Issue #107: How to (actually) heal burnout

Good morning!

Thanks for reading. We’ve got a great list of links this week, along with a lovely, personal piece by writer and former general-tech-person Emily Key, who suffered a traumatic brain injury and discovered (surprise!) that the healing process could apply to treating burnout. As someone who tends to work myself into the ground (and as a founder/parent who can’t just take a bunch of time off), I found her systems really, actually helpful for Type-A doers. After sharing them in her newsletter (the aptly named “Your Weekly Breakdown”), she was kind enough to let us republish them in Early. I suggest you check them out if you or someone you know has been burning the candle at both ends and needs tactics.

Speaking of other people’s newsletters: I am an absolute newsletter goblin. I subscribe to about 40 (with the list pruned regularly) and love turning people on to the good ones. Here are a few you might like:

• Leading Sapiens, published by exec coach Sheril Mathews, has some non-cheesy leadership gems. I loved their recent issue on “un-guru-ing” your life and designing your work style from a place of self awareness.

• Our friends at People Ops Weekly do a great job of curating helpful resources, plus they have a killer HR job board.

• Eleanor Konik is a fantasy writer who shares her history research deep dives. Always a different topic, and always fascinating. Check out her posts on sleep and tails.

• Brave New Work Wednesdays, from change consultants The Ready, is a great fit for organizational design nerds. They’re always doing smart and exciting stuff!

• POCIT (People of Color in Tech) keeps me up to date on some great things POC are building, as well as a watchful eye on what’s going on in DEI in tech, a subject the wider media has slowly tapered off on covering.

• Need to keep up with your Gen Z coworkers? Not understanding the memes in the #random channel? You need After School, by Casey Lewis.

• Worried about the climate? Our friends (and clients) The Narwhal publish in-depth, investigative and independent journalism (and a great newsletter) about the pressing issues on our planet.

• Looking for an easy way to expand your horizons? Flow State, which sends you new working music suggestions (no vocals) daily, or Contemporary Art Daily, which shares two interesting pieces per day, are both great choices.

If you have a favourite newsletter (besides this one!), I’d love to check it out– just hit reply.

Stay Bright,

Nora

New in Early Magazine

Bright Reads

• Glassdoor is rolling out a communities feature for existing and prospective employees to post and chat anonymously about companies (quite similar to Blind, which we wrote about in Early Magazine least year).

• Have you heard of “Open Hiring”? Aiming to make an equal playing field, it operates on one simple principle: the first qualified person to apply gets the job. No interviews, no references, no background checks.

• The next hot workplace perk: divorce benefits?

• B+E’s Steph Little is quoted in Bloomberg re: Shopify’s new “meeting calculator” that lays bare the per-hour cost of collaboration. While it’s always a good idea to avoid unnecessary meeting creep, you can’t always put a price on the value of gathering.

• Everyone’s talking about AI performance reviews; Textio is working on them, and Hypercontext has recently rolled out an AI review extension to their people management platform. Betakit covered the trend here, with B+E’s Steph Bergman weighing in on the pros and cons. In short: if AI is helping you capture or compile better quality performance data, great. If it’s making your final assessments, not cool.

• Do young people want to return to the office for…dating?

• Is remote work the start of a new class struggle?

Coming Up

• 🇨🇦 August 1 is Emancipation Day

• 🇨🇦 August 7 is a Civic Holiday (not a statutory holiday, but widely treated as one in Ontario)

• 🏳️‍🌈 On August 16, catch Bright + Early’s Clea Arrieta in virtual conversation with Jennifer McPherson about being “out” as a queer person in the workplace. Get your tickets here!

Was this email forwarded to you? Subscribe here.