<story><title>Understanding the neuroscience behind burnout (2022)</title><url>https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/03/29/how-people-fall-apart-yale-faculty-discuss-the-impact-of-burnout-on-the-brain/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>toddmorey</author><text>I parent a child with autism. The care needs are intense; the burnout is real. But I can&amp;#x27;t employ usual burnout mitigation techniques like taking time off or making career &amp;#x2F; lifestyle changes. The world relentlessly marches forward. However, I&amp;#x27;ve learned human resilience is AMAZING. You&amp;#x27;ll be surprised at what you are capable of when life asks for it.&lt;p&gt;Here are a few big insights that have really helped me:&lt;p&gt;- You never have to feel like doing something to start doing it. This insight is so strangely freeing. It really got me out of my head and the loop that I was in berating myself about motivation.&lt;p&gt;- The act of doing something is usually what creates motivation to continue. Tell yourself you&amp;#x27;ll spend 30 minutes on whatever it is. No matter what it is, I always know I can survive 30 minutes of it. However, 90% of the time, the timer goes off, but I don&amp;#x27;t feel like stopping. I&amp;#x27;ve found my grove and I keep going.&lt;p&gt;- Procrastination isn&amp;#x27;t poor time management; it&amp;#x27;s poor emotional management. Be gentle with yourself. Know that you can be scared, frustrated, or angry but don&amp;#x27;t have to let those emotions define you. CBT works really well here. Don&amp;#x27;t define emotions as &amp;quot;good&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;bad&amp;quot;. Define them as &amp;quot;useful&amp;quot;. If the emotion you feel isn&amp;#x27;t useful, acknowledge it, but realize it&amp;#x27;s fleeting and let it pass on. Some people like to visualize emotions as clouds drifting by.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;(My grandmother, who survived the Great Depression on a farm, had the Desiderata posted on her wall. &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.desiderata.com&amp;#x2F;desiderata.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.desiderata.com&amp;#x2F;desiderata.html&lt;/a&gt;)</text></comment>
<story><title>Understanding the neuroscience behind burnout (2022)</title><url>https://yaledailynews.com/blog/2022/03/29/how-people-fall-apart-yale-faculty-discuss-the-impact-of-burnout-on-the-brain/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>this15testing</author><text>I feel like being forced to spend 40+ hours at any&amp;#x2F;every job has to create more work to justify that amount of time (an &amp;quot;agreement&amp;quot; that people died for when they were working in factories, not that its based on anything realistic or &amp;#x27;scientific&amp;#x27;), and that&amp;#x27;s not very inspiring and takes SO MUCH ENERGY, at least for me.&lt;p&gt;On top of that you then are faced with this constant increase in &amp;quot;tech&amp;quot; that is supposed to do so much amazing stuff &amp;#x2F; make everyone more efficient, so now you are forced to do even more work in those 40 hours or get squeezed by wealth inequality? The new AIM chatbots coming out now can do so much! wowee! now I can be in 4 meetings at once?&lt;p&gt;Then on top of THAT you also have to wake up each morning facing global climate change where there is no real effort to change the course (you can say all you want about renewables, but as long as these graphs keep going up we&amp;#x27;re all going down &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.climate.gov&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.climate.gov&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;p&gt;People do get value and meaning from their work, whatever it is, it just feels like this mindset and social structure of the industrial age doesn&amp;#x27;t match up with any of the challenges we face nor does it feel like it fits with all the knowledge and technology that has been developed. What&amp;#x27;s the point if what we&amp;#x27;re doing on a day to day basis takes so much of our energy and then just gets us closer to human caused environmental destruction no matter what it is?</text></comment>