How to prevent burnout (w/ Master Fixer Guy Winch) | from Fixable

0:03Happy Sunday. Elise Hugh here. Today we're bringing you a Sunday pick where we share an episode of another podcast from TED, handpicked by us, for you. Do you feel like work is taking over your life? Today we're sharing an episode of Fixable to dig into something we all face, burnout. Guy Winch is a psychologist and author of the book Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life. In this episode, host Anne Morris sits down with Guy while they're both at TED 2026 to discuss the insidious ways work can follow you home and how to set boundaries to avoid burnout. They dig into the harmful effects of after-hours rumination, share practical rituals to help you separate work from the rest of your life, and offer tips on how to take a truly restorative vacation.

0:52Whatever you're dealing with at work, Fixable is there to help, offering actionable insights to create meaningful change in your life and workplace. Listen to Fixable wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have a problem you want fixed, you can call their hotline at 234-FIXABLE. That's 234-349-2253 to leave Anne and Frances a voicemail with your workplace problem. Learn more about all of Ted's podcasts at podcasts.ted.com. Now on to the episode right after a quick break.

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2:47This episode is sponsored by Peloton. Good design has a way of solving problems you didn't know you had, like the mental overhead of planning a workout. Deciding what to do, how many reps, whether your form is right, it's friction that pulls you out of the experience before you've even started. The Peloton Cross-Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, builds a workout roadmap that's completely yours so you can stop overthinking and just move. It handles rep counting and form correction in real time and builds weekly plans around the instructors who match your mood, vibe, and personality. The only thing you have to think about is how good it feels to let go.

3:24And when you're ready to shift from a run to strength work, one spin of the swivel screen takes you there without losing momentum. The best solutions don't add complexity. They remove it. Let yourself run, lift, fail, try, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.com.

3:50Welcome, everyone. I'm Anne Morris, and this is Fixable. This is the show where we tackle the problems at work that seem, well, unfixable. Problems like burnout. There was a time when work was a place we went to. Now work follows us home, crawls into bed with us, and hijacks our minds. Today's Master Fixer believes we aren't just working too hard, we're letting our jobs hold our lives hostage. There's some strong language ahead, folks, and for good reason. Dr. Guy Winch is a psychologist, a best-selling author, and the man behind three TED Talks with over 35 million views. His latest book is Mind Over Grind, How to Break Free When Work Hijacks your life.

4:34We recorded this conversation at the TED conference in Vancouver, the birthplace of big ideas and some of your favorite TED talks. Guy and I sat down to deconstruct the autopilot state that leads to burnout, the specific brain hacks that can recharge your battery, and why leadership's greatest responsibility isn't quarterly profits, it's protecting the human beings behind the work. Let's dive in.

5:04Guy, welcome to Fixable. Please save us from ourselves. Thank you for having me. I want to start with this idea of work hijacking our lives, which is such a vivid framing of the problem. How do I know if work has hijacked life? Like, what does it look and feel like in practice when this happens? So some of it we know, but a lot of it we don't realize that's what's actually going on. For example, when you come home after a very challenging, difficult day at work because this irritating thing happened and that frustrating thing happened and that really stressful thing happened, it's going to be very natural for you to ruminate about it, to brood about it, to dwell about it, to replay certain things after work.

5:48When you're home, to have fantasy arguments about telling someone off and all the mic drop moments you envision having, which you'll never have because you're never going to do it. But that can take hours out of our evening. That's one of the ways work will hijack our thoughts, for example. There's research that shows that if one person is very stressed at work, their partner can develop symptoms of burnout. One of the ways work will hijack our relationships. Work also hijacks our leisure, our coping mechanisms, our emotional intelligence, on and on and on. Tell me some of the warning signs to look for in ourselves and our loved ones.

6:25So one of the warning signs to look for in yourself, you know, at work, for example, is do you approach your very difficult work days of I need to get through? This is the day I need to get through. You just put your hair down on autopilot and you go from task to task to task. You're not actually thinking in any deliberate or intentional way about, well, how do I manage this day? How do I build in some actual useful breaks, not non-useful ones, i.e. social media? And so that's one thing. When you just feel like days that you have to get through, weeks, periods, entire periods you have to get through, that's a warning sign.

7:00When you get home and you're not really present, you're checked out, you really have trouble switching off. Or the opposite thing in that all you can think to do is I need to veg out for four to five hours because I'm drained. Let me just plot myself on the couch and binge screens for however long. That's another sign that something is going wrong because that's not a very helpful thing to do. And why is that not just recovery from a hard day's work? How do I know when it tips into this idea of burnout? Well, first of all, those are two different questions. I want to answer one at a time. Recovery, actually the science of how to recover from the workday, is a little bit more than just resting.

7:40That's one component, and there are two others that you really need to hit. Resting will prevent your batteries from being depleted further, but it won't recharge them. To recharge them, you actually have to do an activity that you find personally recharging. None of those happen on the couch. So that's the... Unless we get a little bit more creative with the couch. Yeah, it's not happening. Yes, you can get creative with the couch, and those are recharging things that can happen. But other than those, most things you need to do in a way that, you know, the kinds of activities that you feel like, oh, I don't feel like doing that.

8:12But when you force yourself, you come back with a second wind because it actually recharges you. And the third thing is you need to feel autonomy, like you are in control of your time. And again, if you're mindless on a couch watching screens, you're likely to wake up feeling tired the next day. Burnout is a different thing that we can talk about. Yeah, I want to get to the definition, and then we're going to get to some solutions. So you described kind of an autopilot mode at work. I'm coming home. I'm not reconnecting with the people that I love. Are there any other signs I should look out for?

8:43Yes, the way you feel about your job. If it was exciting, interesting, meaningful, engaging, it's not anymore. You're so overladen that you just want to get through it. You numb out to those sensations and those feelings that actually kept us motivated and going and made it exciting and something that we wanted to do. This is especially difficult for people who are very passionate about what they do because you lose the passion and then they're questioning what they're doing. It's the burnout. It's not that they've lost the touch. They've become numb to it. And the main feature is this feeling of exhaustion, of fatigue.

9:21You just feel tired and you feel cynical towards what you're doing. And a good night's rest isn't going to do it. And even a weekend's rest, if you can get it, is not going to do it. There's something bone tied. I got burnt out in year one, after one year of my profession. Somebody who's an early achiever and wants to achieve quick. I achieved burnout quick, for sure. And the thing is, I felt like I'd been doing it for 30 years. And this was your first year practicing as a psychologist? Yes, and I felt like I'd been doing it for 40 years. I felt like, oh, I'm just going to the office again, more of this.

9:52I had just started. I was living the dream that I wanted to have for so long. I lost all sentiment for it because I was so burnt out, jaded, exhausted. And what I'm feeling that story and what I'm in touch with is that you have made such an extraordinary contribution to the world. Like the cost of leaving you in that state is a high cost for you and it's a high cost for the rest of us. Absolutely. Have you tried to quantify this at all? Like the kind of the stakes of this phenomenon for the world? Look, I don't know. I haven't done the research in terms of the numbers globally. But I've worked with so many people who are questioning, am I in the right?

10:31Am I doing the right thing? And they were doing important work. And actually, people who are doing really important work tend to get burnt out because it's important, because they keep saying yes, because they really want to help and they want to do something meaningful. They're much more at risk for this burnout. And then they start questioning, does it matter what I'm doing? Yes, it does. But you need to take care of yourself in order to keep going. When this subject traditionally comes up, we are quick to blame systems and organizations and the leaders of those systems. One thing I love about your message is you are also pointing out that we have a tremendous amount of personal agency too.

11:09So with the power and agency I do have, what is my first move? If I suspect I might be in the state that you're describing, coach me through it. What's my first step? How do I think about pulling myself out of this? I want to be clear with people that I work with a lot of the employers, with the founders, with the CEOs. They're not having a great time. Many of them are also burnt out. Yeah, they're also burnt out. I mean, it's not like, oh, we don't work and we make everyone. They're working just as hard or more. So they're also very vulnerable to this. But one of the things that we need to catch is that when we are stressed out, the bell curve of how we deal with stress and performance is such that it goes, the more stress we have, we start to perform better because if there's not enough, we don't have skin in the game.

11:53The stakes are low. We don't try as hard. There's this Goldilocks area. I love that. You know, in which kind of like the stress is just right. Yes. For us to perform at our best without getting exhausted, overtaxed. But once we pass that area, then we start to mismanage the stress. Then we start to make things worse for ourselves. We start to self-sabotage. We don't take the breaks we need to do. We don't recover well. We don't switch off. Is that because we're in that autopilot state where we're not making good decisions? Because when we're very stressed out, we need to allocate a lot of our mental and emotional resources towards handling the stress so we don't experience it in the moment.

12:30So our emotions don't flood us. So we don't become dysregulated. That leaves less left over with which to do our jobs. We start making mistakes. We start deferring to automatic coping mechanisms that just, you know, those are the ones that are going to tell you, oh, you have five minutes. You should look at social media. That will be the right thing to do. It is not, but that's what your unconscious mind is going to tell you. And your point, if I'm hearing you correctly, is that we actually don't have the cognitive bandwidth in that state to solve this problem. We don't have the awareness that we need to disengage the autopilot.

13:02If we knew what to do, we could actually take a moment. It takes five minutes before a day to look at your day and schedule, like here's what I need to do here. Here's what I need to do there. This will be fun to do. That'll help me recover from that. It takes five minutes. We don't have the awareness. We just want to keep going, but our cognitive and all our abilities start going down the hill during the day. And then, you know, we're much less effective. We start to make mistakes. We're less creative, less productive. So it's not a smart way to manage ourselves, but it's the autopilot way. So let's imagine a world where I feel myself getting pulled in.

13:34It almost feels like a gravitational force that you're describing. I feel this happening. What is my first move? First move is understand that you need to put on a self-management hat. You need to have a role in your head of let me figure out how to manage myself and manage the stress and take a few minutes from my day, from my evening, the night before, from the morning, to strategize how to get through this specific day, to figure out how to recover well when I'm at home, to really prioritize my life. When we talk about the work-life balance, people always say, oh, I added an hour of yoga. And I'm like, okay, that's great.

14:12I'm all for yoga. But that's not what the life part, the life part means being present and putting the kids to bed and having dinner with your partner and hanging out with your friends, just being present and being able to enjoy that. That's what people start to lose touch with.

14:39This episode is sponsored by Peloton. Good design has a way of solving problems you didn't know you had, like the mental overhead of planning a workout. Deciding what to do, how many reps, whether your form is right, it's friction that pulls you out of the experience before you've even started. The Peloton Cross-Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, builds a workout roadmap that's completely yours so you can stop overthinking and just move. It handles rep counting and form correction in real time and builds weekly plans around the instructors who match your mood, vibe, and personality. The only thing you have to think about is how good it feels to let go.

15:16And when you're ready to shift from a run to strength work, one spin of the swivel screen takes you there without losing momentum. The best solutions don't add complexity. They remove it. Let yourself run, lift, fail, try, and go. Explore the new Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus at OnePeloton.com. You have the vision for your business. You have the plan. And you just got handed a huge opportunity. But is your business connectivity reliable enough to make a move? Spectrum Business delivers fast, reliable internet, phone, TV, and mobile services. So you're always connected when it matters most.

15:52Get connectivity packages built for your business with savings that keep your budget in check. And with fast, reliable internet and 100 % U.S.-based customer support, you'll stay connected and ready to bring your vision to life. Learn more at spectrum.com slash business. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas.

16:16When you've done this research, what are the decisions that you see people make that have the biggest difference when it comes to burnout? Okay, so first of all, understand that in order to recover from the workday, the first thing that has to happen is that you have to detach from work. In other words, if you are thinking about work when you're at home, you're at work. How do I stop thinking about work? Well, first of all, be aware that you need to. Okay. And so, I mean, I have a very strict rule. When I finish my day, I announce to myself the evening begins. And by the way, it doesn't have to be exciting at all.

16:48But I'm just announcing that the workday is over. So I'm setting up a barrier where I am resistant to the idea of dealing or thinking about work. So first of all, be aware it's not useful for you to do that once you need some time off. I develop and I suggest developing a ritual to transition from your work mode, which is battle ready, mindset, fight or flight of the workday into a relaxed or it can be exciting, but it's not in fight or flight. You're not feeling threatened. You're feeling engaged. So that's different. One CEO I know used to just walk out of his house, walk around the block, come back in.

17:24And that was his ritual. Great. It's one element. Yeah. Okay. So that's a starting place. Because the goal of the ritual is to train your brain. our brain is a prediction machine. If you can train it to anticipate what's coming next and if it knows, oh, when you start doing this, I'm supposed to get into home mode. I'm supposed to relax. I'm supposed to re-engage with my family duties, my friend duties, my alone duties, whatever they are. But like that's a different mode. You can teach it. And so you want to involve as many of the senses. Music, sound. Music is very evocative. Have the song. Have the playlist.

17:55Change clothes. We are very tactile. And clothes are very... Oh, I love that one. Take off your battle. Yeah. There's a reason power suits are called power suits. And leisure wear is supposed to make you feel relaxed. Once you switch into that, we're in a different mode. You really have to train your brain to come down because when we're activated, we're in fight or flight, no one leaves the battlefield and switches on a dime into relaxed mode. It takes a while. And so you want to train your brain to do that, to see that that's what's coming. So that ritual is very important as well. These are end of day rituals.

18:26End of day rituals. What have you seen worked for end of week rituals? And the weak rituals, like, okay, so first of all, what are the things that, you know, the recharging activities, and they're activities that are also people. Like our personal identity becomes shrunken when we're all about work because it's just duty, duty, duty, and we get home, and if we're parents, it's duty, duty, duty. Where is us? Like, you know, where's the part of you that's funny or goofy or irreverent or whatever the thing is that you don't get to express during the workday? Who are the people in your life that bring that out of you that you don't have time for anymore.

19:00It's not the people you don't have time for. It's aspects of yourself that you are allowing to wither. And so you want to give oxygen to those parts of yourself, of your personality, of your identity, of your life, that don't get an expression during the workday. That's what's going to fulfill you. That's what's going to create some kind of resistance to stress and burnout because there's another part of your life that's robust enough. And you are not your work. Yes, not just your work. It's fine to be devoted to work. Most of us are, but it's not. I say to people, if work was taken away tomorrow, who would you be?

19:31Who are you if not work? And a lot of people struggle with that question. It's a super provocative question. Yeah. What about longer breaks? How do you incorporate vacation or end-of-year rituals? How critical is it for me to take my two weeks off? How does this fit into your burnout plan? Well, there's a whole science about vacations, actually, and how to make them restorative. Shorter vacations are better because the benefits of a vacation start to fade after a week. So if you're taking two or three weeks at once, you're kind of missing out on the benefit of it. So shorter vacations are better.

20:07But also give some thought to what you need. A lot of people who have young kids are like, I am so burnt out. I'm taking the kids to some kind of theme park. And I'm like, and that seems stressful for you. That was the most stressful three days of my life. I know, right? I mean, that's not the right thing. The five-year-olds are not burnt out. Yeah. You're the one that's burnt out. Now, you need to occupy them, but think of both your needs. But the biggest advice I have to people is that get to your vacation rested. Everyone likes to work up until the last hour to get ahead and this. And they get to, I know, I was like that.

20:40I got to vacation. It took me three to four days to relax enough to be in vacation mode. I was still so hyped up and thinking about work. I couldn't enjoy really. I didn't feel relaxed. Now I relaxed a couple of days before. I try to end work early, really have restful evenings, pack ahead of time so that I don't have to do it last minute. And it's amazing when I started doing it the first day of vacation, I felt rested. I'm like, oh, my God, I feel on vacation and it's day one. It usually takes me half the vacation, then it's almost over. So you want to really do that. You want to triple dip on vacations.

21:15Vacations can give you three times the pleasure if you get excited about it as anticipate. You know, like get excited about what you're going to do, who you're going to see, where you're going to see, where you're going to go. You know, don't get too much spoilers in, right? If you're going to the Eiffel Tower, don't look at the panoramic views online. Save those for yourself, but read some of the history, get excited, get the kids excited about the animals they're going to see in the animal park, whatever the thing is. So get the run up. And our brain interprets anticipation almost as good as the event.

21:45So you'll feel excited. You'll feel, you know, imagine the beach and the quiet. and the sea, and you'll literally start feeling calm. Then build in time to document. If you don't, you're going to document instead of being present. I've been to so many places where I see people march in, take pictures and leave. They're not aware of what they saw, why they're there. They didn't get any of the benefit, but they can show it to their friends. Schedule it and contain it. Yeah, schedule, be present, then document. Documentation is important because then when you get back, you can relive the entire thing through that media, They are create little albums.

22:20You can print them out. It's not expensive or create them online. But when you do that, two things happen. Number one, you have a great memory. And number two, if you had a headache, it's not going to be in the pictures. You know, if things went wrong at the hotel and you were irritable, you won't see it in the pictures. So we can quickly romanticize what a great vacation. It's not just that. You are relaying down memories that will remember the vacation without those things. You will literally in time forget the headache, the annoying busboy, whatever the thing is, and you'll just be like, look how happy I was because you won't see the irritation.

22:50So you're curating your memories, not just your experiences. So take us back to a young Dr. Winch. Your first year and you suspect something is not right. How did you pull yourself out of that? What happened was like it was literally my anniversary of my first year in my practice, Friday night, get home and I get in the elevator with a neighbor who was a doctor in an ER. and then elevator starts to rise and then it shudders and stalls between floors and my neighbor, who does deal with emergencies for a living, went into a panic and he started hitting all the buttons, there were many, and pounding the door and saying, oh, this is my nightmare, this is my nightmare and I look at how many buttons now.

23:32I'm going to have to stop at each floor and what came out of my mouth was, and this is my nightmare. And it was funny in my head, but it was so cruel and he looked at me and he was so offended and I realized, oh, wow. That was very out of character. This is not why you became a psychologist. It's out of character. When you find yourself, no matter what the situation, doing something that's out of character, be very curious about what's going on because something is going on. And I went home and I was like, what's going on? And I realized I was burnt out. I realized I felt like I'd been doing it for so long.

24:03I wasn't enjoying it. I was jaded. I was just going through the motions. And it was one year. But you can get burnt out very, very quickly. And that's what alerted me. And then I realized, oh, wow, I really, really need to make changes. I am way too early in this. It took me a while to really figure out that I still liked it. But the minute I wasn't burnt out, I'm like, oh, yeah, I love it. But when I was burnt out, I had no idea whether I liked it at all.

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25:15Deciding what to do, how many reps, whether your form is right. It's friction that pulls you out of the experience before you've even started. The Peloton Cross Training Tread Plus, powered by Peloton IQ, builds a workout roadmap that's completely yours so you can stop overthinking and just move. It handles rep counting and form correction in real time and builds weekly plans around the instructors who match your mood, vibe, and personality. The only thing you have to think about is how good it feels to let go. And when you're ready to shift from a run to strength work, one spin of the swivel screen takes you there without losing momentum.

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26:59It's very serious. It must mean something. So I will write in my calendar in the evening what the evening is about. And I'll just use an example of one at which there are no plans. And I'll say, watch TV for two hours because you'll really, you know, binge the show that you really like for two hours. And then I'll write, enjoy it. That last part is important. It actually sounds like the opposite of stupid. Okay. Well, no, it doesn't work. It's smart in that way. Yeah. But, you know, like really write, enjoy the TV show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when your brain sees it, it's like, oh, I actually have a task.

27:29I have a thing to do. Now I know what to do. Because your unconscious mind is like, let's enjoy it then. You know, and then it's all game. So I use my calendar to direct my unconscious mind, my brain, to like, here's what you're doing now. And I, you know, be present, enjoy this. And I do a mindfulness exercise almost in everything I do. I did one before I came in to this studio. Like, enjoy this podcast. We're at TED 2026. Will you do it with me? Can we do it right now? Yes. Whatever you did, let's do it now. Yes. Okay. We're at TED. Do I close my eyes? You may, if it'll help you. We're at TED 2026.

28:04This is our last year in Vancouver. It is a beautiful city. This is a beautiful convention center. This is the start of the week. It's an exciting week. And you're starting with an interview that's going to be really fun for both of us. So be present, enjoy the interview. This is the kickoff of a really exciting, meaningful week. Did you speak or that was just an internal soundtrack? I did that. I took a minute before walking in to do it. I always like... And you were just thinking these thoughts. You weren't saying them or you were saying them? No, in my head. Yeah, in your head. There are people around.

28:37You know, the mumbling aloud doesn't always look good. But if there are people around... You know, sometimes I'll say it aloud. Like, I work from home. There's a door I can close to the office that's a little separate from the rest of the home. And so I will literally say evening time. As if I'm announcing an event. And they're off. You know, evening time. So good. I announce it. You know what I also announce? Again, lunch. I take short lunches, but I really enjoy them, and I make sure to enjoy them. I don't do work during lunch. I really try and recharge. It's midday, and I have lunches that I like and I enjoy, and I'm like, oh, I'm looking forward to lunch.

29:12Enjoy lunch now. And I have a certain ritual that I do during lunch. I enjoy it. It's going to be 15 minutes. What is the ritual you do during lunch? The Wordle, Spelling Bee. Yeah. And I enjoy it, and it's relaxing and recharging for me. And you will announce lunch. It's lunchtime, Guy. I literally announce lunch. I'm like a butler with a bell in my head. It's awesome. Like, tea is served kind of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so much more exciting that way. I love it. So a lot of people who listen to this show do have some power inside systems. But what is your advice to people who are responsible and do have some power to change the way we work?

29:53So first of all, it's a win-win because the less stressed and burnt out your workforce is, the more engaged they are, the more loyal and the more productive. And therefore, they will stay longer. You have less retraining, rehiring, costs, you know, and all of those things work in your benefit, right? And so you want to be smart about it. Again, our instinct is to think if you just keep going, like overworking, if you just, you know, there's research, for example, that shows that when employers or managers are looking at two people who do the same task, and end with the exact same product, and one of them stayed 10 hours to do it, and the other did it in the eight hours allotted, they will evaluate the person who needed 10 hours as a better employee.

30:33Because they put in the work. They're less efficient. So, you know, they're not a better employee. So to actually understand that, like, overworking is not helping. It's helping them get burnt out, if that's what you want to do. That's terrific. But it's not really, really helping them. So really putting boundaries around the workday. Putting boundaries around the workday, encouraging breaks within the workday. There are companies, for example, whose screens go dark every 55 minutes. It's useful. Now, the employees get really annoyed. I was in the middle of something. Like, you're not embracing the idea of take the five minutes, don't just sit there frustrated and reboot, you know, that kind of thing.

31:09Because it's useful. And we have, you know, two, three, four good hours of deep work in us a day. Like, unless we recover and we charge, it's super important to do. Are you watching The Pit? Do you know the show? I am. Yeah. What I think is I love the show. I do think it's directionally how work feels for a lot of people, even who aren't in emergency rooms, that they are good people themselves. They're surrounded by good people, talented people. They're trying to get it right. And they are also at the mercy of forces beyond their control that have a major impact on their experience of work. Does that resonate with you?

31:48Yeah, but the thing about the pit that I'm more interested in, when they get home, how quickly can they switch off? How much rest do they get? How do they recover from those brutal shifts is what really interests me. In an ER, you can't really plan your breaks, you know, unfortunately. Again, there are characters who do the thing of smoking, which is not a good thing to do, but the smoking forces them to go outside and reboot for a minute. They have the excuse, I need to go smoke. I wish other characters would go outside without the cigarette. I think we need a ritual to replace cigarettes because I think that they really played that role inside organizations.

32:22And it's social also because they're such pariahs, unfortunately. You're connecting to people. People are like, so let me talk to you even though I don't know you because we have this one thing in common. Now more than ever. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but it forces breaks, you know, and I wish we could do without cigarettes. Yeah. We do a lot of work in healthcare. And head of a ICU nurse came to us the other day. She said, I now have 110, I think, direct reports. Oh, God. A lot of organizations are moving to these flatter organizations where suddenly they have a lot more people that they are technically responsible for.

32:58So in her case, and I think it's useful to learn in these extremes and then take the lessons back for the rest of us. But in her case, how does she even begin to mind over grind her life? Well, it's much more important for her to do. At work, for example, if you have 100 reports, you really want to try and create some esprit de corps, some real feeling, and then find those people that you can delegate certain things to. You need lieutenants. You can't do it alone. Yeah, you need lieutenants and you need reliable ones. But if everyone's more bonded, then, you know, people will accept the authority of the lieutenants that, you know, get branded lieutenants, et cetera, et cetera.

33:37Lieutenants will want to take on those duties because it helps. You know, there'll be much more of a we're in this together vibe, which in health care, you are against the system. You are against regulations. You are against all these different shifting ground that is so difficult to manage. But also, again, take the breaks during the day. Be a leader in doing that. Have an open discussion about what do you find recharging? In the book, I have sections about how do we charge in five minutes. But ask people, what do you do in five minutes that you actually find restful or recharging or revitalizing?

34:09Let's share our tips. Let's pool our resources. Let's have that as an open discussion. So if you get the five minutes, what do you do with them? If you get 10 minutes, what do you do with it? Like start a conversation, an open dialogue about we are under it, under the gun here. We're under pressure here. let's help each other manage these pressures because let's pool our resources let's pool our know-how like really start working together which would be good for us because the more bonded we feel the more belonging we feel in the workplace it is a great mental health boost to feel that sense of belonging and camaraderie and togetherness so it works on all fronts yeah and i think there are two points there that are really resonating one if you are in that situation like that head nurse, there might not be formal structure, but you have to add some informal structure below you and put your high performers to work.

34:59And then the idea that isolation really is our enemy when we are deep in this experience. It's beyond enemy. It is incredibly painful and damaging. People, when they feel ostracized at work, not even ostracized, but they don't feel a part of the group, people will leave. I always say to people, when you're looking to jump, it is the people that matter more than your comp. If the difference in comp is minor, but the difference in camaraderie and the feeling of who you're working with, it just matters so much for your mental health, for your physical health, for your longevity, truly, for your physical health.

35:39That matters a ton. So feeling bonded. And again, just find your work tribe, your mini work tribe, your team within the team. That's why office politics, when people are pitted against one another, and they are too much today because these companies merge. People see it coming like a year away. And then you have two competing departments. Half of the people are not going to survive. They know it. And meanwhile, you guys need to work together until we figure that out. So you're literally creating this gladiatorial situation, which is so hostile and tense. And people go to work. They're in a real battle mode all day.

36:11it is devastatingly bad for them, for their mental health, for their physical health. They will get sick. The World Health Organization, for example, says that around 750 ,000 people a year die from overworking. Just they overwork themselves to death. The stakes are high. Yeah. What advice do you have for people walking into systems like that or industries like that? First of all, your awareness needs to be higher, but think about what weight people, because people don't challenge it. No one goes to the bosses and says, hey, this is not reasonable for us. It takes really, you know, literally acts of Congress kind of thing to challenge.

36:52But in fact, there could be more of a groundswell. Stress and burnout in the workplace are at higher levels now in 2026 than they were before the pandemic. Still, it's been five or six years where the workplace remains very unhealthy. It remains unhealthy. There's room for people to organize and say, like, this is not reasonable. This is not okay. And again, to the employers, I say, it benefits you to have healthier employees, both physically and mentally and emotionally. You will get more out of them. You will save money in the long term. You really need to have that long-term vision now. What is your beautiful mind thinking about now after burnout?

37:34I think that I would like to go more towards how leaders and managers, you know, I see they're in the worst straits. You know, and I see the— Many of them are burnt out trying to solve this problem. Yeah, look, I talk in a book about, you know, a major founder of a major company, everyone knows the name, I won't mention it, who got scurvy working on a startup. Scurvy is what the sailors got in the 18th century, you know, when they were like sailing for 20 months because vitamin C, the deficiency, is what creates— a Flintstones vitamin would have saved that person. But there's so many people that are just so dedicated.

38:08They don't notice. We see a lot of that. We work in a lot of founder-led companies. Yes. Do you know what I have to ask a lot of my clients these days, which is embarrassing to ask, but I do. Like, I'm sorry, Mr. Majorly Famous CEO, when's the last time you saw a doctor? Yeah. And they always look at me like, I'll have to ask my assistant. I'm like, if you don't know, that's a problem. That awareness is something that we can instill it at the top, it will filter down, but it needs to be instilled at the top too. Guy, what are you fixated on right now? Look, we're in April and I live in New York.

38:44It's a new season. I'm a Mets fan. It's not easy to be a Mets fan. It is not. There's a lot of heartbreak. There's a lot, but there's also a lot of promise because every year is a new season. I believe in the team. I believe in the owners of the team, really wanting this team to succeed. and so I'm excited for the season. Some of my favorite people in my life are Mets fans and so I'm thrilled to add you to the list. Resilience, but also hope. Dr. Guy Winch, thank you for coming on Fixable. It's been such a privilege to have this conversation with you. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

39:29Your participation helps us make great episodes. So if you want to help, please follow the show, share an episode with a friend, leave a review. All of those are free and they totally help support us. If you want to figure out any questions about your workplace problem together, email us at fixable at TED.com.

39:54Fixable is a podcast from TED. It's hosted by me, Anne Morris. And me, Frances Fry. This episode was produced by Rahima Nasa from Pushkin Industries. Our team includes Constanza Gallardo, Banban Chang, Daniela Balareso, and Roxanne Hilash. And our show was mixed by Louis at Story Yard.

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