Flameout: Burnout Supernova

okay there we good all right hi everyone I'm Dan Ward I go by polar on Twitter and um wanted to talk a little bit about burn now and um you know I know that there are some people who have had conversations about this but I think it's a very important topic in our industry and um Wanted to continue that conversation so we have a small audience in the room here and um I'd appreciate you guys uh jumping in and uh asking questions adding comments um experiences that you want to share feel free so first of all you know I want to talk about what burnout is um there are several definitions and it varies depending on where you look the official

quote unquote definition of burnout was uh generated by um Christine maslac who is kind of the um EXP on burnout in not just you know the infosec industry but in general she's really the one who brought uh the science the psychological science behind burnout to the Forefront and um you know she really talks about uh emotional and interpersonal stressors and longterm how that affects your your attitude your cynicism your energy and your Effectiveness in your organization um and that's an okay definition it doesn't really get to the heart of What U what I think we struggle with but we'll start with that um you know another definition the Wikipedia definition is a psychological term that

refers to long-term exhaustion and admin interest in work which to me sounds like retirement so I don't really think that's a great definition either so you know but when we start getting further down and and looking at people who deal directly with people who are very burned down we start to find that um it really has to do with how much effort you exert and how much reward you get for that effort right and so you know people who see this on a regular basis um you know the failure of exist of the existential Quest why am I here why am I doing what I do and when I get up in the morning to

go do that do I really have the energy and drive and desire to continue and you know that's really this final definition I think really gets to it that the gap between um expectation and reward so you have very high expectations if you don't achieve those or even if you do the effort that you exert to make that happen can be very high and um it leaves you questioning if it's worth it but um we're going to go through and talk about a little bit of this and um you know how how to manage that want to give you guys some some thoughts on um you know what I've done personally to try to manage my burnout

I've been through it several times and um you know I think I'm kind of getting to a formula to manage that and and head it off the pass and and and keep myself in a healthier Place well my own personal experience for one thing um you know i' I've been through it several times and uh you know really the second time I went through burnout I thought had resolved the issue the first time and obviously when I went when I went through it again I had to face the fact that I didn't actually resolve it and all the things that I had done to try to prevent it didn't work right so um this is really kind of years

of experience and and having gone through this and some things that that did work well for me and and you know I think that people can kind of start maybe with some of those things they can avoid some of the distractions that didn't really they made my personal life better but they didn't resolve the problem right and that's really what I see a lot of is people making changes but not ultimately addressing the problem and that's really where I think we need to get to so why do we talk about burner um you know it's very high-profile we're it's it's a thing in the industry right now and it should be it should continue to

be a thing in the industry because we um we see a lot of it right we are we are and I'll talk a little bit more about this as we go on but we are a very susceptible group to burnout for a lot of different reasons and you know it really pains me to see a lot of my friends and co-workers who are in this industry as well struggle with this and there is no support group for them there is nobody reaching out and trying to head them off at the past and put them back on a healthy path right we have take care of one another and people don't understand our industry like we do

so if you see somebody struggling you really need to reach out and try to help that individual and keep them you know keep them in a healthy head space do you have an example of other industries that maybe have a more mature or not that problem yeah I the military the uh law enforcement and some of the mental health uh you know Industries really um focus on this people who are direct caregivers or crisis responders have very mature processes to deal with this um but we're a young industry right and and and the people's side the wet wear side of what we do is is very immature um we we're just starting to figure out

that you know what are the problems of having 15 years of exposure to you know telling people that the world is going to be the same tomorrow as it is today when we know that it very well may not be so that takes a toll on an individual and we have not F figured out how to deal with that it's not remember in summer camp those of us that went to summer camp you didn't go in the canoe or the sailboat or the pond alone that's right the very least in the military in a lot of things the buddy system suck police have a partner for a reason right right and it's easier to understand why two you don't send two

8-year-olds out you know one8y old yeah well in our industry supports that right if you look at the hacker um stereotype it's the Lone Wolf it's the person who's up till 3:00 in the morning researching sitting in front of a computer very sedentary living off of you know Dr Pepper or Mountain Dew and you know crunching data I mean it is not a healthy stereotype and people especially people starting out in the industry think that that's what it's about so we're setting people up through that stereo type and through lack of um engagement processes when we see them going south and and really as an industry we don't help people recover there either so it's just it's a problem

that continues to to feed on itself and get worse the uh forgive me some just shut up no come on in Jack the uh the airline industry is a really interesting study in this because they take well where's the risk uh so there a couple years ago there was the the the flight attendant who flipped out popped the door grabbed two beers and left that's that's just kind of embarrassing the people behind the lock door they watch each other they're trained to watch the each other air traffic controllers are training to watch each other you know and it's why the people in the pointing of the planes rarely screw up too bad cuz first of all

they're double cheing each other's work but also they're double cheing each other and I I don't know how what triggered what got you into talking about this he had to work with me not severely burnt out so what so Lance is a good friend of mine and and and i' I've seen him struggle with this I have personally struggled with this and obviously you know when you start looking into why a do I have a problem right because a lot of this is is just really undiagnosed out there right so we think that this is the world that we live in and we need to just get over it and continue dealing with the grind we're smart enough and Tough

Enough can that's right and I can do it on my own I don't need you thank you very much right so reaching out is well let me let me keep going because this is all this is all in here so the personality that excels in information security is also susceptible to burnout the reason why we're not humble or social right we don't we think we can do it on all on our own and we try to make that happen and when we find ourselves in a bad space the last thing that we're going to do is damage our reputation by reaching out and saying I am in a bad space and I need my friends to come and help me

right so as a friend of somebody who is going down that path you know you really need to try to find effective ways to reach out to those individuals and help them get the help they need and you know really the third reason why I wanted to have this talk is because um and I and I'll use myself as an example here you don't realize how bad you are how badly burned out you are and I didn't either and as I Was preparing for this I asked my wife you know there's a scale I'll show you in a bit where I was on that and where she answered and where I answered were very different from how I

perceived myself and how she perceived me and the dichotomy there really surprised what about like negative reinforcement like we and sometimes in software engineering they they say well you know programers are like fuses and we're going to burn them out we'll just get another one yeah that's a sick philosophy right so it's like we're reinforcing that but isn't that counterproductive to having good happy you know worker bees that are secur absolutely is so you know when when people use that as their excuse to take care of the problem by removing it from their organization that just means that we have a bunch of hurting and damaged people who are now unemployed and you know that's going to pile on to

their depression and make things that much worse and you know ultimately leave their next employer to have to deal with a problem that they didn't create right if that person ever gets back on the path of being employ what what what do you think about the whole I don't know I've seen it where people go into firefight mode and then they come out and it's almost like they're freaking out because they're not getting that adrenaline hit and it's over it's like very vicious cycle that's right kind kind of like hert Locker the the movie is kind of what I reference when I'm talk about that but I've seen that happen many times too yeah you've seen

you've seen organizations live that right whole entire organizations where they're constantly in triage mode and they do not know how to operate outside of triage mode and they think that when they are not in triage mode that they're not doing their job right that is a sick corporate culture is that a type of burnout what's that is that a type of burnout is that is that on the Spectrum I think that leads to burnout I I think that that and and we'll talk about more why that leads to burnout but that is definitely uh a contributor right and and um as a as a leader or manager of people if there are any of you in the

room and I hope there are you know this is really something that you need to keep an eye on um to make sure that your uh your employees um are are healthy and are able to contribute long term right so sometimes managing a workload effectively is very painful in the short term but in the long term uh the rewards are much greater and I I think that's a lot of what leads to that when you're trying to be everything to everyone all at the same time you know that's an impossible expectation on an organization which leads to Impossible expectations on individuals so that that expectations versus reward is already skewed just by the culture of your organization

so the stages of burnout I'm not going to read all of these to you but I will point out that you know stages one two and three are really what set you up for Burnout and these can go on for a very very very long time years um where you are a highly productive individual and organizations love this and it's not always it doesn't always lead to burnout but it it it often will given a long enough period of time where organizations start to become aware of a problem is as you move into displacement of conflicts where somebody walks up to you and asks you a simple question and you respond in a way that

is incredibly disproportionate to the question that was asked right with anger frustration but that's what security people do wait a minute yeah you probably need to check that my answer is no so so one of the other things is you know and and and that I mean you said it that's what security people do so people don't recognize that as a sign of a problem right they just say man that security guy he's always so wound up I don't understand what's wrong with him right and as we go through you know a lot of these criteria for Burnout are based on social interaction so a lot of the standard measurements that we use to determine if somebody is burned out

doesn't really apply to us because we're already such a selectively social group that our social interactions don't exactly match up the Gen to the general population so when you look at this from a very clinical perspective you know there is a lot of burnout that is specific to the in infosec Industry that is different than General burnout and you know I think that there's enough difference there that we probably don't see a lot of that clinical diagnosis where you know there truly is a problem right because as we go through some of these lower levels or higher levels of of burnel you know we get into things that deal with how we interact with people withdraw well if you're withdrawn

you know people think that you have your head down and you're getting work done they don't see that as a problem right they don't see you removed they don't see you revising your values to where work is the only thing that you care about and your family gets none of your time or attention because you're so focused and committed and you think that's the way that you should be to to do your job effectively they don't see the behavioral changes necessarily though they might start to get a clue there where organizations really come into play is at at the the higher stages of depression where you're dealing with the autonomous response the the Deep part you don't you know your your

friends um notice the change you're not interacting with them your co-workers you don't have good interaction with them you're going through the motions but you have Blank Stare right every question that you respond to begins with a sigh right it's it's every answer is well I have to explain I have to go educate this person before I can even have the conversation that I want to have and I really don't know if I even have the energy to do that how does self analysis work like if you tried to look at yourself you know and said like I'm burned out how effective is that yeah so that's a great question um so this is this is my example of what I

did uh was I I looked at this and tried to figure out at my worst stage of burn now where I was on this Continuum and I rated myself at a six I thought I was denying emerging problems but I definitely had displacement of conflix because I was frustrated with people but I thought that six was about as bad as as I got I asked my wife to read through the description of each of these stages and have her rap me with without you know any influence and she immediately said I was at least an 11 right so that told me that the mechanisms that lead to burnout also change your values and make you not realize that you're as bad as

you are right so you need to have some type of external mechanism to give you some indicators that you're going down this burnout path H but we always go alone so we don't know that's true but um you know you don't really always go alone there are people in your life who are giving you feedback on this you just may they're transmitting you're probably not receiving right so there's a there's definitely some distance there causes of burnout I love this quote um trying to figure out why pickles had turned into pickles without analyzing the vinegar Barrel right so if you look at the individual pickle you're never going to understand what created that pickle and it's the same in our

industry there's a lot of external influence that causes you to be burned out that's not just infos things that are happening that can be the economy that could be you know any external influence that that that changes our industry that that causes pressure that that forces you to be uh to operate at a higher normal stress threshold so uh working too much uh unjust environments where the reward doesn't equal the effort you're not getting a lot of support I mean does this ring a bell with anybody I don't get any support nobody understands what I do right yeah um where you're unable to affect change right you're beating your head against the wall every day and and you know

nothing is moving but you think if you beat your head harder against that wall it's finally going to move that wall isn't going to move right um serving values that you load if you're doing some if you working for a company that provides an ultimate end that you don't agree with that can create internal conflict which leads to stress an insufficient reward right reward I don't always mean it doesn't always mean money it can be praise it can be satisfaction right so um I mean this this is almost the definition of the impos industry um so you know plus uh the person personality traits that lead to good infos individuals I mean this is just uh this is just kindling waiting to

be lit so all it takes is uh a little bit of external influence and we're on our way so when you say um little support I'm assuming I just want to thr this out there you're talking about like even the fact that a lot of us in this room and here we go to talk to someone and you feel like you're talking want that's right so you know what we do is very specialized it's not their fault it's just they don't understand what the hell you're saying that's right so so they don't they don't live in the world that we live in right so you know trying to go have a conversation where you feel

like you're having effective communication with somebody outside of this industry is very difficult so it was very therapeutic for me to be on Twitter and to see that everybody else is dealing with the same exact problems that I am and I am not in fact alone right these are very common issues and you know we don't have the answers but at least we're not alone in the struggle right so if you look around and you're the only one on the battlefield you're feeling pretty pretty alone right there is no but if you're looking around and you see these digital feeds coming in that say yeah I understand that sucking I'm right there with you then you know

that's a very powerful thing so if you're feeling alienated make sure that you reach out to the community because they will respond and they will help you but um and and just being a part of that seeing that information come through is very therapeutic if you are not able to convince yourself that you need to reach out just participating in those conversations and seeing other people being frustrated as well will be helpful tell me to shut up anytime I want to throw the reason the reason that we started trying to formalize what we did years ago was that there were a couple of us who sort of kept an eye on each other so Josh Corman and I Martin McCay

and I G sponsor and I each other and if if you look at the list of people we had at various times sort of hey you know when I saw you at source or RSA you look kind of rough what's up and that drove us to say all right instead of just talking among five or six friends who are our mutual Aid Society right yeah let do it and group accountability is but our egos and this sometimes make it hard to reach out as you talked about yeah I don't need help yeah [Music]

[Music] right when I have to people outs always little ience oh

every iek and wow enjo it meure and joy that that D curiosity makes probably my mom manag and I'm told that frequently I've never told wow your curiosity drive has been a huge benefit for our organization right so so welcome to be a being a true infos seex person and not a you know cut and dry like firewall Administration right I mean that drive to understand is really what makes an infos person an infos person right if you are if you're digging if you're if you're researching if if just because is not the right answer for you then yeah you truly are a part of that community and susceptible to all of this right yeah explains the fixation on unicorns

and rainbows too yeah right why do you think though that that because management seminars typically teach managers to try and focus on those types no no they don't no management management seminars are are really not I I mean I don't think I and I I mean I've been through a formal Management training track and they never touched on this at all right they are not I mean business managers uh don't look for this in their individuals and they're not definitely not trained to deal with this and if you come to them with this problem nine times out of 10 they're not going to know even where to send you to start getting help right well maybe do

you look you look uh like you maybe have had a experience and I hope that's the case the management folks that that I've worked for in the past that are professionals and typically management professionals along in this field they're not looking for the the 9 to5 person they're looking for somebody that has a passion for it and they're understanding that and what I I personally think what you've seen in the Management Field if you will is most of it has gone to hacking SL management that just caters to the competition not to the company and the individuals right so can I ask what size organizations because I think the size of the organization makes a huge difference

absolutely also you talking an IT type person manager you talking I'm talking about both okay um and I'm talking about both small and large uh but um in some of the the corporate Wireless um AT&T Wireless uh and and some of those other businesses I've had the privilege to at least get glimpses into and in most of those cases they they did really time at promoting that and then what what I typically saw happen was a takeover and management style that's right and I think that that's so I think I think the focus there is as as a management team um of an of an infoset group are you interested in immediate return or being

able to provide a long-term consistent result right if you are incentive to provide an immediate return then you are going to do what you have to do to provide that return and if that means burning out your people and having husks of individuals that are left when you're done and you're okay with that then that's what you're going to do and you know a lot of a lot of leaders don't even know to push back on those unrealistic expectations that are being brought down on them they have to be successful they have to meet their numbers to get their bonus and they're going to do whatever it takes to make that happen now we are finding that that

doesn't work right as an industry people are becoming aware that the minions are fighting back and they are starting to renegotiate the expectations and the expectations coming down and the expectations coming up do not me and now I own a gap right how am I going to fix that I'm going to have to renegotiate back up the chain of what I can actually accomplish in a reasonable amount of time that's a good thing right but that's not going to happen proactively right these managers aren't going to do that until they have they are incentive by their Workforce to do that so I think that's you know that's part of what I'm looking out of this is some type of

ground swell to say this is something serious that you know we need to do collectively

yes and people I think are the best manag for itur researchers haveed they also is that everyone else is kind

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right else yeah to agree yeah I think some of the best managers that I've had are so burned out they don't know what to do with themselves but they are so busy trying to take care of their people who are also burned out but they can't deal with their own right and there is no support group for them right they're in the same boat we are so yeah I think that's definitely you know what we're seeing and you know I I don't know what the standard deviations were on the original data that uh the Jack and Company put together for RSA but it would be interesting to see what the different scores are by level in the

organization and see what the deviation is amongst those groups but I have a feeling that that you're not going to see a lot of difference between the infosec managers and the general infos practitioner yeah that's there were very few patterns that that we could really stick uh stick things in right [Music] um in other Industries uh moving up the food chain tends to add pressure but also adds reward I'm not sure that the reward I'm not sure the ratio works out for us right exactly it's not a one to one

right these are things that you really need to to try to be aware of in yourself and try to negotiate as you talk with your employer um you know you can go renegotiate the terms of your relationship there's risk involved with that but ultimately if you're going to be happier it might be worth the risk I do want to talk a little bit about the survey that I did um you know I sent a note out this was kind of last minute but um I wanted to see where we fell I know that we did a we did some polls I I went back and looked at the data and I couldn't directly correlate the pre just in data to the

questionnaire that I used so I'm not going to go back and cor I'm not going to try to correlate that but if you look you see some similarities in um the way the original data came in and the way that this survey came in and some of this I think is unique to is just a part of being in infosec I mean we're cynical right it shows that we're cynical we all agree that we're cynical the deviation on this is very low compared to the general population we would expect infosec people to be much more cynical because it's almost a survival tactic in this industry exhaustion you know that's part of our culture we work we work uh incredibly

hard the expectations are incredibly High and um you know it's interesting to see that for all of that effort for all of that negative emotion that that effort generates that the reward the effectiveness is actually a little bit lower than the general population so we're working harder our attitudes are worse and we're getting less done than you know the general population of people that that they serve so I I think that this really kind of points to you know again a little bit of sickness in our in our uh in our culture where you know if we're could could we reduce our Effectiveness a little bit and gain back some of our time reduce our exhaustion improve our

Outlook a little bit maybe I don't know but but but I hope so and then you know the areas of work life life survey which um the AWS and and the Massac burnout indicator are the two kind of accepted mechanisms that the the um the mental health industry uses to determine burnout and causes of burnout which they're not great they don't really apply to our industry very well but they're kind of the best thing that we have so that's what we use but if you look at this you know the interesting thing is in our industry our workload we feel is lower than the general population we have more control over our work we have more reward we have

about the same amount of of community involved this we have you know greater fairness and you know we typically align with our organization's values so the fact that all of these indicators say basically we should be happier than the general population but when we go back and look at this data we're not so there's something that these tools are not capturing me ing that is causing us to to be more burned out than these tools can measure right that that they can there is no cause and effect relationship here that is that we can directly correlate so you know I I think that even if managers were trained and kept the pulse on this using these types

of tools which I think you should attempt to do you're still going to have to do the basic sniff test like look the individuals in the eye and see if they're being effective in their work if they're contributing if and if they're engaged and if you see that start to slip you're going to have to get involved and try to figure out what you can do to help those individuals yes how would you get that person so if you notice that behavior how would you get that person to admit that there's a problem they're going to stage in intervention that's that's a good question the reality is that person probably already knows there is a

problem said before you thought you were at a six where you know you're really yeah but but the thing is I knew there was a problem and and the reality is that you're going to know there's a problem even if it's just I really don't want to do this and I don't know why I can't motivate myself to make this happen right that's a very initial stage of burning out right you're not interested in in doing the thing that your organization has hired you to do right so you know if you see um Effectiveness or contribution diminish that's a good sign that you need to to put eyes on that individual and try to understand

what's happening with them and you know sometimes a very direct approach works well right and you may not if you are if you're the manager you don't even have to get them to admit that there's a problem to help them starting to help intervene and reduce their workload and pull them out of some of the things that they're committed to I mean this is a sickness right it's it's a it's a self-feeding situation where you feel like you have to own everything you have to be all things to all people you get very territorial you get very cranky when people start removing you from these things that you feel that you need to be involved in and

that are not going to be successful unless you are a part of those those efforts so as a good manager you are able to help the most and your employee is going to hate you the most for doing that because you're helping them but it doesn't feel like you're helping them it feels like you're removing them from doing the thing that they the way that they add value to the organization so that it can feel to the individual like you're putting them on the path out the door with really what you're doing is putting them on the path to being in in a more productive space and a healthier

space not necessar I mean I've had managers do this very po where they did this to me you know the second time I got burned out I I had fortunately a good uh a good graveyard manager who who just started doing these things right he started pulling me out what's that that that's right so so effective communication is important here right so that and that was my point is he was helping me the most but I could I couldn't see that I didn't understand what was happening and you know we didn't have the direct communication of I think this is what's happening with you and this is what I'm going to do proactively about it but that's what was

happening right he was trying he had my best interest in mind but I couldn't see so make sure that you you communicate with people that and it doesn't have to be hey I think you're burned out right it can be I think that the expectations that this organization placed on you are a little bit unfair right so we are going to readjust those expectations and we're going to back you out of some of this and that means you know certain things to the business or other team members but we're willing to make you know we're willing to do that to make this this Fair rocus that's right and I'm going to push back up a little bit and reset some

expectations so that I can maintain the health and and longterm contribution capability of my team so some of those things which will almost always be counterintuitive is when people around you start getting burned out they're not helping other people and they may punch out they may go crazy and they say okay you're now removed from the equation permanently you've been deselected or they may leave and that will cause an impetus for your employer or your boss to say oh my gosh we can't have another one of these and I'm really concerned that this guy who's a good guy is not going to be able to do his job not because of personal but professional you

know valuation and they'll say immediately like full stop go over here you get to go on a paid vacation and that looks very counterintuitive to you like what is going on why am I being punished now is not a really good time for this I mean we were down people we don't need to be removing me and putting me on the bench and uh and then usually the same language they use with the people that were deselected could be also be used with you if they're not communicating very clearly and say no I insist because there's a bigger thing I'm worried about here than just you yeah you have to have I mean you know

maintaining those relationships is important and understanding good communication understanding what's happening around you yeah and they could be scared they could say I really don't want to talk about your job right now CU I'm afraid it may send you over the edge and so that might break some Comm communication Pathways cuz that might be the only thing you want to talk about is going in there and securing the heck out of it

yes don't workm or I not areer all right and right so so being able to to detect an unhealthy environment is definitely important and how you react to that environment is critical too but you know to recover from burnout or to prevent it you are going to have to change things and change is very difficult and uncomfortable for people but I can guarantee it's a lot more comfortable than having to deal with depression and severe burnout and depersonalization so you know it's really a game of um you know where do I want to apply control do I want to wait till the very end where automatic systems are kicking in and forcing me out of this situation or am I

going to take ownership of this um renegotiate my expectations and commitments and really come um manage a better work life balance for myself right that's what a lot of people don't do they expect their employer to do that for them and a lot of employers especially in this industry you know they don't have the the bandwidth to deal with that right that's why it's really important for us to self-regulate um not only you know at an individual level but also at a community level so keep an eye we do have of self yeah the reality is if you walk off the job the business keeps going absolutely right yeah it might be painful for a

little while but it might be less painful than dealing with your attitude right yeah so what do we do about burnout and I spend a lot of time thinking about this trying to boil this down into some simple steps right one you have to realize at an individual level if you're going to get better you have to realize that there's a problem and this can be this could take a long time to get to right this this is this is your point earlier right that what if somebody want admit they have a problem well they're not going to fix themselves right so you're going to have to intervene on their behalf but once you know there's a

problem you're going to have to figure out why the problem exists and you know this is easy to skip right people move on to making other changes in their life outside of their work environment that ultimately improves the quality of their life but it doesn't fix the underlying cause of the burnout it may give them more stamina it may push them back a few levels or give them some relief but the burnout isn't really getting any better right so we have to figure out what that what those stressors are that are causing a burnout situation and make sure that we can start putting together um small changes to impact those stressors right A lot of

times expectations and commitments drive this I've overcommitted myself or somebody has overcommitted me and I need to now go back and renegotiate those expectations or as gracefully as possible resend some commitments and do this you know don't punch out completely or you can if you want but you don't necessarily have to you might start with some small changes to say well if I reduce my expectations a little bit does that improve you know make a small change evaluate and adjust your plan accordingly taking care of yourself I think is critical too so there was a good talk on depression earlier in here that a lot of these same things apply get enough sleep um sleep direct directly impacts my mood

and I'm sure it does with you as well whether you're aware of it or not um your diet and exercise I mean these routines will definitely impact how much stamina you have to deal with with burnout and how much um um garbage you can take before you start to break down in forcing downtime you know this is hard for somebody who is used to working 80 hour weeks to enforce a stopping time and go home and have meaningful relationships with individuals because it feels like you are slacking on the job because you have reset your values to where the job is the only thing that is important to you you have to you have to reset those values and it's something

you have to do forcefully it's not a comfortable process and find a purpose out outside of work these are these are just suggestions but you know typically if work is what you're living for work is what you're spending all your time on and what you're obsessing over which is what caused you to get to this situation to begin with so find some um you know find at least one thing but hopefully several things that you enjoy outside of work and you can invest your time time some other things that you can do you know make sure that you understand what your stress behaviors are and when they start to kick in so when you get

stressed do you eat do you obsess what what are those things and this might be a good time to uh to talk about the Budd buddy system right where you might not even realize those things are happening but somebody who you trust or who you authorize can um you know they can tell you that you're you're exhibiting these signs and that they think that you need help and you let them tell you those things without getting frustrated or upset and take them at their word and start um start making some changes yeah I think this is key to be proactive is that you need to set up those ground rules beforehand because people could be beating you over

the head with obvious indicators and you'll ignore them right that's part of the reinforcing I mean this has to be a very fundamental thing where where you agree that you know I'm going to tell you and you are going to listen to me and we are not going to argue about this right this is I'm going to tell you and we are going to go do something about that and if that is you know go to the bar and have a conversation about what sucks in your life that's fine but you know we're going to talk about what we're going to do to start making this better as well and some of those things require simple changes some of those

things are not even work right you might be burned out in things outside of your work life that are impacting your work life so you know there is a lot of influence here that um um you know that can come into play but I think the biggest you know the biggest um the biggest thing that you can do is allow somebody to tell you that you have a problem and then allow them to help you overcome that

problem long-term management things outside of work may be contributing to the issue things in your job role or career that don't fit your personality are going to create stress so you know if you are a a a square peg in a round hole you are going to be stressed right man I really hate malware right so if if you're working for a company or the the your co-workers don't share the same values as you you just don't fit on the team that creates stress that that that you know you need to at least be aware of that and have have a mechanism for dealing with that longterm start building long-term plans to resolve areas of conflict in your

life this is you know for me this has been a year-long journey I have changed job roles I have moved locations um I mean almost everything in my life except my family and my close friends have changed and it's created ultimately a better life for me but I still find that there are times that I'm burn out on my day-to-day job and have to manage that and you know after you kind of figure out how to create this balance you really need to work to maintain that and I think that you know the way that you do that is through aggressive expectations management right when somebody comes at you with an expectation you need to make sure that

you and they are on the same level as to how long that's going to take to accomplish and where it falls on your priority list and make sure that you know there are some things on your on your priority list that are being accomplished that are important to you that make you feel that you're contributing because if your contribution list consists of conference calls all day long you don't feel ultimately impact change in your organization you know you're going to feel that your efficiency is very low so that's the end I'll open it up for any questions or conversations and if you want to read more about this there's some very good uh references out

on the internet I will be releasing the data set remove removing all personally identifiable information and organization information so if you want to see the raw data that I Ed to build um the couple graphs I put in there plus some of the statistical analysis around standard deviation things of that nature I'll release that on the full.org website and um as well as the finalized report that uh consolidates all that data and um and lets you see all the results any questions just a car right thank you everyone

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