Ep 31 - Navigating Change Without Burning Out: Strategies and Insights

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Ep 31 - Navigating Change Without Burning Out: Strategies and Insights Podcast and Video Transcript

[Disclaimer: This transcription was written by AI using a tool called Descript, and has not been edited for content.]

Introduction to Change Management and Burnout

Dave Dougherty: All right. Welcome to the latest episode of Enterprising Minds. Alex brought in the topic today. So quick kick over to him on what we'll be talking today.

Alex Pokorny: Sure. So change management giant topic, but the piece that I was going to kind of focus in on is. It's dealing with the, basically the pain of change management.

So the burnout side, like how do you avoid burnout when there's been a bunch of changes from the kind of leadership perspective, what do you do with your team to kind of work through that? If you've just had a bunch of really long days in a row, how do you get your creativity back and kind of inspire yourself to do something a little bit different?

I don't know. So just want to kind of run around some ideas and what do you guys have tried or what you've seen experiences that didn't go well, and maybe we can work through those. Thanks.

Exploring Creative Burnout Avoidance Strategies

Dave Dougherty: Well, so before we jump into this, I want to call out what you you shared with us before hitting record. I'm sure it is.

It is a list. Burnout avoidance ideas, but this is something you got from ChatGPT or tell, tell us about this six. Sure. Oh,

Alex Pokorny: there's probably up to 30, I think in the actual session, but I was asking it for some creative ideas of things to do with the team. Basically to avoid burnout and what are some ways to work through changes and stuff like that?

So it started out with a pretty standardized list, but then I kept asking it like no, no, no, no more creative more creative more creative And I gotta say by the last maybe 10 Let's see. One of them that I don't think I threw into chat was time to travel fridays Host a fun themed virtual event once a month where team members are encouraged to dress up and decorate their virtual backgrounds According to a chosen era or theme creating a playful escape from the routine I was like Okay, I think we went far enough We can back off

Dave Dougherty: of that one

Alex Pokorny: a little bit

Dave Dougherty: Yeah But your net your next prompt should be Okay.

Get rid of the ones that will get me in trouble with HR.

Alex Pokorny: Which one of

Dave Dougherty: these

Alex Pokorny: seem like they'd be liabilities and not those. I also asked like virtual team ideas as well, just given the way of work today. And so many of their ideas were very much in person ideas. And I was like, that's, that just doesn't work anymore.

So there's some fun ones in there. We can bring them up into the conversation if you want, or if you just want to. Kind of pull from your background or your advice.

Dave Dougherty: I'm all ears. Yeah.

Personal Experiences with Burnout and Recovery

Dave Dougherty: Well, so burnout, I think is such a, such a personal thing, right? I mean, cause each of us has a different threshold of.

what's exhausting. But more importantly, though, and this is true in a lot of conversations I've been having with, with the people around me is even just getting the individual to recognize that burnout is what they're experiencing is like more than half the battle, you know, where it's like, yeah, you've been working hard.

No, they did not recognize you. I'm sorry. It's okay to be frustrated. It's okay to, you know, feel things. But then, you know, so once you recognize that what you have is being completely fried, either physically or emotionally at least for me, then it becomes prioritizing what, what such a weird, I hate saying it this way, but what brings me joy you know, things like guitar or writing or cooking, like things that bring me into the moment that are inherently creative.

Those are the things that I necessarily gravitate towards. If I am more actively burnt out, then I will, you know, be sort of in that sort of crisis management mode. And in which case then it's the go for a walk, go work out. Like get yourself into a different headspace, right? And then go deal with it because if you're not in the right headspace, then you can't affect the positive change that you, you may be looking for.

Alex Pokorny: There's a piece I want to highlight there that was really, I think, very insightful for one of the best ways to deal with it, which you're saying about these are different creative activities, playing guitar, cooking, like writing that are creative, that keep you in that moment. Yeah. I think that's so important because, I mean, there's a lot about kind of staying within the moment and a lot of talk around that.

But I think that makes a lot of sense because a lot of burnout is one kind of like a loss of energy and wearing, but it's also, there's Anxiety with it too. There's an anxiousness of it where things are urgent and things are urgent and oh if we don't get this done it'll be bad. So it's always like this slightly in the future consequence and oh we should have done this and kind of looking back and it's still not even in positive light either where I don't kind of always see it as anxiety lives in the future and depression lives in the past.

Ruthi Corcoran: If

Alex Pokorny: you're looking too far in one way or the other in a negative context it It feels bad. I mean, it, it wears on you. And if you're staying actually within that moment and just working through what you're doing, you can find that satisfaction again, and at least some feeling of control again, or both of those things are outside of your control.

Dave Dougherty: Ruthi, any immediate thoughts? Otherwise I can jump in for a long time.

Ruthi Corcoran: I'll just hop in on that. And then there's a, there's a few other thoughts bubbling in the background that need a little more time to stew. But one of the things that I do on a regular basis. And I noticed when I don't, when I haven't done this is I'll take walks.

And oftentimes if I'm feeling particularly wound up about something, or there's, there's a lot of those urgent requests, Alex, that you mentioned for your, your, your time is being sort of pulled in a bunch of directions dictated by other people's priorities or urgency or anxiousness. My go to is to take a walk.

And I think it's similar to what, what Dave, you were talking about with, you know, playing guitar, doing the sort of creative thing, taking a walk for me gets my gives my mind a chance to rest enough or forces me to rest mentally enough that all of a sudden I can sort of step away from the situation and realize the bigger picture or find alternate opportunities that when I'm in the moment just responding, responding are very hard to see.

Alex Pokorny: That makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. There's a quote that I keep on a whiteboard. The urgent is rarely important. The important is rarely urgent. And that is like those periods of intense change or periods of intense projects and all the rest. Man, so often if you step back and, you know, there's the 10 minute thing, you know, is this really going to be important in 10 minutes, 10 days or 10 years, and most things fall off pretty darn fast.

There's also a lot of wasted work that happens when there's a lot of urgency. You're just responding to it, taking it without considering it and then spending your time on that instead of something more important.

Dave Dougherty: So this, I mean, this goes back to our conversations earlier about, you know, life in an agency.

Yeah. Part of me is very happy that I experienced that early in my career because it's just good training to realize Everyone has different priorities. Like if you have a client list of 20 or more, I mean, you know that you're not going to hit everybody, but everybody has an urgent phone call. And when you have both of them or multiples of them calling you on the Tuesday saying we need this now and you go, yeah, okay.

But you're the third one to call me, I have to prioritize these things. It, that kind of perspective helps me. Sure. Like what's important and what's not. The other thing for me has to do with an old job right out of school.

The Impact of Work Environment on Burnout

Dave Dougherty: You know, I've talked about this quite a bit and how graduating into the Great Recession with arts degrees like Nobody was hiring, you know that so I just took random jobs.

And one of the jobs that I got was Working at a teen expulsion center, and I did a half day at an expulsion center where I mean these are the kids that like got into a big fight and If they screw up one more time in school, they're like out of the district, you know, or they got caught bringing a weapon or drugs or, you know, something in their backpack, right?

Those kinds of kids. I split my day there and then I split my day at a teen treatment center where they were providing education for that. And I ended up working with a number of English as a second language kids. And they were all wonderful, but they had a whole bunch of things that they had to deal with that were more important than school at that very moment, right?

Like if you're fighting to survive, who cares about math, right? That you have, you know, different priorities there, but working in that environment,

I just, I never get worked up about the stuff at work because, you know, when you're working for a big company and you know, okay, so your product is not launched at noon, it's launched at two. So what that's not the end of the world, you know, I mean, some of these, some of the kids that I ended up working with, like their first memory was their village burning.

Before they moved to the U S like, come on, your PNL doesn't matter. I know it does to you, but in the big scheme of things, it just doesn't matter. I'm sorry.

Ruthi Corcoran: And I think Dave, part of it too, is giving your finding ways and building the habits to make mental space, be it the creative activities, maybe it's, is something as simple as, you know, you toss on a certain podcast on your way home from work or on your way to pick up kids or whatever it is.

So that You can allow yourself to step out and have those thoughts because like, yeah, when I'm going for my walk or whatnot, I can get myself in a mental place where I can put that perspective in place. But when I'm right in the middle of it, it's so hard to keep that perspective, at least in, in sort of my mental world.

Dave Dougherty: I think it came through repetition, right? Because, because of the way that I looked at that time where I had like the super long hair, super long beard And, you know, it looks like a Viking. I ended up getting a bunch of security jobs too. And there just isn't time to think. Right. So it is that, that reaction piece of it.

And but standing around and waiting for something to happen has allowed a lot of things to, to sit and just sort of be an automatic response. Right. So yeah, I don't know. I would be curious.

Strategies for Managing Work-Life Balance

Dave Dougherty: Do you guys, how actively are you guys fighting burnout on a day to day basis? Like, do you put things into place so that like every day you get your walk in or You take 20 minutes to stare at a wall, whatever it is you prefer to do.

Alex Pokorny: Yeah, no, I've I've built more and more into that, of, into my life of that, those different activities. I don't know. I've tried some different things something that's very energizing to me, especially when there's not a whole lot going on is kind of some kind of personal growth. Thing so a 30 day challenge thing or a new I don't know book or something that's going to be some kind of Life skills sort of thing.

I don't know. Something that basically feels like I'm not just making every day the same, in fact I'm progressing. That makes so much easier to deal with because each day it doesn't feel like a slog. Each day is instead another notch kind of up the ladder and it's going, you know, in a positive direction and I'm growing in some form or fashion.

So trying to keep an activity like that going has been very helpful. There's always different pieces that I try to use, like a physical aspect. So if it is getting my dog out every single day or trying to hit for me, honestly, 5, 000 steps would be a great goal. 10, 000 steps, which is the standard one.

Not going to ever happen for me. It's sedentary life of a work from home. person. So things like that, like just trying to like make sure that I get something active infers my sleep quality a lot, but also it gives me a good physical break. And I think it is kind of like just again, taking a break away, getting some perspective, being in a different moment.

And the difficulty that I find with it though, is not feeling rushed to go back. And that's when it gets wasted. If I am trying to make sure I get a walk in and I have exactly nine minutes and I'm nervous about, you know, getting on the call just in time and all the rest, that entire time is stress that that is an entirely wasted effort.

Like, it just doesn't work. So the difficulty I have with it, though, is building in those breaks in a way that I can say, this is dedicated time. I am okay to take this time. And honestly, it is me allowing me to not be stressed about it. And that is the thing that destroys, you know, one of these activities that I do or anything like that, like there's a whole list of them, but the things I've I've done or tried are currently doing, but that's the one that I

Dave Dougherty: was going to say, the most burnt out people that I know of are very driven by guilt, which is not necessarily something that rules my life.

Do you feel guilty if you step away from, from work? Like, is that why, you know, I have to be on time. I have to, I can't take this time because you know, they're paying me to be on a meeting or be available.

Alex Pokorny: That's a good question. I don't really have an immediate answer. In next week's episode,

I mean, if you want my kind of off the cuff reaction, maybe that's part of it. The other part is like, When projects are just being very, very constant and there are a bunch of deadlines you're trying to hit, it's really hard to step away and then not feel like, you know, that deadline is still looming and that it doesn't destroy the effort that you try to take away from it because you're still so focused on that, that end point or that consequence or whatever it is on that piece.

So maybe it's guilt, maybe it's more of an, you know, anxiety towards the future kind of piece. Maybe it's honestly just routine because that's the other thing is like once things start coming in like it's so easy to just keep on going going going well I'm getting distracted here I'm getting distracted here I'm doing this I'm trying to get back to this and the days the hours fly by when you got life like that so it's harder in those days to take a break and step away too.

That

Ruthi Corcoran: last piece that you mentioned is is much more of what I find myself falling into which is just the inertia of. Of a project or an activity, or, you know, I, I get in the zone. I focus on the thing and I just keep going. And then 2 hours later, I realized, like, I haven't taken a break and that is fine for that.

2 hours. Like, you might argue us in the zone. Like, that's a great thing. Except that what, at least on, on what I experience is that say, even recently, like, I've been working towards a really large project. It's been going on for several months and it's constantly like that and it's constantly responding and for, you know, a period of one month, two months, it's a lot of fun.

It's really energizing, engaging. I'm enjoying it a lot. Once I go past that point and I'm continuing to put that much energy forth, then all of a sudden it starts detracting rather than, than being a good thing. And in addition, all the other competing priorities of life all of a sudden have taken the back burner for a bit too long.

And I start recognizing the consequences of having done that. And that's where I think for me, it becomes a challenge. It in part is because I'm quote burnt out, but also it's because I'm feeling the consequences of having prioritized a particular thing over other things for so long. And now I've decided, okay, I need to.

Rebalance and that rebalancing process is very difficult because you've gotten yourself in a mode and you've set expectations with the people around you that you're responding or you're going to be there of course I'm going to accept the thing and all of a sudden you're going no I'm going to clock out at three because I'm going to go do daycare and actually go for a walk today.

And that is extremely hard, both to sort of reset expectations, sometimes with others, but even just with myself of, Oh, I got to pay attention to the clock. I can't just keep problem solving, problem solving, problem solving. And so I don't find as much, there's any sort of. guilt or anxiety. So like, it's, it's none of those emotions.

It's more just I get so excited and into it. But after a while that, that excitement starts depleting my, my overall energy base.

Alex Pokorny: I got an interesting question for you guys. So we're all search marketers or have had that experience for a number of years. And I've been on a team that's gone through a lot of change recently, and I mean, I've got my little tricks and stuff like that, that I do to kind of try to combat burnout, but it really doesn't seem to have affected me to any degree like the others.

And I wonder I was kind of reflecting upon this. I wonder if it's partially because of my history of being a search marketer in the aspect of you're usually the first of your kind when you join a company, there is no process. No one knows what you do. It is up to you to figure it out, figure out how you're going to do it.

And every day is basically like that. And you're the first one at that company to do whatever, or you're a part of this very small team who has been put together. And it's the first time the company has ever done. This thing, there's no, there's no process documentation that tells you, Oh, this is every Monday we go through these emails or it's responding to these questions.

You know, it is not nothing like that. It's every day is figure out what would be most effective, get it done, go do the next thing. I mean, keep on going. Like it is the least prescriptive job out there, which also means you're constantly in a state of change. Either we're attracted to the some element of that, you know, it could be the excitement of it could be the the learning aspect could be, you know, who knows, but do you feel like that has helped you through this?

Like if you were to try to compare yourself to other coworkers and especially non search marketers? I

Ruthi Corcoran: think I wouldn't have thought of the lens of search marketer, but now that you phrase it that way, I think there's, there's a couple of things going on there when there's sort of a selection bias. So all of us might have fallen into this and then stayed in it because we had certain sort of built in attributes or.

Predispositions. And then to your other point of the types of activities we, the three of us have engaged in in the past of just sort of having to start from scratch, figure out ways like work with people who have no idea the value of the thing that you're trying to put forth. Those are sort of exercise all the muscles that you then need, especially in high change environments.

So yeah, I think, I think there's something to that Alex that there's probably certain roles and career paths that attract a certain personality or, or skill set and then cultivate it. Cause I, I don't have much anxiety or worry about change. Most of the time I embrace it. Most of the time I go, Oh, cool.

Look at these 12 new things that we can do as a result of this change. And everybody's looking at me like, Yeah, but you know, we don't know this, we don't know this and I go, that's fine, we'll figure it out. It'll be great.

Alex Pokorny: That's how you have to handle it. There is a million things that you'll never know about, never be able to plan for.

Ruthi Corcoran: I do have a riff on that, but I want to give Dave a chance to respond quick.

Dave Dougherty: No, I think the, like the reason I brought up the previous job experience, right? Working with those kids. I do think those, those experiences that you have.

allow you to develop the coping skills that are necessary. And you know, like you, Alex, I, one of the reasons I like digital marketing is that it is constantly changing. So you have to keep learning. You have to be pushing yourself all the time. The, I found that I was burning out a lot. With last year when, when AI was coming in hot and heavy and because it was so new and because it seemed like such an existential threat because it came out of nowhere, right?

Like or it felt like it came out of nowhere. I know. It's been 50 years in the making, but still and because every week there were like 40 new companies and 60 new ways of doing something or, you know, the all the LLMs just got so much better so quickly that I was like, Oh my God, I can't keep up with this.

Like, I'm really trying to, I'm trying to make sense of it. I'm trying to figure out how to utilize it, but oh my God, it's too much. And so, you know yeah, I have, I have my own process to do that, to like take a step back and realize like, okay, every single press release, you don't have to pay attention to, right?

Like do the, find the summary podcast that talks about all of them, let them have all that stress. And But then also my experience with the crisis communications and communication planning, like the hardest thing to convince clients with crisis comms or with anything is to make a plan before things happen.

The best way to handle crisis communications is through having already done scenario planning and already done templates so that you can fill out on such and such date this happened. Here's who's going to talk about it. Here's, you know, the, the press contacts. Here's what we're finding out here are the topics we will not talk publicly about until we know everything, right?

Like making a plan for all of those things. The best way to do that is before it happens, because then you can poke holes in it and you don't look like a fool and you don't, you know piss off a bunch of people in a time of emergency. Right. But. Clients never wanted to do that because they always just, well, we're a growth company.

We're only going to be doing this, this, this, this, and this it's like, you know, you're going to have a new hire that says something wrong to somebody else. And then what do you do? Cause that's not what you were planning on doing today. Right? So.

Ruthi Corcoran: I think there's kind of a cool difference between those 2 scenarios that you just laid out with sort of what you are experiencing with AI and the sort of speed shift of of the landscape.

And then what you described with crisis communication of this planning idea. And what I do like about the crisis communication mentality is that even if none of the plans you put in place come to fruition, Work out as you intended, you've at least gone through the exercise of working through the different steps that you might have to go on.

And, you know, maybe the, the event is different. Maybe the contacts are slightly different, but at least you've, you've gone through the process and you, you've familiarized yourself. I think, though, that the key distinction between what you just described is like, with crisis communication, the realm of possibility.

Yeah, anything can happen and there's a lot out there that you wouldn't expect. But to your point, there's a lot of cases that you can expect, or at least you can roughly plan for. The AI scenario that we all, that we sort of experienced and are continuing to experience, there's so many unknown unknowns and the landscape is continuously changing in ways that you can't easily predict or at least I have a hard time easily predicting.

And I think I want to introduce this concept of OODA loops because it's, it's a way, and it's a framework of, Of thinking about how you respond to those situations. And, and how you, how you, like, it's kind of like crisis communication where you've got your plan and you've got your framework. OODA loops are a framework for dealing with unknown unknowns, right?

This comes from Jeff Sutherland, Scrum book. He's got a nice little chart here. We don't have to go through the whole chart, but the basic idea is an OODA loop is observation, orientation, decision. Action. So in a unknown, swirly event, job one is observe the situation, orient where you sort of are within there and like where you fit so that you can make a decision around what you need to do next and make an action.

And the faster you can. You can maneuver in that way to sort of get your bearings, figure out what's going on and where you are, what next action you're going to take, and then doing it, the faster you can maneuver within that, the more able you're going to be to navigate changing and rapidly changing scenarios.

And I think it's a, it's a habit that maybe I've cultivated sometimes consciously, sometimes not over time of whenever I'm in sort of a swirly event, it's like, okay, take a moment to pause, see what all the dynamics are that's going on. What's caused maybe not what's causing the swirl, but like, you know, Notice what's happening within this world.

And this can be like political stuff at work. This could be, you know, a eyes coming, like observe what's happening in the landscape. Where do I fit within it? How do I need to maneuver and then and then move? Right? And so that's. That's, I think, a cool lens you can take in rapidly changing circumstances, even though there's a lot of unknowns and the obvious direction might not be clear.

I

Alex Pokorny: kind of think we're dealing with distraction in a couple of ways then, because in one, you want to step away from it, gain perspective by not being so hit with all the next thing, next thing, next thing. Wait for a moment so you can see greater perspective on it. Really, you could call that kind of next thing, next thing, next thing part distractions.

And then as you step away from those, you can get the greater perspective. I mean, the other way we've talked about it is well within it. Focus down, remove those other distractions, try to focus into what you are doing so that you can just do that and work on that and not be so pulled and so focused on these other things, you know, staying within that moment.

If it's a break from it again, being in that moment, not trying to get lost in the swirl of it.

Ruthi Corcoran: I think, yeah, what we described earlier with, creative activities, walks, et cetera, is have been mechanisms that allow us to step out of that situation and sort of observe and orient ourselves so that we could make the next decision. Yeah,

Dave Dougherty: I think for me that that's why, like going for a walk or going and working out, like doing something stressful in response to the stress helps me get rid of that emotion.

So that I'm not making decisions in an emotional state. You know, cause after you've, after you've lifted a bunch of weights, there's just, you, you can't, you're just too tired. You're too tired to be emotional. And you get that dopamine rush and, and everything just feels better. I think dealing with the emotional aspect of it for me is always step one.

Because good decisions are never made emotionally. And then if I'm still swirling after that, that creative process helps me to work through the multiple situations. Okay. I think this might be an outcome. Well, why, what would happen if that was the outcome? Anything? Probably not. So yeah, being, being specific through that, but then, you know, again, it comes down to taking time.

So if you're in a crisis. situation. You might not have the time to do that. So you will have to adapt it to the individual situation you find yourself in, but I'd be curious with you guys. I feel like, especially in the marketing community we have gone from crisis to crisis, to, you know, spin to spin, to spin from the pandemic to AI hitting, to layoffs, and then.

The threat of AI and more layoffs, you know, the way everybody likes to talk about it online, whether or not that's actually going to happen, another thing, but it's just sitting there stirring. So, I mean, the way that we've talked about it thus far has been like an individual singular event, which is great for theoretical discussions, but in reality, you get punched from every direction, you know, sometimes simultaneously, right?

So I think that. Overall fatigue, I know at least with a lot of my friends and a lot of conversations I've been having with, with other friends that's just been one thing where it's just like, man, I, I, I don't want to deal with yet another thing. I just need a week.

Other than yes, do you have thoughts on that?

Alex Pokorny: Let's see. Heraclius, I think had a quote probably in the year 400, 500 of the common era. Sure. Right off the top of your head. Yep. Constant life is kind of change something like that. Yeah. That's, I don't know. I think some of that's just, that's maybe I'm totally projecting, but imagine that's a lot of people's lives.

Like there's a lot of change. Their ability to handle that next level of change or that next change. I mean, that all differs by the individual in the context as well. Like, you got a ton of stuff going on at home. Like, it is really hard on the work side. Like, same and

Dave Dougherty: vice versa. I always find it interesting that people say that that doesn't matter.

I was like, really, like, if you don't want to clean up

Ruthi Corcoran: somebody's puke at 3 00 AM,

Dave Dougherty: thank your call

Alex Pokorny: at 8. Yeah, I, I don't understand that there is Roger, I was talking about like the work life balance, and then, or life work balance, if you want to prioritize correctly. But, trying to, and seeing it as a myth, basically being, you're one person.

If you have a heck of a day, you're going to be tired at the end of the day or frustrated, or your patience will wear thin. Or the opposite of that, you know, if life is great outside of work, I mean, that can totally translate into work as well. And that enthusiasm can carry into your coworkers. I mean, all that stuff happens.

Like, I think it's very, very, I mean, very solitary life if we somehow weren't affected by others. No, that's not the way it works.

The Role of Routine and Distractions in Burnout

Dave Dougherty: So I'm just, I'm rereading this thing from GPT in the chat and it made me think one of the experiments that I've done recently is to play around with the amount of caffeine I consume in the morning and what kind of impact that has on my overall day.

I think a lot of people get trapped into the thinking of, well, I just have my four cups of coffee and I need to have it. Cause I've always just had my four cups of coffee. And right. But then you're sitting there and you're like, okay, well, why are you twitchy? Cause you had your four cups of coffee and then you had your diet Coke at lunch and you got, you know, punched in the face by a bunch of rejections from your, you know, your latest project proposal.

And yeah. Yeah, no wonder you're twitchy and what do you do it to you get that, you know, mid-afternoon lull. Well, let's go Let's go get that chocolate caramel Cappuccino like no, what are you doing? So I've just been playing around with okay, I will do I typically get an Americano in the morning and It's one little creature comfort, right, that I do, and I used to also do cups of coffee after that, like at home, and it has made a significant difference, actually.

Like for the rest of the day as well by getting rid of those two extra cups and only doing the Americano, at least for me in the way that, you know, I process caffeine. So that particular thing has been interesting as well. Like, what am I consuming at the beginning of the day? If I don't eat like a bunch of protein in the morning, the rest of the day is screwed because I'll be snacking.

I'll be like, and you know, this is just my experience, but have you Have you played around with any of that as well in terms of being resilient to burnout or the day's frustrations? Yes. As you drink more coffee on screen.

Alex Pokorny: Go ahead. I got a variation off of that.

Ruthi Corcoran: No, I don't have anything interesting to say. I just, I drink coffee and then I get tea and it, it's, I do not notice a distinct difference unless I don't drink enough water during the day. I guess there might be some minor stuff, but I, I find that the amount of coffee and or tea caffeine that I consume doesn't have a lot of impact.

I say that, but I also don't have a lot of it. You know, we're talking 2 cups plus a cup of tea. Like, it's, it's so maybe I'm just moderating without even realizing.

Dave Dougherty: It was like, I was accidentally doing the fasting thing,

Ruthi Corcoran: you

Dave Dougherty: know, or I was making fun of it and then someone described it to me and went, Oh, Oh, oops.

I'm doing that actually. So yeah, wipe the egg off of my face on that one.

Alex Pokorny: My variation of that actually is not reading the news in the morning and when it changes for me considerably, I've noticed.

Ruthi Corcoran: In a good way,

Alex Pokorny: in a good way. Yeah, absolutely. Like changing that morning routine right at the beginning. is far more precious to me than how I deal with my afternoon. If it wakes up to, yes, a kid screaming or something else, like grabbing my attention or annoyingly the alarm clock going off, which normally I'm a wake up ahead of that.

It doesn't happen. Like it's usually something I can dismiss right away, but it's like changing that morning routine and how that affects me and what I do. And when I put my first kind of effort toward definitely affects my day, like if I read the news in the afternoon, the evening, perfectly fine. That's cool.

Not in the morning.

Ruthi Corcoran: I'm glad you brought that up Alex. Cause like, well, Dave, the caffeine thing in particular doesn't have a lot of an effect. I find myself with a very similar situation that Alex points out where the sort of general idea of how I start my day has a really big impact. And On the mornings where I decide, you know what, nope, I am going to just enjoy, sit down with my kids while they eat their breakfast.

I'm just going to appreciate being with them. The phone is upstairs. It's nowhere near. Those days are so much better. And I put myself in the right mental state to begin my first call. Whereas if I've been, you know, I don't know, scrambling around doing stuff, trying to, or even updating the news or the latest blogs, all these things, everything's in such a jumble that I hit my first call and it's like, Where are we?

What did we leave off? I got nothing.

Alex Pokorny: I was going to bring up one of the co-creators of Gmail co-founded Google Meet a guy named Jake Knapp, K N A P P, but he was also an early adopter of trying to make his iPhone a distraction-free phone. So yeah, this distinct experience, I think it was, I just listened to podcasts on the topic. So it was, it was a pretty good experience.

Pretty interesting one and I've actually put into practice a couple of the things. I don't know how far I'll get into it, but it was like 2012. He's playing with his kids. They're two boys. They're doing like playing with like wooden trains and he pulled out his phone and his phone Son asked him like what's on his phone because like trains is super exciting what it's on the phone must be super exciting, too And he totally lied and said no It's just a work thing where he was just like randomly basically surfing the web But it's like and put his phone away.

It's like what am I doing? And then that just started kind of a purge of What he's coauthored a number of books and the other author came up with this term of infinity pools, where there's a lot of different apps that pull our distraction and there's an infinite amount of content, you know, scrolling, TikTok, Instagram, you name it.

Like there's always something more. So it's an infinity pool. So he goes through this idea that basically is trying to remove those kind of apps off his phone at least removing them off his phone. He might still browse to them, but the effort of logging into them and things like that create some barriers, which allows him to kind of stop himself.

And then the ones that he keeps is his future ones. So as a kid, if someone told him that this phone was going to exist, that was going to have your camera, it was going to have this ability and this ability, the GPS and maps ability, it was going to have this, he's like, those things are awesome.

Those things are super cool. And I love playing around with those. I want to keep those on my phone and in my life. And he definitely plays around with the new apps and he's a huge early adopter of technology. So, you know, a tough spot to be in. But I thought it was really funny because he worked on Gmail and at one point he finally realized that it was himself that was pushing himself to respond so quickly.

If it was a co-worker who was an hour delayed or a day or two delayed they said, Oh, I'm sorry. This hasn't, you know, usually respond faster. He immediately forgets it, forgives it, and moves on, but he doesn't for himself. So he realized that was such a painful thing. So eventually he put in in his email signature.

I only check my email twice a day. And it didn't change anything for anyone else really, because really nothing at work was that urgent. I was like, that's, I bet I could probably do the same thing and combine all of those little distraction pings of Outlook. Into 2 times a day, and I don't think it would really change anything.

Ruthi Corcoran: And I think this ties in so nicely to some of the things we were talking about with change and sort of being caught up in this world of change and people's confusions. And then also people's sort of reaction of, oh, we got to just do it do do do do do do so that we can it. Limits your ability to pause, reflect, and pay attention to what's going on around you so that you can make decisive decisions.

I think a lot of those infinity pools that you described. That's exactly the same thing. It sucks you in. You get distracted. You can't you have a harder time. I'm not saying you can't, but it's a harder time to sort of. Pull out, look at the big picture.

Dave Dougherty: Yeah.

Concluding Thoughts on Managing Burnout

Dave Dougherty: I think this is a good, a good spot to stop. Let us know if any of these things resonate with you. Thanks for listening. I know, I think I will, I will play around with some of those phone things. Cause that's been a particular piece in my family where yeah, just realizing how some people are not even cognizant that they have pulled out their phone and are now on their phone and it's like proximity does not equate to.

You know, being with us, you know? So yeah, that'll be interesting. Let us know what you've implemented, what you have played around with. And we will see you in the next episode of Enterprise Minds. Take care.