Derek Thompson:
]]>Stalin and Hitler: Both terrible, but also mutually destructive. Cancer and Alzheimer’s: Also both terrible and also, weirdly, mutually destructive. Apparently—and I never knew this—Alzheimer’s patients rarely have cancer. Doctors have studied the association for years without understanding the root cause. Maybe it’s mere selection effect, where people who don’t get cancer survive long enough to get dementia. Or maybe something more interesting is happening.
Cate Hall:
]]>It’s easy to extend this framework to explain burnout. You can think of the rider and the elephant as having agreed to a sacred pact: In exchange for doing what the rider asks, the elephant is promised certain rewards. When things are going well, the needs of both rider and elephant are satisfied, even if the balance isn’t exactly even day-to-day.
Burnout results when the rider asks the elephant, over and over again, to commit a tremendous amount of energy to a task, but then fails to provide the reward the elephant is expecting. As a result, the link between effort and reward breaks for the elephant, with catastrophic consequences for the rider.
Three weeks of interval running and my VO₂ max is back up in the average zone according to my Apple Health.
Feels good 💪
]]>Mandy Brown:
This is one of my answers to the question of, why give a fuck about work? Why love your work? It won’t, of course, love you back. It can’t. Work isn’t a thing that can love. It isn’t alive, it isn’t and won’t ever be living. And my answer is: don’t. Don’t give a fuck about your work. Give all your fucks to the living. Give a fuck about the people you work with, and the people who receive your work—the people who use the tools and products and systems or, more often than not, are used by them. Give a fuck about the land and the sea, all the living things that are used or used up by the work, that are abandoned or displaced by it, or—if we’re lucky, if we’re persistent and brave and willing—are cared for through the work. Give a fuck about yourself, about your own wild and tender spirit, about your peace and especially about your art. Give every last fuck you have to living things with beating hearts and breathing lungs and open eyes, with chloroplasts and mycelia and water-seeking roots, with wings and hands and leaves. Give like every fuck might be your last.
↬ ∙ Tagged in Health, Work Culture.
]]>Kate Leto:
Emotional self control is “the ability to remain calm and clear-headed during a stressful situation or crisis.” In other words, it’s the ability to handle our own disruptive emotions—not to ignore or deny them.
…
]]>Emotional self control is also linked to resilience. When we have more emotional self control, we can more easily bounce back from negative situations. And again, we’re sending the signal to our teams that setbacks are inevitable, but we have agency over how we respond and adapt to them.
Csaba Okrona:
]]>burnout is a specialized, clinical syndrome, recognized and categorized by very distinct symptoms. It’s a chronic state of being, a silent whisper of desperation that builds up over time, often unrecognized until it becomes a deafening roar that one can no longer ignore.
They go deep and I’m here for it.
↬ ∙ Tagged in Creativity, Health, Music.
]]>Kandi Wiens:
However it manifests, it’s important to remember that workplace cynicism isn’t due to some sort of character flaw or being a “glass-half-empty” person. It originates from the workplace environment, not the individual. Many experts, in fact, see workplace cynicism and depersonalization as a form of defensive coping: Becoming distant and withdrawn is a self-protective measure that places a buffer between an employee and the emotional exhaustion and energy depletion their job is causing. Even relentless optimists’ protective measures can be broken down when they’re exposed to high degrees of stress, especially when that stress continues unabated.
I hadn’t made the connection between rising cynicism and burnout before.
↬ ∙ Tagged in Health, Work Culture.
]]>Dina Denham Smith and Alicia A. Grandey:
Leaders are expected to attend to employees’ mental and physical health and burnout (while also addressing their own), demonstrate bottomless sensitivity and compassion, and provide opportunities for flexibility and remote work — all while managing the bottom line, doing more with less, and overcoming challenges with hiring and retaining talent. They should appear authentic, but if they get too honest about their distress, others may lose confidence in their leadership, known as the “authenticity paradox.”
This whole article resonates with my experience.
↬ ∙ Tagged in Health, Leadership.
]]>Advice on managing stress and how to create conditions for rest and recovery.
]]>Paul Ollinger:
]]>Danish values also provide a three-step prescription to turn the day around: “In Denmark, we have sort of a mental health [checklist]: Do something active. Do something together with other people. Do something meaningful.”
161 suggestions from the staff at Automattic.
↬ ∙ Tagged in Health, Remote Work.
]]>An app to help you use less apps.
]]>Shows a distinct lack of crocodiles.
]]>Simplicity of programme, Kettlebell, and not training till failure.
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