Talking Drupal #376 - Burnout

• What is burnout
• Why is it so important to you
• Have you suffered from burnout
• Do different professions have different rates of burnout
• Is it individual or teams / projects / community oriented
• Is it only mental or can it be physical
• What contributes to burnout as a contributor or maintainer
• What can prevent burnout
• How do you recover
• First episode was Talking Drupal #265
• Helping communities
• Signs to watch out for
• What is next

John P  
This is talking Drupal weekly chat about web design development from a group of people with one thing in common. We love Drupal. This is episode 376. Welcome to Talking Drupal. Today we're talking about burnout with Jono Bacon. Jono has been building communities now for over 22 years, he has worked with over 200 businesses to help them build productive communities from early stage startups to Fortune 500 companies. He's the author of five books, including the award winning People Power, and the Art of Community. And he writes for Harvard Business Review, Forbes and others. He's the creator of the community experience masterclass, and the community ignition workshop, where he has trained hundreds of students in how to build communities. He includes people from a broad range of industries, including tech, consumer fitness, gaming, entertainment, medicine, nonprofits, and more. Jonno, welcome back to the show. And thanks for joining us,

Jono B  
everyone, it's nice to be back. It's nice to see you all again. You're happy smiling faces. So

John P  
sometimes, sometimes they're happy and smiling. If you look at the pictures for the podcast, sometimes they're confused, and sometimes pages range. They are all over the place. For those of you that don't know, I'm John Picozzi, Solutions Architect at EPAM. And today, my co hosts are as usual, Nic Laflin, founder of Enlightened Development. How's it going, Nic?

Nic L  
Good morning. Happy to be here. And I have a new mic stand. So I've been fiddling with that last couple of days, Black Friday got a good deal on it. So hopefully that makes the audio a little bit better.

John P  
I was gonna ask you to ask you a question. So you got that on Black Friday? Did you sir come to an email, or was this something you just kind of like decided to pick up?

Nic L  
No, I mean, I, I needed one that had a little bit more flexibility. So I could have it kind of off to the side because I think that was causing some interference over the last few weeks. So it's just the reason to pull the trigger. It's a it's a road Pro Plus. So it's a pretty pretty fancy one kind of goes along with the road like itself. So pretty happy with this first one made a couple of days, but it's definitely a lot higher quality than the $20 one that I think I got at Walmart 10 years ago, so RoadMate good stuff. Yeah, the Mexican quality sounds good. Also joining us for the next four weeks is Les Eaglin, manager of customer success at Redfin solutions, was he has been involved with Drupal since 2011. Co lead Drupal project browser strategic initiative, and an organizer designed for Drupal, Boston and Ned camp. She was the past member of the Drupal Association Board of Directors. Welcome to the show. Happy to have you here.

Leslie G  
Thanks for having me, Nick. Excited to be here.

John P  
So moving into our updates. Lucky for us, we have somebody who's very familiar with Project Browser, apparently project browser is going to have a beta to release or had a beta to release. Lesley, can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Leslie G  
Sure. So last Wednesday, we released the second beta. Basically, when Therese talked about Project browsers strategic initiative back at Drupal, con Portland, he said, the goal is want to be able to discover great modules from right from within Drupal without having to go to drupal.org. And install those modules with a click of a button. The release that we just put out allows you to install without going to composer just by clicking the button from your Drupal site. So that's really exciting. We need people testing that out. So that was that was our Thanksgiving. Release last Wednesday.

John P  
Oh, there you go. And we will have a link to to that in the show notes. So if you want to learn more about project browser or to check out the beta to release, you can do that. Now for our module the week. Let's introduce Martin to talk about the module the week Martin Anderson-Clutzis  a Senior Solutions Engineer at Acquia and maintainer of a number of Drupal modules of his own. He even thought of a new one this morning that he may POC this weekend. So he's he's he's building modules, folks. What do you have for us this week, Martin?

Martin A  
Thanks, John I thought this week, we would talk about the token module which provides a centralized API for text substitution. So since Drupal seven, some token support is actually built into Drupal core, but the module will really provide It's common and reusable token UI elements as well as some missing core tokens. The module was originally released at the end of 2006 has eight point x dash one dot 11 versions, as well as seven point x dash 1.9 versions. So those release sort of Drupal nine and 10 and seven versions of Drupal core respectively. Both of those were released earlier this year, the eight point X version being released in August of this year. Now, token itself has never been reviewed as a module that week, although token tweak was actually covered back in episode 105, over seven years ago now, in terms of sort of how we'll maintain it is it is frequently updated, it currently has almost 500 issues open 172 of which are for the eight point X branch and 89 of those, which are bugs. So definitely lots of healthy discussion going on there. And the module is actually in use by over 650,000 Drupal sites, and almost 300 1000s, almost 300,000 of those are using the a point x branch has sort of a team of maintainers, you know, both people who just are actively using it and contributing patches as well as the the maintainers. The user verdere is the one who seems to be doing the eight point x releases of late. And really just to give a little bit of extra background around exactly how the token module works. If anybody isn't familiar with tokens, they kind of act as placeholders for data that will be replaced when the content is rendered. So it could come from the node that's being displayed, it could be coming from the site configuration, or even the current users profile. And really lots more, it's also possible to create custom tokens, which makes it a really powerful way to have complex logic to define exactly what the data is that will be used for that substitution. So lots of flexibility. There's also a very rich ecosystem of modules to provide additional tokens. But wanted to kind of open it up to the group, I suspect that probably almost everyone who's done extensive site building in Drupal at this point is probably use tokens at some point or another. But does anyone have cases that come to mind of where tokens were particularly powerful or maybe even challenging to use?

John P  
So I think I can I can, I think I can provide an example that covers both of those. Commerce, right commerce uses a lot of token replacement for, you know, email, communications, Order Notification, shipping notifications, and all sorts of, you know, even on screen, thank you messages and things like that. And usually they work great, right. But sometimes they can be they can be challenging. Sometimes you have to build or build or add tokens to the token system for commerce sites. So I think that's kind of where I've, I've experienced kind of the most frustration and the most benefit from tokens.

Nic L  
It, I think it's on both sides that I work on too. But it's also one of those modules that I don't install manually. It's just a dependency for another module. I mean, I think it I think meditate depends on it. And I use it pretty heavily there. I've definitely used it with the storage module for setting up some default titles. So a module that you maintain, it's great, it's one of those utility modules, I understand why it's not in core, because it makes it easier to kind of update and keep up with contrib. But it's definitely one of those key modules that I feel like, almost every set I use, I build has it.

Martin A  
Yeah, I also use it quite a bit for the event platform that we covered in a previous show, again, to sort of work in a similar way to what John was talking about with Drupal Commerce, the idea being to have sort of a single place where a an event organizer could go in and manage a lot of the data and then really have sort of, you know, default, you know, email notifications, and some of those other kinds of things that would again, use tokens to sort of take that centrally manage data to to insert that into, you know, some of that other kind of boilerplate text. Also, the other thing, and one of the reasons why I've had to write custom tokens is tokens are also used quite extensively by Acquia. Site studio. And so being able to write custom tokens can really provide a lot of, you know, more complex ways to use, you know, conditional logic and some of the things you know, in use for that solution as well.

John P  
Awesome Have tokens. It's one of those things. It's funny, Nick said, you know, it usually gets installed as a dependency of another module. And I don't know that, you know, thinking about it, I don't think I've ever actually just installed tokens, just install tokens, it's always come come along with something else and provide a great, great flexibility and improvement. Right. Awesome. Thank you, Martin. Let's move on to our primary topic. So the idea for this show was, came from me watching a YouTube video where Jono talks about burnout. And I thought, wow, that's an interesting, interesting topic that we've we've covered on the show before, but wanted to take a little bit of a slant from, you know, Jono, who has a lot of experience building communities, I wanted to look at it from the point of view of like, community member burnout, right? Because like, everybody has burnout at their job, everybody has burnout at, you know, in various areas. But you know, there there's an aspect of being a community member being maybe a maintainer of a module, or, you know, Leslie, I'm sure you, you may understand this as being, you know, a co initiative lead, right, those those kinds of jobs and positions can lead to a certain form of burnout. So with that said, if you search, you know, Jono Bacon, burnout, you will see a number of videos, blog posts on the subject. And I wanted to start off with kind of kind of a little bit of a softball question here. But Jono, why is burnout important to you?

Unknown Speaker  
It's a good question. I mean, I think the reason why that is, it's it's one of those topics that a lot of people don't think about very often. But then when somebody raises it, they self identify with it a lot. So for example, years ago, I burned out the first the first time I burned, I burned out a couple of times, was in 2006 2007. And I was working at canonical building the Ubuntu community, and went through this experience of burning out and I like with anything that I discovered, that's new to me, I tend to go down the rabbit hole and learn a lot about it. And I was learning about this thing called the burnout cycle, all the rest of it. And we actually had an internal company, all hands, and I was doing a presentation about this. And first of all, I was surprised by just how many people showed up to the session, like the room was jammed full. I was expecting four or five people to show up. So that clearly said that it was a topic that was interesting. And then when I talk through my experience, and what I've learned to kind of deal with burnout, the amount of people that came up with my fellow colleagues that came up afterwards and said, like that really resonated a lot with me. In fact, one person ended up going to therapy, and ended up getting a lot of help there. So it became evident to me that this is kind of a bit of a sleeper topic that really resonates with people, but a lot of people don't really talk about in any level of substance in depth. Well, everybody knows what burnout is. But in terms of how you identify it, spot it, deal with it, manage it. You know, my goal is to just if I can put a little bit of information out there that of just what I've learned, I'm not a psychologist, and hopefully that'll be helpful.

Nic L  
Okay, so we're moving from a softball question to a slightly more personal one. You mentioned that you you'll you started on this journey, when you realize that you were suffering from burnout yourself. Can you expand a little bit on that? And like, what is burnout? How did you recognize that?

Unknown Speaker  
First step was on my hair fell out. Just kidding. For me, my experience was, was I was you know, I'd been working at canonical for about a year, something like that. And I had this fairly intense job, like a Bunty was really kind of taking off and there was a lot of scrutiny and pressure around it. And actually a member of my team, this guy called Daniel haulback, came up to me and he said, You're right, you seem a little bit stressy. And he basically said that I was kind of snapping at people. And I was aware of this, but I hadn't really admitted it to myself. For some reason, I just didn't feel myself like you have a general sense of your own psychology. And I felt off I felt different. And I just kind of wrote it off as just being a bit overworked and a bit stressed at the time. And but then I started struggling a little bit with, with focus, I was just getting distracted a lot. And one of the things I feel very fortunate about in my life and my career is that I never have issues with with focus. I'm always like completely in the zone most of the time. And I just caught myself like snapping at people here and there. And that's when I realized I just don't feel quite right. And that's when a friend of mine said I think you might be burning out and I didn't I had heard of the term but I didn't really know what it meant. And that's when I discovered this thing called the burnout cycle, which was published in Scientific American Mind magazine, years ago, and it was essentially 12 stages of burnout that you go through, it doesn't happen to everybody. And it happens. Sometimes people can skip through those steps. And step one is you kind of a bit mad at the dog. And step 12 is jumping off a bridge, like that's how it kind of how it kind of journeys through it. And when I was, as I was reading this, this PDF of this article, as I was reading through the stages, like, yep, yep. And I was like, okay, that's what's happening. And for me, I actually want to go visit a friend of mine who lived in who still lives in Ireland, just for three or four days. And I felt a lot better after three or four days. And that's not the case for everybody, for some people burnout last weeks last month, and they have to manage it and all the rest of it, but I was quite I think I had a pretty mild case of it. So.

Leslie G  
Great, thank you, John. Oh, different professions. Have you found different professions have different rates or types of burnout?

Unknown Speaker  
I think so. I mean, to me, burnout is it's an amalgamation of stress. So every profession has some level of stress. But I think every professional has individual differing levels of stress, right. So, you know, I've seen a lot of leaders in leadership roles. I know a lot of executives, and founders who are running companies experienced burnout. And sometimes that can be the most difficult situation because they're in a, they're kind of on a pedestal, where they're expected to lead and perform, and all that kind of stuff. But you know, if they're running, for example, I know a lot of founders who've been running out of money. In the last year or so. The runway is getting shorter, and they're starting experience levels of burnout, and then one of their biggest fears is starting to lose their mojo a little bit about their business, because you've gotta be able to show up excited every day and motivating all the rest of it. I know a lot of developers have experienced burnout as well, especially when they've got incredibly tight deadlines, or there are they're experiencing significant issues. Like I know a lot of people in the security field who experience a lot of burnout because they they have this constant feeling that they're not applying enough security or like the provisions around security and not significantly from what they're doing. So the role was feared about fearing about getting hacked, getting around. So I couldn't give you concrete like this professional that that profession, but I think it's where you've got elevated levels of stress, and also, where there is a lack of a work life balance. You know, I think one of the key elements here is that, and the way the burnout cycle kind of operates is that usually at the beginning, what happens is that people feel like they're just too busy, they've got a lot going on. So they tend to overwork to deal with it. And they start at the beginning, you have this kind of level of insecurity and fear that you're not doing a good job, I just want I was economical, like I was in this very visible role, you know, within our world. And I had a huge amount of impostor syndrome, I felt like I you know, it was only a matter of time before people figured out that I wasn't very good at what I was doing, and it was going to end up in flames. And that's super common, right with people. And so people tend to overwork to deal with that feeling. And then when people over work, what happens is they start eating more junk food, they drink more alcohol, they maybe indulgent drugs, and and they kind of shake it off that this is just a tough patch that I'm going through. So I think where people have that lack of worry about work life balance.

John P  
We can have you back on to talk about imposter syndrome, because what you what you just said, I was like, Yeah, that's me. I'm that guy. Yeah, we're just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

Unknown Speaker  
And it's super common as well. Like, I'm hoping that people who are watching this or listening to this will, who experienced that will realize that, like there's this kind of misnomer out there that imposter syndrome happens to people who were the beginning of their career that they when they're just getting going. Not the case. Like I say, I mean, I I'm not saying this to sound braggadocious. But like, I work with a lot of companies and a lot of founders of companies and a lot of VCs as well who have crippling levels of impostor syndrome. So it's not usual by any stretch.

John P  
It's, uh, yeah, I mean, I, within the last year and a half switched to a large, large, much larger organization and like a new job and I was kind of like, oh, man, I do not know if I can do this end like, there was there was definitely a level of of imposter syndrome there. That I that I think I, you know, I don't think I've yet overcome but we'll figure it out. And I think it's something that just kind of keeps going. But anyway, let's move back to back to burnout. We will talk about impostor syndrome at a later date. So you talked about somebody kind of pointing out in you like hey, you're you're kind of being snippy with people and And then you did some research and went through, you know, that list of saying like, this, this is this is something I'm facing, this is something okay, maybe I am clearly, you know, suffering from burnout here. So the question that I have is like, how do you recognize burnout? But I'm going to, I'm gonna pinpoint that a little bit as to is it something so somebody pointed it out to you? Is it something that somebody can identify themselves? Like, you know, could could somebody wake up one morning and go like, hey, there's a problem here? I think I'm burnt out? And if so, what might that look like?

Unknown Speaker  
I think I mean, obviously, it depends on the individual. But I think with people who are fairly self aware, they can definitely detect it. So one of the things I credit to my parents with my upbringing was, they kind of baked into me about just always evaluating yourself and being self aware of where you are, but not limiting yourself based upon your self awareness. Right. So knowing your psychology, so for example, especially around this time, when I experienced burnout, for the first time, I had a tendency to worry about a lot of things. My dad has had this for years. And there's all kinds of reasons why I think him and I have experienced this, but I was self aware of the fact that that was a an element of my personality. So when I started, when I when I learned about what burnout was, I thought, well, there's clearly going to be a line a dotted line to worrying, if somebody doesn't have that, that kind of self awareness, then it might be a bit more difficult for them to see it. And so I think the good news is that that kind of self awareness is something you can develop and it's something you can grow. There's a there's a philosophy out there called stoicism, which is all about kind of like dealing with difficulties and challenges in life that I'd recommend people check into. It's not like a creepy, cult religion type thing. It's just kind of a nice, and you got to like take only take it to a certain limit, because some people get, you know, they just wake up every day and just read Marcus are really us versus, you know, all day every day. But one of the things I like about it is is that you look at yourself from the outside in, and you basically say, Okay, well, there are these psychological components of my personality. And I'm aware of these so I can manage them. Right. So I think when people have that, that they can do that, that the where I find it's most effective is when somebody else can identify in you or where there's a marker. Now, that example I gave you when Daniel said to me, like you seem to be bit stroppy with people. Because of the self awareness thing, I took that as feedback, I didn't take that as an attack. But I know a lot of people were, especially if they're in a deeper level of burnout, and they are maybe a bit self conscious. And they're worried if that feedback doesn't land in a in a caring manner, then people can reject and say, Well, I'm just going through a tough patch right now, like Daniel, because I knew him. And I've known him for a number of years. And he wasn't just like a guy who worked for me, like we work and continue to be really good friends. It came from a position of love. So I was able to take that and then work with that. So unfortunately, I think I think it's detectable with self awareness. But I think what you really need is you need friends around you who can help to identify it. But what I would say is if people keep giving you feedback that you seem to be like yourself, you seem to be a bit frustrated. You seem to be a bit angry, or angsty or edgy. Maybe have a look at the burnout. So.

John P  
So I think that's that's great, you know, great advice. And I think like, you know, you again, said somebody who was like, Oh, you're not acting as you normally would. And they kind of call that out. Right? I'm wondering, do you you know, Jonno begun burnout, burnout experts, right? Do you have some sort of, and this is a riff on a question from from Randy, our guest hosts in the last four episodes, he sent us some questions for this this episode. So this is a version of one of the questions he asked, Do you have like a communication plan or a way to talk to somebody if you're like, a manager specifically, right, and you're like, oh, this person is suffering from burnout? Like, is there a lack of a better word script that you can kind of follow to have that conversation or start that conversation?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, I mean, the approach I would take here is the same approach I'd take to any kind of difficult feedback that you want to provide to somebody is, first of all, don't do it over slack or, or, or, you know, Discord or anything like that. You've got to talk to somebody and ideally be on video or in person with them. Because people need to see that body language and hear your voice. The first thing I would I would say is you know, that you basically reinstate the relationship that you've got. So you say, you know, For example, if I was talking to Nick here, and I was, and I detected that Nick was burning out, I'd say, Look, man, you know, as you know, I love you to bits, I think you do amazing work. And I just want you to be really successful in whatever you're doing. But as a friend, or as a manager, sometimes the way in which you help somebody is going to be through giving them difficult feedback. And I just want to share something with you that I'm hoping you will take with the spirit that's intended at some point from a position of love and construction, as opposed to I'm not trying to tear you down. So usually, at that point, somebody's thinking, Oh, but I know this is coming from a good place. And then I'd probably say, you know, I've noticed recently that you just don't seem to be yourself as much, you know, you're just normally a really happy go lucky, friendly person. But I've noticed that you've been a little bit more sharp with people. And for my experience, that's usually a signal that something's going on. And I just wanted to kind of sit down privately have a chat about it, and see if there's something I can do to help. And that's how I would frame it.

John P  
Make sense? Nick? We're gonna have to have a conversation later, buddy.

Nic L  
Yeah. Powerful.

Jono B  
I mean, yeah, actually, you are fired neck, just, you know, from this.

Nic L  
I think the great thing too about that, is it a lot of that language can be used for any kind of difficult conversation, right? You're you're not using, you know, some of the some people may be familiar with this, but you're not using your language, you're using inclusive language, you're stating Peppa city relationship? And, you know, I think that's great advice.

John P  
I have self admittedly have had a manager have that, that same sort of conversation with me. And yeah, it was, it was from the from the employee side of things, it was very, very impactful in the fact that, you know, I was like, Oh, I did not even realize I was doing that thing that somebody called me out on and like, that's terrible. I don't want to be perceived that way. So now I'm going to actively try to change it.

Unknown Speaker  
You know, just real real quick on on that. You just said something that triggered a thought in my mind. So two things. One is, from the position of, I do think we all need to take responsibility to, to provide a door that people can walk through, one of the biggest fears that I've had in my life of is that I'm doing something wrong, and people won't tell me. And one technique that I use to mitigate that, and I would encourage everybody to use this is whenever I talk to anybody, and I'd say the same thing to you, to you folks. I always say like, I'm undefendable. And what I mean by that is like, there's nothing somebody can say to me, that's constructive, that's going to upset or annoy me, like if somebody comes to me and says, You know what, Jono? Oh, I don't like what you do. With this particular project. I feel like your social media is not very good. Or, you know, I didn't like the story that you told me, you said something that upset me. I will never be upset or angry when people give me that feedback. And I think by people need to know that they've got permission to have those conversations. So one thing I'd encourage like, is to as a general rule was, as everybody who's watching this talks to the world, just say that you'd have to use I say, undefendable, because it's kind of a, it's a very stark way of describing it, you might want to say like, look, constructive feedback is not something I ever bristle with. But the other thing that you mentioned there, John, is, it's amazing how many people don't realize what they're doing. There was a guy who was in the Ubuntu community, who was, who was a bit of a pain in everybody's butts at the time. Like, it wasn't really a member of that community. But to be super critical of everything we did every single blog post, I put out, other people put out, he'd be in there in the comment box complaining about something that was going on. And people started making jokes about him, and sniping back at him behind his back in the community. And my view was, look, he's doing this from a position of that he cares, right? He wouldn't invest all this time and effort, just to be nasty. He's doing it because he cares about Ubuntu, even if he's not actively a contributor to Ubuntu. So I emailed him and I got on the phone with him one day, and I talked to him about it. And I said, I don't know if you know this, but people are kind of talking about you in this way. And I don't think it's very fair, but I just wanted to give you this feedback. And he had no idea he had no idea was behaving this way. And it turned out he had like some like low blood sugar thing where when he didn't have enough blood sugar, I guess that he started becoming like really snippy with people. But it made me realize that a lot of people, their behavior is not there. They have no idea that doing it. So I just I want you to underline that point, John, because I think it's really important that we shouldn't assume ill will and everybody you know,

John P  
not not to make light not to make light. But sometimes you just need to eat a Snickers, right? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker  
seriously.

Nic L  
It meshes well, with a show that we had two weeks ago about neurodiversity to is like some people just view the world differently too. And having that conversation can help people see oh, by the way, I'm interfacing with others. Put on this particular way isn't constructive. And like you said, General, that feedback is always great. There's always a kernel there. But sometimes the method of that of that feedback is can be tweaked on both sides. Right? Yeah, so, exactly. Switching gears slightly. One of the things as we were preparing for the show that I was thinking about that I'm curious, if you have an opinion on is, is burnout itself, is it? I've always thought of it as kind of an individual thing, like I'm burning out, or somebody's burning out. But I'm curious that that's kind of how, how it is really can't can like a group of people burn out together, can like a whole team or project community kind of burn out over something? Or is it? Is it really just an individual kind of phenomenon?

Unknown Speaker  
I think the the, the, and the caveat around all of this, you know, I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a therapist. So take, take what I'm saying with a pinch of salt. But I think the the, the notion of burnout is very much of an individual thing. However, I think there is a phenomenon that does impact teams, which is where, you know, one of the, you know, I, I work for myself, right. And one of the things I miss most about working for a company, is that sense of camaraderie. You know, like, those days when you all drink champagne together, and those days where you will drown your sorrows together. And, and the camera, even sometimes the the, the purest moments of human interaction are when things are really not going well. And everybody feels like they're in it together. And but the challenge with those times, I think, is that I don't think so much burnout. But I think a narrative forms in a team, where people become incredibly negative about something, and then that can generate burnout. You know, this is one of the reasons why I think culture is so important in companies and in communities is that it's, I'm not talking about, you know, having a narrative where everything's rainbows and unicorns, excuse me, or anything like that. I think you need to keep people motivated and excited, and a team or a community, and to always give people that sense of like, what if, like, what if we did this? What if we did this all this cool stuff that we could do? Like, you know, we're talking about Drupal, this is what Druce has done for years, right, like many other people weld. And part the reason why I think that's important is that if you don't do that, or if you allow negativity to prosper inside of inside of a culture, or a community or a team, it just becomes corrosive. And then that will generate burnout. And I think one element of this is creating an ethos that whinging and complaining isn't enough, like it, like, do something about it within the parameters of what you can do. And in many cases, you don't have anything that you can do. But everybody's got the ability to sit down and come up with a constructive idea to make something better, even if they don't have the power to be able to implement that idea. So to me, when you have that sense of constructive problem solving inside of a team, it mitigates them Ward's off a lot of burnout, when everybody feels like they've got no power, no control, that it generates burnout.

Nic L  
So, so to summarize, and this kind of was my theory to like burnout itself is individual, but a team or community can contribute to it. And I imagine if somebody burns out in a team, their work is going to kind of spread out to the other members in the team, which will increase their stress levels, which will increase their likelihood of burning out so like, a whole team can burn out, it can be kind of like a domino, if it's not addressed at a kind of a cultural level, but but the is the individual that burns out in the community that can kind of help help manage that.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, absolutely. And I would without getting too metaphysical about this kind of stuff. To me, the energy that people put out into the universe is at least 50% of the reason why we do or do not want to work with people. Right. So for example, we've been on this on this on this call today. And the energy that each of you are putting out is very positive, it's very constructive. And I want to be around you like I want to be on it. It's one of the reasons why I was happy to come back. But if it was grumpy, and miserable, and negative and complaining, I don't want to be around people like that they suck. So so to me, that's where we need to the challenge is that there's a power dynamic in every in every human interaction. And often people have a negative negative perspective, because they don't have the power to be able to impact the change that they want to make in the world. And that's why we need to make sure that where when you have teams where nobody has the power to change the negativity in the team, that's when it's time to get out where you can. So I think my basic view is that when we feel like we can impact the things that frustrate us, and we can change them, then it mitigates burnout when we feel like we have no control over that. That's one burn up tends to prosper.

John P  
Now Nick had something to talk to me about later, like less grumpy, more happy. Just to just ask another question around this point, it seems like, you know, As Nick said, burnout can be an individual thing, you know, but it also sounds like it could be like a almost like a virus, right? If one person is suffering from it, and they bring a lot of that negativity into into a community or a project like that can sometimes fester and cause other folks to maybe suffer from burnout. Is that Is that fair?

Unknown Speaker  
I think so. I mean, I think you only have to look at what happens in certain social media communities to see that inaction, right. Like, it's interesting. I've seen this across open source, it's amazing, like, where you step into certain like, little communities, a large communities, and just people are so excited and motivated and energetic about what's going on. Because there's this sense of like, childhood magic about what we can do and what we can build. And I would say that, in large part, Drupal is like that. I mean, I'm not as involved in Drupal by any stretch as much as you folks are, but and you're always going to have like problems and issues and things like that. But I think where it becomes like a virus in a negative way, is what's negatively happening is gossip. And gossip is interesting, right? So if you look at most of the news, and news is negative, because negative stuff is interesting, you know, things that are that are positive, most people like, Oh, that's cool, but it's not as exciting. So that's where there is a requirement, I think in we all need to take an individual responsibility to do this. And this is one of the reasons why everything was seen on Twitter and Facebook, and a lot of these communities that are these social media networks is is concerning is because most people don't have the natural inclination to say, Okay, well, I can take the hit the heroin hit of being negative and scratching that internal edge, or I could not do that. And I could actually try and focus on what we can do what we can when we can be positive.

Leslie G  
Great. We talked a lot about burnout being, you know, think about, you know, mental, is there a physical aspect to it as well, I'll give you an example. You said, you know, you feel burnt out, you might overeat or you might drink or you might do other negative things behavioral wise. But can it start with a physical aspect to burnout?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, I honestly don't really know the answer to this question. I mean, my my intuition here is that, it it's mostly a psychological mental thing. But there are physical attributes that will, that will, that will kick it off. So tiredness is one right? Like, if you feel tired, it can definitely speed up the burnout process. And if you're not eating healthy food, like if you put garbage in, you'll feel like garbage. Right? And, and, and that will definitely help make it worse as well. The challenge is like, as that burnout cycle progresses, like, you were just saying, like, what, what typically happens is, people just need a sense of relief, like they that they're waking up, they're feeling miserable, and they're not happy with what they're doing. They know that they're not doing as well as they should be doing. So they tend to eat junk foods, and they tend to drink alcohol and do drugs and things like that, because it's a trading trying to mitigate, they're trying to get some relief from what you're experiencing. So and that will then obviously manifest in physical related issues, like, you know, if you wake up hungover every day, then that's going to impact your day, right?

Leslie G  
So I find that it's a vicious cycle, you're burnt out, I have a lot of roles in the community, organizing camps and cones, and regular job initiative leads all these other things that I tried to do. And I struggled with trying to balance all of those so that I'm not sleeping at night, because I keep waking up saying, Oh, I'm behind on this, I'm behind on that. And I wake up in the morning, and it's worse, because, you know, now you're tired, and you're trying to balance all these things. And then, you know, it goes on for days. And it really put it out. I guess you would definitely call that burnout. But it's like a vicious cycle that it's hard to break out of.

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, exactly. And though I think that one of the most important things to do in breaking it, where possible is to get away. So like I mentioned my I went away to visit my friend in Ireland. I was lucky I was in a position I could do that. But I I've been a remote worker for my entire career. And I had the financial funds to be able to get on a EasyJet flight to, you know, to Ireland, like people don't can't do that. But what I would say is if you if like you're busy working, got a family, all the rest of it. Even just going for a drive can help. One of the things I do this is a little bit of a detail, but it might be useful to people who are watching this. It's called having an executive session with yourself. I didn't realize it was a name for this until I learned about John Lewis, the politician who did this when I'm having a difficult time Then when I feel stressed when I feel like I'm, I'm stepping into burnout territory, I go for a drive by myself. And I talk to myself and I basically have to alter egos. One is me. And then one is a pseudo therapist who's talking to me. And I literally talk out loud. That's why I drive because I if you do this, walking around your local neighborhood, you look like a lunatic. And, and I basically walked through the thing that I'm worried about, I think I'm thinking about, and I essentially call myself my BS. And I will literally say, Don't be stupid, like, why would like this is happening? And this is happening? And this, I go through the data, like, why would you think this way it's stupid and actually give myself a pep talk. And I've met a lot of people who do this as well. But that's all within the context of getting away, like not sitting in front of your computer, getting out your house. So even if you can only get away for a 15 minute drive, or go for a walk to a park when nobody's around, so you don't look like a weirdo. Definitely do that.

Leslie G  
Yeah, that's great advice. Thank you.

John P  
Interesting, because I just thought I was a weirdo, because I used to, you know, I talked to myself and be like, listen, you're being a jerk, like, cut it out. And then I don't know, if I saw a YouTube video you had done where you were talking about that? Or you were on a podcast, maybe talking about it. I was just like, kind of like, huh, alright, there's like, there's like a name for that. All right. I'm not. I'm not nuts cool. Definitely do it in the in the car or with earbuds in as you're walking down the street, though.

Unknown Speaker  
Exactly. And some people I remember talking to this group one time, and I was telling this story. And there's, I've met a few people who don't like this, and they're like, No, you shouldn't do that. You should be really kind to yourself. It's like, that doesn't work for me. Like, telling me that I have to be kind to myself doesn't work. For me, what I need is a kick in the ass, right? I need to tell myself, I'm being stupid. And that that's my approach. So this might not be the approach for everybody and

John P  
not not like, I don't know, I don't think you're being derogatory to yourself. Like, you're stupid. You're worthless, right? But it's, sometimes you just need to be like, Hey, listen, you're being a jerk. Or you're you're just, that's just not smart. And here's why. Right, exactly.

Jono B  
That's exactly the right route. Yeah,

Nic L  
in like you said, General, this might not be for everybody. But the part that I think is for everybody is, and again, this is kind of a callback to the neurodiversity show, but it's, you're being intentional, both thinking about you what you're going through how you're responding to it, you know, both emotionally and like your actual actions, right. So, and that's the part that I think is helpful, however, you need to do that. But the important part is you're thinking about the circumstances you're in the issue that you're in and how you're reacting to it, and how you want to be reacting to it right. And kind of taking that step back and slowing it down and thinking about that is what allows you to kind of make what make how you want to act, or reality. Right? Yeah. Whereas if you're just living day to day and not thinking about it, you can get correct. And that's like,

Unknown Speaker  
Well, I do think a huge element of this. And there's that's like, this is like those little executive sessions with yourself. It's like a microcosm of it is, to me, it's all about taking back control. You know, there's been a lot of talk in recent years about, about power and the power dynamic. And I think it's, it's a very worthwhile conversation, I mean, the metoo movement was a wonderful example of that continues to be is, you know, outside of these horrible cases of like sexual abuse, and and all the rest of it that are going on the underlying Venom that's inside of that is power, right? It's, it's, it's someone exerting power over somebody else. And that's a very negative way in which power is applied. And I think one of the ways in which we can deal with that now well, which we can prevent it in many cases is that we is that we claim our power back. And sometimes we have to claim our power back with ourselves, we have to, you know, I didn't one of the times where we feel most, at a loss with these kinds of situations. And I'm sure people watching this will this will resonate with them, is where you feel like you don't have any control of your own mind anymore, where you feel like I just don't know what to do. I'm kind of a million options in front of me. I don't know which one I should take. And you know, like, you're stood in front of YouTube, there's a million videos, which one do you watch first kind of thing. And I think identifying that there is a power dynamic at play. And reclaiming the power is important in so many walks of life, like this, like if you go to a job interview, and the person on the other side of the desk is, is interviewing you about the job. A lot of people feel that they have all the power in the room. And you know, it's common in in recruiting world that if you want to interview better, you, you you you equalize the power. It's not just about I want the job from you is that I've got a set of services that I can offer that may be valuable to you. I think we need to do the same thing. So when we go for that drive, or we go for a walk with earbuds in we're basically saying I'm not willing to be dominated by this and to burnout. I'm going to take control I'm going to make some choices make some decisions that will that will rectify.

John P  
So what Let's let's take that and maybe expand upon it or shift a little bit to more focus on, you know, community burnout, and burnout specifically for like, members of a community, such as maybe the Drupal community, and specifically like maintainers, or initiative leads, right? Like, what what do you think contributes to their burnout? You know, they're working on on a thing, a project or an initiative module. And like, they've they've gotten to the point where they're identifying that they have had burnout, like, what do you think some of the things are there that can that can contribute to that?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, so I think if we break it into maintainers, and contributors, I think a huge chunk of that what flows between both of those different types of roles is expectations for sending expectations. So if you're a contributor, and you're, you're contributing to a module, say, and you go, like what we see all the time in open source rates, somebody goes in, they build a feature. And then they go and submit a pull request. And it turns into this long drawn out conversation about well, you didn't do it this way, you didn't do it this way, didn't do it this way, that's really frustrating for the contributor. And then eventually it gets in, but it was a bit of a nightmare. And nine times out of 10, that's expectations weren't aligned, like the code contribution process was not very, was not clearly defined. So consequently, someone did a ton of work, the biggest risk of open source is somebody does a ton of work. They, they've made this really nice gift for everybody. And then really fussy about how you receive that gift. So I think if we set those expectations up front, like when I'm setting expectations with gifts for my son, we say, no junk food. So I think that's one element. But then on the maintainer side of things. I think where maintainers often will experience burnout is that is they're overwhelmed by people want this, this, this, this, this, they've got a million different issues to deal with pull requests coming from all angles. And there are many cases, volunteers, they're doing it in their spare time, they've got a million other things that they're focusing on, and that they need to take care of. So they've got all of this pushed on them. And they just feel overwhelmed. And interestingly, there's an there's an analogy here with email, like people often feel overwhelmed that they get too much email, and they're leaving things on the table that taken too long to respond. The thing about if you look at maintainers, and email, or email and issues and pull requests is they're all to do list the other items, too. Right? So just because somebody submits an issue doesn't mean you have to respond to it. And I think that just because somebody submits a pull request doesn't mean you have to respond to it. What we should do is we should set expectations around. Where are we focusing on right now, in our communities, to set guardrails and parameters around that, like a lot of projects do this where they say wishlist items, don't submit a pull, don't submit an issue. We're not interested in wishlist items, we're only interested in bugs. And that will cut a lot of that stuff out there. But the problem is a lot of open source projects, especially with maintains, maintains want to be all things to all people. So like, yeah, just submit whatever you want. And then they get into this issue of like tons and tons of content that they have to deal with. So to me, it's all about setting expectations in line. And that's where the burnout mostly happens from what I can see.

John P  
Yeah. So it also sounds like it could be a time a time issue. Right. So like, you know, Lesley's previous comment with involved in a lot of things. Like there's only a certain amount of time for each of those things. I feel like that can that can lead to and I've experienced that myself, I think where like, time or lack of time kind of contributes to that burnout a little bit, too. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker  
And I think the other element that plays into this, because I completely agree with you, John, is that, and Leslie your story is a great example of this is that, you know, so in a healthy community, the number of people that will be active. So they'll be posting, replying, creating stuff in a healthy community is 20%. So 20% of your total membership will be actively contributing. That means that 80% of people are watching or observing, they're consuming. So consequently, we only ever have one in five people who has got that mindset and time available to do stuff. And then what happens is the most communities, it's way less than that. So what happens you get people like Leslie, who becomes oversubscribed, because everybody knows that Leslie's really great and does all this great work. So then Leslie's to do list is longer than her arm. So one of the elements and we work in which we can mitigate this, and I do this a lot when I work with clients when I teach in my classes, is we've got to nurture our community members. There's three stages, you know, casual, regular, and core. And most committee members are in the casual stage. We need to nurture them into the regular stage. So they're shown up every week and then we convert them into contributors and in many cases, That's just going up someone saying, Hey, would you mind doing this? Or would you help out with this, but that will only work if those people are completely bought in and devoted to the community because they're getting a lot of value from it. So we kind of have to be intentional in how we do that in communities. Because if we just leave it to chance, you end up with like five to 10% of your community members are active, and then people get overloaded. Yeah,

Nic L  
there's also a couple other places, because you mentioned contributors versus maintainers. And, you know, that's, that's a place that Drupal is kind of your, there's, you know, there's maintainers that are contributors, and they're, you know, there's kind of both sides of it. And I haven't seen this a little bit with the Drupal 10 release coming up. I've been working on a bunch of modules, trying to get them ready for Drupal, 10. And something that you mentioned, that really hit me was that sometimes it's the fact that you the process isn't well defined, can cause some that burnout. And I'm curious about something because it's kind of conflicting with Drupal specifically, it sounds like there's kind of two conflicting things to prevent burnout. So if you're a maintainer of a module, one of the things that can help prevent burnout is giving you as much control over the process as possible, right. And Drupal does a fair amount of that, like you can use when you're if you're a module maintainer, you can decide which issues to take on, you can decide whether to use merge requests, or Patrick wet patches, you can decide how your semantic versioning works, you can decide which versions of Drupal their support, right? Yep. As a contributor, though, that inconsistency can sometimes be a little disconcerting, though, because like, yeah, one module, you do it this way, and that will get merged in, you know, if you see an issue that you can fix, you fix it, it gets merged in, it gets released right away another module, it might sit there for three months, six months, a year, or might never get merged in. So I wonder, I'm curious what your thoughts are? And how do you balance those two things, because you don't want to make it Ultra rigid for the maintainer of the module, because that will contribute that people just want to come maintainers they can't do it. No way. But you also want some consistency for the people trying to become especially first time contributors. How do you balance that?

Unknown Speaker  
To me, there's kind of a magical, it's a magical mix of philosophy and tactics. So I was actually literally having a conversation with, with a client of mine yesterday about this, where they've got a very, very popular open source project, they got 1000s of people who were using it, but they have just a couple of people who are actually contributing to it. And one of the things that we when we peel the onion, where that we identified was that there was no philosophical narrative around it, there was no like, this is where we want to get to this is what we want to do. This is where we see the opportunity where you get people excited about the impact of that software on the world. And that's the philosophical piece. And that's, and I think you always need that your because then, then you can say like, this is the direction that we're going in. And that helps to align your contributors with, with what you're doing, right. And you make that very open, very flexible, like you don't weld people to it. But it gives people the motivation that they can, that they can have an impact. But then for all the tactical elements of like, how do you submit an issue? How do you submit a pull request? How do you test your software? How do you release yourself where you break it down into a workflow, and you treat that workflow, like an open source project, right. So you basically say, this is how we find the most efficient way in which we operate. But if you think we can make this better and more efficient and more effective, then we'll fix it right, and let's have a, let's submit a pull, submit a pull request to fix the process, right. And what I find that is that when you clearly define workflow, you become you can become 100 times more efficient. So for example, I used to do like social media and YouTube videos and things like that. And I kind of do them when I had time. And I was really choppy and inconsistent what I was doing. Now I do all of that stuff in one day. And I, it took me weeks to build out a workflow where I create the content, and then my assistant goes through and like chops it up and schedules it and all the rest of it. And obviously, most people in open source don't have assistants. I'm just saying that like, you can you can you can create workflow that makes it really easy to scale out what you're doing. But you need that philosophical directive, that narrative saying like this is where we go into this is one of things that I think is the differentiator between projects that really succeed and projects that don't is that the ones that really succeed. Their founders get people really excited about what's possible. Whereas the open source projects that kind of just sit there and they don't really go anywhere, they don't have any of that. They just say well, you know, submit a pull request, it's like that's not enough. You've got to excite your your contributors around it. So

Nic L  
So I think the next two questions are probably the most important questions those show up. So this first one is what you've talked about a couple of these things, but what can prevent burnout?

Unknown Speaker  
So I think one thing is, we have to take responsibility over our own psychology is that is to look at your brain, like an open source project. Like if you look at open source project, you think, Okay, where do I want it? Where do I want to go? How can I optimize it? How can I make sure that it's healthy, we need to do the same thing with our brains, like Don't give into your own psychology. And this is something that anybody can do. Right. You know, I think the way in which we do that one is is definitely look into stoicism, there's a great book called The obstacle is the way by Ryan Holiday that I would recommend. There's a bunch of great books on stoicism. But the other thing as well, I think is, is only spend time with people who have a positive outlook on life. Like, don't descend into the pit of people complaining on Twitter, and Facebook, don't be around people who just want to tear things down. I'm not interested in those people. Like for me, anybody who, who, you know, whether it's people building tech, or whatever, if the peanut gallery people who say it'll never work, those people suck. And, you know, it's alright to be around people who want to be constructive and how you make things better. But you, I think we have to take responsibility in our own health, we have to take our responsibility and our own psychology. And part of that is being around healthy, positive people. And in some cases, we can't control that there's people at work and things like that, that you have to be around. But just take those people with a pinch of salt and focus your social group, focus your community groups on positive people. The other element, I think, in preventing it definitely is, is work life balance, one of things I cannot stand is this kind of attitude of Well, first of all, you know, we have to work 150 hours a week, it's not about working longer, it's about working smarter, in my mind, and I spent a lot of time working. But like, I spent a lot of time playing the guitar and hanging out with my son, and you know, watching movies and stuff like that. And I think we need to do that. So we need to have like a decent work life balance. And, and just, you know, healthy eating, get exercise is one of the most incredible ways of relieving stress and anxiety, like, get on a treadmill, go for a walk, whatever is right for your body.

Leslie G  
So right. The second part of that is, and you spoke about some of this already, but how do you recover from burnout?

Unknown Speaker  
So yeah, I mean, like I said earlier on, one of the things I would definitely start with is trying to just get some mental space away from it. Go for a drive, go for a walk, if you've got the means to do so. Take some time off work. Go visit a friend, just get away from it. Definitely do not descend into the where possible, don't descend into using booze or drugs to relieve burnout. There's nothing wrong with booze, and some drugs. So long as like anything in life as long as you have a healthy attitude to it and how you use it. But when you're burning out, that's the worst time to do that. So I think getting away from it. And then also, again, like surround yourself with with people who care about you. Be open and vulnerable with them say look, I'm just going through a bit of a rough time right now. You know, I'd love if you could be a shoulder to cry on type thing. That it's amazing how people say like a problem half there's a problem. So like, it's amazing how positive that can be. But that takes some vulnerability in admitting that to other people. And then like I say, like good literature can be amazingly helpful. Like I literally have a stack of books of the obstacle of the way books in my in my closet over there that I give to people when they're going through difficult times, like a friend of mine had breast cancer give her a copy of friend of mine got let go from you know from his company, all these tech layoffs. It's amazing by sitting down and reading when you feel like that person's got all the answers can help you figure it out yourself.

John P  
So, in your first visit to talking drupal, Episode 265, which we talked we said was a couple of years ago. We talked about your book people powered, which is a book about building communities and how that impacts your business. I'm wondering like in a in a in a broader sense of things, right? How can burnout impact communities and specific like open source communities?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, I mean, if burnout is not effectively managed, then it what can happen is it can manifest in people, individuals experiencing burnout and then it turns into that kind of like virus that we talked about earlier on. and where, you know, the amount of times I've seen somebody's burning out in the community in a community and then they start being stroppy and snippy with people. And then other people get annoyed with that. So they start sparring with each other. And then people say, well hang on a second, I'm with Dave, and I'm with Sarah. And then they start falling into camps. And that's where it can be, it can be, it can be pretty dangerous. So to me, it's incumbent on community leaders, where you observe that kind of behavior to nip it in the bud right away. And to lead with intention and empathy. One of the things that bugs me about what we see a lot in social media, is that a lot of people are judged and shamed on their actions. And people seem to not look at their intentions. And the amount of times I've seen really good people, you know, just behave in a way this unusual for them. Like they're, they're usually friendly and polite, respectful, but they, they become snippy and frustrated with people. And instead of looking at the intention, like Did they intend good. They look at the words, and we all misspeak, we all say stupid things from time to time. So as a community leader, look at the intention, if you know somebody who's normally pretty good, and they're, they're not themselves, then clearly their intentions are good, but they're just not themselves. That's where you want to kind of step in and see if you can offer them a helpful word.

John P  
Regularly say stupid things. So I understand that.

Leslie G  
In your consulting work, John, have you had opportunities to help communities overcome burnout problems? Specifically?

Unknown Speaker  
Yeah, yeah, a whole bunch. within communities as well as within within companies as well, I have a weird job because I often like come in to help build or optimize a community. But then what happens is because a company community like community that companies building is so intrinsically linked with the culture of the company itself. In many cases, they end up kind of becoming a bit of a therapist for the executive team. And sometimes that's really helpful, because sometimes you just need an objective third party, who can kind of gently, really speak to what's actually happening, where nobody in that team can really speak to that. So you know, to me, this, the way companies operate the way communities operate, so basically, it's just human psychology. So we just need to apply the right things at the right time.

Nic L  
I mean, that that's true of all consultants, though, right? Consultants are hired to tell the executive team something that somebody's telling them.

Unknown Speaker  
That's true. Yeah, it's kind of a roundabout way of doing it. Yeah.

Nic L  
Yep. So I'm curious. So we've talked a lot about burnout. We've talked a lot about science recognized in yourself and and others, in talks about how it can become kind of a cascading problem in a community. But even the best like community, there's going to be individual instances of burnout. I mean, because sometimes burnout comes from not from a specific community or from the job, it's a it's a variety of factors. Somebody might be working two jobs, or they might be just maybe they just have babies, and they're not getting the sleep that they're used to. But what are what are some signs that a manager or a community leader can watch out for to be like this, this burnout issue is a systemic problem on this team. This is something we need to culture change to help manage this, versus hey, this person needs to take a vacation and manage it and they need some extra support. What are the things that they can watch out for to be like, hey, we need to take a step back, we really need to, we need to hire John Oh, to consult and figure out how to fix

Unknown Speaker  
step one. These are the things I would recommend all leaders of teams or community leaders maintainers look at. One is, what is the narrative of the team or community that you're operating? Like? Do you have a positive forward focusing? Are you getting people excited and motivated about what you can do? Right? The reason why people join companies and communities in many cases is that, that adventure for the unknown and doing cool things, especially in open source, where we can actually create software and documentation and translations and run local groups and whatever else to really do that. If that narrative is missing, create it, if that narrative is negative, fix it, because that's the first thing I would look at. The second thing is where you see Stark changes in behavior, where people who are ordinarily really fun and dynamic become a little bit sullen and maybe frustrated or annoyed. That is the canary in the coal mine for something is up. So sit down with them rewind back to the section earlier on in this in this discussion where where we kind of approach that conversation. That's one thing I would do. And then the other element. I think here is I mentioned like the power dynamic a few times I think what you what we always need to do is the vast majority people always talking about like leaders versus followers. It It's true, like the vast majority of people in the world are followers, they need someone to guide them in the right direction. But we can't replace leadership with dictatorship, right? So when you as a maintainer, you as a leader of a community, or a manager or a company, when you make it clear that like, Okay, this is the direction we're gonna go in. And I've received counsel and guidance from the team. And what we're going to do, but this is the direction we're going to go in is good, but always make it very clear that the power dynamic is that the team is essential in achieving that. And that's part of the narrative is basically saying, like, I'm going to lead us in that direction, but I can't do it without you. And that we're going to show up for each other. That's one of the most critical messages I think we need to get across is, we show up for each other, and we're a team. And part of me being a good leader here is I'm going to tell you some things you don't want to hear sometimes. Right? So that then gives them you permission to be able to have some of those difficult conversations you want to reduce is this more with managers, you want to reduce the power dynamic of like, I'm in charge, and I tell you what to do, because that just doesn't work,

John P  
essentially sounds like it has to be more of a democracy, right? Like, I'm the manager, I'm gonna I'm leading us in a direction but like, I'm going to I'm going to incorporate feedback from from the team members to make sure we're all getting there together. Yeah, I'd

Unknown Speaker  
say like a democracy without the vote, because to me, if you have the vote, then it becomes consensus. And that never works. But to your point, John, like people feeling like they have like democracies, you have some control over over your your country. Right. And well, that's the theory at least. Let's put that so

John P  
yeah. So let's focus on John for a second. We've been focusing a little a lot on burnout and having a great conversation as we bring, bring our show to a close here. I'm wondering what's what's next for John? Maybe a book about burnout or something else?

Unknown Speaker  
I don't know. Maybe, I mean, I am going to probably write another book. And I'm trying to get on to like a book every three to five years. So I'm kind of edging towards that timeframe. Now. After people powered. For me, what I've been focusing on is, like scaling out my business from just one on one consulting. I don't I've never wanted to build a consulting practice doesn't interest me. So now I'm doing kind of individual group group coaching with with my community experience masterclass, which is an event that I run a couple of times a year, which is a 10 week program where I teach people how to build or optimize community. I also have something called the Community ignition workshop, which is a completely free like fourth training sessions. I did it for the first time earlier this year, and it seemed to go really well. And then what I'm building out right now is actually an accelerator community accelerator where companies can join it and they can kind of for the whole year know exactly where they're going to move and have coaching and guidance and things like that. So, you know, that's kind of where I'm focusing on

John P  
focusing on the community. We love to hear about that about the community, especially coming from Drupal. John, no, thanks for joining us, and we appreciate your time.

Jono B  
Thank you. It's a real pleasure.

Nic L  
Do you have questions or feedback you can reach out to talking Drupal on Twitter with a handle talkingDrupal, or by email with show@talking.com You can connect with our hosts and other listeners on Drupal slack in the talking Drupal channel.

John P  
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Nic L  
And you can get the talking Drupal newsletter for show news, upcoming Drupal camps, local meetups, and much more, you can sign up for the newsletter at talking drupal.com/newsletter

John P  
Thank you patrons for supporting talking Drupal, your support is greatly appreciated. You can learn more about becoming a patron at talking drupal.com and choosing become a patron. All right, everyone, we have made it to the end of our show. And this is the point where we like to insert shameless plugs and tell everybody how they can, they can contact you so So John, we'll we'll start with you. How can folks contact you if they want to talk about all the great things you're doing?

Unknown Speaker  
You can anyone can email me at jono@jonobacon.com is the easiest way to do it. And then my website is unsurprisingly, jonobacon.com.

John P  
There you go. Lastly, if somebody wants to take something off of your plate, reduce your to do list, how could they contact you to do that?

Leslie G  
First of all, I'd really appreciate that. Community's great. They can reach me at leslieg on drupal.org. This easiest way.

John P  
There you go. Nic Laflin what about you?

Nic L  
You can reach me pretty much everywhere @ nicxvan

John P  
And as for me, I'm John Picozzi. You can reach me on all the major social networks and drupal.org @JohnPicozzi and you can find out about EPAM at epam.com.

Nic L  
And if you've enjoyed listening, we've enjoyed talking. See you guys next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai