Anne Morris

All right, Frances, that is our show.

Will you read us out?

Fixable is a podcast brought to you by TED and Pushkin Industries.

It's hosted by me, Anne Morris.

And me, Frances Frey.

This episode was produced by Rahima Nassa.

Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Michelle Quint, Daniela Baloreso, and Roxanne Heilash.

Kyllä. No, se on hyvää tiedoa, koska meidän suunnitelmamme tänään on harjoitella enää koko ajan. Meillä oli paljon lisää Rosemaryille puheenvuoron ja miten saada mojosi takaisin työssä. Ja me sanomme kaikkea tämän jakson kanssa, mikä tuntuu olevan periaatteena auttamaan kuuntelijoillamme rakentamisen ja uudistamisen aikana. Mä rakastan sitä. Mä rakastan sitä niin paljon.

Welcome to Fixable, a podcast from TED. I'm your host, Anne Morris. I'm a company builder and leadership coach. And I'm your co-host, Frances Fry. I'm a Harvard Business School professor, and I'm Anne's wife. This is a show where we believe meaningful change happens fast, with some intentional rest and recovery along the way. There is a reason a week is followed by a weekend. Exactly. Today on the show we're going to give unsolicited advice –

to anyone who is feeling stuck at work right now, both overwhelmed and under-inspired. We're going to tackle both parts, how to get unstuck, but also how to create an experience of work that is worthy of you and your short time on this planet. Oh, I love your ambition. I want us to deal with the deficit of life force, the burnout part, the part of work that feels literally unsustainable.

And then I want to talk about how you replace that mediocrity with something else, something bigger that may even create a surplus of energy. If we're making this equation work, we want to dial down the negative parts, but we also have to dial up the positive ones. How does that sound as a plan? Well, from my math mind, we are nowhere near the frontier, so I'm optimistic.

So we sometimes call this state, this experience of work, exhausted mediocrity. And when we say that, it really hits some people hard. And it's this mix of feeling both stressed and bored at the same time. So our friend Adam Grant said,

Sometimes uses the word languishing to describe a variety of this experience. It's a beautiful word, but it's something beyond just feeling stuck or stagnant. It's also an experience where our nervous systems are jacked up, but we're not getting any payoff for it.

Totta kai, jotain. Ja tänään haluamme saada kaksi näitä osia, joita ajattelen kuin melkein uudistuskysymyksen. Joten on osa yksi, käsitys, joka on tämä eläminen, kärsimykset, osa työtä, joka on tuntunut eteenpäin, koska emme ole tarpeeksi tarpeeksi.

Ja sitten toinen osa on, kuinka muuttaa sen vaikutuksen jotain muuta, jotain isommaa, jotain enemmän ambitiivista, jotain, mikä vaikuttaa enemmän luonnollisesti luoda, voin sanoa, yliopistoon energiaa, jossa me voimme edes mennä loppuun, jotta saamme sen jälkeen työskentelyssämme. Mielestäni tämä on se, mitä niin monet ihmiset ovat valmiita saamaan.

Okay, Frances, let's start with the cause of the problem here on the exhaustion side. So your lovely colleague, Leslie Perlow, has done a lot of thinking on this. Why are we all so tired at work? Because we care so much is one part of the answer. What Leslie's language would be, because we are always on.

Lesley's book is called Sleeping with Your Smartphone, which is super memorable. There's also a piece of this that is not just about job design, which I think you're offering a beautiful remedy here. But what do I do if I've just been pulled in to the reality of being alive right now, which is an always-on human experience?

Always on is one of them. So the phrase I like from her work is intentional disconnection. Yeah, I think that's exactly right. Being deeply disciplined about, you know, putting the phone away. Ariana Huffington has done a lot of thinking on this in her Thrive movement. Has a little bed for your phone. She tucks her phone in at night. I think all of this stuff is really helpful, and it's very aligned with...

Jim Lairin ja Tony Schwartzen peak performance literature where they found that these elite athletes would allowed them to truly excel in a sustainable way over time as they brought the same amount of discipline and obsession to their rest and recovery as they did to their training and their nutrition and all these other things we associate with elite performance. And channeling Leslie's advice, I feel like

Se on mielestäni se, mitä meidän täytyy olla huolta. Mielestäni se, kuinka paljon agenssia meillä on oikeastaan, jotta voidaan loppua, asettaa joitain rajoja. Mielestäni maailma on myös erittäin avoimessa tästä. Mielestäni koko liikkuvuus noin neljän päivän työtä. Kaikki ovat pitkällä huolta.