meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Worklife with Adam Grant

We Don’t Have to Fight Loneliness Alone

Worklife with Adam Grant

TED

Management, Worklife Podcast, Worklife With Adam Grant, Work Life Balance, Ted Talks, Podcast About Work Life, Ted Adam Grant, Adam Grant Podcasts, Ted Podcasts, Adam Grant, Organizational Psychologist, Business

4.89.4K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2020

⏱️ 39 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Many workplaces have become increasingly lonely, even before the coronavirus pandemic made more of us literally remote. It’s not just an unpleasant feeling—loneliness can hurt our health and our job performance. Find out why it's time for happy hours to finally die—and how it might take less than a minute to start building real connections.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Ted Audio Collective

0:09.0

My name is Vivek and I am a physician by training, but most importantly I'm a dad of two toddlers.

0:18.7

When I was going through my residency training after medical school, we were told when we

0:23.7

started the program that we should in fact call our family and close friends and tell them

0:27.9

that they probably wouldn't be hearing from us for a long time. We were told that dealing

0:33.1

with life and death situations, excruciating illness and incredibly delicate and difficult

0:38.7

family circumstances would be incredibly taxing.

0:43.7

And so with this warning, you know, in mind I entered my residency training expecting

0:49.3

it to be an extraordinarily difficult three years. I was training with 70-some odd fellow

0:57.6

recent graduates who came to work each day almost without exception with the mindset

1:04.4

of how we could all help each other out. I've came to work each day feeling like I was

1:08.6

coming to work with friends. Fast forward just three years. When I started a full-time

1:17.6

job, that community broke apart and dispersed. And instead I was in the more sterile culture

1:26.8

of traditional medicine with a group of people I didn't really know that well. And a group

1:32.0

of people who had lives well outside the hospital. And I remember going to work at times feeling

1:37.5

like there was so much to figure out and not always show who I could be open with about

1:41.9

the fact that I didn't know certain things or that I was uncertain about how to proceed

1:47.0

with the patient. I wasn't sure that I could be vulnerable and open with people. And that

1:52.8

felt quite lonely. And I struggled with that until one particular moment a couple of

2:01.4

years in when I ended up sick as I think I've ever been. And it was in that during those

2:07.8

five days that I just realized how lonely the last couple of years had been. Our relationships

2:16.4

are what catch us when we fall down. And I realized in that moment lying on my couch

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.