About This EpisodeÂ
In this episode of The Future of Work® Podcast, Daniel Lamadrid speaks with Dr. Guy Winch, internationally renowned psychologist, bestselling author, and leading voice on emotional health, about why burnout, stress, and overwork continue to intensify even as awareness around well-being has grown. Drawing from his latest book, Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life, Dr. Winch explores the paradox of modern work: companies talk more about emotional health than ever before, yet people remain overwhelmed, mentally depleted, and unable to disconnect.Â
The conversation examines how burnout at work now extends far beyond office hours, especially in an era shaped by remote work, AI anxiety, blurred boundaries, hustle culture, and nonstop digital access. Dr. Winch explains the psychological patterns that keep people stuck in rumination, why overwork erodes productivity rather than improving it, and what leaders and employees can do to build healthier, more sustainable ways of working. This episode offers timely insight into the future of work by showing that emotional adaptability, psychological awareness, and intentional recovery are becoming essential human skills in a rapidly changing workplace.Â
About Dr. Guy WinchÂ
Dr. Guy Winch is an internationally renowned psychologist and bestselling author who advocates for integrating the science of emotional health into our daily lives. His 3 TED Talks have garnered over 35 million views, and his science-based self-help books have been translated into 30 languages. His newest book is Mind Over Grind: How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life (Simon & Schuster).Â
What You’ll LearnÂ
- Why burnout at work continues to rise even though awareness of workplace well-being has increasedÂ
- How remote work can blur the boundary between professional and personal lifeÂ
- Why rumination after work keeps people mentally trapped in the workdayÂ
- How AI creates a different kind of workplace anxiety than past technologiesÂ
- Why overwork can reduce productivity, creativity, and decision-making qualityÂ
- How self-neglect, not just long hours, becomes one of the biggest dangers of hustle cultureÂ
- Why effective recovery after work requires both rest and recharging activitiesÂ
- How simple rituals can help transition the brain out of work modeÂ
- What leaders often misunderstand about burnout and workforce well-beingÂ
- Why emotional adaptability and psychological versatility will matter in the future of workÂ
Transcript
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:00:00,000 ]We do a lot of things that are very harmful, that are not useful, and we are not adapting to these extra pressures that are coming in the workplace. You mentioned AI, the uncertainty of that. The dread of that, the stress of that, the entire feels— all these massive layoffs you keep hearing about. It’s constant stress and pressure, and we mismanage it, for one reason: no one teaches us psychologically how to manage it. That’s why I wrote the book because we need to understand how, individually as individuals, we need to do better by managing ourselves in a more effective way.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:00:30,840 ] Welcome back everyone to the Future of Work podcast. I’m really excited for this episode with Dr. Guy Winch. How are you today? I am well, thanks. How are you doing? I’m doing well. Um, I’ve been really looking forward to this episode. We recently recorded uh an episode with a colleague, friend of yours, Amalek, and she speaks very highly of you. I’m really excited for the episode. So thank you for taking the time to to have this conversation with us, which I believe is crucial right now. You are a best-selling author and specifically a psychologist. In your new book, ‘Mind Over Grind,’ you speak of the emotional toll that everyone is going through, if we can generalize, because of work, AI.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:01:25,740 ] All these technological advances. What prompted you to write about this now?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:01:33,380 ] Why now? Well, it’s been an interesting thing because the pandemic, the shutdowns, happened early in the pandemic.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:01:41,110 ] The idea of emotional health in the workplace became really public—for the first time, every single company was worried about it. I was giving talks like. So many times during the week. There were resources. Everyone was aware that, oh, you know, like emotional health in the workplace is important. It literally had this golden moment, and then after that came quiet quitting. Where employees were kind of taking control and prioritizing their work-life balance. And it seemed like, ah, for me as a psychologist, like, oh, great. Finally, emotional health in the workplace is getting its place. And at the same time, over these past five years, six— almost since the six— since the pandemic, work stress and burnout are at all-time highs. So how is it? That we are so much more aware of the importance of work-life balance, of emotional health in the workplace, that you know, all companies have these pages of resources devoted to it that employees are aware of the importance of prioritizing it and it’s keep getting. Worse.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:02:44,040 ] That is a paradox you would expect it to get better, but stress levels and burnout are still at an all-time high, and so I was very interested in that, and what my research led me to discover was that one of the reasons that’s happening is because we’re fighting stress and burnout, and in this difficult workplace at work. But it’s no longer contained to work. It spills out. From work. It follows us home. The subtitle of my book is ‘How to Break Free When Work Hijacks Your Life,’ because that’s what actually happens. Work hijacks our life. And until we can figure out how to fix the life part and what happens with those stresses at home, we won’t be able to resolve stress or burnout.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:03:23,710 ] You know. Yes, I I definitely agree, but and and this paradox that you speak of— why is it, why is it that we’re so aware now, but it’s still something that isn’t fixed. I would argue. I don’t know what you think. Um, I believe that it’s because.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:03:44,060 ] It’s the younger generations that are more.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:03:48,970 ] That have noticed this more. It’s sort of from like the bottom up, rather than from the top down. And that’s why it’s still.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:03:57,290 ] Not being fixed would would you sort of agree with that? I mean, older generations, the ones leading right now, I believe they were told this is how work is. It doesn’t matter if it hijacks your life, but then younger generations are are suggesting the opposite.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:04:13,850 ] Do you think there will come a time where it evens out?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:04:18,760 ] Well, I don’t think it’s about the younger generation not experiencing this versus the older generation who’s experiencing it. The younger generation, Gen Z, is experiencing this in the workplace as well. I only follow five people in my book, but throughout the entire book, you hear all their stories. And one of them is a Gen Z person. She’s 25.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:04:40,220 ] From the time that I’m writing about. And so everyone is susceptible to this because of the psychology of it that work follows us home in ways we are not aware of. It impacts us in unconscious ways. And we all have an unconscious and all are. approach to psychology is unfortunately not informed. We don’t realize the way these things are happening. We do a lot of things that are very harmful that are not useful. And we are not adapting to these extra pressures that are coming in the workplace. You mentioned AI, the uncertainty of that, the dread of that, the stress of that entire. feels all these massive layoffs you keep hearing about. It’s constant stress and pressure, and we mismanage it. For one reason, no one teaches us psychologically how to manage it. That’s why I wrote the book, because we need to understand how, individually, as individuals, we need to do better by managing ourselves in a more effective way.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:05:35,230 ] Yeah, definitely. And it’s sort of like what you mentioned, I think.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:05:40,380 ] The pandemic not only made us more aware of this but I think work started following more people home as more people began working remotely. And I’ll use me as an example. I mean, I work remotely. Our entire company works remotely. There’s a lot of pros.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:06:00,040 ] But the con, the biggest con is that the the line between life and work becomes more and more blurred. One of the things I miss about the office is that it’s actually funny to think about this now. It wasn’t that long ago, but when we would go into the office, we would arrive. We would open our computers. We would work our eight hours. We would close our computers and we would go home. Right. But now the computer is part of your living room. It’s part of your kitchen. It’s part of it. And it’s always there. It’s always there.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:06:34,720 ] That’s what I believe. I think remote work has a lot of pros, but it also comes with a lot of cons. One of them being precisely this, the blurred lines between life and work. And.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:06:47,000 ] Yeah. That’s exactly true. But the idea there is that when you work from home, you have to make even more intentional efforts to create a psychological divide because you don’t have a physical space. The other thing is it’s not just you— every time you see your laptop in the room, you’re going to think, ‘Oh yeah, that email I have to respond to,’ or ‘that thing I have to do.’ I mean, it’s a visual reminder. I always say to people: cover it with something, put a plant on it, hide it like— just don’t have it in the corner of your eyesight, because that’ll make you think about work. But the other problem that happened over the pandemic is our managers, the bosses, the companies are much less concerned. You know, that boundary broke for them too. So, like, the idea of troubling an employee at home after hours. They’re not that troubled. By doing it, you know, I mean, the idea of letting email at 10 o’clock at night and expecting a response. They’re not that troubled by doing it because they’re used to the fact, well, they’re home when they’re working from home. So it’s like it’s the same thing. We have to adjust for that psychologically and be much more intentional and clear about how we create those boundaries.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:07:50,590 ] And we’re not making that adjustment.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:07:53,140 ] Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I want to get into those psychological patterns.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:07:57,200 ] But before, so sort of to wrap up this.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:08:02,700 ] brief combo on work itself, do you? Dr. Winch believed that work is in fact getting harder. For us to manage. Be that because of AI, because of whatever you want. Is work.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:08:18,110 ] I don’t want to be canceled for this, but is work getting harder or are people becoming more?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:08:25,370 ] fragile slash aware.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:08:27,810 ] What are your thoughts on that again? Work, if it was happening just to a specific segment of the population, then you could say, okay, maybe that segment is more fragile. It’s happening to everyone. Work stress and burnout are up across the board. Bullying, harassment are up across the board. They’ve almost doubled. Over the last 10 years, in terms of the reporting of these things, the insecurity from AI affects so many industries. You see, layoffs happening at all kinds of companies, not just tech companies, but this kind of uncertainty about the future of AI and which jobs it’s going to take and which ones are going to be retrained and which ones not. It affects, I mean, look— I’m a psychologist, right? And so I’m in the threatened. group of jobs, in other words, will people need therapists if they can keep just chatting with AI, and if not now, then in a few years time, maybe the AI will do as good of a job as I don’t know— not yet, but but they might. In other words, every segment, practically, you know, unless you’re a hands-on person, an artisan, you know, someone who uses tools, etc that the icon doesn’t have hands, then yes, you are threatened.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:09:36,833 ] That is a new thing, that is a new stress, it’s a very very real one. So this is not about fragility. This is literally about shifts, monumental shifts in the workplace, in the landscape of work, and in the pressures that regular people have to deal with because of it.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:09:55,290 ] Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that makes total sense. I appreciate the. the feedback on that. And now, as we focus a little more on the psychological side, what what What psychological patterns?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:10:08,250 ] Do you believe make people vulnerable to burnout even when they know they’re overworking?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:10:14,410 ] Are there specific patterns that you see? Tell me a little bit more about that. So there are many examples.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:10:20,950 ] I’ll give you one example. You get home after a difficult day or you are. Home after a difficult day at work, difficult things happened, threats of layoffs, you had an altercation with someone, you have a co-worker who’s trying to stab you in the back or who’s keeping stepping on your toes, you have a boss who seems dismissive and uncaring, you know the rude people around you, whatever. Whatever the thing is, you are likely to, again, at the end of the workday.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:10:48,180 ] Chew that over, like stew about it, obsess about it. Those kinds of things make us get home and start worrying and start chewing. And, you know, if that rude coworker said something to you that you didn’t like, you are likely to get home and imagine a conversation in which you’re going to say this to them and say that to them, or your boss was disrespectful. People start ruminating. That exactly— it’s ruminating. That’s what the word means: you’re ruminating. But when you are ruminating, you’re doing it in a way that it’s entirely unproductive. You’re not actually figuring anything out. You’re not trying to learn something. You’re just having fantasy conversations and arguments with your boss that you’ll never have because you’ll get fired. But you imagine, I’m going to tell them over this way and I’m going to tell them off that way. Or you’re going to go in and you’re going to try and scheme against and plot against that co-worker who’s scheming against you, but you never really will because that’s not your style. You devote hours to it. We literally spend hours doing this. Here’s the problem. When we spend hours doing it, we’re not solving anything.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:11:49,790 ] We are basically still at work. Because if you’re at home and you’re thinking about work, you’re at work. Your body is responding by putting you into fight or flight and activating you as if you’re still in the office. You flooded yourself with all the bad feelings you had when the incident happened because you keep reactivating those feelings. The research tells us that when you’re ruminating about work after work, you are likely to have sleep impairments because of it. You’re likely to have a bad mood because of it. You’re likely to eat unhealthy foods because of it, because that’s how we soothe the bad moods. You can predispose yourself towards depression if you keep doing it, increasing your risk of cardiovascular disease. These are real things, and more importantly, you’re going to be completely checked out. From what you’re supposed to be doing— in the life part of the work-life balance, like whatever you’re doing with your friends, with your partner, with whatever— you’re not going to be paying much attention. You’re going to be checked out. It’s bad all around. And most people do not catch. when that’s happening and they think they’re doing something productive because they’re thinking about it even though they’re just ruminating and worse they don’t know how to fix it they don’t know how to stop doing it because it feels very compelling these are intrusive thoughts yeah so one of the
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:13:00,530 ] things you talk about in the book is how do you stop ruminating when you’re doing it because you are this is extra unpaid overtime that you’re giving instead of life for something useless and harmful Yeah, and you know what?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:13:14,340 ] I relate a lot to what you’re saying, and this actually has been happening to me. I’ve sort of found a way to lessen it. tend to go to bed and I start ruminating about work and what am I going to do tomorrow and what happened today? And like, there’s never this disconnection and sort of, and, but what I’ve been doing and it’s kind of helping, um, is.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:13:37,350 ] First of all, like no screens for a little bit before going to bed, right? Like go to bed, drink some hot tea, whatever. But what’s really been helping me— and if it helps other people, I hope they do it. And if you have other tips, I write what’s on my mind. In a notebook. You know, and so there’s I think there’s like this psychological thing where if you write things down before going to bed, they sort of exit your brain. And so I’m worried about what I’m going to do tomorrow. What are the first three things? What do I have to fix? I just write them down. And so now I’m waking up and I take a look at what I wrote down before going to bed.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:14:18,090 ] There you go. Do you write down questions?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:14:21,360 ] But do you write down— what am I going to do tomorrow? Or do you write down, here’s what I’m going to do tomorrow?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:14:29,530 ] I list things like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. I only do 5 because then I can just finish the notebook.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:14:37,510 ] What do I want to start?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:14:40,930 ] Fixing, tackling tomorrow. What? Not the how, though. It’s the what.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:14:48,820 ] Would you suggest it’s better to do the ‘how’?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:14:50,990 ] No, I think it’s sufficient. Because here’s the thing: what people need to do when they’re ruminating is they need to, when you’re ruminating, you’re spinning, you’re actually not resolving anything, you’re leaving this this problem, unsolved. And that’s why your brain is not letting it go because it’s unsolved. When you write down, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do tomorrow: A, B, C, D,’ even if you don’t write ‘how,’ you’re tricking your brain into thinking you’ve got a handle on it. Because, A, you wrote it down. You have a plan. You have intentionality. The assumption is: I’ll figure out the ‘how’ tomorrow, but I know what I’m tackling.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:15:25,960 ] Just enough closure for the brain to then let go of it. And that’s what people need to do. They need to pose whatever they’re worried about as a problem to be solved. They don’t have to solve it all, but they have to clarify. Tomorrow I need to figure out how to address this co-worker who keeps treating me rudely. Why my boss is dismissive to me in meetings? What am I saying that feels like it’s stepping on their toes? And how can I avoid doing that? So you can either start figuring that out or clarify. What needs to be figured out, that’s what you’re doing because even the clarifying what needs to be figured out is setting an intention to then do that. Again, it’s putting enough closure on the thing to allow your brain to let go of it. But just stewing about, why does my boss do that to me? Or your thing is, I have so much to do. When am I going to do it all? I don’t know how I’m going to get it all done. There’s just so much to do. That doesn’t get you anywhere. Writing down I have A, B, C, D, E to do. And tomorrow I’ll figure out when exactly I can do them. That is figuring something out.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:16:27,960 ] It’s an action item. And that’s what allows you to put the rumination aside.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:16:32,730 ] Yeah. I mean, very nicely said, yes.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:16:36,630 ] So, yeah, I mean, that’s sort of helping me out right now.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:16:41,710 ] And I will say I used to do it like in a Google document, but I think it works best when you actually use your fingers and on a piece of paper, there’s like a better connection from the brain to, you know, your hand.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:16:56,890 ] But anywho, I mean, Right now, we’ve talked about it. We know it’s happening. AI is causing a lot of confusion, a lot of fear.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:17:09,829 ] How is it? From what you’ve seen, how is the psychological impact of AI different from past technologies, even if we compare it to when the internet became a thing? What is that?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:17:23,430 ] Different, more impactful, or not?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:17:28,050 ] Um, psychological impact of AI, do you think?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:17:31,650 ] Look, when the internet became a thing, it was a tool that was going to help us. Be more productive. And the threat there was you need to get fluent with this tool. You need to learn how to use it. Otherwise, you will become obsolete. So the threat is that technology is advancing, you need to keep up with it. In order to remain relevant in whatever you’re doing, because this tool will help you or will help everyone, supposedly, do their job better. AI is not about a tool that’s going to help you do your job better. It’s about for many people, a tool that’s going to do your job instead of you. It’s a much more existential level of threat. There are many job losses that are about to come and many sectors are already experiencing them. Because people are going to be replaced by AI, not aided. By AI, not made more efficient or more productive, truly replaced.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:18:28,900 ] Usually when that kind of thing happens, then the new jobs and new areas of expertise that open up— um and so. But we don’t know what those are yet because we’re not seeing fully. What’s going to be replaced. We also know that when technology comes along, there’s always a segment of the population— and it can be a substantial one. That will feel like I am against this, I’m anti-AI. Therefore, I will only call a company or buy products from a company in which I can actually call and speak to a human being. So they might become a premium. On people doing jobs that right now AI might be doing, or automated systems might be doing it’s unclear how this will unfold. But they’re always that segment, and that can become a larger segment. The principle of, you know, you people deal with AI. I only want to deal with a human. If you don’t provide that for me, I’m not doing business with you. You know, that can happen. But what happens to us psychologically is the vaguer the threat, the more unclear the future is, the more anxiety and dread it causes.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:19:33,400 ] Because if it’s a clear threat, we can prepare for it better. If I knew that this was going to happen in my industry at this time, in this way, I can prepare. Either adjust in a certain way, figure out how I need to learn, retrain, make myself relevant. But it’s the vagueness of the threat. It’s the unclear time. On the table, right now, we have AI. We don’t have AGI. Right, general artificial general intelligence— who knows when that will be reached, if any? Time in the near future. The assumptions are: it will. What will that change when the AI can truly think? Like a human, not just mimic one by prediction algorithms, so all of those things are unclear and it’s that lack of clarity that causes the most anxiety. There’s not a lot we can do yet to fully prepare for it, and that’s the stress that is currently in the workplace and will continue to mount.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:20:23,420 ] Yeah. No, definitely. And if you add to that, the current political climate, everyone’s just sort of like losing their minds in a way. You know, it’s I’m stressed about work and this is happening in my country.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:20:37,270 ] It’s just a lot right now for people, I believe.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:20:39,870 ] It’s very difficult. The millennials.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:20:42,320 ] Since we talk about segments, the millennials, you know, a lot of them came into the workplace right after the financial collapse of the Great Recession in 2008.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:20:51,230 ] so they came out of college like ready for the workplace that was not ready for them they had to deal you know with that but but gen z and certainly gen alpha are dealing with two major things that are making it even more stressful for them. Number one, I’m in college now. I’m in graduate school. I’m training for a career. Will there be one? will it be relevant at all by the time i finish will there be a job for me to be had in my industry at all let alone fewer of them number one and be the threat of climate change many people makes the future seem equally uncertain. And so you have this two big existential risks, which put this uncertainty there and make it like, why do I invest in something for the long term when I have no idea? What the long term is going to look like, or whether that investment is going to pay off in any kind of way. And so, just it’s difficult to feel motivated. It’s difficult to feel— challenged and driven. When you’re driving toward a future that is so uncertain.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:21:50,290 ] Yeah. Definitely. And, you know, like you said, when the internet came about, it was.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:21:57,360 ] It was labeled as a tool that would help us. And I think that’s how AI started as well. But there’s more and more research and studies coming out. There was a recent one done by the University of Berkeley, California. It was covered by the Harvard Business Review.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:22:14,030 ] AI is actually not making work easier. It’s not making us work less.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:22:20,530 ] We’re going into this never-ending workday because of AI. It’s gotten to a point, according to the study, where I mean, this is going to sound redundant, but it helps us so much that we end up doing more because of it. So it’s a tool that’s helping us do more, but we’re working more and the day never ends and we’re just stuck in this loop. Um, People are calling it the never-ending workday, the endless workday.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:22:49,030 ] I think that is something that’s happening. You know, AI has got us stuck to our screens even more than before.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:22:55,930 ] Yes, and for many people, it is promoting overwork. Overwork is really problematic in the current workplace. Anyone who’s in a startup or who’s a founder or who’s in certain segments of jobs are just expected to overwork. Now, the average work week is 40 hours a week. You know, between 40 and 55, 60, depending on the definition, is when you’re working hard and overworking. Over 60, it’s extreme overworking. Now, Overworking. comes with real risks. The World Health Organization said that on average 750,000 people die each year from overworking. The overworking literally kills people. You are much more predisposed to stroke, to cardiovascular disease, when you overwork. In China, there are headlines all the time about this 30-year-old and this 40-year-old executive who dropped dead from overwork. In Japan, there’s a word for it. It’s called karoshi—death from overwork. There’s a word for it.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:23:57,130 ] Yes, I was just going to say. It’s death from overwork. Now, now. What I talk about in the book is that overworking is necessary for many industries. I’m self-employed, and I can fall into overworking at certain times as well. You know, tax people around tax time and this. There are certain times and professions. You know, like you’re self-employed, if you’re a mom and a pop shop, you might have to overwork. The question is, can you do it in a way that’s not endangering? your well-being either emotionally or physically, and in my solution for this, in the book, is to look at not the hours that you’re overworking, but how much your self-care is dropping. Because you have people like Sam Altman, the founder of OpenAI, who said that when he worked on his previous startup, he developed scurvy. Scurvy is an illness sailors used to get in the 1700s and 1800s when they were at sea for two or three months and didn’t have access to vitamin C. The lack of vitamin C over a prolonged period causes scurvy, which can kill you.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:24:58,750 ] You get bleeding gums, your joints start to fall apart. He only realized he had scurvy when he started to get the bleeding gums and the joint pain, etc.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:25:07,420 ] All that means is that he was so focused.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:25:10,900 ] on what he was doing that he didn’t. monitor his nutrition i can i don’t know this but i can just imagine the pile high of the pizza boxes or the this and even you know a simple flintstones vitamin would scurvy but he was that he lost touch that much with his self-care that’s what happens when we overwork it’s not the hours that we’re overworked although those can be significant. It’s the self-care that drops to the point of self-neglect— a lot of the time, that we are truly neglecting ourselves and putting ourselves at physical and mental risk, because we are so not monitoring how this is impacting us. So the solution is not to arbitrarily cut hours. It’s to monitor your self-care.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:25:53,460 ] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I mean, this touches on hustle culture, right? I mean, hustle culture is what is causing this. And you just mentioned the example of Sam Altman and all these people and Elon Musk and all these people, these millionaires that have succeeded, they have a story. And their story is always sort of like, ‘I sort of killed myself to achieve this. I went without sleep. And so.’ They’re like consciously or unconsciously, I believe, telling people. This is how you got to do it to like be at the top.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:26:29,639 ] First of all, the stories you don’t hear are the ones from the people that either died or failed, of which there are many. When Elon Musk was sleeping on the floor of the factory for a year, was that? Literally on the floor were his chef. his personal trainer, and his masseuse— perhaps not there to ease his comfort—uh, yeah, yeah, there’s definitely some marketing and storytelling right. So you hear from those billionaires and it’s like, ‘Dude,’ with all due respect. I work extremely hard when I and but I am aware that this is not a story of glory for me. It was a story of, in my case, there was self-neglect going on. There was like, it cost me. You know, in my health, it caused me burnout. Like, there are real ramifications for doing it. And when you’re telling people to do it, they’re taking you literally. They’re literally like, ‘You know,’ founders. I talk about one of them in my book who I worked with who literally believed that he had to work 110 hours a week, 120 hours a week for the first two years of a company because that’s how you do it.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:27:38,880 ] And it cost him everything. And because he took it literally, and these people don’t mean it literally, it’s storytelling, it’s marketing. You know, fine, tell the story, but you can’t take that literally, and you can’t do it at the expense of your health and of your mental health. And that’s what people are doing, and that’s why it’s so dangerous.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:27:57,640 ] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, that’s a very good point. And curiously enough, I mean, The countries that work the least are sometimes the most productive, and the countries that work the most are sometimes the least productive. Yes, I’m Mexican. I live in Mexico, and Mexico is one of the countries with the highest uh working hours, according to the um World Bank, the OECD, and um we’re not the most productive, I think. We’re, you know, why why do some because like the cultural thing, why no no it’s your brain.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:28:39,050 ] It’s your engine. Your cognitive abilities fatigue.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:28:43,490 ] Your capacity fatigues as the day goes on. You have three or four good hours in you.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:28:49,140 ] And then it all starts to go downhill. So working 14-hour days doesn’t make you more productive than working a smart eight-hour day by taking breaks when you need to take breaks, by refreshing yourself. Because if you just keep going, and that’s what people do, that’s the hustle culture, the grind culture. Just put your head down and keep grinding. But if you keep grinding, your efficiency, your productivity, your creativity, everything about your mental skills that you’re using start to decline and sharply— the more fatigued you get. So you might be working six hours from, like, 5 to 11 o’clock at night. But that work product could probably be done in an hour and a half in the morning. If you actually recovered and rested well, and people keep thinking, ‘No, I’m as sharp after 14 hours,’ and I’m like, ‘That’s absolutely absolutely untrue. You’re kidding yourself. You are making more mistakes. You are less creative. You are like, you’re fatigued. So it doesn’t work. It’s not a recipe that works. You have to do it in a smart way.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:29:52,070 ] And in a smart way, again, I’m not against overworking. I do it a ton, but I do it smart. I know when to stop. I know when to take breaks. I know how to refresh and recover during the day and make sure that every time I take a break, I’m coming back recharged rather than depleted.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:30:07,170 ] Yes. Yes, definitely.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:30:11,290 ] We’ll not get too deep into this, but these people that think um working 14-hour days there’s a point where the body just can’t, and then that’s where, like, substance abuse comes in. I’m trying to find research um for an article I want to write for all work and… There seems to be more substance abuse within workers in order to manage more work. Be that Red Bulls. Be that, what’s this thing? Ritalin and all these things. Adderall.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:30:42,710 ] Ritalin. Adderall. Cocaine.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:30:46,120 ] Yeah, and so be honest, cocaine, methamphetamines, all the stimulants.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:30:51,300 ] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:30:52,890 ] Which, by the way, have so many other side effects. They will start impairing your judgment. If you do them chronically and abuse them, they’ll impair your judgment. They will make you paranoid. Like, again, you are actually damaging the very executive functioning that you are relying on to do your job. That’s a counterproductive method.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:31:12,460 ] Yes. Yes, definitely. And look, we’ve talked about all the bad, but let’s.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:31:17,100 ] That’s sort of a shift to the good. I mean, you’ve argued that how we spend our time after work determines how well we adapt to work itself.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:31:28,710 ] Are there any practical strategies or types of habits one should create in order to disconnect from work, actually enjoy life, and for them to be more performative at work?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:31:47,410 ] Yeah, so first of all, I’ll give you two quick ones. Number one, you should develop a ritual that helps you transition your mindset from work to your personal life at the end of the workday.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:31:57,420 ] Involve all your senses. Listen to certain songs that kind of bring you down for the, you know, activation for the fight or flight of the workday and put you in a more relaxed, calm, family-oriented, friend-oriented mode, wherever it is. Change your clothes. Our clothes are very embodied in other words, they make us feel things. When you’re in work clothes, you feel like in work mode. Change into casual clothes, into clothes that fit the mood you’re trying to set for yourself. After that, take a shower. Showers can wash away more than dirt— they can wash away a mindset as well. Because they’re very immersive. Take a walk around the block, because you know that kind of allows you to get some nature, hopefully, and to you know, kind of refresh. Change if you’re working from home, the lighting at the end of the workday so it seems like a slightly different environment.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:32:44,520 ] Close the laptop, put a plant on it, do something that makes it less obvious as a workstation and more like a home station. So do those things, number one. And number two.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:32:55,400 ] Remember that there are two main ingredients for effective recovery from the workday, according to the research. One of them is resting. But only one of them is resting. And people over-index on rest when they feel mentally fatigued after a workday. Their brain confuses mental and physical fatigue. So they feel like I’m wiped out. All I can do is sit on the couch now and surf social media or watch screens for the next four hours. You are not wiped out physically. You’re wiped out mentally. Physically, you have energy. It just feels like you don’t. But the second ingredient is to recharge, to do an activity that gives you a second wind. That makes you feel like you. That’s very difficult to do when you’re sitting on the couch. You actually have to get up and argue with your mind that’s telling you, ‘no, no, no,’ you’re too tired. Don’t do it. You’re not tired physically. Just mentally. But the recharging activity will recharge your batteries. So if you’re athletic, go work out for a bit. If you’re a maker, go make whatever it is. If you’re a creative, lift up the musical instrument and play it or go write. If you’re a writer, or go paint. If you’re a painter, if you’re an extrovert, go and socialize in person.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:33:58,700 ] Do the things that, when you do them, you come back with a second wind and you’re like, ‘I feel more energy than before I left.’ Those are the two ingredients you want to incorporate after the workday.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:34:08,400 ] That’s actually really amazing to hear because I’ve once had— I don’t know if you’re familiar with her. She’s also a best-selling author, and she’s a physician, I believe. If my mind serves me right, Dr. Sandra Dalton Smith wrote ‘The Seven Types of Rest We Need,’ and it’s precisely this that you’re saying. Rest doesn’t mean putting your head on a pillow and going to sleep. There are multiple ways to recharge, and there are multiple ways to rest. One of them is being out in nature. People underestimate how nature can actually give us more ‘battery.’ I’ve found that the hard way.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:34:48,190 ] One of my intentional things when I want to cut the workday and move on to my personal life is, well, I live near the beach, but I will walk to the beach. I will watch the sunset. And that’s sort of how I’m telling my mind. It’s over, you know?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:35:03,570 ] But it’s really great to hear that you also are suggesting this. Rest doesn’t necessarily mean going to bed.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:35:13,450 ] And do you find that people make common mistakes when trying to unwind? Is there like a common mistake people do?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:35:20,110 ] Well, they over-index on the vegging out, on the binging four hours of a show. Or on social media or on watching the news, which is not restful these days in any way, shape, or form. You know that’s going to get you right activated again, right? Put you right back into your flight. They neglect to give oxygen to certain aspects of their personalities and their identities that are a vital part of who they are. They don’t have time for the friend who used to make them. You know that they could be goofy, or silly, or funny, and so they don’t express aspects of who they are. They become really, really narrow because we need the after-hours to really you know express all the other aspects of our personality that we can’t express at work. We sometimes we can’t be creative at work, we can’t be funny, we can’t be or silly, or we can’t be irreverent, or we can’t be rude in a kind of, you know. But there are friends in which we can do all those things, but we cut them off because we feel too tired for them. These are important. ways.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:36:21,310 ] for us to give oxygen to the different parts of who we are so we a fully formed three-dimensional people rather than drones who just like work, sleep, work, sleep. It’s not the industrial revolution— we don’t need to sit on a couch for four hours after work. We weren’t spending 16 hours, you know, doing you know fabrics dying fabrics in a vat. That’s not what our work was. We sat most of the time, most of us, and so we really need a very different way of thinking about the after hours.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:36:47,650 ] Yeah. I mean. Gosh, I mean, this has been really insightful, and we’re nearing the end of our episode, but I do want to ask you a couple of questions before we go.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:37:00,860 ] What should leaders understand about burnout that they often miss and that you think they don’t understand or don’t want to understand? What is something you would suggest or advise leaders understand about burnout and follow up? Is it up to the employer?
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:37:22,720 ] To the employee? Or a mix—so that you know, is it up to a leader to promote well-being for their team, or is it one’s responsibility to look after themselves? What would you say?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:37:39,040 ] Look, it behooves both. Because, for leaders, if your team is healthier, if they are not burnt if they’re burnt out, they’re not that productive. Again, it affects your productivity. It affects your mental abilities. So, if your team is burnt out, they’re not that productive. If they’re overly stressed, they’re not delivering their best work. Product to you. So your interests are aligned. A healthier workforce is a more productive workforce is a more loyal workforce is a more engaged workforce. It should be a win-win. But leaders also are under pressure because they’re under pressure from the C-suite who are under pressure from the board, you know, who governs the organization. So all these pressures, and they just want profits, and they don’t care what happens. It all filters down, but it should come from the leadership of the companies themselves. There should be an understanding that, you know, the healthier employee we have. The more productive. That employee will be. The more engaged we will be, the more loyal we will be. We won’t have to spend so much money in recruiting, training, and replacing, and onboarding other people.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:38:40,320 ] So that’s very, very important. But when I wrote the book, in the introduction, I say, this is not a book about how to change your workplace. For simple reasons, that’s a big assignment. It can be dangerous for some people to do. And it’s not necessary in terms of what I’m trying to do with this book. This book is to empower people. That no matter how difficult your workplace is, there is still a big delta you can achieve in reducing stress and burnout and improving your quality of life. Both at home and your quality of work at work. By managing yourself. More wisely by being aware and more educated, which is what the book tries to do, about how the psychology of this affects you, how your thinking affects you, how your habits affect you, and how you have to be more intentional and more deliberate so that you can reduce, you know, all those pressures and have a better quality of life. The thing you mentioned about rumination, for example. You can save hours. If at the start of the evening, when you start to ruminating, you cut it off by doing this exercise of problem solving, you can then free up hours of unproductive time.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:39:43,640 ] You rest and recover more effectively, you lower your stress to begin with. They’re like all the tons of suggestions and tools that you can use in the book that will that will help you become more effective in the workplace. That you have to manage the stresses that come at you and that do come at you more effectively. So that’s the thing. Like, you can be empowered as an employee, and it would behoove the employers to work in the same vain because it would actually get them a better work product than if they just mounted on you know this hustle and grind culture. Are very mistaken in thinking like you have to hustle, but you have you have to grind, but you have to do it in healthy ways.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:40:26,770 ] Amazingly said. Oh my God. Yes.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:40:29,770 ] And look.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:40:32,000 ] Looking ahead at the future of work.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:40:36,150 ] What skills, what skills, emotional skills do you believe will matter the most in the next five to 10 years?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:40:46,410 ] What distinguished humans and allowed us to succeed the way we have is our adaptability.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:40:55,270 ] Our versatility. Our ability to adapt to different situations by learning. New skills, new information, new tools that we can use to manage those difficult situations well. Emotional adaptability, psychological versatility.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:41:13,950 ] Those are going to be very, very important to have them. You have to be self-aware. You have to be a little bit more knowledgeable about how your brain works, how your mind works, some basic psychology about things, which is what I try and get into in the book, just to explain, this is how your coping mechanisms work. This is how emotional regulation works. This is how you need to be more intentional in certain moments. Those are the skills. To be adaptable, to be versatile, that I think will help anyone survive in any situation.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:41:42,520 ] Especially the future.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:41:44,480 ] And I second that. Yes, I second that.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:41:48,330 ] I think there’s two things in life people can’t avoid.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:41:53,710 ] Death? And change.
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:41:56,280 ] I thought you were going to say taxes, but fine, let’s add taxes.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:41:59,400 ] Well, I mean, there you can avoid them. Um, but yeah, I mean, I really second what you’re saying. I think the ability to adapt will separate those.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:42:11,800 ] Um, who can. And who can’t. And that’s just how it is. Dr. Guy Winch, it’s honestly been a pleasure speaking with you. How can people get in touch with you to learn more? Where is your book available? We’re going to link it within our episode. How can people reach out and learn more?
Dr. Guy Winch
[ 00:42:31,660 ] My website is guywinch. com, G-U-Y-W-I-N-C-H . com, where you can have links to all my social media. You can follow me there to my newsletter on Substack. It’s only every two weeks, so it’s not too much. And it’s a deep dive into a topic with practical advice each time. The book is available everywhere books are sold. It’s an audio book, it’s an e-book, and it’s in hardcover. And you’re in Mexico, it will be out in Spanish at some point next year and in a variety of other languages. But right now, it’s in English everywhere books are sold.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:43:05,589 ] Awesome. Amazing. Once again, thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time and being with us here. I hope we get to catch up soon— the way the world is changing. We’re prone to have another discussion sooner rather than later, hopefully. Unfortunately, so, but that will be a pleasure.
Daniel Lamadrid
[ 00:43:23,710 ] Amazing thank you so much. Take care and I hope to see you soon again.
Dr. Guy Winch
Thank you very much. Ciao.
