3 signs that you’ve hit clinical burnout and should seek help | Laurie Santos

This interview is an episode from @The-Well, our publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the @JohnTempletonFoundation. Subscribe to The Well on YouTube ► Watch Laurie Santos’s next interview ► In the last few decades, the concept of “burnout” has become ubiquitous in modern discourse around work and academia. However, there is a common misunderstanding about what burnout actually is. To many people, burnout is synonymous with being overworked and stressed. But cognitive scientist and Yale professor Laurie Santos wants you to know that that’s not the case. Rather, burnout is a clinical syndrome with specific symptoms of emotional exhaustion, depersonalization or cynicism, and a sense of personal ineffectiveness. It can be caused by a heavy workload, but it is often due to a mismatch in values, unfairness, or a lack of intrinsic reward. Properly understanding burnout — and knowing how to identify it — is crucial for employing practical steps to proactively avoid the syndrome. To do so, Santos suggests four simple, actionable steps that can help you not only spot burnout, but stop it in its tracks. 0:00 3 symptoms of clinical burnout 1:51 3 causes of burnout 3:39 Questions for assessing your burnout 4:59 How to treat burnout Read the video transcript ► ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Laurie Santos: Dr. Laurie Santos is an Associate Professor of Psychology at Yale University. Her research provides an interface between evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, and cognitive neuroscience, exploring the evolutionary origins of the human mind by comparing the cognitive abilities of human and non-human primates. Her experiments focus on non-human primates (in captivity and in the field), incorporating methodologies from cognitive development, animal learning psychology, and cognitive neuroscience. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read more from The Well: Why the search for meaning is not a job for science — or religion ► Eastern philosophy says there is no “self.” Science agrees ► I’m “spiritual but not religious.” Here’s what that means for a physicist ► ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About The Well Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional? There are no simple answers to life’s biggest questions, and that’s why they’re the questions occupying the world’s brightest minds. Together, let’s learn from them. Subscribe to the weekly newsletter ► ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Well on your favorite platforms: ► Facebook: ► Instagram: