- Our systemically under resourced, over worked culture normalizes 12-hour days, constant interruptions, layoffs, and impossible goals. - Instead of fixing the system, companies and coaches are selling burned out people the idea that they’re the problem. - And if you want help? The solution is to either pay out of pocket — or go through your employer to tell them how bad they’re breaking you. That seems like flawed logic to me. Wellness programs wont eradicate executive function issues, just like yoga didn’t, that’s not the problem we should try and solve. Nor is treating executive function challenges like everyone has adhd. Burnout is a structural issue, not a personal failing. Here’s the real question: When are we going to stop monetizing people’s exhaustion… and start holding companies accountable for cultivating environments that don’t break us in the first place? @Business Insider @Forbes #burnout #adhd #corporatelife #wellness #business

Y'all, what the actual F. This morning, I saw this article in Business Insight about the rise of executive function coaches. It's a 10-minute read, so let me just give you the TLDR. There are employee wellness companies and coaches that are pitching their services to help you fix your problem, burn out your experience in your workplace. Oh, and last week, there was an article in Forbes about employees emotionally withdrawing and burning out because they feel undervalued and stuck. My translation to all of that is that we are monetizing people's exhaustion. If you want these kind of services, you're either going to have to pay out of your pocket and find a coach or guess what? There's an employee wellness program, but a lot of those programs don't really work because they're not really addressing some of the underlying issues and we're just offering you services like meditation. How about some breathing exercises? All of those things are good. They can support you whether you have an exhausting job or not, but what really bothers me about the article is that now we're going to treat it like you have ADHD even if you don't, which also diminishes the experience of people that are actually neurodivergent. I'm not saying that being stressed out and burned out does not create executive function issues. It does, but there's really a difference between the two. Look, if you're an entrepreneur and you want to work 20 hours a day like I do, I work for myself, so every single hour I put in is for me, so if I burn out, that's on me, but when I'm working for a company that's making billions of dollars, that has resources that they can actually allocate to employees and not to their bonus structure, it's a different conversation. What I want every corporate employee to know is that burnout is not a personal failing. It is not a moral failing. It is often a symptom of a systemic issue, systemic problems and you can look up lots of studies on this, which is why people are monetizing it and let me be clear, I am not bagging on the coaches themselves or the people that are trying to provide wellness to employees. I'm certainly not bagging on people who work in corporate America. I worked in corporate America for over 30 years of my life. Had I not done that and done well at it, I would not be living the amazing life that I have now, so I'm not going to shit talk corporate workers either, but I am saying that there should be maybe some more balance in this system. I know these are nuanced and complicated issues. I come from that world. My point in making this video is really two things. One, I don't ever want anyone to feel the way that I did, which was wholly responsible for my own burnout, when really what was going on was a toxic culture. There was a toxic culture at my company. 19,000 people got laid off and they didn't have to and that was not just because of big corporate bonuses. It was because of bad decision making and systemic issues that had existed for a quite a long time and I don't want employees spending tens of thousands of dollars on coaches when really that money could be going for your family, to your community, to like anywhere else, but trying to fix yourself so that you can show up in a system that maybe is not really working.