Thread by @RohanIrvine

The next speaker is Vinita Israni — 'Burnout: Confessions of a Corporate Design Athlete'

#uxaustralia2020

Vinita is starting with a mindfulness exercise focussing on times when felt deflated and unenagaged with the world.

"I should have said no, 20 yesses ago."

Burnout has the ability to mimic the signs of depression.

It's more likely in women, millenials, personality and creatives.

UXers are likely to burnout because we take on a lot more emotional labour resulting in compassion fatigue and emotional contagion.

Hustle culture means we have imposter syndrome never feeling enough and ending up with hurry worry

UX is the glue that connects people together.

Vinita shares she hit rock bottom travelling back and forth from Sydney in a consulting role, working ridiculous hours on planes trains and automobiles.

She wanted to find out what had happened to get her here.

Vinita asked herself the 5 why's

Why was I feeling this way?
Why was I burnt out?
Why was I travelling so much?
Why did I feel like I had to prove myself?
Why did I feel like I couldn't squander this opportunity? I'm a first gen immigrant and taught to take opportuities

Vinita created a happiness jar, and when she had a happy moment she put a note in the jar, and at the end of the year looked through the notes and made a content analysis about where she spend her time and what she spent her time doing.

She decided she had three options:

Dying from overwork
Taking a vacation (shown not to work)
Lean into the discomfort and find out what was going on.

Mindfullness

You make the most decisions when you breath out. If you can control your breathing a bit more you can make better decisions.

Connection and Meaning

Vinita is a ball of cynicism when she's stressed out, she keeps a folder of positive comments that she can access when she starts to feel burned out.

Acceptance

Vinita struggles letting go of things
A low threshold and professional PTSD, the harmful behaviours she brought with her from previous jobs.

Vinita created a positive affirmation post it note specifically for her that she spends time with every morning.

Why are we always flying so close to the sun?

Are we in an industry that demands it or are we demanding it of ourselves?

What has lead to pandemic burnout?

Zoom fatigue
No shifts in in behaviours
Expectations
Acceptance

Resilience

It's a process, not a capability.

It should not be quantified by how many times we've bounced back from burnout, it should be how many times we have avoided it.

Can we design the shit out of this pandemic?
Your methods will have different flavours
Make sure you iterate

Thanks Vinita!

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