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How to Be a Better Human

Anne Helen Petersen on changing your relationship to work and the guardrails that can prevent burnout

How to Be a Better Human

TED

Self-improvement, Education

4.21.3K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What does "burnout" even mean anymore? If you're asking yourself this question, you've come to the right podcast. Anne Helen Petersen is the writer who helped popularize the term and she thinks people are missing the big picture. In this episode, Anne Helen and Chris discuss the structures that are leading so many people, from nurses to teachers to office workers, to suffer from chronic, work-related stress. Then, Anne Helen suggests some of the ways that we can rethink our relationship to work – and offers practices that could protect us from laboring past our limits. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

Transcript

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0:00.0

Ted Audio Collective.

0:02.0

Audio Collective.

0:04.0

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.

0:10.0

I'm your host Chris Duffy.

0:12.0

When I worked in an elementary school, I experienced so many very weird things that were very specific to being a teacher.

0:18.0

For example, I remember the year after I left teaching being absolutely astonished that I could just go to the bathroom

0:24.3

whenever I wanted and I didn't have to run back in a dead sprint praying that full chaos hadn't

0:29.5

interrupted while I was gone. What a wild luxury. Or now as a comedian, I never stopped being amazed by the fact that sometimes I'm paid in money for my work, and other times I do the exact same work, and I'm paid in drink tickets. Exact same effort, very different reward.

0:45.0

At the end of the day, though, there really is not any such thing as a normal job.

0:49.0

All workplaces have their idiosyncrasies and their quirks.

0:52.0

So how can we make sure that whatever the job you do... places have their idiosyncrasies and their quirks.

0:52.8

So how can we make sure that whatever the job you do,

0:55.3

you leave work every day with dignity, with respect,

0:58.0

with fair compensation, and with energy for the rest of your life?

1:01.8

In my opinion, nobody dives into these issues

1:04.1

in a more nuanced, thoughtful, and approachable way

1:06.7

than today's guest, Anne Helen Peterson.

1:09.0

Here's a clip where she's talking about this new world

1:11.2

of remote work and her own experience in it.

1:13.7

What remote and flexible work allows you to do is that previously our lives absolutely

1:20.0

revolved around work.

1:21.9

Work was the sun. You're the planets going around it. And now I feel like work

...

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