Welcome back to another episode of The Talk.

Today we are joined by Professor Gloria Mark, and we are continuing our conversation about attention and specifically about burnout.

So, first of all, I want to ask you, how do you define burnout and are there different kinds of burnout?

Yeah, so whenever we don't have the resources, the cognitive,

the emotional resources to deal with the environment, to deal with the task that's being asked

of us, then it creates stress. And burnout is an extreme prolonged experience of stress.

So if you're experiencing chronic stress for some time, it can turn into burnout.

And when people experience burnout, people can get depressed, you lack motivation.

So it's really quite a serious condition.

So, you know, you have to make sure that you don't let yourself get into the state where you can become susceptible to burnout.

And how is burnout different from depression?

Well, they're related.

You know, certainly when a person is depressed, they also lack motivation and energy to do things.

So they're actually very similar.

Burnout can happen from experiencing a lot of demands over a period of time.

For example, you know, I recently was speaking with someone who was a consultant,

who just had so many demands and deadlines and people that she had to interrupt with. And at some point,

you know, she just reached a breaking point and she just couldn't do it anymore

and she experienced burnout.

And that was a result of just trying to keep up on this treadmill of demands.

Depression, I would say, might have different sources.

Even though the two are very similar, depression could be from having a traumatic experience.

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