Welcome to Tectastic, where we navigate the intersection of technology and business, uncovering innovations that redefine our world. Hannah, I wanna say thank you for coming on. It's fantastic. It is lovely to have you here. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. So you're you have a passion project around helping people avoid burnout and, specifically, burnout from tech.
And it's something that I personally very conscious of because I'm constantly surrounded by it, and I've made some pretty severe life choices to help me not burn out because I felt it coming. But this is a passion project to yours. You have advice for people on this. You made changes in your own life about it. Tell me about, like, finding your passion here and what you're doing about it. Absolutely. So this all started, with me burning out, surprise.
So, yeah, so back in, I think it was 2017, I hit a wall. I was working full time in tech, and I had, you know, young children under the age of three. And, I just I couldn't get out of bed. I couldn't get out of bed for a month, and I didn't know why go to the doctors, go to the test done, and everything came back. And they're like, you're fine, except for that, you know, you're not getting up. So I was just completely fried. And it frightened me because I had worked hard to get into this career.
I didn't wanna lose my job because, like, wasn't showing up for it. I cared. I just didn't care because I was pride. I didn't wanna not be able to show up as the moment I wanted to be for my kids because I have no energy. I didn't wanna lose my marriage because was ex too exhausted to give anything.
So I felt like I had really important things on the line that I had to shift my approach to life, and I made ending burnout, my number one priority, and it took a while, but I did turn it around without quitting my job, without burning down my career.
And in the process I learned that, you know, I've met so many other women who have lost their careers, their health, their marriages, who've missed years of their children's lives because they were so fried that they felt like they had have to give. So they just walked away in one way or another. And so I feel like it's kind of I feel called or, like, motivated to help others understand that you can end burnout You don't have to dredge your job. You don't have to hate getting up in the morning.
You don't have to go through life, feeling like your soul is being sucked out of your body. It can be stopped. It can be turned around. You don't even have to quit your job. So that is that's why I'm why I'm here and why I'm excited to share. There's a related topic here that my wife and I talk about it a little bit. I'm just open my eyes to it, at least.
I'm very, very focused on the businesses fully absorbed in that which puts a lot of emotional mental burden on her for all the things that aren't work, like, figuring out grocery for the week or, you know, just the the basic things that you have to do in life. Also, she tends to be more of a planner than I am just naturally, but she cares more about the details, whereas I'm tend to be more about, we'll figure it out.
I I would say that I I hate assigning anything to gender specific, like, norms, but there does seem to be more women have had to take on that role in relationships. They're the caretakers that nurtures in most relationships. And whether that's, societal or what, is true that that happens a lot. And that cannot help with burnout. I mean, it's just one more thing gotta carry and worry about. Mhmm. You are absolutely correct.
And I I think that's just why women are reporting Vernette in higher numbers. And I think it's exactly that. It's that second shift. It's that 3rd shift. It's, I think it's gotten better. Obviously, you know, everything, every decade, things shifting a little bit shifting a little bit, but I think statistically most women do end up with the role of household manager and care provider.
Whether that's a children of or of their parents or, you know, maintaining those family ties, they end up in that role, whether they're good at it or not, It just kinda defaults to that. Not always, not always, but many times it does. And, yeah, so that does contribute to the never off. You feel like you never get time for yourself. You never get time to invest in your own health.
And I think that in combination with, you know, I work with a lot of people who are in tech, the never ending aspect of the job, like, you know, if you're working with people across, you know, in, in India or in Europe, that day never ends, right? It's, you're always on. You've got meetings that AM, you've got meetings at 9 pm. Like, how do you create a life with that? And I think that that's a really poignant conversation to have.
It's at this point in our lives where, I think, tech use is increasing. And I think AI is gonna have a big impact on how it just kind of permeates every aspect of our lives. We're not there yet. Early days.
But, yeah, so I think having conversations around how to intentionally design your life in a way that fills you as a human being as a complete human being, not just a head on a body who's working and working and working and getting through all the checklists every single day, but gives you you know, that white space and margin and pre brings that back into your life.
We've talked about, before we started recording, similar changes we've both made, are slight differences, but very similar, right, we're both in technology and roles. We both have been surrounded by it for a while. I tend to think of my cell phone or anything that somebody can reach me, at a digital leash. It's the thing that holds me back to whoever's pulling on the leash. And when you're running a business and you've got employees, all of them have that leash.
And, if you got customers, they all have reach. And so I've very intentionally made my life such that the moment I decide I'm not working, there is no way to get ahold of me. I am unavailable, and it is the only thing that stops that problem from being 20 fourseven because I've literally had teams in India call me at 2 in the morning, and it was critical. And there's no way I could say no. Mhmm.
Yes. I've had the Christmas Eve calls, you know, like, the the never ending aspect of working in tech. But, and what you've done is exactly what needs to happen, whether you're the boss or the employee or wherever wherever your role having a clear definition of on and off and having that be respected is critical. So, yes, I know, you know, in my own negotiations, I said, you know, from these hours to this hours is sacred time I'm spending time with my family.
I'm flexible pretty much around the clock, otherwise. But with periods where I when I take a break, I take a break. I leave my phone in the car when I go for a hike, you know, I'm not taking it with me. And I'm I did intentionally, like you said, I moved to an area where there's a lot of wifi gaps. So if I wanna step away, it's actually pretty easy. I just need to go for a hike, and it's hard to reach me. And that was done with intention.
Had been living in a city and working in a way where I was just always on. And I felt like I always had to be on. I felt like people affected it. I felt like that was the norm. And in the culture, the company that I was at the time, it was, like, it was an always on culture. It was a, constant visibility, sort of a situation, and, you know, different cultures and different companies, either honor or don't honor that work life boundaries.
You know, because you're setting a line, right, you're putting up a wall. You're like, I'm on or I'm off. And, I think as leaders, because I know a lot of, or your listeners are in leadership or even starting your own company, you get to define that. You don't have to be at the whim of you know, being a in a reactive space, you're in a position of creation. You're in a position where you can define that and defend that and create that space and stand for your employees.
And I think that is amazing. I've seen it done successfully, and it makes a big difference in the culture and in the productivity. I've often said, like, when I was at larger companies, when create that always on culture. I said, this is a failure of leadership. It is. Right. You do not do your best work when you're exhausted or burned out. You do your best when you're, you're relaxed and you've had time to consider and, you know, you've got, clarity purpose.
And if we're not giving you a clarity purpose, and we're not giving you the space and the resources to do your job. Well, that's our fault. So when we call you in on a Saturday, I failed. Right. Putting that on my, my leadership teams and putting that on myself really changed how we approached it. It was like, aren't we this bad at our jobs that we need to call the team? And that completely changes the dynamic.
Yes. When I took on a management role, one of the things that I was sure to do with my directs was, you know, ask them on a scale of, you know, 1 to 10. One being your board falling asleep at your desk, 10 being your completely overwhelmed. Your heads have got to explode. Where are you? And it was like a weekly check-in. Where are you? Where are you?
And when the team starts to rise up and everyone's at an 8, 9, and it's not going down, then it's like, okay, if something needs to shift, we need either more resources, or we need more time. The one that I think most people failed to think about, because most of those conversations tend to be about more of something, more time or more resources. But the question I will always ask when I like here is more is what can we do less of? Yes. Right. Are there meetings that we don't need?
Are there tasks that we're doing that are not useful. And we have ways of evaluating that, of course. You don't just say, I don't feel like doing it. Okay. Great. What's the value it's providing? If it's not greater than the effort being put in, we're not doing it. Yes. I love elimination. It's one of my favorite things. And it's the first thing I do whenever a task comes in. Is does this have to be done? Yeah. Is this important? Does this have to be done by us? You know?
Like, can I get rid of this before I say yes? Yeah. Well, and one of the things that's always bugged me about product leaders, and I am a product leader myself as a founder you all just are is that it always is a game of edition. I need to add more features. I need to add more complexity to it. And I'm like, for me, elegance is in the simplicity of it. Can I do the job better by taking something away that isn't helping you do the job?
My least favorite tools are the ones I've used for the longest. Like, I'm very, at the very, very beginning of computer graphics, there was the commodore 64 had a wallet pad, which was drawing template you could use on it. And all it was was you had some colors a little brush, and then you can use it just like a paint palette almost. And the closer the tools stay to that simplicity, they better they are to use. You can add functionality without adding complexity.
But if you've used Photoshop for the last 30 years, it went from a very easy to tool to one you practically need a PhD in the tool to use. And that's a mistake that in technology, we always wanna add more and in our lives, that's true too. It's not so much my generation, but I, I do notice it a lot more with, you know, people that are younger than me during the workforce.
And I recognize that that's because the cost of living has increased the ability to to buy a house is decreased and wages haven't picked up. There's almost this need just to maintain the status quo to have that additional source of income, but not having that poetic time where your brain can dream and imagine and solve problems on its own means that you're not as productive as you would be if you just took that time and he did nothing. Go for a walk. Turn the brain up.
There's a researcher at the University of British Columbia in Canada, but He's incorporated, like, Eastern philosophy, especially like ancient Chinese philosophy on the idea of kind of I'm trying to remember the the way that we talked about it, like, practice makes perfect. And if you don't do well, just keep trying harder. That's kind of the western ideal that comes from philosophy. Easter philosophy is the opposite. You wanna get to the state where you don't have to try hard anymore.
Like, I don't make beautiful music by trying really hard to play. I'm not a great tennis player because I'm trying really hard to win. I'm a great tennis player because it comes naturally now because I practice it to the point where I'm just in the zone, left flow state. You can't be in the flow state if you're constantly busy.
True. That is such a point that you're making, the intentionality around doing less, both as a product designer or a leader or in your own life to prevent burnout is about think having a really clear idea of what you're saying yes to. So I think that's actually like the first step up ending burnout is pursuing your yes.
You know, in a company, you know, as a leader, you have to get really clear on what are you gonna be good at as a company, who are you gonna serve, get crystal clear, really tight, In our personal lives to prevent burnout to end burnout, we have to get really clear about, well, what matters to me? What are my priorities? Am I living in alignment with those priorities? Am I pursuing my career in a way that is in alignment with what matters to me, am I on the right projects?
And once you have a clear yes, crystal clear, tightly focused. Then everything else becomes it becomes so much easier to say no to the things that are cool, aren't gonna move you towards that, yes. Yeah. You know, because we all have shiny object syndrome. We're humans, right? It's it's it's in product leadership as you mentioned, but it's also in our lives. So you don't have to say yes to everything, but it get really clear on what you are saying yes to.
And another thing that you mentioned that I love is that white space of life that used to exist because I, you know, I grew up before the phone, before the interwebs, and there used to be white space. There used to be margin in our day. And now there kind of isn't because we always have access distractions, you know, if you're in between meetings, if you're going to the bathroom, if you're in bed right before going to sleep, What are you doing? Most people are scrolling.
And I think we all are in tech. I think we all have an understanding of what scrolling does to the brain, but it is a and it does cause or increase the likelihood of anxiety and depression because of that pattern of the dopamine releasing. And so as far as just earn out in general increasing, I think that that's part of it, is that we've lost the margin in our lives. We've lost that white space.
Not only are we filling it with something that causes stress and anxiety, but we've lost that white space where we used to be able to complete the stress cycle. If you have time in between meetings, what are you doing? You're processing. Going through the process of letting it go, of letting it all sink in.
If you have enough time to go for a walk during your lunch break and say you're scrolling, but if you go for a walk, that movement helps to complete this rest cycle so that you're not carrying it with you, month after month, or month, year after year, and that results in, in some cases, the expression of that is burnout, And then at night, of course, setting the lack of sleep quality is huge. And, staring at our phones is the big culprit behind that.
So one of the things that you just said had me at the, I'm a Paul in Athens. Like, I'm, I've been writing code since it's pretty young. I've also been a painter and a sculptor since I was young and music and all the fun stuff. But that's because I was introduced to all those things and then get in time to explore and play with them and get good enough that I was comfortable with it, but not a master at any of them. I my friends say that I say I'm the jack of all trades master of none.
They're like, no. You're the master of And I'm like, okay. What after, like, I'm not, though. You pick any one of those faces and not the master. I'm good. Not great. And I like being good, but not great. I like because for me, what's interesting is the exploration of how things can connect and how I can create new things by grabbing a bit of this and a bit of this. And there's a conference in Portland, Oregon every year called Drop Code.
And it tends to be people that are both artists and coders, like technologists. And what they all have in common is this concept of poetic time where, you know, nobody has a brilliant revelation while working hard at the computer. They solved the hard problem when they're out on a walk, they're in the shower, or as our product leader on my company said, He's got a magic lawnmower. When he's sitting on it and he's doing his lawn, that's when all the insights happen. Like, that's right.
It's when you're in that moment of not thinking about it that the clarity comes in because your brain's not working hard to solve for it. 3 forming associations are occurring for poetry that's written. I love that. I've watched it with my niece and my nephew. I love them to death, but they're now in their twenties. And they were raised with constantly having to be doing something.
They went from soccer practice to boy scouts to, like, whatever it was the band and the next thing, they they didn't have any free time. And in school, early, they got rid of recess. The one time in the day that that the stress a sitting at a desk and being patient as a child full of energy and and not really knowing how does it still. But one time, you get to release all that stress and potentially have that white space brain time was removed. Mhmm. Like, how are we doing this to ourselves?
Why are we allowing this to happen? Because what we're doing is we're gonna create an entire society, people are full of anxiety and incapable of accomplishing anything because -But they're busy and they feel like they are. Yeah. Busy, the whole busy culture nonsense. Yeah. Absolutely. And I've seen that raising my own children, it is hard to be a working mom and not have your kids constantly in a camp or in a thing. Right?
You know, I do create space for boredom, and they come and they complain. I'm bored. Like, my job's not to entertain you. Don't play. I bought you toys. Should I take them away? Are you gonna play with them or not? Maybe I'm harsh. But anyways, I do think that boredom is valuable, and one of my guess, my priorities in my own life. And I set this as the priority after my burnout because I do tend to be an ambitious person who is going up the next thing, and it has a checklist every single day.
Like, I'm very organized and driven. But what I missed from, you know, if you think back to my childhood is I had time to wander. I had time to wander through books, through ideas, through nature, I had steak to wander, and then I had space to create. So it was drawing, writing, and all these ways of expressing what had percolated and happened enmeshed in that time of wandering.
And so now wandering is high on my priority list as something that is a value in my life that I am protecting and pursuing is time to wander, space to wander. That's fantastic. The other thing that I noticed is, like the anxiety created by fear of failure. Yes. My opinion on that is you never learn if you don't fail. You, you can never succeed if you haven't learned and you can't learn if you haven't failed.
I, I put a lot on social media because you see everybody else telling the glory moment, not all the work that went to get there. They're sharing our happiest, most exciting. Like, a view of that is probably not even true. That's what everybody's doing. And so nobody feels like their own lives are living up to that unless they have that wind too. And if they don't get it instantly, they feel like failure because I see everybody else showing their wins.
And, I think that that's a huge detractor from people actually trying things and learning, failing. All of it. And you need that playtime, that bike space when you're able to explore that of any chance that that. And kind of going along with that with the busyness and the hustle culture, as I've seen, you know, the woman I work with, they are afraid. I mean, they're showing up because they're afraid. They feel like they have to prove themselves. They're constantly proving themselves.
They are on all the time on I'm because they feel like they need to be seen. They are overcommitting themselves because they feel like they need to prove themselves. They feel being busy is equal to being worthy. And breaking that association and reframing that is, you know, a big chore. Like, it's a lot of work. But it is so powerful when we realize that we're worthy because we are, and busyness is not a badge of honor, and it's actually not making you more productive.
It's not good for your career, like focuses, deep work is. Building strong relationships is. But busyness for the sake of busyness being seen for the sake of being seen is almost it's coming out of a place of fear. There's one more aspect I keep thinking about, and that's because the business I'm in is, I think of modernization technology modernization to the treadmill. You can't get off of it because technology is evolving faster than our ability to implement technology. Right?
So every day that you modernize, you've actually created debt debt because it's not modern anymore. And so everybody's on that cycle, and that cycles accelerating, largely due to things like AI. Mhmm. But it's always been fairly rapid. I've been doing this for over 30 years now, And during that time, there's never been a moment where you could feel like you were an expert because the incident you were an expert is something that something wasn't worth doing anymore.
Yes. Yes. And I think that has a huge impact on people that are in the technology space is that there's no such thing as deep expertise anymore. You can't get comfortable with the status full, you have to constantly be learning and adapting. And the problem, though, is we are experts. We are trusted to be deep experts. How do you resolve that in your career and in your personal life when it is evolved too fast to keep up with. You're expected to be the expert.
You can't because there's not enough time to develop that expertise. Most people spend more time. They just throw everything they've got all their time into becoming something impossible to become and burn out extraordinarily rapidly because of it. I hear you. I hear you. It's something that I was thinking about back, I made a career shift from development into UX. And part of my thinking was development is, like, you're on that never an intranial of something new.
Whereas UX, you go deep into psychology. It's about being an expert on humans and their relationship with tech. You still have to stay modern. You still have to stay current, but it's I found it more sustainable. But as far as, like, what do you do, right, if you're supposed to be the expert at all times? And I think the the answer is community that we can't always pretend like we are to debentures and everything, and I think that that's okay.
I think it's okay to say, I know this person over here, and I'm gonna leverage their expertise. I know this person over here, and I'm gonna leverage their expertise. We can do this together. And then there's also, like, a almost like a seasonality, I feel like, to learning where you lean in and you're just heads down, you're cranking, you're learning something new, and then you lean out and let it process.
If you're always leaning in and the motivation is fear, like we talked about earlier, because you're afraid of falling behind, because you're afraid of someone looking down on you because you're afraid of not being good enough, you're gonna burn out. You're gonna you're gonna push yourself too far, and the fear and then drag you down. So I think being intentional is leaning in and intentional is leaning out and allowing, I guess, like, the flow of technology growth just just ride the waves.
You know, don't don't expect that you're going to be ahead of the wave. You will not be ahead of the wave. Sometimes you're gonna fall off the wave, and that's gonna be okay. Let me okay. Just get back up. Everyone around you is doing the same thing. Another way to approach it, and this is what I think our job as technologist is.
We tend to think of ourselves as The wizard of Oz, the man behind a curtain, when the Oz was trying to, like, there's magic happening, and he didn't want anybody to see how it was done. And my view has always been that's not our job. Our job is to help them make it be done. Whether we show them how or not does not matter, but that myth that magic exclusive to us as magicians is just terrible for our, our own well-being. Show them how to learn because that's what we have to do.
Even if it is just saying. You know what? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm gonna go find out, you know, would you like to come along with me on that journey? Right. I think that's the most powerful thing to say because we're all learning right now. We're all growing. AIs happening faster than any of us can keep up with. Like, it's gonna be more and more like that. Where it's a constant. Well, it's all figured out. I had it. That was wonderful. Thank you so much. This was a great topic.
Thank you for having me. This was fun. And that's a wrap for this episode of Tectastic. Wanna thank you personally for joining us and we'll see you next time. Until then, keep exploring and stay curious. Thank you for listening. If you are new here and enjoyed the content, please subscribe. It really helps us out. And if you are a regular listener, thanks so much for your continued support. O overwhelmed by tech debt.
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