Pushkin

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought lots of odd new expressions and concepts into the public consciousness

Things like social distancing, variant of concern, flattening the curve,

and full minds. But the new post-COVID concept I want to focus on today is one that I find especially interesting from the perspective of thinking about our negative emotions.

That concept is the Great Resignation. It's a term coined by Anthony Klotz, an expert in organizational behavior at Texas A&M University.

He used the term to describe the massive and historically unprecedented number of people who've decided to quit their jobs just over the last few years.

Economists have been puzzled by many aspects of this resignation trend, especially when you take into account which workers seem to be bailing on their jobs and record numbers.

Because research shows the massive exodus we're seeing isn't just caused by low-paid workers seeking a higher living wage, or employees in their 20s seeking something new in a wide open job market.

The Great Resignation seems to be driven instead by highly skilled and often well-paid mid-career workers, people in their late 30s and 40s.

They're the ones statistically speaking, who seem to be ditching their jobs and droves. But as a psychologist, I'm more interested in the emotional states that are driving so many people to just up-and-quit a career that many of them have had for over a decade.

And if we look at the reason why, it's because a lot of us are just not feeling okay at work.

And I really mean us, as in me too. As a busy professor, researcher, head of college speaker, and podcaster, I definitely know what it's like to feel physically and emotionally overwhelmed at the end of the week.

To have so much stress that you react to the people around you with less empathy than you'd like to.

I know what it feels like to worry that you're going to absolutely lose it if even one tiny new task gets added to your plate.

And if you are feeling that way, please know, it's not you. It's Burnout. Burnout, this all-too-common, overwhelmed psychological state, is the feeling we'll be covering in this final episode on our series on difficult emotions.

We're good to trace its origins way farther back in human history than the great resignation.

But perhaps most importantly, we'll hear some strategies for navigating Burnout, and ideally getting rid of it for good.

You're listening to the Happiness Lab, with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.

One of the suckiest things about Burnout is that the science shows that it can sneak up on you when your life is seemingly going really well.

That's what happened to Jonathan Melisick, author of the recent book The End of Burnout, Why Work Drains Us, and How to Build Better Lives.

Jonathan's Burnout began soon after he got his dream job as a tenured college professor.

I would wake up in the morning and dread having to go to work. My constant thought was, oh, not this again.

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