Strategies for Overcoming Burnout While at Work with Cait Donovan
Episode 153
Have you ever found yourself staring at your computer screen, feeling like you're running on empty? Or maybe you've noticed your passion for work dimming, overshadowed by exhaustion and stress. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone.
In this episode, we're going to unravel the complexities of workplace burnout. We'll explore how to spot the signs, understand its root causes, and most importantly, learn practical strategies to prevent and overcome it. Whether you're feeling the heat of burnout right now or want to arm yourself for the future, this conversation is for you.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Recognize early signs of burnout
Apply simple yet effective changes in your routine
Break free from societal pressures
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About the Guest
Cait Donovan is a Keynote speaker, one of New York City’s leading burnout experts, host of “Fried – The Burnout Podcast,” and author of the book "The Bouncebackability Factor". Her creative burnout recovery solutions have been featured on podcasts and online magazines such as “Forbes”, “NPR,” and “The New York Post” and in companies such as Lululemon and Pepsico.
About the Host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
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She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
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Welcome back to another episode of the Unstoppable Grit podcast with Danielle Cobo, where we dive deep into the strategies of building a career and life you love. I'm your host, Danielle Kobo. And today we're tackling a subject that let's face it, has touched each of us in some way, burnout in the workplace.
Have you ever found yourself staring at the computer screen and feeling like you're running on empty? Or maybe you've noticed your passion for work dimming, overshadowed by exhaustion and stress. If that sounds familiar, you're not alone.
In fact, according to a Deloitte study, 77 percent of respondents have experienced burnout at their current job. 83 percent say that burnout had negatively impacted their personal relationships. And that's why I'm thrilled to have with us today, an incredible guest, Cait Donovan, who has the renowned fried the burnout podcast.
In this episode, we're going into unravel the complexities of workplace burnout. We'll explore how to spot the signs and understand its root causes.
And most importantly, learn practical strategies to prevent and overcome burnout.
Whether you're feeling the heat of burnout right now, or want to arm yourself for the future, this conversation is for you.
So grab your coffee, take a deep breath, and let's dive into this enlightening discussion with Kate Donovan. Get ready to turn your burnout into your breakthrough.
Keep Learning, Keep Growing
What inspired you to go back to school?
My initial college experience was really So I did two years of undergrad, and then I went for a four year master's program, finished with a master's degree after six years of schooling, but didn't get a bachelor's along the way.
When I moved back to New Jersey after being in Europe for 12 years, I tried to apply for my acupuncture license in New Jersey. New Jersey is the only state in the country that I could not get an acupuncture license without having a bachelor's degree which was wild. Right? And I don't know that I want to even practice, but I spent 100,000 in a lot of years with that education, so I want to be able to use it in case, just if I want to, I want to be able to do it and do it legally.
So that was the initial sort of, maybe I'll just go back to school, I'll do a couple years of school, I'll kick out, because the first two years at BU counted, and I was on a pre med path at the time. Those two years were gonna count. So I'll just do two years of school. I'll get another degree. I'll be able to apply for a license if I want one in Jersey, and I've really been spending so much time in this world of burnout.
This gives me the opportunity to choose a subject and to choose classes that can help enhance. and expand my knowledge. And so that was a huge selling point for me that I got to sort of do a few different things in one.
I'm seeing more and more people going back to school later on in life. For many reasons, what you had described, where they're saying they want to up level those skills, they want to create a deeper knowledge within their expertise.
And it does open the doors to more opportunities, the more education that we pour into ourselves.
nd I got there, and when I started digging into some of the burnout stuff, I learned things within the first few weeks that I was like, oh, this is actually really important. These are things that I really need to know.
And I was able to find an online degree program through Penn State that was, it's called Biobehavioral Health, which is the biopsychosocial view of how chronic stress affects the body. Like, could it be better? Is there any better thing? When I found it, I was like, are you kidding? Like, yes, of course. What I found out while I was doing it was that it was basically the Western version of Chinese medicine.
So it's the holistic view of how everything works together and how everything sort of, you know, combines and so it was easy for me to wrap my head around a lot of it because I had a framework already that was in alignment with what I was learning. It was just a different set of terms than I was used to.
I was so excited. I was going to go for organizational leadership. When I started my classes, I had four people on my team that were promoted into new roles. So half of my team, I would now have four out of the eight vacancies on my team. And I remember that moment where she said, Have you ever given yourself permission? To maybe say it's just not right.
That's a huge thing, and when you're adding things to your plate, some things have to become not right now, I don't believe there's any other way to do it. I am not a corporate worker. I work for myself, so I have a little more control over my schedule.
But for the first few years of the podcast, I did everything by myself. All of the editing, all of the show notes, all of the social media posts, all of the scheduling. And when you do all of those things by yourselves, this might be really surprising to people don't know how much work actually goes into podcasting.
We're not just like clicking record and then sending stuff into the ether. It was taking me six to eight hours every week, which means one full working day of my week was dedicated to creating the podcast, which brings no money, which is a service, right? So I looked at that and I said, okay, well, if I'm going to start school, I cannot do school.
And I thought that that was gonna sort of settle me into a routine and make everything okay. I had no idea that jumping back into school, I was going to reignite a bunch of burnout provoking behaviors that I thought I had already managed. And this was the big shocker for me, like I know better than this, but the perfectionism turned on, the wanting to get all A's.
I'm so accustomed to being a straight A student that I couldn't understand why I wouldn't do that. And so I found it, like, I was about five months into the program and taking too many classes. And I was literally, actually, physically banging my head against my desk because I was so overwhelmed and frustrated.
And then I had to stop and say, okay, well, I had to take podcasting. The podcasting post production off of my plate, what needs to happen now? And what needed to happen was I needed to allow myself for this process to take three years instead of two. I needed to not take as many classes every semester because I actually couldn't do it all.
I wanted to see that grit and resilience.
Overwhelmed to Enlightened: Recognizing My Need for Change
What were some of the signs that you saw within yourself?
I was getting really irritable. I was getting very overwhelmed very quickly. My frustration levels were through the roof. I found myself being, and this is going to sound terrible, you guys, but I am nothing if not up front. I found myself being really judgmental of other students in the class, because with online courses, you have to participate in forums.
And so everybody sees everybody's work, and if you don't participate, you don't get a grade, so it's a big part of your grade and I was reading things and I was like, you don't know how to write a sentence. This doesn't even make sense. You clearly didn't read this article. I read the article.
You know, like, this like, moral superiority and this like, I'm doing it better than everybody completely took over. And I was embarrassed, I couldn't figure out why I needed Do it.
I was like digging into it and I was like, do I care if this person gets a C and passes all their classes and this is good enough for them? Or maybe this person has a learning disability and this literally is the best that they can create and maybe this person doesn't speak English as a first language and this is amazing what they're actually doing.
Like, this is amazing.
So I had to stop myself and say, You can be good to be good for yourself.
You can be good to simply be good for yourself. You don't have to be better by making other people worse.
Grit as My Pride
If I'm able to look at somebody's burnout situation and come up with at least six different categories of factors, at least that contribute to a burnout, why wouldn't I be able to look at my current situation and look holistically at the factors that are contributing?
I was the same in college. I was bartending and waitressing in multiple places at once to pay for my apartment in San Diego while I was finishing my degree. That was also part of what tripped me up when I went back to school. Now, my husband was lucky enough to not have to work during college and college was free because he grew up in Poland and college is as long as you can get in with your grades and merit, you don't pay.
So it's included in their education. So he didn't pay for college and didn't have a job. And so it was a very different experience, but it was a sense of pride for me that I had that grit, that I was a bartender, that I made it work, that I got through school, that I paid my own way, that I took those loans, that I paid them back, right?
My grit was my pride.
But then, I was 20. I had a little more energy, I had a little less attention to things like hangovers and I could power through a lot of things. I was at a different stage in my life and I failed to take that part into consideration. I was like, well, I worked and went to school before I can work and go to school now.
I grew up with not the best circumstances, and there was always this baked in idea that if you could, like, make it out of this little city in Massachusetts, that you, like, won something. I don't know what, but life, the game of life, you know?
And so, being able to start from close to nothing and make it has been a huge driving force in my world, and I know that's something that we share and so using that grit to be successful makes me feel like gives me a reason to be proud of where I came from, because if I wasn't, then I might not have that grit.
It's kind of like meshed up in this ability to overcome, but it's also, if we look at it on a more general level, it's built into our country. We literally love, more than anything, an underdog and people that quote unquote pull themselves up by their bootstraps, which is like actually physically impossible.
That's why we use it as an expression, but , you can't actually do that, but we love those stories in this country.
Hard work and individualism are two of our top 10 values.
So that grit also gave me pride because it meant that I was living in accordance to the cultural values, the societal values that were embedded in me, like it or not.
It's a part of your identity when it comes to being successful.
And I like to remind people of it because I have a hard time. Still, this is still something.
I feel that people make assumptions about what I had to go through to get here, and I feel like they assume that it was easier than it was. So I feel like I have to harp on this and keep reminding people where I came from, because in my mind, makes my success more acceptable.
Breaking the Myth of Self-Made Success
One of the things that I talk about with burnout coaching clients a lot is there's no such thing as a self made person. There's no such thing.
We can't get through this life without each other, and when I have somebody say, on the other side, they'll say, yeah, but I did do everything by myself, and I say, okay, well, let's take a moment, look at your desk.
What's on your desk? Well, my computer. How many people do you think needed to exist in this world for that computer to, first of all, be thought up, to exist, to be developed, to be built, to be shipped, to be sent, to end up on a store shelf, to be bought, to be unpacked, to be set up?
We don't do anything alone. So when I get into that place of like my grit and my pride and my, I have to remind myself that, we are all connected, and the better I do, and the better vibe I bring with me, and the better energy I have, the better it is for everybody.
This is my contribution to the world as being happy and successful.
Reconnecting with Your Body: A Path to Resilience
What are some of the advice that you recommend for some of the coaching clients that you work with where they're in work and they're in a situation where they're burnt out but maybe they're not in a place to take a sabbatical leave or to take a I'm grateful that sabbatical leaves do exist but not everybody is able to take that.
Find out what's available to you and figure out if you're going to use any of it.
So let's figure out if there isn't something physical that's standing in your way and making things difficult, right? If you have a little more discretionary income, maybe go the functional medicine route so somebody can test for more specific optimizing factors. But even just a general blood test, if you're low in vitamin B12, you're probably going to feel pretty crappy.And you're not going to be able to focus, and your muscles are going to hurt, and you're going to have bad recovery times, and your sleep isn't going to feel great. If you're very stressed out, you probably have low magnesium. Let's take some. Let's do that first. Before we go down a whole host of self judgments about how if we could just change the way we interact, or change how we show up, or change ourselves in some way, it would be better.
Do Foundational self care.
It means drink when you're thirsty, eat when you're hungry, rest when you're tired, move when you're antsy, and pee when you have to pee, right?Go to the bathroom when you have to go to the bathroom. When I say this, people are often like, well, that won't do anything. That doesn't change anything. And at the same time, they're like, I never pee when I have to pee, I write eight more emails before I go to the bathroom. When I tell you that this is critical, because what it does, it allows you to reestablish a conversation with your body.
If your body gives you a clear signal, and then you respond to it, your body starts to think, ah, she's got me. There is nothing safer for you as a human than feeling. Like somebody's got your back.
When your body feels like you've got its back, it will respond better to you in all situations. So start paying attention to the little things.
When your eyes start hurting, close them for 60 seconds without looking at a screen. Don't take a break from your computer to your phone. Stop and close your eyes.
Be brave enough to meet your basic physical and physiological needs.
Sounds so simple, yet so important that most of us are not doing it.
We just ignore it. We just keep pushing forward. I'll just keep pushing forward.
So I would start with those three things and let them build on each other for a little while. I promise you it's surprising what a difference it makes.
Unfried Burnout
Unfried is a four month program that is run by my very closest friend from acupuncture school and burnout coach, Sarah Vosen.
It's a four month program that we designed together and then she took to a whole nother level. It's been running for almost three years now, so it's been through the wringer a few times and been perfected. It takes you through how to analyze your resources, how to take stuff off your plate, which stuff you can take off your plate, how to move through emotions that might be stuck, how to reconnect with your values and priorities, and how to plan a sustainable future for yourself that's burnout free.
I heard people in the past talk about their products as life changing, and I thought, that's like really bold.
I've taken this as far as I can by myself.
I don't know what else to do. We are what else you do.
It's a little bit about my own story of burnout and then there's a series of exercises that you can lean on if you are a DIY kind of person and you can do some digging, you have the energy to do some digging on your own.
It's not surprising. It consumed my mind. And I remember asking so many people their opinion. Okay, here's 20 more titles. Here's 10 more titles. Here's five more titles. And narrowing it down, it was so hard.
For our listeners out there, it is your time to break the burnout cycle. This is your time to take control. And first by asking and asking going over to your corporate office and asking what resources are available to support you.
Ask your manager, ask your family, your friends. It is time to put yourself in the driver's seat of your life and to break the burnout cycle and to take care of yourself so that you can then take care of everybody else. But it starts with taking care of you.
