S3E2 - Interview with Anahita Amirpour

In this special first interview episode of Moms, Mats, and Manuscripts, Ksenia sits down with Anahita Amirpour - PhD student, performance consultant, and former nurse anaesthetist - to explore how researchers can thrive without burning out. We talk about the culture of overwork in academia, impostor syndrome, setting healthy boundaries, and how Anahita balances her PhD, her business, and writing a book. Whether you're a stressed-out scientist, a recovering perfectionist, or someone juggling too many roles, this conversation will inspire and support you.

Topics covered:

• Burnout in academia and healthcare
• Why impostor syndrome is so common in scientists
• Personal and cultural risk factors for overwork
• Sustainable productivity tips
• Balancing research, business, and creative projects

We hope you enjoy this candid conversation as much as we did!

______________________

Anahita's Instagram: @phdanahita

Anahita's website: https://www.amirpourconsulting.com/

Don't forget to like, follow, and share our podcast! We'd love to hear your thoughts and questions, and if you have ideas for future episodes, drop us a line.

Follow us:
@moms.mats.manuscripts
Ivna's Instagram: ivnayoga
Ksenia's Instagram: shantiscience_yoga

Reach out: moms.mats.manuscripts@gmail.com

Transcript

Unknown: 0:00

🎵 🎵

Ksenia: 0:04

Hello and welcome to this episode of Mom's Maths and Manuscripts podcast. This is a special one. You might notice that I'm here alone today. It's just me and it's because I'm interviewing. I'm doing our first ever interview with a guest and I cannot be more excited. This is going to be a super insightful and inspiring discussion with our guest and I hope that you find it as helpful and useful and interesting as I did. So Let's go and enjoy. All right, here we go. So welcome, Anahita. I'm so happy to have you here. So excited for this conversation to take place. You are our first guest. So thank you so much for joining.

Anahita: 0:52

Thank you so much for inviting me. I'm excited to participate in your podcast.

Ksenia: 0:57

Thank you. And so just a short introduction for our listeners who probably or may have not seen you before. Anahita Amirpour is a super kind person who agreed to this interview and has built an amazing personal brand and like a really strong presence on social media. This is how I found you. And I was thinking from your account, you know, what if I had found you earlier in my PhD career? But so she is a performance consultant who helps researchers move forward sustainably on their academic journeys without letting fear or imposterism hold them back. She has worked with PhD students and researchers from around the world through one-on-one programs or group programs, teaching practical skills-based trainings. And Anahita is also currently a PhD student and her research focuses on how people recover psychologically and cognitively after surgery. So wearing multiple hats, doing all the things and not burning out, hopefully, in the process.

Anahita: 2:04

Yes, exactly.

Ksenia: 2:05

Tell me all your secrets, basically. How do you do this?

Anahita: 2:10

Yeah, I don't know if I have any secrets. But yeah, I mean, yeah, that's basically what I do currently. Yeah, it's been a journey. I mean, I started my PhD four years ago. I'm planning to defend in this September. So it's starting to, you know, finish up everything that I've started, which is fun. And in that process, I also learned that A lot of PhD students were struggling, especially in the beginning of the first year. I met several students who came back from sick leave or who were going on sick leave due to burnout syndrome. And it made me wonder what's going on because I never really had... any type of experience from research work in that sense. I mean, I was a research assistant for a while, but I was working remotely. So that was different. And my background is from clinical work. I worked as a nurse anesthetist for many years before transitioning to academia. So while I was noticing and talking with these students, there was obviously a big gap, like what should students do? What type of help and support do they need? And that gave me the idea of if I could be of any help. So I started out on my social media accounts and just posting around these topics about mental health, how to work more sustainably and so on. And I started working with some people that I found online just for free, like a hobby to see if anything that I was teaching them could be of help. And it did, which was great. And then I... I chose to start my company and that's where I started working more on that part as well as doing my PhD work. So it's been a challenge, but it's also been very, very fun. And I really love helping people. It's like, I mean, that's why I started working as a nurse anesthetist from the beginning. I've always worked with people in all stages of their lives in different ways. Of course, it's a big difference from being extremely sick and almost dying to do a PhD and it's not a life or death sentence, you know, or a situation. So it's different, but it's still someone you help in a difficult situation, right?

Ksenia: 5:02

Yeah, I mean, it can be, I guess, sometimes in very drastic situations, it can be very, very bad. Yeah.

Anahita: 5:10

Yeah.

Ksenia: 5:11

it's curious to see that you're kind of why stayed the same throughout these different stages of your career. Like you were a nurse and you wanted to help people. So I guess that's what brought you first into that line of work. And then you are still helping people just in different ways. And I, I can, I can relate to that. Like this is what brought me to science, kind of the idea that I want to help people, but in a way, maybe broader sense than just one-on-one as a doctor or nurse. And then, um, I realized that, yeah, I can leave science and still have the same why of helping people. Yeah. Good. So you're, you're also experienced, you have experienced burnout, but that was a nursing career in working as a nurse, or that was already as a PhD student.

Anahita: 6:02

Yeah, that was when I was working clinically. So I worked as many others, healthcare professionals during the pandemic. I was working in the intensive care unit where we met the most, the sickest patients, basically. And that was a very difficult time for me and my colleagues. And we worked 12 hour shifts just to, to make things go by. Yeah, it was a difficult time and it affected me physically and emotionally. And that's why I got burnt out and stopped working clinically for several months to just recover, focus on recovering. So that was before I became, or I came to academia. I had experienced that. And that is also... one of the reasons for why I want to prevent that from happening for others who are in the academic context, like how can we prevent ourselves from overworking? What are the patterns behind overworking and the cultural patterns, but also individual risk factors that exists, right? And preventing exhaustion and how can we move more forward, more in a sustainable way without neglecting our wellbeing because without that, there's no, life feels very empty when we don't have, when we only focus on work, on the work domain in our lives and don't have the energy or resources to prioritize our families or hobbies and so on, right?

Ksenia: 8:00

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, I guess... sad but it's also understandable that it happened while you were working during the pandemic because that was such a situation like completely out of ordinary and you probably couldn't really do much to prioritize yourself just because there was such a workload and so many patients so many people who needed you so this is yeah this is out of ordinary and I guess I know also many other medical professionals who burned out. And if they haven't left their careers, kudos to them, but many also left after that because it was extremely difficult. But then in terms of academia, What I think in this case, as a PhD student or as an academic at different stages, there are things, it's not, as you said, a life or death situation oftentimes. So there are things that you should do to balance things out a little bit. You cannot, or probably you should not devote 110% of you to just your job. So what do you... What do you see as the... Let's start with the individual. Let's start with the individual risk factors. What do you see as the patterns that people present that make it really difficult for them to balance and make them just go all in for their work and burn out eventually?

Anahita: 9:32

Yeah. So I think there are several risk factors, one of them being... A very dedicated person and highly ambitious, driven, goal-oriented person who tries to juggle multiple responsibilities and roles in their lives. Being a woman is also a risk factor because we usually... We have families, or you have a mother, you have a child, you have a partner, and you have the household, you have the job. So you're trying to juggle all these things simultaneously, which makes it more challenging, right? So you're trying to be maybe 100% in all of these domains. That's also a risk factor. And then we have other risk factors, such as... going all in into responsibilities. Perfectionistic personality traits is also a risk factor, trying to be perfect in everything you do, not allowing yourself to do any type of mistakes, not being accepted towards yourself if you fail or if you experience any setbacks. That's also a risk factor, being perfectionistic. So there's just a few, just some more. Yeah,

Ksenia: 10:57

yeah. Do you think there is a bit of like almost a selection process that people with these tendencies tend to go to academia because maybe we want to go above and beyond in everything and so we end up pursuing degrees and this career path?

Unknown: 11:16

Yeah.

Anahita: 11:17

Yeah, like what came first? Like, is it the person or the setting? I mean, I think it's a mix, right? I definitely think academia draws a certain type of people, you know, people who are very goal-oriented and they have a niche interest or are very competent in a certain skill set and so on. So I definitely think that that draws a certain type of people, I think so. But then the people also create the culture, right? And the culture is also a huge risk factor too. for instance, burnout, like what is the social norms at the workplace? Are you expected to be available at all times and late weekends and late evenings? Is that like what's expected from you? That also creates barriers to have a more sustainable relationship to your job if the cultural environment is not accepting of you taking breaks or if you taking of going on on vacation or not responding to that email 9 p.m. on a Saturday evening when you're at a party or whatever. So I think we need to have like a holistic view on what drives a person to a burnout. It's not just the individual risk factors and the individual, but it's also the structural environment that creates this as well.

Ksenia: 12:51

Definitely, yeah. There's a lot of cultural aspect of it and maybe cultural also in the sense that it depends and differs from country to country or from setting, I think. And then academic culture as a whole as well plays a role in this. And combining with the individual risk factors that can be a potent mix. Yeah, it's a potent mix, definitely. Very efficient at bringing a person to a burnout.

Anahita: 13:23

Yeah, and creating a lot as well in that process. For people who burn out, they usually do extreme amount of work. I mean, not just at their jobs, but publishing or taking on projects, but also they do so much on their free time maybe they have like several hobbies or they have family responsibilities they do so much and that's also what can can lead to the burnout that they're trying to do so much in all domains yeah

Ksenia: 13:57

Yeah. I think you mentioned something that I also find really fascinating that, yeah, we, when we have a tendency to go above and beyond and, and put a hundred percent of ourselves into everything we do, but like, we're just one person and how do we put a hundred of us? That's I mean, it's also something that I see in myself and this is, I don't, Yeah, this is the thing that I know that we need to kind of keep under control a little bit and know that sometimes it's okay to dial down on one thing and increase the other one and vice versa.

Anahita: 14:35

Definitely.

Ksenia: 14:38

So you are speaking of that and speaking of dialing down or putting 100% of us in different things. So you are also very multi... faceted let's call it that way right you're you're phd-ing you're still a student so you are also a lot of work you're publishing you're presenting you're doing all the things that come with that and yet you're still also managing your company you're managing your coaching performance consulting business social media like i don't know if you have somebody on the side to help you with that but i mean it's just me yeah so especially that you know it's just it's How do you manage to balance and how do you manage to know where you need to put a little bit more, where do you need to put a bit less and do these dials and pouring of yourself into different vessels?

Anahita: 15:39

Yeah, that's a good question. I think it's been a lot of trial and erroring for me to know what works and what does not work. So it wasn't like I woke up one day and like, this is how I want to do this. That's not the reality. The reality is that in the beginning, of course, when you start a company, everything is much more difficult because you have to learn everything from scratch, right? It's just like, researching, like I come up with a business idea, who is the potential customer, how are you going to market that? So it's a lot about project managing, but also marketing and sales. So it's a lot of things. which can be very overwhelming. So in the beginning, I was working a lot to understand that, which meant that I was working in the beginning in the evenings to understand like, how am I going to do this on my own? So with time, and when I also got help, I reached out and got help from a business coach myself. So because I didn't want to, you know, just stumble around in the darkness, not knowing how am I going to move forward. And that helped me a lot, you know, asking people who are ahead of you, how do you do this? That's been a huge amount of help for me while I've been wanting to build my own business while also doing my PhD. So that has been very helpful. And also having like the social support to do this, that's also been a very big help. Like if people in my surroundings were against me, building my company or against me doing my research or whatever, it wouldn't have been possible to do it. So social support has also been very important. And I've also been trying to be focusing on like my personal boundaries around work. That means that I have a set amount of hours that I work in the weeks that I've had during these years. So for instance, in a certain period, I was having specific days for my company work and specific days for my research work. And for research work, I've mainly spent, when I've been logging my hours to just trace how it looks like in practice, it's been around 30, 35 hours for PhD work. and the rest for the company. And so that's what's been working for me. And I think why it's been working is because I'm able to focus very well when I'm doing any of these things, like the company work or... my PhD. So I also work on one thing at one time. So I'm very good at monotasking. So I don't simultaneously do several things. And that's also the line of my research. Like I'm not in a lab, for instance, so I don't need to have all many things going on at the same time. So I, my work, my research work is, I mean, it's clinical research. So I've been having patients in my studies and during the data collection and so on. But then I'm working very independently and I have a high autonomy of how I disseminate my hours. So I can choose when to work on specific tasks as long as I'm delivering and moving forward. So there's been a lot of things that's made this possible. And I think one of them is like the line of my research that it makes it very, it's up to me how I want to do it. except for when I've been having the patients because then they decide I have to be there for the data collection and so on. And the same thing with my business, it's remote. So I meet the clients virtually. If it was like I was working somewhere else, like at the clinic and having clients or patients there, it wouldn't have been possible because it has to be in a virtual setting for it to work. actually work at this point.

Ksenia: 20:02

I see. I mean, definitely this balancing act is going to be more difficult, as you said, as you touched upon this, that it depends on your line of research, your line of work, the model, or whether it's in person or hybrid or remote or how exactly it works for you and for your, whether it's a PhD or business or whatever it is that you're juggling. But I think you also touched upon some really good points that are going to be helpful for people, you know, no matter what they're doing, whether it's quote-unquote just a PhD or motherhood, maybe the social support, the boundaries and monotasking, I think it's also a good point. It's not always possible, obviously, but it's... It's such a revelation. Like I think you hear a lot about multitasking and how you have to be good at it apparently, but then it's taking up so much bandwidth and you feel like you're not really doing anything properly. Yeah. And once you start focusing on just one thing at a time, then it all makes much more sense once you learn also how to train your focus to be on one thing only at a time. Definitely. So this is, this is all our, this are all really good points. And then let's bring this to one more thing that you're doing, which I was really surprised and fascinated to find out from our conversation is you're writing a book, right?

Anahita: 21:35

Yeah. Starting to, yeah.

Ksenia: 21:39

It's also finding little pockets of time for that one. Right. What, what inspired you? What, what's, told you to write a book?

Anahita: 21:50

Well, I think it's related to, you know, both the research work and my business that I... I mean, we write a lot as researchers, right? And I enjoy writing and... throughout my work with my clients um one of the things that is like a very commonality between everyone is the the feeling of being an imposter in academia like you have all these qualifications all these skills all these competencies but still you feel like you don't belong there but still you feel like this is not the place for me to be so that's what inspired me, I could say, to write a book about imposterism. And I'm still figuring out if I want to mainly focus on academic imposterism in the academic setting, but I'm also thinking about including imposterism from other settings. So it's not just in academia we feel like imposters. There's been described in the art setting, like in artists and musicians, but also among elite athletes, people who perform like on an Olympic or also national level in their sport. So we have this type of challenge or personal challenge and emotion that we're sharing. And it will be interesting to explore that a bit more. What do we have in common? And how are the settings also, you know, maybe... um creating this imposterism in in some ways um or and what can we do like what are the strategies we can uh we can apply to cope with it and and so on so that's that's the main kind of content of of this book i'm hoping

Ksenia: 23:46

So not to take too much information out of your future book and to still keep people interested in and inspired to read it when it actually materializes and comes out. But maybe you can just give me a little bit of information. Why do you think... it's so common in scientists and academics, how exactly you see the setting or the personal qualities also contributing to it. Just one or two things maybe.

Anahita: 24:19

Yeah. So I think one thing that is especially for academia is that we have, compared to the general population, if you want to call it, we have an enormous amount of knowledge And with an enormous amount of knowledge, that usually goes hand in hand with imposterism. So the more you know and the more you understand that you do not know, that you have lack of knowledge in, the more you feel as an imposter too. So it's like a paradoxical feeling. But that is one thing. And then also another thing is that we are usually surrounded by a lot of highly successful people. And whenever people talk about success, it's usually one-sided. Like, I got all these medals or all these prizes. I got all these highly impact publications. But no one really talks about success. the other sides of the success, like all the failures, all the setbacks, all the rejections you've experienced while getting there. And that also creates an atmosphere or a culture where people think that everyone is just 100% successful without experiencing any setbacks. And then whenever you personally, as an individual, I just think there must be something wrong with me. Why am I failing? What is wrong with me? Why am I making mistakes? Because everyone else, they are so successful. And that's because we are not allowing those types of subjects and conversations to be a part of the culture, vulnerability. That's basically what it's all about. Whenever we share about mistakes, failures, setbacks, rejections, we are sharing vulnerable parts of ourselves. So that's also one reason, I think.

Ksenia: 26:20

Yeah, I think... We're also rarely talking about personal definitions of success. So we are in an environment where success is all this, as you said, high-impact papers and excellent research and presentations and conferences and this and that and the other, getting all these grants. But then we are kind of in this bubble where success means that. Yeah. And we rarely... stop and think about what it actually means to me what excellence means to me also in research because yeah we talk about um really high quality and what is it going to be mean to me personally like okay you there is probably a sort of a standard definition right but then you um also have different gradation of it and you can do amazing research without working yourself into the ground, hopefully. And you also can do amazing research and just completely burn out in the process. And how do you balance this through understanding what is important for you? What do you value? What is your definition of success? Yeah, excellence. So we don't often have these conversations. It's not something that you kind of discuss in your PhD courses or in academia in general. And I'm really happy to see that this is coming up now, I think, a lot. And the topic of mental health of academics, PhD students has been a discussion for the past maybe seven, eight years, like a very... pertinent and important discussion with also papers being published. So it's good to see this. It's still probably not enough.

Anahita: 28:33

Yeah, we need to do more for sure.

Ksenia: 28:35

Yeah, that's why, I mean, it's amazing that there are also people that are kind of taking matters into their own hands and like, okay, how can I be of help? Like, how can I, all hands are on deck and how can we participate in this?

Anahita: 28:48

Yeah.

Unknown: 28:49

Yeah.

Ksenia: 28:49

And then I guess it's also true and probably you also found this with working with your clients that also people want to or have to want to change and not just put the blame sort of or talk only about the culture, but they also want to do something themselves so that they can make it easier for themselves and hopefully inspire the change in culture as well.

Anahita: 29:13

Yeah. Definitely. I think if you're aiming for any type of behavioral change, you need to be self-aware of what the problems or challenges you're having, but also having the motivation to change. If you don't have those two things, it's going to be difficult. to even reach out for help in the beginning if you're not aware of the problems you're having and not wanting to change either. I mean, sometimes people don't want to change. They want to keep going. So those things are important to have whenever you're starting to work with someone like professionally who wants to help you move forward in the direction that you want and at your workplace or personally and so on.

Ksenia: 29:59

I guess we are often also not really aware of our patterns maybe when we reach out for help because we're just like, oh, I'm so stressed or I'm so anxious. Help me. If you go to a coach or if you go to a therapist, I'm very stressed. Help me with the stress. And then once you get there, then you start uncovering that maybe not everything is just about the environment. Maybe not everything is just about... stress per se or pressure but it's also the internal workings of yourself that are contributing to it

Anahita: 30:37

definitely yeah as long as you start peeling on one layer another layer comes

Ksenia: 30:45

it's a never ending work a never ending cycle but it's also I think it can be so rewarding if you do that and if you actually if you actually, I guess, want to continue doing this excellent, impactful work that you love or working in science or working in any other capacity where you need, where you are in this pressure environment and where you need to be kind of sharp and on, you need to do this work so that you can do it sustainably, right? So you can do it for many years to come. Hopefully you want that. And yeah, not just, yeah, you know, burn out and you're three of your PhD and then never, never go back to it because you're just done with it.

Anahita: 31:30

Yeah. And I think that is the case for a lot of people that they just like, I just want to get this, I want to finish and leave academia. I don't want to go back or I just want to transition entirely to like industry or something else. And that's, I mean, it's, it's a personal decision, right? What you want to work with and you have the choice, hopefully, to also choose. And I think at the same time, if we were able to, you know, build a generation of scientists and researchers with these types of skills, you know, learning how to set boundaries and really work on things you really want to do instead of just Trying to be the best or perfect. And, you know, prioritizing recovery and your personal health. We could also build a generation of scientists that would feel better with themselves, but also that will also spread to the surrounding and the culture as well. Yeah. Yeah, so there's definitely a lot of work to do. Work never finishes for us.

Ksenia: 32:39

No, absolutely. And this is, I mean, it gives me a bit of like this duality of feeling like I am happy for people who know what they want to do. And if that's leaving academia and going somewhere else, doing something else is amazing. If that's, you know, truly what they want to do. At the same time, it does make me a little bit sad when really brilliant people with maybe... yeah like a knack for teaching a knack for mentorship because that's also something that you not not everybody has let's be honest not everybody can be a good mentor and manager

Anahita: 33:13

for sure

Ksenia: 33:14

and sometimes people with like this innate talent at mentoring they just yeah they just want to run away from academia as fast as they can and never see it again and it makes me a little bit sad so it it would be a great thing if we could contribute to, yeah, as you said, building this next generation of scientists with these tools, with this resiliency and this ability to manage and balance their life a little bit better than probably the past generations. And then that's going to spread wider and wider because then they will become professors that are doing this work management think hopefully a bit better and bringing up next students next generations of students in a different way so yeah i mean we can hope

Anahita: 34:05

we can hope and yeah we can also make some small steps in that direction if if we have the capacity and willingness to do so and that's also like a motivation to keep going um at least for for me um I mean, I really value working with my clients, but I also like viewing my work from a bigger perspective. Like, what can this lead to? Like, potentially something like this, like changing, you know, being part of the cultural change, hopefully in the future, but also being part of, you know, bringing up the other generation of scientists that have these qualities or so on. That's also a motivation for me.

Ksenia: 34:57

Yeah, that's, that's an amazing why and an amazing goal. I think that's very important. Okay, so shifting gears a little bit. One last thing I wanted to ask you, I was very curious about is, I So, and I think we also, we talked a little bit maybe in the past about the fact that you did practice yoga a little bit and you are also very physically active. You are in nature, you're running, you're hiking. And can you talk to me a little bit about what this, so the physical activity, the sports, the time in nature, how does that play a role for you, for your mental health, for your, yeah. Yeah. for your PhDing and your business.

Anahita: 35:41

Yeah, that's a great thing that you brought up. Because it's so many things we do without really like, it's just part of my routine now. But in the beginning, it wasn't. So it kind of first started out when I started working as a consultant, when I was working clinically, this was like six years ago. So I moved from the city to like the countryside to work at the hospital. And there was The thing you could do was going out in nature there. So that's usually how this kind of interest started. And when, like during the pandemic, when I got my burnout, one of the recovery strategies I had was being in nature. going on, you know, hikes, simple hikes, not like physically exhausting hikes, but just being in nature, trying to be more present. So that's how my kind of interest of those activities began. But I also, since a young age, I've always been physically active in sports as well. So I haven't gone from zero to nothing. to being in nature. So being physically active has played a role in my life in certain periods. And now, if I look back and compare it, I mean, it's something that I really value in my life, to be physically active, to feel well, and to prioritize my physical health, because that also... obviously affects emotional mental health as well so for me it's it's non-negotiable and it's probably gonna be like that because I've seen all the benefits it's done for me during these years like not only you know for my burnout but also like physically being able to be you to have the cardiovascular capacity to walk a long time or run a marathon or yeah, whatever I wanted to be doing. And it's amazing to see what the body is capable of. And that also is helpful for doing challenging cognitive work, like research work. Like if I can do difficult physical things, I can do difficult cognitive things. And those things go usually hand in hand.

Ksenia: 38:10

Yeah, so I guess it does change you and kind of rewire you on both a very physiological level with all the health benefits and then also improving the brain function as well on a very physiological level, but also just knowing that I am a badass out there on a trail or on a track and then I am a badass also in my research and I can do what I set my mind on, right? Yeah. Would you say that if you notice yourself kind of dropping this and putting your physical activity, your non-negotiable, as you said, time in nature or time moving your body in various ways, if you notice yourself putting this to the back burner, will this be a red flag for you that you are kind of not well, you're on the way to burnout maybe? Yeah.

Anahita: 39:04

I think I definitely would interpret it as a sign of something going on. And I think I would also perform, you know, worse in my work because, you know, being at least the line of my research is that I sit at my desk for hours and it's not healthy to be just sitting for hours, like public health wise. We need to move our bodies. We need to be going out or whatever. Or if you don't wanna do like cardio work, you can do something else, more calm type of activities. But I would definitely interpret it as something, maybe I'm going through something very difficult that I don't have the kind of resources to do the physical activity. Because sometimes that is also like a sign of exhaustion when you don't even have the ability to go for a walk because you're so tired. Because you've been through this kind of low intense or high intense kind of chronic stress that your whole body is just tired. you know, it doesn't have the capacity to even engage in an activity. And then at that point, it's very urgent and you just need to lie down. So I am hoping to never come to that situation. But that is like one of the severe aspects of if a burnout would come because that is what happens to some people. They can't even move because they're so exhausted. But it's more acute, you could say, that thing.

Ksenia: 40:47

Yeah, I guess, you know, in that case, obviously, you cannot immediately demand physical activity from people. No, you can't. Bring yourself up to some sort of baseline and then get going. Okay, so then in line with that, what would be... your main maybe let's say three three red flags of like early burnout where you think okay i see i'm doing this or i see my client is doing this this is a signal this is a sign that i need to maybe pull back a little bit and think about what's going on where i can balance better so kind of early early warning signs of burnout that you notice in yourself or in others um

Anahita: 41:36

So one thing is to not being able to leave work at work. So you bring work to your family, you bring work to your hobbies, you bring work to whatever you're doing outside of the work setting. So when you're also noticing that your mind is constantly absent in these thoughts of your job. So that can show up as not being present when you're meeting family members, meeting friends, or when you're doing something you previously enjoyed a lot, but you're not able to enjoy it because you're not present in the activity anymore. So that is a sign if it's repeatedly like that. And sometimes, I mean, I, I can feel absence at times, but that's, that's nothing wrong. I mean, it happens to all of us. I'm not saying that you have to be a guru, a mindfulness guru. Yeah. And everything you do, there will be, yeah, no, but I'm seeing like, if it's a repeated pattern of that showing up and another thing would be as well as, um, to, um, you're not able to stop working. So in that sense, in a more practical way, like for instance, the time is 5 p.m., but you're still saying yes, Like I have to do this. I have to finish that and so on. And then you come up with a lot of excuses. The brain does that. And then you just continue working without going for a break, without eating, without taking something to drink. that's also a sign that you're neglecting, you know, the body's needs of nutrition or rest, et cetera, in a repeated pattern as well. Because sometimes you do that when you have maybe a very tight deadline and you do that for one day. Okay, fine, do it. But if you do this every day, something's going to happen. So that's also a sign, I'd say. Yeah.

Unknown: 43:55

Yeah.

Ksenia: 43:55

Yeah, I think it's important to discern, and you mentioned that sometimes these things happen, especially in this line of work. Maybe you have a tight deadline, maybe you have an experiment that is very tight, you have very short times, and maybe it is an experiment that is lasting 15 hours, and you have to do it. If you are in the lab, you have to be there, you have to be there late into the evening. It's fine if this happens sometimes, or when you have to conduct this experiment. But if you are working like that all the time, even when you are not having these deadlines or this experiment, then it becomes a problem and then becomes probably both a signal and then a problem that is kind of feeding deeper into the cycle of burning out.

Anahita: 44:45

Yeah. And another thing I would like to add is also if you've heard reactions or comments from your surroundings, that's also a sign. Like your family members are noticing that you're just at your desk or you're never coming home or you're coming home very late from work or you have friends reacting, you have colleagues, bosses reacting. So reactions from the surrounding is also a sign as well.

Ksenia: 45:15

I think from my personal experience, I would also add to that that sometimes there is no reaction because you just pull back and withdraw from everybody so much that there is not even a space for them to react.

Anahita: 45:28

Yeah, well, yeah, that's a good point. That's a good point. Has it been in your case?

Ksenia: 45:34

yeah yeah yeah i think i disappear from the face of the earth and then i know that okay this is this is a problem if i don't reply to messages if i never have time to meet anybody all friends or or family or whatever and then you know it's at the time when i experienced burnout it's just been my boyfriend at the time now husband who was a bit like It's time to come home. Come on. But then everybody else was just like, they couldn't get to me because there was just a meeting or no conversation, nothing happening. So I was drawing. Then I think that's also a signal.

Anahita: 46:12

Yeah, definitely. And yeah, it's a great point because some, we have that type of work settings in some places, while in other settings, we're always like, you know, you have, you know, the research group, you're sitting with them all the time and so on. So I think it's a great point that you're saying, like with drawing, especially when you're working remotely or very, you know, solo working, that's definitely a sign to look out for. Yeah.

Ksenia: 46:40

A lot of great points that I hope people will take out from this episode and a lot of useful information there.

Anahita: 46:49

Yeah, hope so.

Ksenia: 46:51

Yeah, I think we can leave it here for today. And thank you so, so, so much for being here. I was so excited. Thank you. for this conversation I really love talking to you

Anahita: 47:01

yeah so did I likewise

Ksenia: 47:03

yeah thank you and well we thank also the listeners and people here with us and well bye and I'll hope I'll talk to you again at some point in the future

Anahita: 47:17

yeah we will do that

Ksenia: 47:19

thank you so much