bit. Maybe. Hard maybe. Sorry. So I think we've got time for one more. Usually the questions I get after this I can just answer by like see your doctor everything's terrible but these are all like weirdly deep. I wonder if you have any advice for detecting burnout in others people you interact with socially or in employment and what you might do to mitigate that and try to help them. So this is fantastic like yeah just to repeat this in case the cute softbox is not picking up for the live feed. Oh I repeat nothing. So looking for burnout in other people especially if you're in a management role or especially if you're you're sort of in a leadership role in a community or in an organization is incredibly useful. So look for things like look for sort of representations of the points we touched out but sort of out loud so folks who don't seem to engage with their successes folks who are continually saying oh I'm oh I have no idea what I'm doing oh I for me one thing I really notice with other folks when they say they're burned out is I'll often hear people talk about I just need to get through X I just need to get through this project I just need to get through this next project I just need to get through this event I just need to get through this other thing when you see people continually talking about I just need to get through this one stretch of everything being terrible and my life will be okay like I think that's just how life works I think that can often be an early warning sign fabulous thank you all so much oh thank you everyone um and uh you can continue talking with Jess outside and uh remember emf is entirely put together by volunteers and so if you'd like to be part of making an amazing event like this happen go to the website sign up for volunteering there are lots of ways you can contribute and help