Burnout Sucks: Surviving and Thriving in High Stress Environments

all right wow it is telling the state of our industry that the burnout talk is full all right uh good morning everyone uh I'm Josh Michaels uh and I'm one of the founders for bide Seattle and I also do things in computers today I want to talk about burnout and how we can survive and not just survive but try to thrive in these high stress environments that we live and work in a little bit about me um anything you hear today is not the voice of my employer all right yes boss I'm sorry um I am an executive director of risk investigations for a large financial institution I run the security floor operations at Defcon I.E the bomb threat

last year uh I was MSP sock architect uh the p&w Rangers are a conflict deescalation team for burning men like to build organizations make pizza and uh I'm an advocate for Burnout burnout for Burnout you know when your friends are in the front row and you're just like it's got a laser so when I say burnout Advocate um I have gone to the hospital thanks to our industry I thought I was going to have a heart attack I had my first panic attack in my life years ago in a building not far from here it sucks and recovering from that sucks so I want to talk about how do we avoid or how do we still Because unless

you want to leave the industry and go someplace a little less stressful uh which is a valid choice we got to figure out how to work with it what's burnout this is definition we're going to work with today um I try to reference all my slides if I use any sort of uh references so you can find at the bottom but according to psychology today it's the exhaustion brought on by prolonged or repeated and I actually say prolonged and repeated stresses so stress is not inherently bad when you go to the gym what are you doing to your body stressing it yeah you do it right and your body gets stronger uh but if you go to the gym

every day and you beat up your body 18 hours a day in the gym you are going to kill yourself when we talk about stress we talk about this in terms of and I refer to the stress cycle uh Dr Emily nski uh has written one of the Epal books on burnout I highly recommend reading it through stress for us uh happens in you know the stressor starts and I'm going to use a a a Wilderness example so your stressor starts is that a lion I see there it's a lion uh what do I do all right fight or flight so what's happening now my body my energy is coming up I'm like okay I

got a line what am I'm going to do I'm gonna fight this thing or I'm gonna run no I'm not gonna fight the thing I'm gonna pet the thing because it's a cat but or I'm going to run or I'm going to freeze because we do accept freeze is a something that happens we fight right we fight fight of our life we win Lion's done sweet lion be gone and then we return back to our village we return back to our space we get nap time we get our chance for that energy to come back come back down right that stress cycle to finish through it's great we had a stressor took care of it went home had some ice

cream done now the cyber security

version um who here works for Microsoft who here has been on FSB the last six months is that a breach is that a breach it's a breach oh what's that signal okay I got another signal oh my God is that another Russian okay no it's not a Russian it's a guy from Cuba who thinks it's Russian oh my go okay we got to look at that now what are we going to do okay we got to get them out of here we got to you know evacuate them out of the environment okay but wait there's another signal we're going to go back to the start and do that again okay wait we figured it out it's not a brief but wait

there's another signal and we don't get that recovery period this is responder State we are responding and we feel responsible and accountable for the safety of our environments and those we protect I know if you look around the room or maybe in a mirror you will find people who have a hard time saying no to

helping I mean it's one of the things that makes me proud to work in this industry we are an industry of helpers but helpers being help too we got to get out of this stress cycle or at least acknowledge that it exists and plan for it what can we do about it I've split it up into two ways personal like what can we do we're here right you are you manifest your own destiny great what can we do and then organizationally so I built teams uh multiple times in my career and you know as an organizational leader important for me to acknowledge and to understand the signals of you know my teams are giving me um

the organizational is a whole topic for another day so today I'm we just talk on the personal side first off know your signals signals of burnout are just like any other signal of mental health there's no there's a DSM uh for those who are used familiar with this space DSM is how therapists will uh diagnose right but there's no DSM of signals for uh burnout some common signals fatigue extreme fatigue feeling the need or the want to randomly take sick days feeling the need to work harder sounds weird right like oh man I'm burnt out but if I work harder today tomorrow will be better right and then what do we do we'll work harder the next day and

the next day and now we're on 14 hour days changes in your eating habits um I know my body my body when I'm in stress and fatigue goes back to making pizza it you know doesn't necessarily stay on those good eating habits that I've established over my life change is in your routine so if your routine is to go to the gym every day and you're not what's change what's going on take that moment take that introspection figure out like is it just I'm busy why am I busy those summarize into kind of the self-care category right when we talk about personal burnout and like personal signals unfortunately one of the the most common signals is you stop caring about

yourself because you're so busy about caring about others and you're so ingrained in if I just do this one more thing it's going to get better I promise you start making promises yourself know your signals write them down it sounds cheesy but take that moment to introspect to get to know yourself use your tribe when I say tribe family connections uh could be your tribe at work right could be the analyst next to you who's noticing that you know Josh is just really angry all the time he used to be this positive monkey like you know my partner uh one of the amazing things that they will do is they will call me in when I start canceling

my social events because that is a huge indicator of burnout for me I find myself I'm going to hide at home because you know if I'm burnt out I don't want to be around people because that would make them you know they'd be mad at me and then I lose my friends and it's a vicious cycle so when I say use your tribe you also need to open that door for them so go to your team go to your friends and say hey really respect you I know that you love me and care about me let me know if you see these things right invite them to do that because it can be really hard to

look at your friend and be like I think your mental health sucks I mean but we've opened that door uh and the last thing I want to talk about is where possible prepare while positive don't get ready for the hurricane after the hurricane hits because now you're like well I don't know I'm going to drink the water from the sewer and we're going to figure it out with mental health prepare when you have or you were in an upswing or you're with your tribe and you're on a positive note this way when you find yourself sliding down when you find yourself in those situations where you feel that burnout coming on you're you've got some

preparation uh we're going to talk a little bit more about what I think about and what I do for Preparation there and have a recommendation I do want to touch on the three things for organizational so if you lead A team out here do these three like know the common signals there's a bunch of research out there build that psychological safety so open that door for your team know that they can come to you at any point and say I'm not doing well boss and know the tools and connections that your company has for that um huge shout out for Microsoft they have an amazing mental health program here right you get like 12 free sessions

you it's very easy to call and get a hold of somebody so they're taking it seriously they're not the only one I'm just they're one that I know of um so but organizationally way more to talk about there different place different time when I say prepare build your go bag right so people have the concept of a go bag it's see something gone wrong pick it up let's go have this ready have this prepared I literally have a physical container that is my burnout go bag when I open that go bag guess what that is it's a signal that I might be headed towards burnout so I get to take an actual physical signal for me and in

there this is just an example for me right when I talk about affirmation cards they're letters from myself to me hey Josh do you remember that time that you did that really cool thing and you wrote gdpr for Azure you're better than you think right you can have your friends write affirmation cards something that reminds you in that moment when you're like the world sucks and this is terrible that there is light and you have done amazing things you all are amazing people people truly are like this industry doesn't let mediocrity survive a couple other things that I want to call out for me noise cancelling headphones are key especially in our uh unified work environments if I call them

the the nice way uh I have friends and co-workers that I work next to that are wonderful people but if I am in a bad cycle or bad mental state I need noise cancel I need something that lets me disconnect that audio intake um favorite non-alcoholic beverage I know some of you like come on Whiskey's going to win yes I'm all about the whiskey but in the moment when you're having the struggles or potentially heading into a burnout State introducing alcohol or introducing different narcotics may not be the right decision right see I see the people pointing at each other I'm like uhhuh yeah this is your tribe your tribe's calling you in they're like uhhuh that whiskey um

favorite photos tissues because you know you might have seen me getting choked up up here a little bit this is an emotional topic and imagine just in the state you may need it the last three uh so for number for a counselor if you do not have a mental health counselor yet find one or at least have the number to access one the last three are very personal for me I put my favorite recipe for soup and it reminds me Josh get off your ass stop ordering pizza and go make your Harvest soup take care of yourself you matter you matter you are here and you're worth that investment of time the simple workout and when I say

simple it's like all right I got my resistance bands and it isn't bench pressing ad key like it's just something to get the body moving and my my favorite item and I recommend for everyone have a break glass planned for a getaway right so whatever you need to go get away if it's a cabin of the woods you put the money in there you put the map you put the directions like whatever you need one of so mine I have a hotel that I know and I change my walls right so sometimes just changing your walls is enough so my challenge for you all is you know to take this and take this concept and and check yourself like are

you prepared and because we are our community check with your community are they prepared like this I'm staring at a room full of people at a burnout talk and again you're not here cuz you're bored like like this is a huge issue in our space I'm done losing friends to Suicide I'm going to leave you with the organizational number because obviously I wouldn't be an executive director if I didn't give you a number of quotes um so according to uh a VMR Global threat index uh almost 70% of folks who have experienced burnout or are in Burnout are about to leave their job I know I left my job seven years due to burnout seven

years ago um and has hence come through recovery and it's been great but this is something that impacts both personal mental health and our ability as a community and our ability as a business to handle our work and handle our needs um resources at the end here uh really want to thank you all for for coming to a Frank discussion on a mental health topic and I want to pause now I know where we at yeah we've got about seven minutes which is on target questions comments stories please Josh all I want to say thank you uh for giving this talk uh I know there's a lot of people in this room who can relate to what you're

talking about I wanted to share two thoughts that you didn't cover one of them is the power of no there's a lot of people in this industry myself included who feel

obligated so for everyone in the room uh what he's saying is the power of no setting your boundaries right right we do not have to say yes to everything even if no one will pick up that ball and you said you had one other yeah um I would also point out I worked with a number of people who thought they were invincible and and in fact particular in security operations uh you know we value people who do have the the mental and psychological capacity to work very long hours however you know I work with enough people who had more capacity I and I've seen them completely flame out and and limit their c as a result so my

point having done this for over 20 years is no one's Invincible if you think you're Invincible you're not so um for everyone El thank you very much what he was saying was the Invincible fallacy right the the hey I can do that 20 hour day hey I don't need to sleep what's not sleeping for three days I'm I'm a goon I don't need sleep yeah I'll be a dead goon and our industry for a long time bred that they bred the rockar right you got to be a rockar to succeed your brand better be the you're the you're the person that's always there 247 because if not you're not going to become a principal now that's changing but it

takes years for us to get that out of our mind and out of our training so thank you for sharing that please observation I've had made many years ago remind myself con by for form form of a question Josh who's the most important person in your organization so uh he was saying an observation he has made and he's asking me in formal question Josh who is the most important person in my organization and I know the answer he wants and my heart is like yeah I know that answer and my brain's like well obviously that's the most Junior person because they're the person we can build but agree ensuring that you know that the most important person in your

organization and the one that you can most impact for selfcare and most impact is yourself thank you learn that the way it is TR um just something a mentor of Mind said that changed my perspective Josh knows I'm absolutely great at setting reasonable and healthy boundaries and always doing selfcare excellently um but I had a mentor who told me you need to give your organization the gift of failure and it it changed the way he's like if you do everything if you catch all the balls before they drop if you're always the one there 24 hours a day when you burn out because you will your organization will take longer to recover they won't be as resilient you are

actually doing damage to your organization by being a rockar he's like what do you think happens to rock stars how many people do we know that were rock stars in the 70s that you know are alive and healthy and again setting absolutely smart boundaries and living healthy lifestyle choices right so that's something that was really profound to me to kind of change the way I thought about it I thought I was doing them a favor by being the one catching all the balls and always there and the whole world rests on me yeah so for for everyone the audience um the statement around giving the gift of failure was the quote I hear which was allowing

not everything is going to get caught and if you keep catching everything the expectation is you're going to catch everything until you are

buried of us are leaders of teams bring Junior people who love the roles that we offer them and the excitement how do weag help ins these IDE that ESP so uh on the organizational side the question is as leaders and I'm going to qualify the word leader here I don't care if you're an HR Manager or you the best red teamer on the force you're leader in your own way people look up to you the question being how do we help new people or just our our tribe and our crew manage and avoid burnout um and I'm going to go back to that one the you know we talk about psychological safety so opening the door for

conversation it's like we did here uh a lot of you have just spoken up in front of a room of 60 strangers around mental health topics hell yeah do more of that two be that example if I don't take a vacation as a leader what are my juniors going to think work work more work more oh if I lose vacation days at the end of the year what are my people going to think they're gonna assume an expectation even if it's just you know things happen I like to work yay if I'm sending emails at 3:00 a.m. what are my people going to think be the

example all right oh we have time for one more go ahead toage

I we chose our theme this year very specifically it's been a hard run for this year and I mean it we've seen friends Rift we've seen friends lost but we're still here and I'm grateful for each one of you being here for taking this time and taking this time on this topic so thank you all if you have any questions find me around I'll be the one running around like a sh with head cut off but thank you