It's Depression Mode. I'm John Moe. I'm glad you're here. Life is not supposed to be this way. I'm talking about the pandemic here. Our minds are not built to deal with a deadly global pandemic. We're not mentally set up to live

in constant fear of breathing. Our brains aren't used to the intense protracted isolation and having

no knowledge of when it will end. Kids aren't supposed to go to school in their bedrooms. None of

this is supposed to be this way.

And then there's your job. If you go to work but wear a mask all day because of the constant

threat of infection and possible death, remember, work's not supposed to be like that. If your office is

shut down and you now work from the kitchen table, maybe managing your kids' schoolwork

at the same time. It's not supposed to be like that. And that dissonance adds up. That affects

your mind. That weighs you down. It's a lot to carry. So it's no wonder that burnout at work

is a huge thing right now.

Being unmotivated at a job that used to fire you up,

being exhausted in the face of even doing your job,

feeling like you have nothing to give.

You get increasingly unmotivated, ineffective, cynical.

We're going to hear the burnout experiences of you, the listener,

here in a little bit,

but first, Jennifer Moss is a researcher and journalist specializing in burnout.

She recently wrote about some new findings on the subject at the Harvard Business Review,

and she has a forthcoming book, The Burnout Epidemic.

I asked for her definition of burnout.

Music pandemic. I asked for her definition of burnout. Well, I actually like to refer to the WHO definition. The World Health Organization just

announced in 2019 that burnout is really the result of unmanaged stress at work. So the fact that

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