HealthyGamerGG - Explaining Why Devs Burn Out So Often w/ ‪@ThePrimeTimeagen‬

Episode Date: July 26, 2025

In this powerful episode, Dr. K talks with developer and content creator The Primeagen about burnout, emotional growth, and breaking generational cycles. What begins as a conversation about work stress evolves into a deep, personal discussion about fatherhood, loss, and the struggle to show up when life feels overwhelming. Topics include: Prime’s experience with burnout in the tech world and how rediscovering passion helped him recover The emotional impact of losing his father at a young age and discovering pornography as a child Navigating grief, parenting with intention, and trying to be the father he never had A vulnerable exploration of emotional suppression, introspection, and the challenge of expressing feelings Reflections on what it means to be a “good parent” in a world full of imperfect choices This episode is honest, raw, and full of meaningful moments—perfect for anyone thinking about healing, parenting, or how past pain shapes present purpose. HG Coaching : https://bit.ly/46bIkdo Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health: https://bit.ly/44z3Szt HG Memberships : https://bit.ly/3TNoMVf Products & Services : https://bit.ly/44kz7x0 HealthyGamer.GG: https://bit.ly/3ZOopgQ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, chat, welcome to the Healthy Gamer Gigi podcast. I'm Dr. Al-Alo Kanoja, but you can call me Dr. K. I'm a psychiatrist, gamer, and co-founder of Healthy Gamer. On this podcast, we explore mental health and life in the digital age, breaking down big ideas to help you better understand yourself and the world around you. So let's dive right in. Welcome to another, oh, yeah, welcome to another Healthy Gamer Gigi stream. My name is Dr. Aalo Kanoja.

Just a reminder that although I am a medical doctor, nothing we discussed on stream today is intended to be taken as. medical advice. Everything is for educational or entertainment purposes only. So if you all have a medical concern or question, please go see a licensed professional. So today, we're talking to the Primogen. So Prime and I actually kind of, we've hung out a couple of times at places like TwitchCon and stuff. I don't know if we've ever actually collabed. I don't even remember. But he's awesome, huge fan of his work. So we're going to hop into that interview in just a few minutes. I think we're going to be talking about like dev burnout

and he's a dev and hopefully he's not burnt out and he's been crushing it recently I've loved the direction of his content so I'm going to transition this over here hi what kind of background do you want me to have because I can always go like say green

if that's better for you I'll just give you green screen it's just easier. Cool I think it's easier that way okay I'm gonna be looking at your face welcome my dude Hey. What do you go by? Prime by the internet standards and Michael in the real life. I kind of live two lives because I live in South Dakota.

Okay. And so in South Dakota, there's not like a lot of people that know about what we refer to as the internet. Okay. And so I spend a lot of time telling people I tweet for a living. And so I go by Michael there. And then when I go to conferences, I go by Prime. Yeah. Internet name. Now, remind, so do you prefer if I call you Prime or Michael? What do you prefer? Either or. Prime's fine. That's just because usually internet monikering. Yeah. But I'm also fine if you called me Michael. So, you know, Prime, I don't remember. Have we ever actually talked on stream before? We've never talked on stream now. Right. We've only met once in person and then no time's on stream. Okay. That's so interesting because I remember our conversation, which was awesome. And I think it was at TwitchCon.

Yep. Yeah. And it was like a couple years ago, but it was like super cool. And I absolutely love, I mean, I was familiar with your content many years ago, like around, I want to say like 20, 20, but I absolutely love the direction your content has been going over the last few years. And so I find myself, like, watching more of it. That's kind of shocking. A lot of tech reading of articles and stuff like that. It's kind of... Yeah, but I like that.

So I like that it's, it's like technical, right? So it's not just like, I don't know, I tend to like things so that I feel like I'm like learning something, you know, or it's... it's a more nuanced or technical or expert kind of take. I think it has a lot of depth. I've watched a lot of your stuff around like your perspectives on AI, and I really like that kind of stuff because we get approached about that stuff all the time. Yeah.

Yeah, my mom, I knew that AI has officially broken into the mainstream when yesterday my mom was like, so apparently 50% of devs are going to be losing their job. But the other 50%, I was just like, dang, man, AI is getting crazy out there. What my mom's telling me about it? Yeah, your mom who lives in South Dakota? I live in South Dakota half the time, yeah. Yeah.

So, like, if, if moms in South Dakota are learning about AI, then it's absolutely broken into the mainstream. It's true mainstream. So is there something in particular you want to talk about today? Or, like, I know we have, like, a lot of things. We have an agenda of some sort, so I figured we'd be walking through that. Sure. So, so.

I wasn't sure if there's some sort of sideball conversation I didn't see coming happening. No, no, no. I mean, so I, so I, I know that there's like, you know, a bucket. at a stuff. But I think that usually, like, when I talk to people, it's like a little bit more organic. So I think it's usually like, let's start with one thing and just see where things go. Yeah. And then, you know, there's stuff that we're okay talking about, stuff we're not okay talking

about. So, like, that's totally fine. All right. Give me one second. I'm going to bring you into, I'm going to bring you into my stream because I just realize that I don't have you on mind and people are just saying like, hey, all right, sorry about that. No problem.

You know, you think at this point I'd be good at this. You'd think that I would be good at it too, but we're not, bro. I think some of it, I swear, some of it is just the, I think some of it is like, actually the software.

Like, I think it's not quite as clean. There is no really good, uh, bringing streams together software. The best one that I've seen is ping. But even that one, it has this problem where it's like, you can't share desktops easily.

you have to be in this really streamer mode to be able to take advantage of it. Yeah. It's like a lot of problems with it still. It's actually really hard. Like all this stuff is really, really difficult. All right.

So something that I think is going to be a really interesting topic, or at least I would assume to be an interesting topic. I can give a little bit of a background on, I guess, my own personal experience with burnout. But then on top of that, we can talk a little bit about that. I think in the day and age of AI,

I think we're going to have a significantly higher amount of burnout. Okay. kind of have as to my theories and you can tell me that I'm way off. I'm going full tinfoil hat or maybe I'm not. I don't know. Let's do it, dude. I love me a good piece of headgear that gives me plus three to AC and minus three the int and wisdom.

Yeah, so can you just tell me a little bit of- I excel in that? Huh? I excel in the lacking of wisdom. Fantastic, dude. Yeah, so I'll give you a bit about a bit about, what's it called burnout. At least my personal experience with it, because I think there's lots of different ways people can experience burnout.

And I don't think there's, anytime you say someone says like, oh, burnout is because of, I think that often you're probably missing a whole group of people. And so my general story goes that 2016, I want to say, working on Netflix, by the way. And so, this is a dumb joke. And so then I am wanting to try to become a manager at that point in my life. I'm kind of like tired of software. And so I start doing all these things. I'm kind of in this like program with my boss.

He's he's putting me under a lot of like these kind of difficult situation so that I can kind of learn and become a better people manager, if you will. And during that experience, my wife had a miscarriage. And I just remember being deeply unhappy. Like even before this, I was just deeply unhappy with programming. I just didn't. I wasn't loving, uh, my job. I was not happy trying to go towards a manager, but that's like the thing you do.

Like if you wanted to improve your game, you had to go and become a manager. And then on top of that, my wife, I didn't know anything about postpartum depression and all that. So I kind of came through this, like, like she was having such a hard time. I didn't really understand it. Just everything felt really difficult. And on top of it, it felt like I was just not like living up to what I'm supposed to be doing. And it felt like impossible to reach. And then I was just like hating Dev more and more.

And I was just like just in this just massive upsetness kind of phase to the point where I feel like I kind of just tried to like drown it out, I guess, by playing Halo. five. Like that's kind of how I coped with the situation. But I just could, it just felt like I could not code for so long. And I remember just at one point I finally just said, hey, I'm just not going to do this anymore. I just got to like, I just have to, I'm not going to try to be a manager. I'm going to, it's kind of where that my origin story also started right in that region. I just really disliked how tech was going, how like austere maybe it was at that time period. It was just really frustrating to be a part of. And I just, I just, I felt like I just. I felt like I just. just couldn't program, but I had to because I, you know, I had a wife and kids. I was living in the Valley. So it's like I couldn't stop doing it. But every single keystroke felt like just a huge amount of weight. And I just, I just remember just what felt like months of just absolutely hating every, every single day of going to work and just having this like, I don't, a feeling, or feeling anxious all the time about just everything. And so that's kind of like my effective burnout story.

and kind of the discovery of mine was that I started just trying to, one day I just got interested in something. I can't quite remember exactly what it was, but I started to program something on the side. And it's like I kind of re-sparked an interest in programming, not by doing less programming, but by doing more programming. And all of a sudden I just started getting really interested in building things

more and more and more to the point where all my side stuff made my daytime stuff not feel nearly as bad because I actually re kind of discovered what made me excited to begin with. And so that's my like relatively small burnout story. It lasted, you know, like that, the awful feeling lasted for, you know, it's kind of like a multi-year experience where it just kept getting worse every day and it just kept on going. And so I just kept having to perform, kept having to be the guy. I really resonated with that story. I think you had a short somewhere out there where it's like that person that goes over the weekend tries to solve all the problems then come Monday and he's the person that figured out everything and everyone

high-fives him and oh yeah he did all the right stuff I did that for a few years or a couple years in open source yeah for those that don't know open source that's building things for everybody else to be able to use or you're answering questions addressing issues and building something both internally for your company and externally for other people to use and it's just like all of that up until that point just led me to one of I guess my my darkest times as a developer okay that's now there you go such an awesome story so I have like I know there's a lot of stuff that's like on the list for us to talk about. I don't know that we're going to get to anything else.

Maybe we will. But there's so much here that I'm just absolutely fascinated by. And are you, are you, I mean, so much here. Let me, can I just think for a second? Yeah, yeah. I always think people who take a moment to think are objectively smarter than me. Why do you think they're objectively smarter than you? Because you take time to organize your thoughts.

It's just a fact of life. It's a cool quality. Don't keep doing it. Don't let me distract him. I'm distracting you. Just to take a moment to think through your thoughts. I have to think by speaking. Okay.

Whatever that disease is where you can't see images in your head, I don't have that. Instead, it's like I can't think without talking. Yeah. So some people think in order to talk and some people talk in order to think. Have you ever, are you, would you describe yourself as an introvert and an extrovert? I definitely fall into the extrovert category, but I get tired of it also. I like being both. Can I ask you kind of a weird question?

Would you say you're still married? That's not a weird question. Okay. Is your wife more introverted or extroverted than you are? Oh, she's very introverted. Okay, so I have a crazy question. When y'all eat food, do you over-season compared to her? Does she eat, use less salt and lemon for her flavor?

compared to you? Okay, so this is going to be a really ridiculous answer. I think she has a very low-formed palate. She likes ketchup and stuff. I'm very kind of highfalutin in the art of eating, and so I very under-seasoned things. I like it to be just right. I don't want to overdo it.

She has more seasoning. She oversees. She will definitely use too much salt. Completely punctured what I was going to say, but that's totally fine. So here's the thing. I read this fascinating study, okay, about a single drop of lemon juice, right? So if I take a drop of, not like lemon juice from a thing, like if I take a drop of squeezed from a lemon, and you give it to an extrovert or an introvert, the salivary response

from an introvert is way higher than the salivary response from an extrovert. So really? Yeah. So this, like when I read this study, I was like, this explains everything about my life because I'm an introvert. So I require literally less signal. from the outside world to create a larger response. And my wife is like, oh, yeah, this, like, do you don't like it? Does it need more lemon? And I'm like, no, it doesn't need more lemon. It needs less lemon.

And so it's so interesting because it clicked for me. And I'm trying to figure out if this is just like I'm reading too much into it. But literally, I think there's something in the brain of introverts where, you know, when we get a signal from the outside, like we amplify that signal get the volume on that signal gets turned up if you're an introvert. And the volume in that signal is relatively speaking less if you're an extrovert, which is why extroverts require more stimulation and introverts are like completely overwhelmed by it. And I was just curious if that tracked onto you, I don't even remember what we're, oh yeah,

objectively smarter. And the other thing that I was thinking about is whether extroverts are more likely to talk in order to think. So I was kind of curious about that. But anyway, I'm going to go back to thinking unless you have a response. No, my wife, I have a small response, which my wife makes fun of me all the time because I'll be by myself talking. And she'll be just like, why are you talking to yourself? And I'm just like, I'm trying to think. I'm with you. I'm thinking there are things right now. Do you have thoughts in your head? Yeah. Okay. Because some people don't. Easier to talk out loud than it is to say it internally. You know, like 20% of people, some shockingly high number of people, don't have internal dialogue. I know. I think that that's the scariest thing ever. Like, what do they do upstairs? I'm so curious about it too.

I'm hoping to encounter one one day and just ask them, but it's not something that I, back when I was like seeing, you know, 30 patients a night in the ED, I should have understood this question because then I could ask it. Think about the people that both don't have an internal monologue and can't imagine things. They can't picture them, whatever they bring. It's Amphamasia or something like that. Or they can't even see anything or they don't have an internal monologue. They got. I wouldn't have. That's A Fantasia. I'm rusty.

There you go. It's been a while since I was, you know, doing neurological exams on stroke people. But, okay. So let me start with this. Because I forgot what I was thinking about, which is totally fine. Can you tell me a little bit about what growing up was like for you? Yeah, yeah. I would like to say I had a very relatively normal childhood growing up for the first few years.

I know that's not true, but I kind of repressed some level of things. I know that my mom and my dad had some fights and all that and some cops were called during all that. Only told to me by other siblings, my dad became like a, he went from someone who likes drinking beer to a functioning alcoholic. And then at seven years old, he got in a car wreck and killed himself by accident. Seven years old? Yeah, when I was seven years old. Okay. Yeah, when I was seven years old.

Sorry, he was not seven years old being a functioning alcoholic with several kids. I was seven years old. He ended up killing himself. And so then after that, obviously, things were very difficult. At four years old, I discovered his porno magazines. And so that's kind of been something that since four years old, I've never spent a day where I don't think I've thought about porn. Okay. It's been one of those things.

I heard a really great analogy, which is that, like, no matter how long it's been, the ditch is always the same distance. And so, like, the ditch is always right there. It's just that I'm good at not going in the ditch. Okay. And so that's kind of my general childhood was that I thought it was fairly normal. I really remember enjoying, you know, my childhood. There was plenty of things to be upset about, but I think I was really good at just not seeing the bad things. I would hang outside a lot by myself and just, you know, play with our dog or our cats.

I had a bird as well, jump on the trampoline a bunch. They just kind of a lot of by myself time. Did you have friends? Yeah, I had friends, but I just mostly one of my friends. to be outside in our backyard. I did a lot of that. And then as I got older, I hung out with friends, but a good bulk of my younger years for that. Do you remember what you enjoyed about being outside? No. I just remember being outside. I just would just be out there. Okay. And you said that you found your dad's porno stash when you were four? Yeah. Do you remember that? Yeah.

What do you remember about it? I remember that it was in just adopting my mentality at that age, it was the greatest thing I've ever seen in my lifetime. Okay. And what was so great about it? I don't know. I guess biology kicks in or something kicks in where it's just like, this is something that I need to figure out more about. I want more of whatever this is. Okay. So you were immediately attracted to it. Yeah. And did you continue looking at it? Any chance that I could. And did you understand why?

No. I mean, obviously not. I mean, I liked it, but I don't, I don't, I never heard the word dopamine. Yeah, so do you, do you remember what your internal experience of looking at pornography before you hit puberty was? Not like a strong amount. Like, I guess I'm not really sure. Yeah, okay. It's kind of all fuzzy at that point, because it only happened to, it only happened on a very,

select or few times before the advent of the internet. Yeah. Internet made it way easier. And you said your dad became a functional alcoholic. What does that mean? Functional alcoholic, at least my definition, would be someone that gets super hammered. Okay. During the evenings, but then wakes up and goes and does work and does all those things

and acts and is able to maintain a regular life as opposed to like acute alcoholism, I think is the term for it where they're no longer even to age. you know, able to perform regular daily duties. They're just now fully all times alcoholic. And so, so it sounds like he wouldn't drink during the day? Well, I mean, I have no idea. Yeah. But I would assume he didn't, but it definitely, when he got home, he was most certainly drinking.

And how much would he drink? A 30 rack of curs. A 30 rack of curs means 30 beers. Tours light. Yeah, but 30 beers in one day? 30 beers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A day, yeah. And every day? Yeah. Okay. That's a lot of, or most days. These are the stories that I've only been told. Again, I was, I was young and too stupid to really understand. And do you remember what your interactions with him were like? I remember sitting on his lap,

and playing MindSweep, right? I largely don't have too many memories from the times before I was seven. And then what, when he, okay, yes, sorry. I can tell you, my strongest memory of my dad is, being at the funeral and pulling his finger back when he was in the casket, because I feel like he would, like, wake up because it was all kind of fake. Like, this whole situation was, like, a fabricated experience. And so if, like, there's some amount of, like, pain, he would then wake up. And he didn't. Okay. And I can see that that, like, has already struck a nerve. So what are you, what are you feeling now? I don't really know other than like, oh, that's sad.

Right. It's hard to, I don't really, have you read the book, Miss Born? Yes. You know the part where Vin learns about sensing with bronze? Sort of. Mars goes, well, most people can't sense even direction or anything. They can just tell something's happening.

Yeah. I feel like I'm kind of in that. So you're not, Venn. I know something happens. I'm not VIN. I can't tell where things are coming from. I just know things are there. Okay. Awesome.

It's the same reason why if I watch a movie and there's like a dad and a son and the dad's like, I love it. I'm like, dang, I'm crying. How does this happen? Okay. Okay. So that's something that happens, like when their father, son interactions? Yeah.

How do you understand that? And it's okay to say, I don't. No, I don't. I just assume that I just really like, I want that thing. And have you ever had that thing? I've never had a dad, but I get to be a dad now, which in turns allows me to, I'd say, experience that from a different perspective. Right. I get to see the result of the thing as opposed to being in the thing. I get to be a referee as opposed to being able to play the game. And what's that like?

It's really good. You know, it's a, I like to put it as it's a chance for redemption. you know, I get a moment where I get to have a bad thing in life, though not getting the thing itself, get to have a view of the thing that is the appropriate version, right? I get to be the person that gets to be the one that's there for the son, as opposed to being the one that's without a dad, right? So I kind of get to reverse the roles and fix it. You know, there's like that old quote from the Bible,

something about generational sin, father visits the son. And I think this is a real thing that, obviously, people who have anger issues that yell at their kids, grow up with kids having anger issues who yell at their kids. And so it's like, I get to be the person that stops said anger issues. But in this case, it's like, I get to be the first dad that's not a dysfunctional dad. I imagine you're a pretty good dad. I try. I don't know, pretty good, maybe a stretch, but I try. Why would that be a stretch? Because, I mean, how often, how you have kids, right?

You know how hard it is to overreact and do something. I can't, I've probably said the word sorry more times in the last 11 years than I've said in my entire lifetime. Tenfold over. What are you apologizing for? I get upset about things that I could have easily not been upset about things. Like I could have easily approached it better. You know, I get to, it's, you know, how. have you ever you know it's like being a dad is like saying no to the same thing 10,000 times yep

it's like sometimes by the 2000th time instead of saying no it's no we're not going to do that I'm like dude you have to quit asking that and then you know and it's bigger and I'm just like no we are done here then I realize like five minutes I'm like dude I this is wrong I could have just told you no instead of being upset you know it's hard to be a great dad right I don't know what a great dad looks like but I know that I would not put myself as a model okay I I get that you wouldn't put yourself as a model. I think my instinct is that if I watched you parent for a day, I would put you there. That's my instinct. You're very kind. So it's kind of interesting, right? So like, is that kindness? Like, I'm not saying that, I don't think it's kind. I mean, I don't know.

I mean, maybe you're, maybe you're a shitty dad, like we don't know. But, but I have a couple of, is it okay if we talk about this? Yeah, go for it. Okay. So first thing is you said, I could have easily done less, like not overreacted, right? Is it easy, though, to not overreact? In the grand scheme of things, yes. Meaning that when I look back on it, I see how simple it was. In the moment, it's obviously hard. And the more I practice, the more I see the places I overreact and then pivot and become

much better at, like, you know, the more I see the same. problem. Say my stars and do that. I feel like the gap between when those things happen are just getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And I find that I have more and more victory in it. It's kind of like a daily battle of things getting better, never a day where things will be perfect. And what is it that makes it hard in the moment? I mean, I would personally ultimately say that I'm choosing things that are, things that like I'm choosing a life that's easy for me in the moment as opposed to what is probably right to do because you know it's a lot easier just to be like hey we're not talking about at the end or whatever the situation is I'm about to go to bed they're refusing to get in bed for like the 14th time and I'm like that's it I'm just not even reading tonight every kid in bed shut up that's it right like that situation's I don't necessarily say shut up but you get the idea like just shut the whole thing down and realizing that again they're just like part of life I could have easily just Help him get to bed, set a time limit and say at 8.45, I'm done reading. So it's like, if you're not in bed by that time, that's that. Like, you're, you are the ones missing out. I'm not missing out. And so that's like the better. I'd say mentality. So, you know, this may be kind of a hot take. I'm not sure that that's better. So I know this is weird. So sometimes I like, I like disagree a little bit with a lot of common parenting advice. And maybe this is just my own narcissistic justification for sometimes the way that I parent. But I think, and I've reflected on that, obviously.

But I think that one of the most important lessons we can teach our children is that the people they interact with are human. And that the people that they interact with sometimes get frustrated. And the people that they interact with sometimes behave in harsher ways. Like, I'm not advocating for abuse or anything like that. But, you know, I get pissed at my kids too and will be sometimes more punitive. And I think for me, the biggest thing is, like, what's in my heart when I institute a punishment? Am I, like, am I angry at them? And is that what's going on?

Or is it, and what I've sort of found is that, like, the more calm I am, but, like, I'll be inconsistent with my parenting, which is generally speaking bad. But, you know, I think that, like, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but, like, I feel, like sometimes as I've watched them, and I'm super careful. I mean, I don't know if careful is the right word. I spend a lot of time thinking and observing the way that I parent my children. And one of the things that I've, if I look at it, if I forget all of my training and all this kind of stuff and what common wisdom says and things like that, one of the key things that I sort of realized is that having a somewhat inconsistent parent may prepare my children better for the real world. Because in the real world, there is inconsistency. In the real world, the way they behave

affects other people emotionally. People aren't endlessly patient. And on the flip side, I do think that a lot of consistency, a lot of patients being incredibly patient, really helping them develop like a secure attachment style where there's like, you know, I'm not taking out my emotions on them, but that there's certain emotional reactions that I can have that they need to learn. I'm equipping them to deal with a frustrated parent, a frustrated, you know, authority figure. So like, I'm sort of like on the fence about some of the modern takes on parenting and sort of this idea that you should be an endlessly patient parent who's consistent all the time and routine and things like that.

And routine is great. We institute it with our kids in a very like, you know, intentional way. But I sometimes wonder if being an inconsistent parent or being a more reactive, almost like a natural parent, like what sort of feels like what you feel like doing can be actually healthy for kids because there's a very natural emotional interplay between a parent and a child, which can include frustration. And so it really makes me wonder about that. Like, I wonder if we really, and a lot of people will take issue with what I'm about to say. Like, you know, if we treat our kids with too much consistency. And I've noticed this between my kids and other kids. So, you know, can we pause one second?

Can you define consistency for me just so I understand what you're attempting to say? Yeah. So I'll give you an example, which is, so we're pretty good about bedtime, but we're also somewhat inconsistent with bedtime. There are times where bedtime requires consistency, like when we're, And when it's a school, like when school is in, like, you know, we're going to go to bed at a time. We're going to wake up at a particular time. It takes, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but it feels like steering a ship where you're like pulling hard on the rudder. And it's like, but then once you get it in the right place, then it becomes easier.

So we'll sort of do that. We also had a lot of challenges with like co-sleeping because culturally like in my culture will like co-sleep like in India. And so like things like that. were not, I didn't like sleep train my kids. I low-key think that that could be like potentially traumatic. And so, you know, there are other people in our social circle and stuff who are really like sleep train your kids. And it's awesome for them in the sense that their kids go to bed at the same time.

It's really easy. But the really interesting thing is that my kids handle, I think, jet lag and travel way better. So they've been trained to deal with inconsistent sleep schedules. Whereas when you have these kids that are like, have a set bedtime routine for six years and they start to travel, the kids really fall apart. If you travel internationally, jet lag becomes an absolute mess. And, you know, I had an international flight with my kids that was like 30 hour or 30 hour itinerary. and I was like amazed at like how they handled it like champs because they're somewhat trained at going to bed at different times,

learning how to wake up at different times. So I think, I don't know if that's an example of consistency and inconsistency. My point is that one of the interesting observations I made and I also have to wonder whether this is once again like a narcissistic defense and maybe I'm screwing up my kids and I just don't want to believe that. But I think my kids are better at managing, inconsistency, which is like a useful skill.

Okay. Yeah, I think I see what you're trying to say. I am fully on board with the inconsistency. I mean, I think it just definitely depends on the kids. There's like a lot of kind of variation. I have one kid that when he loses sleep, it's a, we have one kid that has, you know, that everyone puts a name on every single behavior. And so I think the name of this one would be something along the lines of like ultra

defiant disorder or whatever they call, where everything, you know, whatever that is. And if he has a, if he has a little bit less sleep or sleep, isn't as good. It magnifies by like 100x. And so it's like I've always been very strict on that. But I understand this idea of inconsistency. It's more about the consistency of responding regardless of my emotions. Like the sleep thing, yes, no, I mean, I think you could make an argument either way for those things. I pretty much generally agree with you. If you have just a kid that doesn't want to fight everything, I think it does make it a little bit, it makes it a little bit easier to have a little bit variation in the sleep. But like as far as like how I respond, because

you get angry as a dad. I get angry as a dad. It's just that I can't allow the anger to dictate how I punish them or that. Like now, I'll just say, hey, I'm not going to tell you what your punishment is. I need like 15 minutes. I'm going to go think about it because in 15 minutes, it's going to go from like one month no screen time throwing away your phone and breaking your iPad and Twain to like, oh, okay, you know what we're going to do tomorrow, no screen time, rest of the day, no screen time,

go outside and play. We're going to figure out something a little bit different, right? Like it just completely changes the mentality because I'm giving myself a little bit of a I just need like five minutes to cool down, right? And so it's just like learning how to not respond in anger, which is something that or respond in any of the emotions you feel, which is very hard, you know. And it's,

it's been a hard thing for me to, you know, go through. Yeah. So I want to be consistent in that. I want to be someone that emotionally, no matter how hard things get, I would like to be someone that doesn't just lose my shit on my kids. I want to be, because that's very easy. It's just like the same reason why it's so weird how much great. you'll give a stranger, but how little grace you'll give, say, your wife.

You know, like how easy it is to get in a fight with your wife over something, as opposed to, like, if somebody's 20 minutes late, that's a friend that you haven't seen a little bit, you're like, God, no problem. Yeah, I'm with you. Chumming it up. You know, it's like, it's crazy how that exists, but it's so, it's, it's just like a very oops, accidentally natural thing. And so I want to be consistent in that kind of sense that regardless of how I feel, I want to be good at controlling my, outcome. I can't really control the inputs. Is that something that you struggle with? Is like historically like control? I can't imagine anyone doesn't struggle with this. Yeah. So yeah, I think I'm, I think I'm very human in that in that sense. So you mentioned like redemption earlier. Yeah.

So that was an interesting word because I sort of see what you're saying and I'm glad you articulated it. But I would not use the word redemption for that, right? Because what you're kind of saying redemption I think of is when you screw up, you fixing it. Well, you just have the word redeem incorrect. Oh, okay. Tell me what the word redeem is. Well, it's to be able to take something from a state of being broken into a state of usefulness or goodness, right? So like my understanding of what fatherhood and all that was was very broken.

But by having a kid, I've effectively redeemed that part of my life. And so that part of my life went from a broken. part into a part that's much, much better or much healthier. I now know what it is to have a dad by being a dad. I don't get the benefits of having a dad, but I get that. Yeah, so that's love it. First of all, Prime, I'm, I remember our conversation from, I think it was three years ago. Yeah, I think so.

And I remember where we were, what we talked about. And it was like, it was one of my favorite conversations from TwitchCon. And I'm absolutely loving this conversation. And so that's so interesting. So I guess then that makes perfect sense because I don't understand what the word redemption is. At least that's what I would define the word redemption. I think mine comes from a very Christian perspective, right? I think that probably makes it unbroken.

I think that probably makes it accurate. So I think just because the root of the word, the etymology of the word, I think that's what you're sort of leaning into is what the original word of meaning of the word is. So what I'm kind of curious about is, so there's a line of, let's say, broken fatherhood. And do you know what your paternal grandfather was like, by the way? Yeah, yeah.

He was a, we've had very few conversations. He never told my, like classic, classic kind of silent generation group. Never told my dad. He loved him. really hard worker was very successful corporately. I even at one point testified

on behalf of the Koch brothers if you know who they are. So he got like pretty high up into the oil game, as they call it. Very different kind of guy. And he only expressed one time in his entire life to me any semblance of emotions.

And that's when he was like 91 years old. And what did he express? Oh. It's just a funny phrase. He just lamented how having, he had some cancers that required him to get rid of his prostate. And he said that it really affected his relationship with his wife. And he just, like, made a small, like, hey, really, you know, it was hard. And, like, that was the only thing he's ever said in his entire lifetime.

To me, that was remotely emotional. So I can kind of see how you're saying, you know, redemption, because, there's the line of broken fathers, not to be, I'm not trying to use inflammatory language there, right? No, I think he was, he was broken too for sure. I mean, we're all broken in some way, but I felt like his was very big. And so you have redeemed that by being a non-broken father, which I think great or not, you know, I'm getting a lot of positive dad vibes from you. And having a kid with ODD is not easy, by the way. he's you know it's shocking how much better they get as time goes on like he's he actually even now

recognizes it and you'll be like sorry here i just just hold on give me a second it's just like things are coming through yeah so i i think that's also where like i'm gonna i got a side track there because that's too juicy to pass up so i think that when you struggle with your emotions and seeing you crack and seeing you recover and seeing you improve my clinical instinct is that is huge for your kid with ODV. Because I think when we model perfection, that's way harder to mimic. When we model struggle, when we model growth, when we model screwing up and fixing it. Because the phrase, the way that you just described your child's improvement maps on so well to your

subjective description of your struggle. And that's something that, like, I really get scared about not modeling corrective behavior if we don't make mistakes as parents and what that's going to do to kids. Just to be clear, I don't, like,

I don't believe in the perfect parent. Like, I don't think there is a perfect parent. Like, I know it's just my, my only goal is to reduce the, uh, the, inconsistent, like, I'm not sure what the right term is, like, to reduce, like, the bursting effects that happens every now and then, right? Yeah, what I'm hearing is that you want to be consistent with the way that you respond to

your internal signals, and you don't want the internal signals to dictate how you respond to your environment. So what I'm sort of getting is that you want to be, like, passport control for emotions in the outside world. In an ideal world, yes. but in the reality that's, you know, everyone has a plan until you get punched in the face, right? It's a leaky,

it's a leaky barrier. Fair enough. It is. So, so what I'm kind of curious about Prime is, is what about, so what about, so you've,

you've redeemed the line of unbroken, I mean, broken to unbroken fatherhood, cool. But like, it seems like that void of lack of a loving father still exists, which, than you and has not been unbroken by your parenting.

Correct. Like, I know that there's going to be always some version of that broken. Right. Like, that's why I know I get way too emotional at a movie with, with like a good dad. Pursuit of Happiness. I can't even watch that show. I already know. That's just the worst.

And what do you feel when you watch that kind of thing? I would genuinely say, like, I think. feel stoked. Stoked about what? I like seeing a good dad. And so you can't watch it even though you feel stoked? Yeah, because it just, it just, it's too emotional, if you know what I mean? Like, it just gets too much, right? Like, it's just like way too much in there. It's not like, I'm not upset about the past. I can't change the past. And I can't, there's nothing to hold on to. Like, I don't have to hold on to it. I don't have to prove anybody wrong. I don't have to do any of that. So it's just like, it's just that seeing that, it's just like, oh man, that looks awesome.

Like, I wish, I had that. That is super cool. But it sounds like what you experience is some kind of positive emotion. Yeah, I've thrown in the realm of positivity, yeah. Yeah. So how do you understand your, and if I'm using words that are too strong, let me know. How do you understand your avoidance of an intense positive emotion? I don't try to avoid it.

Like, outright. Yep, yep. I just, that's why I had trouble finding the right word there. Right. Yeah. I will most certainly not, you know, like, because it's, it feels a little, like,

all honesty feels a little embarrassing. That's all. You know, when you're just like, you know, I don't cry. I work out. Classic mentality. you get me in a shell though I'm just like I'm working out so hard all of a sudden and then it just it it gets it gets just ridiculous feels so silly you know my kids at this point make fun of me they think

it's so funny because they're just like every single time there's anything in a show they're all like dad I'm like shoot up it's just not happening right now and what what do they do they think it's funny and what's embarrassing about they're having a good time and so you know I just give them a little hug, I'll put, you know, the, the oldest one, the ODP or whatever you call it, the ODD, the ODB, I take him and I just, you know, I'll give him like a headlock or something. Okay. Yeah. What do you think would happen if they hugged you instead of looking at you to see if you were getting emotional? Oh, I'm sure I'd just cry more.

Like, that's just all that would happen. It'd just be so sweet and nice. Couldn't even help it. Yeah, so I would, I think it would be nice if that happened to you one day. Yeah, I'm sure it'd feel it'd be great, but, you know, I would just probably cry a little bit more. That's all that would happen, you know. I feel all silly on the inside. Yeah, I don't, I think that you are correct that you would cry a little bit more and you would feel silly on the inside.

But I don't think for a moment that that's all that would happen. You're saying there'd be a redemption even there? Afterwards, I'd be like, I don't even need the crap these things. Got to die. Yeah, so I think something would happen. I'm not sure. I think it's moving in the direction of redemption. Right?

Because there's a, there's a, I don't know if this is going to make sense, but there's like a, you can't hold it yourself. You with me? Yeah. So you need someone to hold it for you. And if we sort of think about like, what is. the role of a dad, what is probably something that you didn't get, like, not to make it like two one-to-one and mathematical, but like a big part of that is like, you know, who put you in the headlock when things were hard, right? Who was there to like literally hold you

when there was too much for you to hold yourself? And I don't think it has to be right so like you see how it's coming up it's like like no one don't you do it i'm i i know it's hard it's hard bro and i won't do it anymore we can go talk i mean and i know it sounds kind of weird can you give me one second i cannot turn the alerts off my stream i have disabled them and everything and they are just going nuts and it's very distracting and so i got to go to i'm going to go to twitch and turn them off from within Twitch. This is so ridiculous. So sorry.

Dude, I had Slack notifications that were driving me wild. I think it's with some update on Slack and it was like, oh my gosh. I don't even know where to go. All right. All right. Here we go. All right. Boom.

Off. There we go. I found the alerts thing. Okay. They should be off now. No one needs to test it. We're all okay. Okay.

Yeah. So where do we go from here? Any thoughts? Oh, dude, that's a great question. You got me on my heels, Dr. Kay. I don't even know where to go. You're breaking ankles out here. That's okay.

I think we let that one slide. I think that's what it was. You know, I think, does your wife watch your content at all? Is she going to watch this interview? I try to convince her not to, and she keeps on doing it. She's probably listening right now. Okay, then that's great. I'm probably going to get a hug the next movie we watch.

Yeah, right? So like, I mean, okay, I think that's the reason I'm asking about all this stuff is because I think it does relate to your story of burnout. Right. So, so, and I'm not, I'm not just trying to like go here for the sake of going here, but I think that, you know, there are a lot of things that you kind of said, you know, this idea of like impossible to meet expectations, forcing yourself to perform, feeling incredibly treas, you know, there are a lot of things that you kind of said. you know, this idea of like impossible to meet expectations, forcing yourself to perform, feeling incredibly trapped, feeling incredibly anxious.

And you said something at the very beginning that I thought was really interesting, which is you said anyone who says that they're burnt out because of dot, dot, dot, you took a little bit of issue with that framing. Right? Yeah. And can you explain? I said because people say burnout happens because, Because of.

And like a very one dimensional things, right? Like burnout happens because you're unhappy at your job. Okay. It's just like, you know, often there's just so much to it. Right. Yeah. So what do you think is off about that characterization? The characterization, it just doesn't, I think it's really easy to take something that feels bad, like how you're feeling, like just the burnout feeling, all the

anxiousness that's inside of you, all the other things that are happening inside of you, and then to just throw it on top of some sort of external source and just be like, well, my company's bad. This is what's causing my burnout. Therefore, I need to get away from this situation. Okay. And what do you, yeah. And I just don't think that that's like, A, it's really, it really kind of, part of burnout, I think is responsible on the individual.

Part of burnout is responsible for the situation that they've just found themselves in, right? Like we don't all get to roll, you know, sevens every single time. And then on top of that, there's also just like external situations that have nothing to do with either work or like yourself that happened. Like, you know, I'd definitely say that one of the triggering effects of kind of my burnout phase was when my wife was having the hardest time of herself because she was, she was in just like a really tough position. and I had no way of really helping or understanding what was happening. And it felt very, you know, it was very confusing to me. And I think that that was like a big trigger into all of this. Okay.

Because I already had a really, like I just got off a team that was just really emotionally and mentally draining. And I just felt like the burnout, like really a kind of like a burnout building. And then trying to do something that I don't think I'm designed to do. You know, I don't think being a middle manager, I don't think will ever be my strong suit. And so trying to do something that is just like where none of my strengths are. and then on top of it having this outside pressure that is just something that I have no control over and I have no way that I understood at least at that time to help. And so, I mean, it sounds to me like what you're really appreciating is the multifactorial nature, right?

I'm sort of getting this idea of like Prime is like holding a particular patch of territory. And it's not the company, the work situation of like trying to grow into a middle manager is like there's an army on the north side that is charging up the hill. But then there's also the stuff going on with your wife. There's also maybe a lack of support structure. And then there's also individual factors, right? Just because you're getting attacked on two or three different sides doesn't mean that your army doesn't have rusty weapons that maybe your soldiers are hungry and thirsty and whatever. which I think makes a lot of sense. I do want to interrupt one quick thing

is I also, you know, these are my younger years and I was a lot less wise than my unwiseness now. And I definitely wasn't loving or supportive enough for my wife during that time. Like, I just didn't really understand how I was, I was not very good at that whole emotions thing for a long time. And so I think that's just part of it

is that I was also just being a failure in that cat. Like, I was just a failure what it felt like on all fronts. You know, like I couldn't, like I was I was good at I was good at programming and I just felt like I couldn't program. I was not good at being a middle manager and I am in doing that was really just it just was not me. I felt like I was falling apart. And then on top of it, I was not a good husband and I knew that I was not a good husband,

but it's just like I didn't really how I assessed the situation. I'm not really sure how I thought through it all, but I wasn't good at that. So it just felt like it was just like kind of a traumatic failure on every side. Now, I want you to be careful about what I'm about to say here. Okay? So I'm not... I can't be careful for you. Huh?

I can't be careful for you. You can be careful about the way that you receive what I say. Oh, don't worry. I will receive things charitably. So that's what I'm afraid of. So I actually don't want you to receive things charitably. So when you say you're a failure on all fronts, right? So I don't want you to.

receive it in a charitable or non-charitable way. Mm-hmm. Is it that you felt like you were a failure or were you a failure? Oh, I would say I was a failure. Like, looking back how I treated my wife, I would have greatly changed. I was pretty selfish during those years. For sure, I had a lot of selfishness. What made you so selfish?

I would say that I just more expected her to kind of figure out her stuff. like it wasn't on me to fix things. Like, you know, I have to go through all this stuff at work. She just needs to figure out her stuff too, which is not like a, you know, that's just not a very loving kind of approach to things. And so it's just like I had, I just had like a really shallow kind of,

I'd say selfish approach to that. Now, in my older years, if I could talk to myself, I'd say why you should do things differently. And what would you say to your younger self if you could talk to yourself? I would just remind myself of what is valuable. And what I mean by that is that we, we, you've got to look at life in a kind of like a series of like value propositions. What is the most, the most valuable thing is what you're going to shape yourself by.

And so whatever you value the most is what you're going to be like the most. And so I wish I could have told myself like, hey, you know, like this job stuff and all this, it's going to come, it's going to go. You're going to change your mind about things. How you feel about it today will be like nothing. but, you know, in five years, I couldn't, I could tell myself, hey, you wouldn't even be working at Netflix at one point. But during then, it felt so big and be like, you know, you know what you will be doing, though. You'll still be having a wife. You'll still be having kids. Like, folks, like put more effort into that. Realize it's good for you to be there for your wife,

find something that can make her feel better. Like, that's what would be me now, but I'm only moderately better than I used to be, so. And what do you think it was that made it hard for you to do that at the time, right? Or to even understand that. I was really having a hard time with my job. And it's just like I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't take on more. It just felt like it was put on me. It felt like I was tapped out.

Looking back on it, I was only tapped out because I was just misvaluing things. I was putting way too much value on my job and what it meant versus my wife. Like, right, that's what I was shaping myself after. So, so, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, so that, that was my grand mistake was. So I think what, what I'm hearing your grand mistake was, was that you were, the only reason you were tapped out is because you were putting 110% of your resources behind something that did not deserve or even benefit from 110% of what you have to give.

Yeah. Yeah, that, yeah, that's fair. Okay. So can you tell me... I'm not sure if it's 110% because I think at that point I started also like trying to numb things.

Play Halo 5 again. Got pretty good at Halo 5, right? Yeah. So it was the last time I was a played... Can you tell me... So it sounds like you're Christian? Yeah. Can we talk about that for a little bit?

Sure. What flavor... That's where I got that whole idea of valuing. Right? I mean, really what I was doing is I was actually defining the word worship. Worship comes from the old English word worth shape, which means that the worth of something shapes who you are.

So can you tell me what flavor of Christian you are? I'm not Catholic. Protestant would be the other division. There you go. And what is, can you tell me a little bit about, you know, how you, what it means to be Christian? So when you say you're Christian, what does that mean?

Yeah, what that means is that at one point in my lifetime, A, I wasn't Christian. I really didn't have any. I was a functionally an atheist. And then through just the constant fighting of porn and other addictions that, you know, that I finally just, I had this real experience one evening where I just genuinely felt like a real external presence. And it's like I had a choice. I had a choice to either continue down what I was doing, ultimately knowing that I was just going to progress and becoming more in this like really terrible headspace that I was already at. Or I'm going to have to make a bunch of life decisions and change who I was.

And so I chose the latter one. And what that effectively means is that I no longer set the rules. or even try to set, or I don't choose what is valuable in my life anymore. I just say, okay, God, you are like, you're number one, so how do I live my life? What do I do here in all situations? And so I've just kind of given up all that. You know, I don't have to be cool anymore. If I'm not cool, that's okay.

Everything's okay because I'm already loved by God. I already got everything. Like, life's already been set. And so I, you know, the classic definition is all you believe in the whole like dying on the cross, rising from redemption, your sins are forgiven. and that's whole thing. So I don't have something I have to live to because I don't have to redeem myself anymore. If that makes sense.

Yeah, it makes sense. So that would be like the classic definition, but I'm talking around the classic definition. What is the practicality of it? No, I mean, so is it okay if I ask a few more questions about this? Yeah. So you said you were struggling and you felt an external presence. Can you walk me up to the struggles that, like,

walk me through the struggles that led you to that point? What were you struggling with? Yeah. Yeah. So in high school, I was deeply uncool. I know there's a lot. We're on Twitch. There's a lot of you out there.

I totally get that. High school self, hey, by the way, if you're in high school, just remember those four years feel eternal. But then afterwards, you'll talk to virtually nobody in your life will completely change. So just so you know, very different life outside of high school. But during that, being deeply and cool, always, you know, hitting puberty, always trying to chase girls, trying to find my happiness in women, very addicted to porn at that time.

I went through a little bit of a suicide bout there, had to go to the hospital, do the whole psychiatric thing. I did a lot of drugs. I had a very hard time. I had to break up a lot of friendships to get away from using drugs because at that point, I couldn't say no to anything. It just felt like I was trapped in anything. Like anything that was addictive, I just felt like I had to do if I was around it.

So that was really, dude, it was so stupid. I remember one time my sister was going to come up to Bozeman. That's where I was going to school at. And that same day, someone was like, hey, you want to drop some acid with me? and like knowing that I have to go talk to my sister in an hour. I'm like, okay. You know, like, I just like I couldn't make any decision at all in my lifetime. It was just, I was pretty out of control during that time.

And so it was up to that. And just every single day, I just felt like worse and worse and worse. It just felt like a really oppressive weight on me, I guess, would be the way to describe it. Can I, what, so it felt like a weight? Like, so you, what felt worse every day is that, things were getting heavier and heavier and heavier. Yeah, maybe that's the best way to say is that there's like a weight on me, is how it felt. And the, yeah, so I actually love that because I think we oftentimes, so especially for dudes,

we have difficulty articulating, but we have difficulty discreetly naming emotions. But I think there's a big bias in the field of psychiatry and psychology as a whole. because what men are actually really good at is articulating physical representations of emotional states. So you are carrying too much. Every dude in the audience knows exactly what that feels like. Is that sadness?

Is that depression? I think this is the mistake that we make. We say that calling it sadness or depression or whatever or guilt or whatever is superior to the physical metaphor. I no longer believe that. claim it and claim it or whatever they say. Yeah. So I think that's, and there's a lot of really interesting evidence about estrogen and awareness of your internal states and some interesting stuff about, you know, if you take like a 10 year old girl, the average 10 year old girl and the average 10 year old boy, the girl will have a greater verbal proficiency. So their ability to put things into words and their ability to experience internal states is both superior to the average man.

but if you think about how men discuss their emotions, like I think this makes sense. And the really fascinating thing is that from my, like my psychiatrist's head is like, oh, which emotion is that? And there's a part of me that I've almost had to unlearn. I don't have to translate that over to sadness or guilt or whatever, right? That weight, it's almost like the constellation of emotions that men experience

uses different words. So weight is an emotion. That's just it. So you experienced more and more weight. What made it hard for you to resist? And this was high school, by the way? This was now getting out of high school, going more towards college at this point.

And so you were using all kinds of substances and pornography? Yeah, really anything that would be in my general vicinity. And what was your, what drew you to that? I just wanted to feel something. You know, I just wanted to feel good. feel something or feel good? Both. And good.

Right, I wanted to feel something good. How does it all together? You know, I just wanted the, I, I didn't like, like, I didn't like how things were shaping up. And so I just wanted to kind of check out and be in something. And how were things shaping up? Oh, I'd say rather poorly at that point. I mean, I knew, I knew that, you know, that this was just a little bit post the suicide arc. And it's just like, I could just, it was all still there.

like a buzz in the back of my mind knowing I was just deeply unhappy is the best way to put it and I knew I was unhappy and I was just trying to fill it with anything it's just like the this is like the classic story it feels like I mean sure but but I I think the classic story yeah can I ask some more questions about that are you yeah yeah so so so first let's talk about feeling something feeling good so I'm wondering if what feeling good what feeling good was was not feeling weight. And it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what it is as long as it's not weight. Correct. So I think there's actually a ton of sophistication and what you said, because it actually tells us a lot, right? So if someone is saying, I want to feel good, I want to feel something.

Good is not, do you play games besides Halo? I used to play a whole bunch. I've recently not been playing in the last couple years. I used to play a lot of RPG. I mean, I played a lot of while at one point. Okay, great. Right. So what I'm sort of envisioning is that your location on the map is like in a pit of lava. And so you're taking dot damage every single round by just being where you are. And feeling good and feeling something, how can that be precisely correct is like, I just want to move out of the lava. I don't care. And moving out of the lava means I don't take dot damage anymore. That's what I'm trying to get away from. Therefore, moving in any direction except for staying here feels good. And that feeling that you're dealing with is weight. And like, I love that term because if I have to think about what is the predominant experience that makes men suicidal, I wouldn't say it's sadness, I wouldn't say it's guilt, I would say it's weight. It crystallized for me that when I have suicidal men in my office, they're getting crushed. like it's too much and they carry it around every single day and it's like every single day like

they have this backpack on it's not even a backpack it's like they're holding it up above their heads it's not even localized to one part of your body that is designed it the whole point is that it's distributed across every it's in some space up here and it's just weighing you down and more and more stones get added to it every single day and then you you feel like crushed like you start to get your back starts to bend and then your knees start to ache and it's just like too much, do much, too much. Yeah. And I think it's a really great, sophisticated description.

I mean, that's what I heard in what you said and then tried to add my own imagery to it. But would you say that's pretty accurate? Yeah, that's fairly accurate. And so when you were, you talk about the suicidal arc, are you okay talking about that for a second? Sure. And so what was, what happened, what were you experienced? experiencing that led you to the hospital?

So recently just off breakup. Okay. Putting all my hopes and chips and all that. And then it kind of got to be... Yeah, just broke up. I felt like I just didn't have anything anymore. Okay. And so...

And then after you were, after you were done with that, you're kind of in this like early college phase. What were you deeply unhappy about? You know, I can't say anything specific. I just, like, it just was a general, it was just like a general malaise, uh, just felt when I wasn't engaged in some activity, I just felt, you know, like I just, it never left me, because I, I still remember right after the whole, uh, the whole suicide thing after that. I just remember it, I can't, I don't think I expressly said, fuck it. But like, that's, like,

the mentality that I kind of gathered was that was just like, fuck it. And then that's when, you know, Smoked a bunch of meth, did a bunch of cocaine, lots of acid, mushrooms, just anything I could get my hands on. And it just went from zero to 60 as fast as possible. And how did the pornography factor into this? That was just like a constant, I'd say. So what does that mean? It was there beforehand. It was there afterwards.

It just kept on being a part of my life for some time. And what did it, what attracted you to it? I don't, it's very addictive. I don't know. The problem is it didn't feel addictive when I was doing it, because I was doing it out of, it felt like a choice of just wanting to do it with no feelings of guilt or shame or anything about it. Did you understand what attracted you to it?

Why did you want to do it? A boobah, very, very exciting. No, I don't know. It's just like, that's, isn't that just like. Did you even feel good when you were watching pornography? Would it make you feel good? Would you experience positive? speaking, yeah, it feel positive.

And so it sounds like you had your first exposure to pornography at four? Yeah. When did you start? It could have been five, four or five, right in there. It did very, very young. When did you start watching pornography regularly? When I got access to LimeWire. Okay.

So whenever that was, ninth grade, 10th grade. So 15, 16, 14. Would you ever watch pornography when you were doing other things? No. Okay. Just because we only had one computer and it was in like a walkable space. So I did it. Okay.

And so it sounds like you were using a lot of substances and then like what was what built up to this experience that with this external presence? I don't, I can't say there was anything particularly special. Right? It was just like day and day out the same thing I was trying to do every single time. someone, by the way, just explain LimeWire for people, I just realized LimeWyer is like an artifact of history, right? Like that is like such a, it's, I just realize

that right, it's such an artifact. LimeWire effectively is a program in which it's like the it's like the predecessor to torrenting. Effectively, you would go to a bunch of other people that had the same file and you could download part of the file from a bunch of people and be able to download any video or anything peer to peer

to peer effectively downloading. And so this was a long, long time ago. There was a whole bunch of versions of this Napster was like the original and then lime wire, Kazah. I think there's a bunch of other ones. Anyway, sorry, just in case anyone was wondering about that. As far as, like, what I was feeling going up to that, I didn't, I don't think there was anything particularly special.

It was just another day. Like, I can't tell you what day it was. I can't tell you what day of the week it was. I can just tell you I was 19 years old. Okay, you were 19 years old, and what happened? I was looking at porn, all the, all the same stuff. and all of a sudden for the very first time in my entire lifetime, I felt like guilty and shame

and everything kind of came on me at once. And then I just felt like a very intense feeling that my actions have real consequences. Okay. And then God showed up? I had no reason to feel that or anything. Like, I don't know. It was very, it was very unusual for me.

And then the external presence. presence showed up. Yeah, that was like all at the same time. It's just like I knew all of my actions were, had real effect on people that, you know, like everything that I was doing was incorrect. And so that at that point, it's just like I could, I could feel everything.

So I just said, okay, I guess I believe in God now. Like that's it. I had no idea. But you had, you felt an external presence? Yeah. Like, it was like, it felt I could feel the weight of everything and knew that I needed something else and I could feel this like thing.

Source, yeah. I knew there's a source and I knew there was a way out. That's it. You just need to move towards that source. Yeah. I knew immediately. Okay. And as long as you put that source and that source is God? Yeah. At that point, it was just God. Like, I didn't even know. I didn't even know. I didn't even have, like, I had to call my mom for a Bible. I was like, mom, do you have a Bible? I don't know. What is the, you know, I had to go find something. Yeah. But I just knew in that moment, that's what I had to go do. And so do you feel like you were saved? Yeah.

Like very... I didn't do any of like the... I didn't do the classic altar call going up there and doing any of that as a very different one. But yes, I do feel like in that moment, life did change because it was the very first time. Here's the weird part is that after I got done doing all that,

I still felt horrible. I said, okay, I need this help. But then it just nothing changed. So I went to bed. The next morning I woke up and then just went about my day. And I was like, that was a weird experience last night. And then I went to go smoke pot. The old pots, as the kids say,

or the devil's lettuce. I don't know what the cool kids say anymore for that stuff. But I went to go smoke and right afterwards, I felt so guilty. And I was just like, what the hell is happening? Right? Like, it was the strangest feeling of my life.

I've never felt guilty until that point. And all of a sudden, I was so guilty. And I was just like, damn it, I got a conscious all of a sudden. Like, it's like, all of a sudden I had to like start, man, it was just awful. It was a real downer, I'd say.

Yeah. And so when did you make the conscious decision? I mean, it sounds like you made a conscious decision to, like, put that source or put God as number one? Yeah. And you talked a little bit, almost like prioritization. Can you say a little bit more about that? What do you mean by prioritization? So you kind of said, like, okay, like, I'm moving towards you, right?

Like, I'm moving in this direction. And then what the priorities that flow from that is what you're moving towards now. Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, yeah. So I didn't know any, I didn't, like I said, I didn't really know any of these words. Like, I knew, I knew, like, there was a dude named Jesus. Like, that's about as much as I knew. And so, like, I was like, okay, I guess I'm doing that.

And so then after that, this is when I just started feeling guilty for everything. So that's when I was like, okay, I got to go, like, read and try to figure out things. Okay, so you started exploring. Yeah. And what did you find? Um, what I found is that, like, I don't have to, like, I don't have to win. Like, that felt really good.

Okay. What, what was the contest? Well, my whole life is I've always been, like, competing for something, competing for women, competing for this. I want to feel good by some sort of external, like, some sort of external thing. I want, I like numb it with the external things. I just am constantly driven in this kind of sense. And it's just like I no longer had to have that, right?

It's just like that didn't have to define me to win. Okay. And all of a sudden it just felt it started to, like it was both the most guilty and awful time of my life and the most freeing time of my life. And then for like the next couple years I struggled with, you know, I had to just change friends. I'd actually tell my friends I can't hang out with you guys anymore because I would just use whatever drugs I was. was around that you know the time i told you about my sister coming this was post me saying as a christian i took lsd i just couldn't say no to anything right so i was just like i was a bit of a dumb dumb during those times and so i just had to break up all the friendships i had the

separate i like had to separate out myself um so i went off and kind of tried to like isolate myself out from that crowd and that did help a whole bunch still at the porn thing the poor thing was uh by far the first hardest addiction to ever stop because there's no like no one will tell you that porn's wrong or bad. I mean, you'll get a lot of people that will get angry at you if you say it's, you know, porn's wrong or bad. And so, especially during that time, it's just like it was, it's such like a private internal thing and it doesn't bleed over, right?

Like, I can be normal for 23 hours of the day. You know, no, no one's going to be the wiser. And so that one was by far just like the hardest. And so I think for the next, for the next three years, that was like a just a big cycle of, of kind of guilt and all that. so and and how did you become a programmer that's a oddly an orthogonal one um

programmer's favorite word by the way and i just we had computers and there was a game called grail uh grail or grail and it was just like the zelda like a clone and you could open up a level editor and there there was just code on the screen i didn't know what the code was so i just determined to myself when i was a young boy sixth grade fifth grade somewhere in there that i was going to understand what that was and figured it out started moving things around, understood while loops and if statements and all that. And then so when I went to college, what I'd do? I'm going to be a programmer. Computer science. I'm going to make sweet science to

computers. I knew it. It was coming in. And so then I did that, right? Because that just made sense. Okay. So you liked it? Yeah. And then what happened? So it sounds like, you know, you were, so you were having to have this kind of parallel story of personal addiction, finding God, kind of starting to get your shit together, changing your circumstances and your life and things like that. But professionally, were you doing okay in college? No, I failed out a couple times. Okay, cool. The first time I fully failed out, the second time I intentionally quit.

Okay. Just because I knew that if I didn't quit, I'd be around people that were going to make me do all these things. Because the first time, I was just there to party and have a fun time. the second time is when I became a Christian and then the second time dropping out is when I realized if I stay here I'm just going to fall into the old habits and so I intentionally quit I remember I drove back up to Bozeman to see some friends and for whatever reason this is one of those weird like times in life that you see these things

whatever reason it was as I was driving up to Bozeman from Billings, Montana I remember driving by there was like 15 instances of roadkill as I was driving by and every time I drive it is just like you're driving towards death and just kept on like, just this phrase kept on saying in my head knowing that I'm going towards just a lifestyle in which I know I don't want to be a part of. It's just, you know, it's serendipity, right? Like I can't read too deep into it, but at the same time, it's just like this weird metaphor. Because I've never, you know, I've driven that road a hundred times.

And I've never seen, I've seen like one deer, but it's just so odd. It was the most I've ever seen in my lifetime on that one drive. And it's just like, it just kept, you know, replaying in my head. So does that sound, I mean, do you understand that as like coincidence or like a warning or what? Yeah, I would understand it as a warning. I think in my, you know, I think in my BC times, I would have thought that it was just, just coincidence. So, but so is, is that how God works, like God sends, like warnings?

I have no, like, I don't, I will not pretend to understand how God works. I can just simply say that in that moment for me specifically. it was a very good, like, obvious message. It's something that I would see, right? Like, I think, you know, I think sometimes there's just these things that only you can see that just work in a way that only you can understand. Okay. But, but there is, I'm with you about the lack of objective truth there,

but for you that feels and is interpreted as a message. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like, I would not say that that is, like, proof of God or anything. I may even be drawing, yeah,

I may even be drawing wrong conclusions or just, like, I don't take things as gospel just because I see something that happens. But I realize that there's certain things

that just like, I don't know. And when I was, like, when I was getting my life back together, just like one of these weird coincidence happened where I'd wake up every single day

and I'd look up the clock and it'd say 22. Every single, I remember even sitting in bed for like 15 minutes, like I'm not going to look at the clock. I'm just not going to look at it. It's stupid.

It's not going to happen. Look up. It's 222. and my mom was also having it every day. Was also having white every day. Waking up and seeing the clock at 22, and we like laughed about it. And it was just like this really weird experience

where it's just like repeating numbers, just something weird that always, me and my mom always just been weird about repeating numbers. And it's just like right when I get my life or trying to get my life back together, I just keep on waking up at the same diet. Like it's so stupid and there's nothing.

Like I don't know what it meant. It just meant something. That's how it felt to me. Yeah. Right. It's just like, okay, there's something there that's just, it's comforting in a strange, weird way.

Yeah, it's sort of like a glitch in the matrix. Exactly. It doesn't necessarily have meaning. So it's not like there's a Bible verse that is like something 222. But it's like there's just some... If you look up all the 222s and nothing would make any sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just some sign of a glitch in the matrix.

Yeah. And so you were saying you were putting together your life. What did that look like? So... Putting together my life. just looked like me trying to quit porn, quit smoking, trying to create new friendships, and just reading a bunch. In fact, at one point, I kind of gave up the whole computer science thing, and I tried,

I was actually going to go to seminary for a while. Nice. But I realized that I could not stop being an engineer. I, like, broke down a piece of paper and started, like, drawing and creating some sort of program in my head, and I was like, I'm just like, I'm a programmer by nature. This is like who I am. There's that quote by the guy who ran up. Do you know the the Chariots of Fire movie?

You know that guy? I forget his name, Eric something. Yeah, no, but I know there's a movie Chariots of Fire. Okay, very famous story where he was supposed to run a, I believe it was he was supposed to run a 100. And it was on a Sunday, and he just refused to run on a Sunday. So he instead went to the Olympics and was like, I'll just run a 400. And so he ran the 401, which is crazy. Back then you could just do those things.

I assume people weren't as optimized as they are today. But Eric Little, that's his name. And he said that when he runs, he'd feel God being happy. And so when I program, that's how I feel. Like, it's just like, this is the thing I think I'm supposed to do. Because even when I try not to do it, I can see myself like, I'm over there, like, drawing out boxes and diagrams. I'm like, oh, this is like, this is the thing I'm supposed to do. And when you, so how did you, so, okay, so you fall in love with programming, you're playing, considering seminary for a little while.

What were you reading, by the way? Um, may have heard a bit the Bible at that point. Okay. Now that I believe it, I better, I better at least read it, you know, understand it a little bit. Okay, so you're reading the Bible. And then, um, how did you get, so, so how did you, and around what time is this? So we're like, I was about 20 years old, somewhere right in there. Okay.

And, and then, how did you start working as a programmer? Uh, I just, I finally went back to school, dropped out again, went back to school, went back to school started doing good uh really struggled by the way like you know how some people they talk about how like you know the light gets flipped and all of a sudden they're better you know you hear all those stories i had none of the light flipping situation i've been feeling guilty and but i started studying and then all of a sudden about a year into like kind of going through college all of a sudden i just got really good at it i remember i had to spend six hours a day three hours in math class because i'd just take one math class over the summer and then three hours in the help center math class

help center. Math class helps center. I just do this over and over again. And then finally by the end, I was just the best at it. And then it's just like all of a sudden I was just good at math. And then I finally got good at it. You know, I finally got, I instantly got good at it after hundreds hours of effort. And so it's just like I went from a horrible student to effectively the best student in my class. And then from there, I just, I got a job because I'd go to the career fair. And I kid you not, one of the pieces of feedback I got on it was you look people in the eye when you talk to them, and we thought that was really good. So we gave you a shot to interview. Because I just, I didn't, a lot of people look at the ground in the computer world, and I

would look them in the eyeball. And so how, what year did you get your first job as a programmer? 2000 and, I want to say 2008. Okay. So then walk me through 2000, connect for me 2008 to feeling burnt out at Netflix in 2016. Sure. A quick little thing. 2008, I worked at the company called Computers Unlimited at the time. It was a C-sharp shop with also some synergy or some weird goofy language for the back end or some legacy part of the application. And I remember being so horrified at what professional programming looked like. I changed my major to mechanical engineering. I did that for a while, realized I really just am not designed to be in mechanical engineering, reluctantly went back to computer stuff, kept going, saw the social network, social network ruined many of programmers' lives because right after watching the social network, I was just completely fixated on this idea that I could make a startup, made a startup, got married, lost all my money, lived in a weird place where the guy below us would threaten to kill us, and it was horrible. Then we got out of that, and then I got onto another, you know, then company,

company, Netflix is kind of how it went. So it's just like. And what was your, yeah, go ahead, sorry. I was just going to say, it felt like a pretty standard kind of thing. Try to do a startup, lose all your money, have to go get a real job, and then just kept on going. Where did the burnout start? The burnout started. I was on a team that wrote something called Falcour, which was like a popular Netflix open source library that was a competitor to something called GraphQL, a popular open source Facebook library.

Back then, the Falcore guys and the GraphQL guys would actually meet long before either of those two things for open source and kind of talk about what they're doing. and where the burnout I know started happening is that we had something on our team called a non-coding architect. And he would come up with these ideas, very highfalut and like, oh, it needs to look like this. It needs to be this. And when he would say those words, what that really meant is, I'm now going to go make that dream become a reality. And so it's just like, I'm going to go do this. Okay, I'm done.

Okay, actually that was wrong. Let's do it this way. Okay, I'm going to go do that. Okay, I was wrong. Let's do it this way. Meanwhile, on the internet, you're starting to open source stuff. people in open source land are just not necessarily known to be the kindest people are just demanding why aren't you doing all these things meanwhile you're trying to get stuff done for Netflix and then you have this person up at the top that's just like you know what would be great you know it's just like idea man you know my life was beholden to an idea man I still remember it was like December 27th of 26 one or two days after Christmas he calls me up to discuss a yet another one of these ideas and I just remember at that point it's just like I felt on my insides I had just like snapped because I was just like man man, I hate this.

This is just the worst. Like, there's just no reprieve at all. It's just constant churning and trying to, like, and I'm doing this. Why? Why am I doing this? Because I can go to conferences and I can talk about it. I can be the cool kid at conferences, right? I get to be invited to the cool places because back then in the tech world,

if you weren't on the speaker thing, man, there was such a, there was such a bourgeoisie and the proletariots at the old conferences where it's just like, here's the cool kids, the ones that are speakers. and then afterwards, I still remember being told to be quiet because we were slightly too loud in the hallway, right? Like, because the bourgeoisie were talking about their highfalutin ideas where us proletariat weren't being this way. Oh, my gosh.

It was just, it was so frustrating, and I hated it so much yet at the same time. I was upholding it. I wanted to be a cool kid. And so I was working so hard to do all these things, and it was just like, I realized I hated it and the things that I thought were cool were actually not cool at all. They were, like, heartbreaking, right?

They were just like, it was all. awful. I didn't want to have to dance for these people. And then I was just like, what am I doing? And so at that point, I thought I was going to quit Netflix and all that. End up one of my bosses, Jeff Wagner. Shout up Jeff Wagner. He was just like, hey, he said a very good phrase to me.

He's like, are you running from Netflix? Are you running to this other company I was going to go to? And I was like, realities I'm running from. He's like, change teams. Come with me. Don't run from something. Run to something. Right? And so it's just like, okay. He's like, let me help here.

And did it help? Well, that's when I decided I'm going to try to be a manager and all that. And that's when I like peaked. Peak burnout happened right after that. Because I was already coming off of like a really kind of, you know, whatever that was beforehand in the programming world where you realize that you've kind of built your professional life on something you dislike. Okay. So you were, so this person sort of offered you a life raft said run to something, not away from something. and then what would tell me about being a manager?

So then you move to management track. Effectively, I still an IC, but I said, hey, I want to be a manager. Because at that time, I thought maybe I hate coding. I didn't know. And so he's like, all right, but I'm going to do it, but it's going to be hard. Like, that's what's going to have to happen. So I still had all my responsibilities as an IC, plus I took on additional responsibilities of trying to be a manager.

Kid you not? Guess what? I'd go to work every single day in a nice little button up. Nice. Long sleeves and everything. I was looking real, real clean back there. What does I see mean? Individual contributor, sorry.

Somebody who does the actual work. Okay. Companies are made up of two people. People who do the actual work and people who talk about the work. Okay. So then you started doing management stuff. What was that like? You know, it was a lot of like going to meetings,

leading them, taking notes, telling people. people about what we're going to do. It just felt, yeah, it's just that. A lot of dock jockeying. What does dot jockeying mean? Open up Google Docs. Let's talk about the project we're going to build. Here's all the different things.

Here's why it's super cool. Now I'm going to go to everybody, and I'm going to sell. I'm going to sell them why this is actually the good idea. So now I'm going to go in there. I'm going to be like, actually, you know, my project. And then they're going to be like, oh, it's a good project. So then, you know, then you're going to get it bought into. And when you get enough people bought into, it's like, let's make

this. Okay. That's dock jockeying. It's what I consider dock jockeying. Okay, cool. And so you didn't like that. No, it turns out I really don't like that either. Again, it's just not even my skill set. It's just like, I'm really good at thinking through a large problem and turning it into code. Like that, I am, I take coffee and turn it into code. Like, that is who I am at my core. And so it's just like, I realize when I was doing this is this is just like, you know when you do something that's near or adjacent to what you're, good at. And when you do it, you're like, well, I'm not only my bad at this, like, I don't love it. It doesn't give me the same kind of joy that something else gives me. That's what was happening. It's like, I did all the work, but with none of the joy of doing that work, none of the satisfaction of doing the work, shall I say. Maybe not joy, but satisfaction. And the satisfaction is because there's a particular kind of work that really brings you the satisfaction, which is translating coffee to code. And if you're doing work that is tangential to it,

not orthogonal, tangential to it, then it gives you like zero. So it's kind of like your, it gives you not much. Yeah, yeah. And how do you think this sort of situation contributed to your burnout? This is like, so at this point, this is pretty much right where my wife also had a, had a miscarriage at this point. Was that, did y'all have kids at that point or no? Yeah, we had two kids. Okay.

Very beautiful boys. And so this was our third kid, didn't make it. And so at that point, I came off of, like, the biggest disappointing thing in programming. I was doing work in which I found no satisfaction and really just kind of disliking it. But this is what you're supposed to do. Again, it's like the same thing. This is what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to be going this direction.

This is, okay, you know what? I'm growing up. This is what grownups do, right? And so I started going that direction. So it's like, I'm not liking what I'm doing. I really just wasn't into programming at that time. I just felt like I was supposed to be doing something different or more complicated or I wasn't utilizing my talent. Like, I just had all these reasons that I was arguing.

And then I was just obviously just totally failing on the husbandry side. I think husbandry is taking care of vineyards. I was failing on being a husband at that point. And how are you failing as being a husband? What would have succeeded being a husband look like? I think realizing that my, that the value of work and all this stuff just didn't, it just, I placed it way too high. Okay. Right.

Like I should have been there more for my wife. You know, I really, I really, what would have being there more looked like? Probably like asking her her, how's everything going? Like, how are you feeling, right? What do you need me to do? You want me to do something for you? Okay. You know, just like talking to her.

So, so it sounds like some degree of like just straight up physical presence. But in your time, at the time, it sounds like in your head, you were like, this is all the stuff that I'm dealing with. This is all the stuff that you're dealing with. You should deal with your stuff so that I can deal with my stuff. Yeah, that's how I took it because I took it as like two equal, two equal problems here. Okay. And then I also had no idea anything

about postpartum depression. I didn't really get that stuff. Can I think for a second? Yeah. May I use the bathroom while you're thinking? Yeah. Oh, perfect. Anytime you want, bro. Hey, y'all, just a reminder that

in addition to these awesome videos, we have a ton of tools and resources to help you grow and overcome the challenges that you face. We've got things like Dr. K's Guide to Mental Health, personalized coaching programs, things like free community events and other sorts of tools to help you no matter where you are on your mental health journey. So check out the link in the description below and back to the video.

All right. Hey. Okay. So how did you start to get out of it? So things were not going well at home. You were on management track. You were still working as an independent contributor. And then you said something earlier about tech was going austere. What does that mean? austere or tech tech conferences and all that things were I use the frame austere meaning like again you

you uh you read misborn so the inside of the inquisitor places they also describe as austere it's like very barren and it has like just like really hard decorating and so that's what I mean by that is that when you'd go to these conferences again it was the

it was the people who did the real work and then the proletary that people are just coming to learn. And it was this very like, okay, we don't like, there's not a lot of joking that's going to go on. But if it is jokes,

it's got to be like in this kind of format, you got to be, you know, there's a lot of tone policing during the time, 2000, you know, somewhere between 2014 to 2018.

It was just like, those years were very interesting tech time. No dongle jokes. None of that. I remember still at PyCon, 2012. PyCon, someone made just some stupid dick joke.

And then it just like turned out like, like four people. people got fired from it. It just like blew up all over the place. It was crazy. It was just a really weird time period in the tech world. And some people, I mean, some people think that was great. Some people don't think that was great. I'm of the opinion that I just don't think it's great. Because there's no like, we're literally doing the best job in the universe, if you think about it. Most of the universe has been lived through really difficult, really hard times hacking away every single day to be able to get, you know, to the end. They would work from sun up to or from, yeah,

from sunup to sundown sometimes even before sunup and like this was a hard hard life we go into air conditioned offices where i get to sit down type on a computer take multiple breaks play some basketball at noon right like it's just like crazy like the the differences are just not even comparable in the slightest um i will argue that i think that there's something really good about using your body though uh nonetheless uh it's just like how have we built a conference and a and and kind of a culture around this like really, you know, we're going to really be like this,

when we're doing the greatest thing in the universe. Like, what the heck's going on here? And so I just felt like at that point, this is when I said, I told my boss, I'm not going to be a manager anymore. And this is also when I started watching,

I started watching Twitch and all that, and just kind of disengaged for a little bit. Okay. And just really just didn't know what I was doing. Okay. That's kind of like how I solved it. Because I had to still go to work. I still had to make my deliverables.

I still had to do everything despite how I felt. So I just disengaged. And then you mentioned something about a side project? Yeah, at some point later on, I built an arbitrage system between crypto exchanges to make money, which, by the way, it worked. It's just that you'd have to have a lot of money for it to work. And I didn't have a lot of money. I have just some money.

And so made a couple thousand. It was pretty sweet. But that kind of reignited this whole passion of like, way, I can just build whatever I want. And that was kind of cool. Like, that was actually super fun. And all of a sudden I just found myself getting like stoked up to go work on something on the side. And how long would you say you were disengaged? Probably like a year, year and a half.

About 2018, I think is when I became engaged again. Maybe 2000, late 2017. And then what happened next? Well, that's where things, well, this is where it took a dramatic turn. There's a guy named Guy Serino. he invited me to participate in a charity thing for Netflix called Extra Life. May have heard of Extra Life. And we are going to play video games all evening long while streaming it.

So I was like, dang, I could stream something. I guess I'll do that. Turned on the old streaming thing. Got to affiliate just so I could take in payments because I figured, okay, if you just subscribe to me, I'll just pay it to charity. I just got to get to affiliate, got to affiliate, did that. And then streamed Fortnite for 24 hours, and it was a lot of fun. And I was like, dang, streaming's kind of fun.

So, yeah, that's, that's, that's, and then what happened. Started the whole thing. Yeah, I was playing Fortnite, too, and I was saying it was fun. Like, that's pretty crazy. So, at one point, I tried streaming programming vastly more successful at streaming than video games, because I'm actually good at programming. And so then at that point, it was just like, oh, I should do that again. So I kept doing it and it just got better and better and better at it.

And that's when I was just like, okay, I'm like making jokes and tech Twitter that, you know, are very Twitch-centric, having fun, but that's just not Twitter culture. And so I was like, dude, I'm going to do this. We're going to break tech culture. We're going to make it into something fun and awesome. And so then for like the next six years, I just tried to make it fun and awesome.

And I would genuinely say, like in the last couple years, tech Twitter's pretty sweet. What is tech Twitter? Twitter, but with the tech people. You know, like how whenever you do anything on the internets, you just immediately echo chamber, no matter like how hard you try, you just always echo chamber into whatever.

And so there's the echo chamber we call tech Twitter. And so that's just where all the people in tech tweet about tech things. And so I think that it's just gotten a lot. It's just more fun. Okay, cool. So it sounds like you had a serious cultural mismatch. And then now sort of the culture that you're inside is like much more aligned with like what feels natural to you, the clothing that you wear, the terms that you use,

maybe the occasional dongle joke that doesn't get you fired or canceled. Yeah. And so I feel satisfied with the scope of this conversation so far in terms of understanding your story. There's still a ton of stuff that I could potentially talk about or ask questions about or share. I feel like I'm at a transition point. Are you okay with that? Is there something that you still want to share, something that you want to talk about, ask about? No, if you want to transition to something different, yeah.

Yeah, so what I'm kind of, I'm kind of curious to like a little bit more, like moving into a little bit more prescriptive space. So you shared your story of burnout and you sort of said, you know, early on that like you don't think it's because of one thing. So if people are facing burnout, what are kind of the takeaways that you have from your journey and what you've seen for other people? Like, how do you avoid burnout? Where does it come from? Like, where does it come from, number one? How do you avoid it? If you're burnt out, what do you do? Yeah. My only couple pieces of advice I have is one, like, you have to, like, really think about your situation. It's in my general experience is not just one thing. It tends to be a kind of a garden variety of all these different things pushing against you that kind of lead you towards a bad place. if you just say, oh, it's just this company that's really bad, which does happen, by the way.

Bad companies do exist that put people into really shitty situations. And then if you switch companies, but it keeps on happening, it can't just be that you've landed that shitty company after shitty company after shitty company. Like something else is happening. So definitely take the time to understand that situation. But more so, instead of looking at, like, it's just a mind shift I've been trying to have, which is instead of looking at things that are everything as a hurdle or something as an impediment to get to where you want, looking at it as the, like an opportunity or like a joy for you to pursue these things. And some of my best work is like kind of after the checkout phase, I kind of started checking back in. It's just like everything I do is like, okay, how can I do this the best? I'm just going to do this the best and I'm going to try to

learn how to enjoy it. And it just kind of vastly changed a lot of things for me because instead of being so like, my talents are much better than this or I shouldn't be doing this because it's like beneath me or this is really boring work or kind of like there's like a thousand excuses people come up with why and I had my own set of excuses is I was like okay I'm going to find like how can I make this awesome how can I really enjoy this and side projects really helped me find the joy again because it was I'm building something for myself something that I can like something that doesn't have all the same deadlines doesn't have all the same external pressures I'm just building for the joy of building something right becoming an expert in my craft actually enjoying what I'm doing not just simply

going through the motions of the day it's just like that perspective change plus pursuing something really made everything kind of start falling back into line for me. And obviously, the external pressures with my wife and all that, that eventually resolved, despite my inability to be a good husband during that time, she got over a lot of the stuff. And so that also helped just not having that kind of external thing. I give you several choices. Okay. Let's go choosing.

One is I could take what you said and sort of reflect it back and add my perspective to it, like almost like a framework for solving burnout, which I think I'll incorporate everything that you said and sort of, like I said, add my own flavor to it. I could ask you a similar question about addiction. Like, you know, what is your experience? of addiction. Where do you think it comes from? What do you think is important for getting out of it? And I really appreciate the way that you think about things. Like, I really, really, really like it.

And then the third thing that I want to just offer is like, you know, if you have any questions for me or anything that you want to talk about or ask about or anything like that, like I want to leave space for, like, these are the two places that my mind goes. Like I feel like I've got, just like my mind is equally interested in both of these things. But I'm also, I would love to talk about anything that you would want to talk about or answer any questions that you have if you're curious about anything. Well, I've been able to do a lot of talking throughout all this. And so I actually want to, I want to hear your thoughts on a lot of these things because you don't just see burnout say in the depth space. But I assume that burnout is more of a universal experience among a lot of people. And so my only experience is within just this small niche. Like, I don't know what side projects look like in some other form of life.

I can really only speak to it in the dev space. And so I mean, A, I'd love to hear what you have to say on these things because, I mean, you say things in a much more digestible way than I do. And I like how you say them. And so I want to hear your version of things. Okay. Give me a moment. If that's okay with that.

Yeah, that's absolutely. Are we about to bust out a little whiteboard time? Yes. Can I jump over? Here, I'm going to jump over to your stream. I'm going to mute it. I'm going to, we're going to do a lecture. And I love what you said. So what I'm going to try to do, I don't know if it'll work or not, but what I'm going to try to do is, I think your lived experience and a perspective on burnout is like completely correct, but speaks to underlying mechanisms that if we understand can allow us to consistently avoid burnout

and recover from burnout. Can you consistently avoid burnout? Is that a real thing? 100%. Okay. Right? So let me just try to figure out what I'm trying to do. There's a, no.

Even if it's like a, like, you know, even if it's something really external, like my mom dies. Like I assume that I will probably go through some sort of burnout where I have a hard time just coping with life in general. Okay. Yeah, can you open up my... So there's going to be a stream delay because I'm watching right now.

I'm looking at, oh, open up in Discord. No, no, no, let me see if... I'm watching your stream right now so I can actually see. It'll just be like a second or two behind. Okay, if I do this... Oh. Okay, hold on. You've just ruined my view.

Hold on. Hold on. I can see me on Discord. Hold on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can see the screen share on Discord, right? I can, yes Okay, good

So then there won't be a stream delay Yeah, there won't be a stream delay Okay, hold on one second Let me get Because I also have you in OBS And well, the screen just changed There we go I'm Gucci on my end

If you can see If you can see my screen share on Discord Yes, I'm almost Yeah, I can see Yeah, you can get started I'm just adjusting it So that every, the my stream can see what you're seeing to

Size All right, let's let's see this Okay So your first question was can you consistently avoid burnout? Yeah. Right? Now, what do you think the answer is? Well, I mean, you just told me yes.

I know. So I'm going to trust you that that's the answer. But my internal thing is that I will quote, I will do, oh, I have you mirrored, I think. Yeah, you're mirrored in here. Hold on, just give me one second. Let me unmirate this one. I'm going to do the classic quoting of Apostle, Paul where he asked God for help for a certain situation and eventually God just responded

in your weakness my strength is made perfect. So I think at some points we all burn out. We all have hard times and sometimes you just, there's things in life that just aren't easily overcomable like that. You can't just simply just, I don't know if all things are avoidable. Like at some point you break down and just like, dude, I can't do this anymore. Okay, so there's a lot of interesting nuances there. Love it. Okay. So the first thing is, did you recover from burnout? Yes. Do other people recover from burnout? I would assume so that other people recover as well. Therefore, it is definitely possible. Agree? Yes, I agree. It's possible to recover. Right. Do some people go through life without burning out? I would assume so, yeah. Right. So this is where

like, if we're kind of approaching it scientifically, right? So if we think about it from sort of a clinical perspective. Do people avoid the condition? Does everyone get lung cancer? No. If you get lung cancer, can you get cured of lung cancer? Yes. And then the issue becomes the mechanism. Because once we can understand why some people get lung cancer and why other people don't get lung cancer, that's how we know. Right. So there's a, does that kind of make sense? It's like really simple. But if it's possible to avoid burnout and if it is possible to, so there's two groups of people, or let's avoid burnout and some people succeeded avoiding burnout some people fail and then if you are burnt out recover so this becomes a non-issue over here but then some people recover and some people

don't so i guess we actually have three categories does this make sense yes right so like some people never burn out some people do burn out and then don't recover and some people burn out and do recover So now all we need to do is understand the mechanism of what this person is doing, understand what the mechanism of this person is doing, and understand the mechanism of what this person is doing. If we understand the mechanisms, then we can absolutely avoid it and we can absolutely recover from it. So let's talk about mechanisms. So problem number one that you said beautifully because of dot, dot, dot. So you said when people say, I am burnt out because of my job, because of my boss, because of my whatever, that is incorrect. And you are correct.

If you are someone who says, I am burnt out because of one thing, this person, the person who says this statement ends up in this box. This is not, it's not like a, it's not, you know, scientific on the level of gravity where gravity is a hundred percent predictable, human beings are complicated, but we actually know there's a ton of research on burnout, and we know what causes burnout. And people who have this thinking will stay burnt out. Because as you sort of elude, huh? I had no idea about this. It's very interesting. Yeah. So as you alluded to, right, so you sort of figured this out because you used to think in a unifactorial black and white way where there's one. object, if I'm a human being and there is an object outside of me and this human being is

messing me up, then this object needs to change. And if the object changes, my life will change. This is what's really confusing about this because there's a counter argument, right? Let's say I'm in an abusive relationship. Let's say my boss is an asshole. But here's the really wild thing. There are many people on the planet who have the same asshole boss that you do who are not burnt out. right? Not everyone who has your boss and your boss, if your boss is a complete asshole,

the percentage of their employees that are burnt out are high. They may be higher because the boss is worse, but it's not 100%. So the first thing to understand about burnout is burnout is an intersection

of individual and environmental factors. Okay, I'm purchasing this so far. Okay, great. You can let me know if you don't feel like buying it at any point. This is also why companies suck at fixing burnout. You didn't have to say fixing burnout. You could have just said suck.

It would have probably done the same thing. It was a corporate joke. We like, don't get on corporations. Come on. Sure. So, yeah, okay, fine. So here's what companies will do. They'll say, okay, you're burnt out.

here's a subscription to a meditation app. Here is a coupon for therapy. Right? So the big mistake that companies make is the same mistake that people in this box make, which is that they put the burnout as the responsibility of the individual. So I was running a burnout recovery program for, about, for one year I was in charge of it. And we trained about 600 physicians across the country and burnout prevention. One of the first things that happened is we'd go to a program and we'd say,

hey, if your doctors are burnt out, we can help with that. And they're like, awesome. We would love your help. Okay. And then the key thing is that the company would say, okay, if I have a doctor who's working a shift from 8 to 6 p.m., can you start your program at 6 p.m.? And we would say no. we would say that if you want us to do your program, all of the doctors need a two-hour block once a week where they sign out their pagers. This is not addition. This is a big mistake that companies make. They say, you should fix burnout on your own time, certainly not on company time. It doesn't work.

So anytime the company points the finger at the employee and says you should fix burnout, and any time the employee points the finger at the company, and says you should fix burnout, it doesn't work. Because by nature, by definition, and we'll get to what these are, the features of burnout are an intersection of something within you with something in your environment. That's how they're created. And the more that we understand that it's like you have a contribution and they have a contribution, the better off things are going to be. And in your story, you know, so here's, I'll give you like a couple of really simple things.

Okay. So one is effort that is wasted. Number one cause a burnout. IMO. So a lot of people think, oh, if I'm burnt out, I should work less. One of the most critical mistakes that people who are burnt out make is that they work less. And I love that in your story, we have an organic example of that in my story too. Work is a major source of fulfillment of it, is a major antidote towards fulfillment. The problem is it needs to be the right kind of work times the right kind of attitude. So number one source of burnout is when you want to work hard,

you try to work hard, and it's wasted. So I'll give you like a medical example. So in your case, it's the ideas person. It's the non-coding architect. Oh, my God. Oh, double-fisting, bro. I can still feel the anger right now. Oh, my God.

Yeah, ideas. Oh, I'm, I'm a non-coding architect. I'm an architect. Right? A non-coding architect is like one of these people that messages you, if you're a programmer on the internet, and you get a DM from someone on Reddit who's like, I have a great idea for an app.

You do the coding. I'll tell you what to build. I have this great idea. A non-coding architect is one of these random redditors who gets paid a salary by a company. You're going to hurt a lot of people's feelings, but it feels true to me. Right? Yeah. And so by the way, just as a quick aside, I think there's immense value in a lot of the corporate circle jerk that you detest, which we can talk about later if you want to.

But on our side here at Healthy Gamer, I used to completely disrespect that shit too. And then once I started actually being on the side of like running and organizing a company, I realized how valuable that stuff is. But anyway, I think it can easily be overdone. But the key thing here is effort is wasted, right? So when you get asked to build something and then it gets scrapped because the non-coding architect did not have an idea that was like a good idea. But you built something, this is going to burn you out.

So in my case, what this looks like is I sit with a patient, right? And I spend two hours with this patient. We develop a really fantastic plan. I feel really good about it. This is fucking why I went to med school is to help human beings and I build some plan. We started engaging in the plan and then I get a message from a pharmacy that this patient's medication is not covered by their insurance company. And then what I do is I talk to the insurance company. and then I do six rounds of back and forth.

They have this automatic, like, rejection of things because that's how they work and stuff like that. So I do a lot of, like, labor that is like, like, all of this effort requires all of this extra labor that I don't enjoy in order to become realized. So wasted effort is what burns people out, not working hard. Okay? There are also other issues of like autonomy.

So human beings get burnt out when they want to do something in a particular way. And someone else tells them to do it in a different way. That burns people out. The key caveat here is that under the assumption that so people need to have their autonomy be able to be expressed. So it's not that you have to do things your way. And there may be a really good reason. So I've worked with a lot of like, you know, interns or other like junior people who want to do things their way. And there's a reason why senior people like to do it in the senior way because oftentimes our way is better because we tried it your way and it didn't work.

So there's a certain amount of like interplay between it's not about like complete independence. It is about being able to exercise some degree of opportunity. Okay. So then there are a couple of other. the things that, and when you're not able to do that, when you become a bot, you become burnt out. Okay, there are a couple of other factors, which I've talked about a lot, but I want to go to a few other things that you mentioned. Another thing that leads people to burn out, I'm going to just toss some of these phrases out here, because you use so many of them, and I love it, I love it, love it.

Okay, hold on. Okay, so first thing that we're going to do is have to perform meeting expectations. Okay, and then you sort of talk about, you know, have to versus get to. So this is sort of like opportunity. This is obstacle. I don't know if this is kind of making sense.

but there's sort of like a there's like a these are all pointing at something so I'll try to explain okay yeah so a lot of times when we're at a job we have this idea of I have to like get through this is an obstacle I want to get promoted like we're looking at something far away from us that we want and there's all this shit in the way so I have to perform I have to meet expectations you're not doing it for yourself there is and this is what confuses people by but they sort of say I am sort of doing it for myself because I want this thing, right? I want a promotion. I want this raise. So this is something that I want. Therefore, I am doing it for myself. This is where there is a nuance to for yourself. You are not monolithic. And you are serving one part of you, but you are not

serving another part of you when you think in this way. So there is a fundamental reframe where a lot of people who have jobs, this is the default mode of operation in a job. I have to do this. I want to get promoted. I have to meet expectations. These are all obstacles to what I want. It's all about, like, I want to do this thing far away from me, and all of this stuff is getting in the way. This is the price I pay to get what I want. They fundamentally view their job as a price. And you may say, well, that's because I don't like doing it, right? That's Hawaii. We all work. Like we all work because I want money and I, so I have to do something in order to get paid. And this is why burnout is so common because many people do it this way.

Many people approach their mindset and their attitude towards their job is a fundamentally antagonistic, unfulfilling one. So if I walk into my job and I think I have to do this, that cognitive structure will lead you to burnout. So here's what's really interesting. There's a, there are absolutely ways to reframe this. And I went through this reframe. You went through this reframe. So there's another like really interesting like reframe, which is called the Nemic effect. This is the right way to give feedback. And I've been talking, I feel like I've been talking about this a bunch. Maybe it's just top of mind recently. But so, you know, like people used to give feedback using the compliment sandwich,

which is like, yes, you did a really great job. And you suck. And you're awesome. right and and like that doesn't really work very well i mean it works well for a certain kind of personality that has difficulty receiving like honest feedback if you're like me it just pisses you off just tell me what i need to do wrong and i'll just fix it i don't need i don't need a slice of bread poop in between and the slice of bread on the bottom just give me the poop because i gotta get the poop yeah at netflix we called it a shit sandwich yeah we we just called that so what actually works like scientifically work what works way better is if you view an obstacle as a stepping stone to an end goal. This is part of the process. It's not an obstacle that you need to get out of the

way. It is part of your fundamental path. So when we're giving like feedback for like residents or medical students or things like that, it's saying things like, look, hey, you're really great at psychiatry for like these reasons. Right. So you're a really passionate doctor. You clearly care about your patients. You're really interested in psychotherapy. I get that you really love psychotherapy. Like this is cool. But you got to understand physical medicine. you will never be the doctor that you need to be. Like, I understand that you want to be a psychiatrist. I understand that you love talking to patients.

That's what we look for. But you are not getting a PhD. You are getting an MD. That means you are a medical doctor. That means that you should understand what the cardio... When your patient has a cardiologist, you have to understand what is going on in their heart. It is not good enough to say, oh, they've got a cardiologist.

I'm going to let them handle it. So it is pointing out. your flaws as weaknesses towards your end goal. What is repairing, what is this weakness in service to? So the moment that you frame a weakness as something in service to something that you are aligned towards, the feedback gets received way better. You have the makings of a great doctor. You got to fix this, otherwise you will never be a great doctor. It's not your good, it's not your bad. It is, this thing needs to be corrected in service to this. So when people adopt this attitude in their own life, right?

And we heard it from you. This is not an obstacle. It's an opportunity. Which you have to understand. So then this becomes hard because we can say, oh, you should think this way. And this is the one thing that I thought was terrible about what you said. You said you have to think about your situation. It is 100% correct.

And no one has any idea what the fuck that means or how to do it. Right? And that's not your fault. That's like, because like, you're right. You're 100% correct. But what I consider terrible, this is my beef, right? It's not, you're not a psychologist or a psychiatrist or whatever. But the whole reason we're having this conversation and why I appreciate you said that is because people are going to be listening to that.

But prime, when they wake up tomorrow at 8 a.m., what do they do? Right? How do they think about, how do they think about that? What are the steps of thinking about your situation? So this is a fundamental reframe that I would embellish. I would lean into what you said because it's the right principle. But I think people are listening to it's like, what do I think? How do I think?

So that's where if there is something that is an obstacle, think about what it is in service to. Think about how this is an opportunity. And literally this cognitive reframe will change the way that your nervous system functions. It'll change your cortisol secretion. It'll change your retic. activating formation, it will change your ability to go to sleep at night. Right? Not 100%, but like, there's plenty of scientific papers where I can back up those as being

reasonable statements. So the way that you perceive the things around you changes your nervous system response, right? If I get fired by my job and I think to myself, oh my God, I need this job versus I think to myself, holy shit, thank you. I was going to quit anyway, and I wasn't going to get severance. Now that you're firing me, I get severance. Right? The attitude to which we respond to the circumstances around us, this is the individual

portion of burnout. And so many people, I hate to kind of say this, but like this is my boomer conditioning coming through kids nowadays. So I think that when you and I were growing up, there was a greater emphasis on individual responsibility and nowadays I think there is a greater emphasis on systemic changes being responsible for my condition. And I'm not saying that it's either or, but they're like, like it was so interesting because I'm trying to figure out how to say if I want to disclose this publicly.

Okay, so I used to be somewhat involved in residency training. Okay, so what that means is like, so when you're, when you become faculty, so I was faculty, at, you know, and then like, so it's my job to teach the residence. So it was really interesting is when I started residency, across the nation, being a residency program director was a good job. So people wanted to do this, right? So like, especially in like academia, right? So places like Harvard or whatever, like, we're fucking there because we like to teach, right?

So it's our passion for subjects. It's our passion from teaching that ends us up there. And so like at all of these like top tier academic institutions like Stanford, Harvard, whatever, like it was a coveted job to teach the residents. What I was shocked by is over the course of like five to ten years, this is a job that fewer and fewer people want across the country. And it's because residents are getting harder to teach. It's not just residents, but also at the level of like if being a teacher today is brutally difficult. People who have a passion for teaching fucking hate the job now. And I think a couple of different things.

So one is that students, I think students as the whole have become worse. So students don't want to work. They become more entitled on the whole, right? So I hear horror stories. This is not just in residency education. But like it used to be like the pendulum used to be on the toxic side where like in medicine, we used to be like, fuck you, work for 30 hours and then be grateful for it. Shit rolls downhill.

It's a privilege to be here. you're attending is an asshole you have to cover for them they're fucking drunk on service doesn't matter we went through trial by fire so you need to go through trial by fire a lot of toxicity and residency education so a lot of residents were really upset and justifiably so the whole point is that there's an internal component and an external component there's a lot of stuff about being in the educational system if you were a student i had a ton of classes that absolutely sucked and it sucked to be a student in those class because the teacher is terrible. Yeah.

And there's a lot of students who don't do their responsibility. There are a lot of students who, like, I'm stunned by how little some people want to work. And how, like, if I am unhappy at my job, that is not my responsibility. That is your responsibility. Right? So I've seen a shift among students over the last 10 years to really completely, like, give up the reins. Some of them really give up the reins.

And I've seen an overall global shift of if a student is unhappy, it is not, or if they're not, actually this is the biggest one. If a student is not getting a good grade, it is the teacher's fault. And I believe that as a teacher, it is my responsibility to make sure the student learns, but that the student also has to put forth some amount of effort.

Can I ask a question? I know we're kind of getting a little off the top of, but I'm actually just super curious about this. How much of that can you control through your teaching to bring the student around to learning to love, like the value of actually working hard? Because there is something special about working hard. But then also, why has there been this shift in people?

If the shift is just assuming the shift is fully real and universal, why does the shift, like, why is it there in the first place? So I would say, so I had a, a fucking brilliant mentor, who once told me, as a doctor, you should never go the extra mile for a patient.

And this blew my mind. Because I was like, I thought as doctors, we go the extra mile. And he says, a doctor who goes the extra mile for a patient goes a mile too far.

And the reason for that is any time I go the extra mile, someone else walks one mile less. And if I walk two extra miles, they walk two miles less. So the more that you do for people, if you do what is beyond your duty and really go above and beyond, you are allowing someone else to not do their portion. So when you ask me, it's kind of an answer that doesn't, I can't explain, but is it your responsibility?

Is a teacher to be inspiring? Absolutely. Can you work hard to help a student be inspired? Absolutely. How much should I do? I'm going to say 50%. I should do 50%. The student should do 50%.

Now, I think that there's a certain amount of basic duty I have as a teacher to recognize that each student is in their own place and that some students may require more effort and some students may require less effort. I don't really think about it that way because what I really think about is it's a qualitative difference in the kind of effort that they need. So some students, when I do 50%, when I expend 50 kilojoules of energy to help this student, it's going to get them to show up to class.

One of the real tragedies in the world today is that what we do is we give those students extra attention. What I should be doing is giving 50 kilojoules to my star student as well. They just need a different kind of kilojoules. Since you show up to class, since you get straight A's, I should be expending the same amount of effort for that student too. But where I'm pushing them is in a different place. So I'm actually ideally exerting the same amount of effort for all of my students. It's just what does that effort look like? Is that, am I going to send three emails to one student asking why aren't you showing up to class?

And then for someone else, I'm going to send three emails to people that I worked with at the MIT incubator for startups that they have because I have a student that I think is exact. I think both students deserve three emails. That's great parenting advice. Yeah, right? So our kids have different needs. And sometimes, I'm not saying you have to send one email a month for everybody. But like, I think generally speaking, I think it's really sad that we live in a society where people who are falling further behind, do they need help? Should we help them?

Absolutely. But we're walking a really dangerous road because the moment that you start doing work for another human being, the most natural evolutionary response is for you to do less. Yeah. Right?

And I'm not saying that some people don't need more help. Clinically, like, you know, I think you should do what people need, generally speaking, within the bounds of what you're supposed to do. like within the bounds of what you do. So there are absolutely some patients that, you know, like I'll communicate with more. I accept more responsibility because they're not able to accept responsibility.

But generally speaking, over the lifetime of my clinical relationship, I don't want to go the extra mile. If you need some more help now, that's totally fine. But like once you get your shit together, I'm going to, I'm going to stop doing more. And you're going to start doing more. That's the goal. And so I think, does that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah.

Right? So I know that was kind of like a weird rant, but I think like this is, it's really dangerous. So here's the last thing that I'll say is like what worries me about this is that if if there is a group of students who is relying on the systems around them to fix problems for them, you are disempowering yourself at a terrible level. Right. So should you expect the people around you to live up to their responsibilities? 100%. but be super careful about giving your responsibility over to them. And there was another, there's a story that I share a couple times. So I was one time talking to the head of security at MIT. And we were talking about feeling safe on campus. And they said something that really struck with me. And they're like, my job is not to make people feel safe. My job is to make people safe.

And one of the challenging things is that, and I mean, this is something I understand as a psychiatrist, sometimes the fear that you have, even if you don't feel safe, doesn't mean that you aren't safe. Sometimes the fear that you have is irrational based on a trauma, et cetera. And it is not the police, the head of security in MIT. It is not their job to make you feel safe. It is their job to make you safe. But there is a component within you that you need to work on.

And I see this manifest in all kinds of scary ways with like relationships where people have a history of cheating and things like that. where like if my last part of cheated on me, now I don't feel safe because I'm not letting, you're not letting me see your phone. Some of the most, not abusive, but toxic relationships that I've seen are when one partner outsources the responsibility of their feelings to the other partner.

If I don't feel safe, it is your fault. If I don't feel loved, it is your fault. It is your job to make me feel loved. Right? But if the bar that we're setting is my feelings, that is not something that you can actually control. It's an unwinnable standard. Kind of with me? Yeah.

So kind of going back to this like burnout thing first. Actually, do you have any other thoughts, questions, responses? No, I'm just thinking through it from like a perspective of a long-term relationship. I've been with my wife for 17 years now at this point, 14 married. Me too. and so oh nice congratulations yeah i mean we i think we're married for 14 i think we've been together a little bit longer but yeah married for 14 together for 17 um just thinking about that which is i think you're right her feelings are not my responsibility but it is my responsibility

to care for her feelings it's like this weird dichotomy that that exists there that i'm i'm not very great at meeting but nonetheless i'm thinking about this which is just how do you like those are two two phrases that are just so close to each other yet they're not, you know, they're not overlapping. They're not a perfect then diagram. Yeah. So this is where like I'm going to go one step more confusing. So I think a romantic relationship is really one of the only things where I actually do believe you are responsible for your partner's feelings. I think it's the one relationship where like when I think about my marriage, if my wife does or doesn't feel a certain way, I, I feel responsible. Now that can,

you can get off into really dangerous territory for the reasons that I said. But I think that's the one place where you should be responsible for your other. I think that's the whole point of marriage is that there's another human being that you're like, the special thing about this relationship is I am taking responsibility for the way that you feel. If you feel a certain way, I'm making it my problem. But if you're not careful and you do, and here's the key thing, I should be responsible for your feelings in a marriage. but you should be responsible too.

We get into a problem when I become, when I've worked with so many people who are in scary relationships with partners who have mental health problems, who are depressed and suicidal, who are also fucking manipulative and sociopathic. You want to break up with me? I'm going to kill myself. Damn, that's good. Right? And it happens a lot.

And so this is what's really, the dangerous. thing is not that I'm responsible for your feelings. The dangerous thing is when you stop being responsible for your feelings. And this is where ideally, like, I think we actually pretty easy transition back to burnout, which is like your burnout is your responsibility and it's your job's responsibility. Both of all have shared responsibility over this. So it is their job to do what they are responsible for and it is your job to do what you are responsible for. Okay. So reframing to opportunity, right? So if you have these kinds of thoughts,

I have to, I have to perform, I have to meet expectations, try to really think about how can you make this for you? What would excite you for it? And this is another kind of cognitive thing, which we'll go into in a little bit more detail. And I think you kind of did this really well.

So like, you know, you talked about how you should work. And this is a fundamental shift in how you can think. When you work, where is the enjoyment? See, if you are working for a later enjoyment, then you are at higher risk of burnout. Makes sense.

If you are working for enjoyment in the here and now, then you have a greater likelihood to not be burnt out. And this is what's so scary right now is that human beings, are losing the capacity to enjoy their work. Because enjoying your work requires, I'm simplifying a bit, but requires a dopaminergic release in your nucleus accumbens. You can enjoy work. But if you're dope.

Can you say that for us layman? Yes. Are you saying that because of like our high reward dopamine society of social net, like, just screens in general, it's really hard to enjoy the things that. take a much longer amount of time. Yeah, I would use slightly different phrase there, but I'm stopping to screen share

so you can see me for a second. Screw me now. Oh, no, no, it's okay. I don't have to. No, no, it's okay. I'll get a fixed. I'll get a fixed. Okay.

So I'm just, I'm literally screen capturing to put you on stream. So, okay. So here's what I would say. So let's understand, like, so,

Prime, how do you, where does enjoyment come from? Like, do you have a sense? Like, how do you enjoy things? What is the mechanism of enjoyment? So, okay, so I'm just going to, I'm going to say in the least sophisticated way possible. Great. That's what we want. For me, enjoyment generally comes. I'm kind of a weird person. I beat Battletoads at a really young age. I have kind of a bit of a Masticus, a Mastikis kind of spree inside of me. I really enjoy working on hard problems and seeing them through. Excellent.

Right. So things that are very, very difficult, it makes me feel really good being able to power through something. Okay. Great. And sometimes the process during it can be really frustrating. Like I can go through what feels really horrible during the actual like process, but the ending feels really, really good. I can give like a direct example of that is that I've been learning a new programming language. It's in a new paradigm. And doing that just even the last two weeks, there's just a small part of me that's just like, man, this is just so much. Like I can arm. already do all this stuff. Why am I learning it in yet another thing? I already know these things. And then it's just like, okay, take a step back. Remember why I'm doing this is because there's a love for learning. And I got to remember like this. And so I just just happened yesterday for me. And I just took a step back, got back into it. I'm having back in. Just having a great time again. Okay. So here's the really cool thing. Okay. So actually, let me ask, here's the wild thing. So you have a history of addiction to all sorts of shit, right?

Yeah. Your predisposition for addiction is partially explains the way that you are. So this is the wild thing. If someone is addicted to a bunch of shit, the really cool thing is if you can structure your life in the right way, you will be able to do such hard work and feel such a reward from hard work. This is what's really crazy about people who are addicted. If you can get them to stop being addicted, they will work so hard. and they will rise to the top so easily because they love succeeding in the face of challenges.

The circuitry for predisposition to addiction and thriving off of beating a challenge is one and the same. And we'll explain why, okay? So let me ask you a question. What feels better? Winning $100,000 at a card table or working for $100,000? $1. Easily the latter for me. Why?

In the moment, obviously, winning $100,000 would feel really great just in the moment. But I think, I mean, ladder for me is better. Because I am satisfied with creation. I fundamentally, the thing that I love to do is to create. And so if I'm working for $100,000, I assume I'm working in a position of creativity. Therefore, I'm creating something. So I'd much rather do that then. Even though, obviously, who wouldn't want to be?

$100,000, but working for it just is a longer-term thing. So which one do you think is more fun? Fun's a tough word. Yep. I don't know how I'd measure the two. I don't like gambling. Okay. But I understand the analogy.

Which one do you think people want more? Let's put it that way. I would assume if all shallows are clear, I would assume the gambling one is what people would say. Absolutely. Right. So I'm asking leading questions, but there's a lot of. of really great nuance in our language that explains different parts of the brain.

Okay? So the first is, see, fulfillment doesn't come from dopamine. Pleasure comes from dopamine. Craving comes from dopamine. Wanting comes from dopamine. So I don't know if this makes sense. We love being fulfilled. And on some level, a lack of fulfillment feels like emptiness within us.

but it doesn't motivate us towards action. No one wakes up in the morning and says, I want to be fulfilled. Therefore, let me do this. No one naturally ties action to fulfillment. The whole problem with fulfillment is I have to like, fucking do a bunch of random stuff. And if I'm lucky, at the end of it, I'll feel fulfilled.

There is not a direct connection between action and fulfillment. You with me? I think so. Okay. I know there's nuance here. I'll explain it. You know, actions do lead to fulfillment, but it is not like an if-then statement. If act, then fulfill, right?

That happens with dopamine. If drugs, then fulfill. I mean, then good. Then feel good. Not fulfillment. Then pleasure. If I win something at a card table, then pleasure. If I play Halo, then pleasure.

If I beat Battletoads, then pleasure. The if-then statement, the logic is like ironclad for dopamine. Now the question becomes, why do people crave winning at gambling more than they crave working really hard at their job and earning $100,000? There's absolutely a component of like temporal effort and things like that. I want to get more for less in the terms of gambling. But here's the really crazy thing. The reason that the gambling is so reinforcing is because of the denial of reward. So if you look at studies on video game addiction, we get addicted to video games that deny.

us things, not video games that give us things. When you say, I love Battletoads, yes. That's why you're a fucking addict, bro. The circuit in the brain is the same. It is this denial of reward that when, when, when we, let's say I play, did you play StarCraft? Oh yeah. Okay, great.

I knew it. Okay, so like, let's say like we meet on the StarCraft ladder and I beat you four times in row. The fifth time that we play on the Starcraft ladder, if you beat me, it feels really, really, really good.

The fourth time I beat you does not feel so great. I'm like, this guy's a fucking noob, right? Yeah. So if we sort of think about it, the dopamine release

is inversely correlated with difficulty. So the harder something is, the more that we release it. We release dopamine through natural means. Okay? And we're wired this way because a long time ago, there were lazy humans and there were hardworking humans. And the evolution wanted to reward hard work, basically.

Right? So just because something was hard, we didn't want to steer away from it because if something is hard, there are lots of signals telling us not to do something. So the denial of reward releases more dopamine. Okay? Okay. So now we get to like work and enjoyment. And I know we kind of got off on a track here.

So this is what's really interesting. when your brain is very sensitive to dopamine, right? If you're sensitive to dopamine, you're more prone to addictions. That dopamine feels really good for you. The really cool thing is that since you are sensitive to dopamine, if you can ever put yourself in a situation where you work really hard, you will get a ton of dopaminergic response. And your brain will love it and you will reinforce that behavior.

And we see you as a living example. addicted to drugs, now addicted to work, and in a good way, right? Like you feel so much pleasure from programming. Now, here's the problem. In the society that we live in right now, we have so much easy activation of dopamine that the hard work path to dopamine doesn't work for a couple of reasons. One is that the brain, you know, if I give you a choice between working really hard for $100,000 and $100,000 here, just open this box and you.

you get 100K, the brain is always going to pick the easier options. So now we have easier sources of dopamine. The more insidious thing is that our dopamine stores are essentially limited on a daily basis. So if I release dopamine through a video game, there is less to be released for hard work. Dopamine is actually a primary motivating neurotransmitter. It's what induces cravings, motivation, and behavior. But when we get rid of all of our dopamine, there's a number.

none left for the desire for hard work. And so it's really scary, but I think that, like, people who are addicted, it's sort of this, like, very, like, feast or famine kind of approach, right? So if you have a dopamine sensitive brain, you're more likely to fall into social media addiction, video game addiction, drugs, or whatever. But if you can ever break out of that, and you can, the same addictiveness to which your brain is drawn to substances. If you can ever show your brain

that you can get this through battle toads, through programming or whatever, you will be hooked. Your brain will absolutely love it. So it's really fascinating. But you're, I mean, so I was addicted to video games. You know, now I really enjoy my work. And tons of patients that I have, like,

part of the reason that I loved doing addiction psychiatry is because the patients, when they bounced back, like they went from like negative 100 to like a thousand. they would crush it so hard. And it's like this thing that is pulling them into this substance is now just shifted towards professional development and growth. And it's like amazing. I know that was kind of a tangent. Thoughts before we go back?

No, no. I think that makes sense. It's just, yeah, it's a very technical set of words for something that I, I feel like is in some sense observably true. Yep. I just lost you again. Oh, you put the thing back up. Yeah.

Sorry. I'm going to go back to drawing. You know, I should just make separate scenes. Okay, this is just ridiculous. No, no, I mean, but... What I mean by that is that it's very obvious that when I am doing... When I used to play a bunch of video games, it was so easy for me to just do that. And then I felt like I had no energy.

So it's like I can very much so relate to that. I can go, oh, I understand. that. I remember that. There's always like this, I can see it in my kids also. Like my kids, when they play a bunch of video games, what ends up happening? They're just like, it's really hard for me to get them to do other things. Because it's just like they've been kind of cracked out on dopamine for a little bit. And now they're just kind of acting a little bit goofy now. So it's like observable at least. Yeah, absolutely. I can see these things. Yeah. And I think even the way that you were pushing back against certain terms, like if I ask you enjoyment, right? You're like,

well, working really hard gives me enjoyment. That's maybe serotonin related. fulfillment related. A lot of what you're saying is your words and your subjective description of things, as you said, is like subjectively observable, maps onto neuroscience incredibly well. Right? That's why we observe it because it sort of fits with the way that our brain works. Kind of going back to this. Oh, yeah. So just to kind of summarize. Can I interject one thing? Yeah. I try not that when I talk about work, I try not to use the term enjoyable because I'm not sure if work is to be enjoyable, it's meant to be satisfying. I'm not sure if those are two overlapping concepts. I think, I think it's, once again, a very nice observable thing. And what I would say is that there is a

subjective difference between, so when I get a lot of dopaminergic release, that feels subjectively different from when my serotonin levels are high. So the way I would describe that is dopamine is pleasure, right? But like when I climb to the top of a mountain and I get to the top, I don't feel pleasure. It's not the same as like a blowjob, you know, like bluntly. Right? It's a subjectively different feeling and like qualitatively so. It's a feeling of fulfillment.

It's a feeling of contentment. It's even a feeling of relief. It's like, oh, this is amazing. I never want to do it again. Yeah. That's serotonin. And it's simplification. And dopamine is, that was amazing.

Let's go again. Right? And it's a different kind of amazing. So the really scary thing is that the two are inversely proportional sometimes. So when you have someone who experiences a lot of dopamine, right? So when you have someone who is flooding their dopaminergic circuitry using methamphetamine, their serotonin levels will draw. drop. It's not technically sort of like that, but basically, functionally, it's like that.

And, right? So when you're an addict, you don't feel good about your life. That's like the weight, let's say. And when your serotonins are levels, levels are high, you don't necessarily, like, you're not enjoying it. It's not pleasurable. But you're like, it's worth it. This is good. I want to continue doing this. So there are absolutely two parallel circuits in the brain that interact with each other in this way. The more doponergic you are, generally speaking, the more your serotonin will drop. And the more serotonin levels are high,

I would say the more resistant to dopamine you are. And this is what really gets addicts really messed up is when you, and this is related to burnout too. So you used to escape with Halo, right? So let's talk about escapism and burnout for a second. When I have a serotonergic deficit, not technically.

So you guys have to understand, I'm making like functional statements. So that means sort of like how it works from a clinical perspective, but it's not like we're measuring serotonin concentrations in people's brain when I, so we don't know that technically, but whatever. So when I'm serotonin deficient, okay, 5HT is serotonin. Then what happens is I don't, I feel empty inside. I feel a lack of fulfillment.

And then what happens is my brain tries to fill this void with dopamine. So I'll escape because I don't feel good on the inside. My baseline is not content. And so then I feel empty and then I'll engage in escapism behaviors. This will make burnout worse because this is what fixes burnout. You have to get rid of this. That actually makes a lot of sense. That's, I mean, those are my worst years where that were.

Right. When it's a slog between I have to, I have to meet expectations, I have to perform, but I hate it. And as soon as I'm done, I'm going to leave work and I'm going to go play video games and I'm going to be dopamine or So the way that you end up shirking off responsibility, which makes the more have to get bigger, and then it just is like this constant wave. Absolutely. Absolutely. So we need to flip that around on its head by starting to derive some degree of enjoyment or pleasure from work, which we can start by using the Nemic effect.

We can also start by sort of saying, okay, I have to do this to get to where I want to go. We can start by literally, so when I have people who are burnt out, you know, I'll ask them, what is something that you can enjoy or what is something that you can intend? try to enjoy about your job. And then here's the cool thing. So now we get to your side project. So what did you do? You started doing work that was enjoyable.

So then what happens? 5HT starts to rise. 5HT starts to rise. Decrease of void or emptiness. Decrease of dopaminergic activity. Which means more dopamine available. which means when you solve a hard problem, you get high dopamine release,

and then this gets reinforced. This gets reinforced, which means now you want to work. Does that kind of make sense? I know this makes perfect sense. Right? So this is where it's like one of the biggest mistakes that people who are burnt out make

is that they try to work less on to the global. And I'm not saying that, so what you want to avoid, is effort that is wasted. And what you need to do is sort of like reprogram yourself while you are in a shitty work environment. Right? Because people will say if I want to, I mean, my work sucks.

I don't like work. Fine. Then start working outside of work. So I had two jobs when I started Healthy Gamer. And like it was totally fine. One of my jobs I wasn't a huge fan up, but I had it anyway, whatever. So I think that like working more and doing fulfilling work. and this is how it works.

We have to go through this thing. So if you get some amount of fulfillment, the void lessons, once the void lessons, we don't escape as much, once our dopamine stores are not empty, then we have more dopamine, then we will find work more pleasurable, and we will reinforce it.

We'll go back to like, I wake up today, I want to do drugs, therefore I get pleasure. It's not fulfillment. It's actually harnessing both of those circuits. The other thing that I want to talk about, two other things,

and then we can sort of maybe wrap up, but next thing, this was great. This is something that I think is very, very under, this is a step that very few people, we never tell people to do, but it's crucial. You, I forgot what you said. I think you said you kind of mentally checked out. You remember that? You said you kind of checked out for a year? Yeah. So this is something, this was one of the coolest discoveries. I stumbled upon some research that just blew my mind. We as a society, generally think about checking out

is a bad thing. Checking out is a necessary step to plugging back in. Intentional checking out. So a lot of times we think, and there's two kinds of checking out. One checking out is escapism through things like video games,

pornography, whatever, right? We like need a break. A break is not checking out. You need to mention, check out from your job to fix burnout. And this is what's really fascinating. So I was looking at studies on midlife crises and quarter life crises. And a quarter life crisis and a midlife crisis is like a developmental thing that you have to go through

and getting out of it. One of the key things is actually creating distance. When you were wrapped up and you know, I'm like 99.99% sure that you're going to understand exactly what I'm going to say. And if people are burnt out at work, they're going to understand this too. When you are wrapped up in the expectations, the pressure in the weight, you are anything but checked out. You want to break from it. You want a relief of it. But your mind defaults to going there. You have to yank it away. You're not checked out.

You're dragging your mind away from it. And the moment that your mind becomes idle, it's like, oh, I have to do this and I have to do this and I don't want to let these people down. And now I got to, got to, got to, got to got. You're not mentally checked out. You're mentally horribly checked in. So intentionally creating distance, and this can be physical distance or mental distance. And you did this in a couple of really interesting ways. You dropped out of that management track.

My guess is that you did the minimum exceptional effort. So I don't think you started slacking at work, but you did the minimum, I would bet money that you did the minimum to do a really good job. And you used to probably do way more than the minimum to do a really good job.

You would do a really good job and then you started, you were like, I still had my IC duties and I started this management track. Right? So you need to mentally create space from your job. Stop thinking about it.

Get away from it physically if you can. This is also really important for relationships. This is why you shouldn't like stay in touch with someone after you break up with them, because the brain and mind needs space for new things to grow. I want you all to think about your mind as one lot of land. And if it has a bunch of housing on it, you can't build something else.

You got to knock down one of those apartment buildings to make space for something else. Make space in your life if you want to fix burnout. And that involves a very mentally checking out, which is not escapism. This is very clear. Right. So think about all of the space in. your mind that the job occupies. Clear as much of it as you can.

Stop striving for promotion. Stop striving for your boss to be like you and shit like that. Stop trying to impress people. Stop trying to come in on Monday morning and be the Savior. And once you do that, your burnout will reduce because space will be created. Once space will be created, this kind of naturally fulfilling work in these side projects will will start to arise. You'll get bored, and that's what we want. When you get bored, you'll get interested in something, and when you get interested in something,

pursue it, and then fulfillment will follow. That's how you break the cycle. The last thing that we're going to talk about, probably... And I accidentally got a lot of things correct here. You didn't accidentally get anything correct. Everything you have is correct. And if it was not... Because I want you to understand this, Prime. there is a mechanism, right? Your brain works in a particular way.

There's also a spiritual mechanism as well. You can talk about maybe on a different day. But if something works, there must be a reason, right? Like in the world, like if a car moves forward, that's because friction. Yeah. Right? Like, there are mechanisms, and your journey must utilize the mechanisms that exist. And your journey is beautiful because, like, you did it stepwise.

Now we get to the last one. Okay, so ego and internal drives. Now, one of the biggest mistakes that you can ever make is for you to feel like to have an internal problem with you that you try to solve through your job. I feel like I'm stupid. Therefore, I have to prove myself at work. I never had a father figure.

Therefore, I don't want to disappoint my boss because I have a paternal transference towards them. I'm tired of being a loser. I want to be a somebody. I want to be a cool kid. I was never a cool kid in high school. I was a reject. I was this.

I was this. I want to show people. And this is like so sad. I see this all the time in medicine. These nerdy little kids who struggled to date think, oh my God, now that I'm a doctor, all the bitches going to be lining up. Insecure teenagers make insecure doctors.

And then they show up on dating apps and they're like, oh, once I'm a doctor, everybody's going to be lining up because women want to date doctors. They're still fucking lonely as fuck. So don't solve your internal insecurities at your job. Don't look for meaning and purpose through your job. Let the meaning and purpose come first

and let the job be a part of it. The job doesn't give you meaning and purpose. The job is one of the wheels of your meaning and purpose. Don't try to solve internal problems of insecurity or this or that at your job. It's a terrible idea. The biggest one is ego. Most common one is ego, right? Like, I want to be something.

I want to feel like I'm a good person, therefore I need to get promoted. If I'm promoted, then I'm worth more. I have more value as a human being. I can hold my head up higher. I want to be at the cool kids table. They're the bourgeoisie. They're the people who are talking at the conferences and the people in the audience. I'm going to be on the stage.

I'm not going to be one of these fucking plebs in the audience. The moment that you have that kind of stuff, you're buying yourself the opportunity of burnout. This is going to increase the risk of burnout. Why? Because if your value, if you're looking for paternal love from your boss and you work really hard and you get some kind of validation, they're like, hey, I'm proud of you.

And then you're like, oh, right? But now this becomes your source. of that feeling. And so now you're like dependent on the job for feeling great, feeling like a good person, all this kind of stuff. And this is where like this is where I think a lot of times, I mean, sometimes jobs will take advantage of this. I think most of them are too clueless to be aware of it.

But like you'll end up working way more than you need to. And you'll end up trying to look for answers in the wrong place. So I think if you go through these things, like these steps and you understand this framework, you will move from this to this. and ideally this to this because you ask can you prevent burnout someone who someone who is

watching Netflix now someone who is internally content will not be at risk of this right like all this kind of stuff will be like and there's all kinds of more detailed things but this is basically how you do it I'm going to stop scream sharing with you now if that's okay okay yeah yeah yeah yeah

does that make sense yeah that makes sense You know, when you say all these things, honestly, like in all reality, the first thing I think of is like, damn, I got checkmated by God in the sense that I didn't plan. Like, if those steps are truly exactly what you need to avoid all those things, most the decisions I make weren't some calculated decision. They weren't like, oh, okay, I need to do this now. It was just like, I just kind of fell into that place. Yes. And even that thing about like finding your purpose first, it's like, it's like, you.

you know, in the beginning of what we were talking about, I fell into my purpose by simply going, man, you know, I guess I'm going to, I'm going to go to seminary now, all right? I'm going to do this. And then it's just like, I kept finding myself going back. I literally bought a protractor and various things to like map out something. I was like, dang it. I can't help but to like want to build things. Like I think this is who I really am. Yeah. And so it's like, I built all these things by by accident in that order, not having any, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't planned. Right? Like I didn't come into this being like, oh, this is like the steps we need to take. Oh, it was certainly planned.

Just not by you. Well, not from my, not from my perspective. Not by you. Right. So I think I think I fell into this hard. Checkmated by God is a great way to put it. Right. So like I know you know this. This may be confusing to other people. But like this was your path. This was designed, right? Like you like you had your own garden of Gethsemini. Right? Where like you had.

I wouldn't say it was that bad. But yes, I said you're saying. Right. So you had the moment where like God very. very intentionally, like, enters your life. And now you see that, like, this was all part of your path and part of your journey and all this good stuff. And this is what God intended for you. And you know that your life is good. You have a lot of gratitude because God didn't, like, I'm sure it was painful, but, like, you're happy with where you ended up.

And you're grateful for where you ended up. And, and, you know, God did you a solid, which is great. And that's what's cool about God is, like, God will fix basically whatever and will take you from a poly substance pornography addict, 19 year old, to a happily married father of, I don't know exactly how many kids you have, who has a fulfilling career, right? And like, you didn't do that yourself.

Like, did you work hard? Absolutely. Is hard work a part of it? Absolutely. But you know that you got a helping hand in a way that you cannot accept responsibility for. Yeah. I'm most certainly not foolish enough to say that I've done all these things myself.

Yeah. Right. And I think it's hard. for people who have not had that direct experience of like this, this thing swooping in from the outside and just like being there and you're like, what the fuck is that? It's, they're not going to understand, right?

It's really hard to understand. Yeah. But if you've, if you've had that direct exposure to God, right? Like, and people will say, like, if God exists, why don't, why doesn't God reveal themselves? And I think God does reveal themselves. I just don't know why.

and how exactly, or I know some, but, you know, I think that there's a lot there too. So I think checkmated by God is a really great example. A really great way to put your journey in context. Yeah. Well, thank you for explaining my own life to me in some sense. This was actually really useful. Yeah, thank you for sharing your life because I think the cool thing is that like now, hopefully people who are watching this can,

benefit from it. And we try to do, I mean, so, you know, we do lectures and stuff like this too, but like, part of the reason that we, so one of the things that I found is that, you know, working with people through this can be really helpful.

And, and so I, I think one of the things I'm super proud of is, is like, we developed a program that basically focuses on career support. So it's not psychiatry, but it's like understanding burnout, burnout prevention, reconnecting with purpose, like all this kind of stuff. And I'm really proud that like that program works really well. What's the name of the program?

It's just a career coaching program. Right. So some time ago, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but like the other thing that I sort of realized is that you can have all kinds of mental health problems, but half of mental health problems are like economic problems. And helping people become fulfilled in their career, get promoted, and stuff like that. Like, that's going to, like, as a psychiatrist, I had so many patients who were like, if I could just improve your job, your job situation, then that would help so much.

There's like just so much about someone's like physical situation, whether they're fulfilled at work, whether they're making enough money, whether they're getting appreciated at work, whether they're over-investing in work, that these are the problems that I think become really, really important. And once you start doing well in that dimension, I really think it's sort of the, I mean, sometimes we focus on treating depression

so that people can go off to work, but sometimes I wonder if we should be doing it the other way around. That if we can help people thrive at work, then their mental health will just get, like, boosted so much. And every time I talk to someone like you, I think about if you had someone who could have helped you along. And it sounds like you found like a really important mentor,

that person who pulled you into the management stuff. But like how many people out there right now who are struggling, like if they get the right kind of support or they do get a helping hand, how much would their lives be altered? And I just think about that quite a bit. I think the challenge is that I don't know how to consistently get God to show up in people's lives and help them. I can't answer that one either.

Okay, so I'm going to say something that's going to sound offensive, but I don't want you to take it that way. Yeah. I know you're not supposed to do trigger warnings either, but I'm doing it anyways. Is therapy being used as a replacement for community? As a replacement? You're saying I wish people had these mentors and all that. And like a real good mentor is also someone who is like in your life, because they're in, they're in your life, right?

They're there for no other reason than to be in your life. And I know this is kind of a hot take. And so just like, just hearing these things is, are people, since they can't have that, do they just go, okay, well, I'm going to go to therapy to kind of fix this thing? And they're not actually getting the community. They're getting the, you know, the semblance of community in some sense, someone to actually talk to, Who actually can talk to the short answer is, this is going to sound kind of weird, but like enough of a yes. So I don't think that therapists are out there or we as a profession are saying to ourselves,

let's try to replace community. I think what's happening is that therapy has become the last bastion that people can directly access that is tangential enough to the problems in the other. parts of their life that do not have any clear solution. So what's happening is like therapy is becoming like the refuge for all kinds of problems that don't belong in therapy. Because we live in a world where you can't make a friend. Like I had a really bizarre experience.

So I talked to presumably a friend of mine. And we've been like texting back and forth to meet up for like a year. I actually completely, I can relate to this. And I didn't, like, you know, I've heard about how bad dating and stuff is and how about how hard it is to make friends. And like, like, you know, I have, we have the luxury of like growing our friends in our household. I have enough community like in these four walls to where I feel relatively fulfilled. And I have friends that are older, you know, that I've stayed friends with. But I tried making a new friend.

And holy shit. It's like I have this whole life. They have this whole life. we really get along well, but it's so hard to form a connection. And I think, unfortunately, you are correct enough that therapy has become the only alternative that is accessible to most people. So people who struggle in their jobs go to therapy, right? Because I feel unhappy.

The problem with therapy is that burnout is not a diagnosis. The average therapist gets a total of zero hours of training in burnout. They don't understand. I mean, maybe I'm selling them short, but these mechanisms of burnout, like, I've been doing burnout research for like 10 years, or not burnout research technically. I've been working on burnout. I haven't been a researcher. And so I think like the reason that we started Healthy Game or the reason that we have conversations

like this is because someone may be burnt out, may go to therapy. I don't know that they're going to get what they got out of this conversation. They're not going to get the sense of community and connectedness that you're, as you enjoy, sort of saying you're incomplete or crappy words or whatever, but your words are perfect, perfect. I will use some technical definition of serotonin and dopamine, but when you describe what did I use drugs to get away from, wait. That's their experience.

What we do on this stream is community, right? That's why we have Discord, and I'm sure you have a healthy community. I don't really hang out there very often, but outside I like the occasional Twitch stream. but um and that's why we started this career coaching thing because i was like this is not shit that therapists are specialized in and some therapists can help the problem is that those therapists tend to be the most expensive so you have a lot of therapists who specialize in like you know working with like engineers at google and and things like that right but those tend to be like

really not accessible so i think that there's we have to build the things that therapy that we are sending people to therapy for. We need to build community. We need to build things like career coaching. We need to build things. And, you know, coaching is a, it's a, it uses a methodology that therapists use, but it is trying to solve a different problem.

Same programming language, but over here we're building a game. Over here, we're building like a food delivery app, right? So the, the methodology of therapy can be used for clinical things, like addiction, to motivate behavior, around addiction. But we can also motivate behavior around applying for a resume.

Or sorry, updating your resume, applying for a job, not getting burnt out. Understanding when I have a relationship with my wife that's toxic because I'm projecting all these things, you can absolutely have that kind of relationship with your boss and understanding those things. How do you set boundaries with your boss? So I think there's a fundamental, something has changed where we used to either not need these skills or we got them organically enough. Something has changed now where we need to basically inject people with skills to survive

in life or thrive in life. It's not something we absorb around us anymore. And I get really scared because, and we haven't talked about how you met your wife, but I would imagine there's a fair amount of similarity that like we probably sucked at talking to women. and then we were forced into certain situations where we like basically had to learn how to do it. The problem is that if you look at kids nowadays,

there is no forcing them into social situations because the social situations don't exist. Yeah. Right, I got thrust into social rehabilitation. And now like there's not a place, like, other people talk about the loss of third spaces and lack of community and things like that. There's also, you know, atheism is on the rise and stuff like that.

And I'm not saying that that's a bad thing by any means, but one of the things that church used to give us was community. And as fewer people go to church, totally fine, not saying that that's good or bad, where are they getting their community again? They're getting it on Discord. That also is like good up to a point. The one thing that Discord can never give you is a spurt of oxytocin in your brain

when you hug your friend goodbye after meeting up with them. So I do think we're relying on therapy to fix way more than it is designed to fix. And I think if you use therapy to try to fix those things, it's going to be really inefficient. And I'm not offended by the question at all. Okay. It's just an observation. I've been just toying around in my head for a little while. I actually want to follow up on the Discord thing because I think that's super relevant.

It's probably relevant for your community, also my community. and I think pretty much every internet community is that we've foregone a lot of physical meetups for in place of like Discord meetups or being able to talk on the internet. And a conclusion I'm slowly, I've been drawing, which is it kind of stems off the Aristotle, principal Papa Aristotle's principle of friendship. And one of the requirements is proximity. And even though I live in the same town, I'm like a five minute drive from somebody, it's almost like the proximity between me and that person is like a continent. Just like the friend you're trying to meet up with for like the last year, it's like even though you probably. are physically not that far away. It has no, like, problem of actual physical distances.

It's just, like, life proximity is so different, whereas Discord kind of normalizes the life proximity and puts us all in the one place. But the thing that I've been kind of, like, is that good, is that bad? I keep making this argument in my head, like, okay, why would that be bad? Is there anything because, you know, internally or inherently, I look at that and go, I think there's something wrong with friendships that only exist in Discord. And I think the reason I've come to is that there's no danger. for I think a true friendship to exist, you need danger.

Because what I can do is I can just block you. I literally don't have to hear anything else from you ever again. I can just never sign into that account again. I can just disappear. Whereas like when I'm with a real friend, they know me. I can't just disappear. They're going to want like a real friend will check in on me and try to find out what's going on.

And so there's like an element of danger that is missing in this relationship. Yeah. So it's a really interesting characterization. generally speaking, I'd say I agree with you. I would say that Discord is not good or bad is both. So one of the craziest things that I had to explain to people many years ago. So I had a friend that I started, I met randomly in a Starcraft match. And then, you know, really became a friend.

Awesome, right? So, like, I was like 13 or something, maybe 15, 16. And so we started playing Starcraft and then made a bunch of friends on Starcraft. Some of them ended up going to a universal. near, I went to University of Texas. They were from College Station. I was one year old. And then they drove down to Austin one time.

And then we hung out and that was super cool. One of my friends from Starcraft, I invited to my wedding. And that was the first time that I met them. Or actually, I met them at my bachelor party. So that was super cool. We'd been playing StarCraft for like 10 years. I mean, we moved on to other games.

But, and so like the friendships we form online are real. I think, though, that there are a couple of, that's what makes it so damn. that's what makes it so dangerous, is it's real, but it's not complete. If we look at the human beings biological needs over friendship, discord cannot supply all of them. And so the really scary thing about online relationships is I think they're real, I think they're authentic. I think we get into the danger territory when those become our only or primary source of physical, of connection.

And what's really dangerous about that is if you look at what makes human beings meet their needs, it is the primary motivator that you have is a need. So once I start satisfying a social need partially through discord, then my motivation to leave the house decreases. So the moment that I start getting calories, I'm not going to work for nutrition. And I think that's kind of what discord can very quickly become for people. And then you mentioned this element of danger, which I think is huge. Because I think that what happens on the internet, the moment that we put our primary form of social interaction on the internet, there is a fundamental replaceability that doesn't exist in real life relationships.

And so, and that's, that's everybody. So you can replace other people and other people can replace you. That's why dating is such a mess. Discord can be such a mess. You get banned from this Discord server. You go to this Discord server. This is the crazy thing, right? If we think about someone who gets banned from a Discord server,

what is the likelihood they'll get banned from another one? Very high. And what you'll find is there are people who get serially banned from Discord servers because there's no one there to normalize their behavior. You just cut the person out. There's no corrective action. Right? And this goes back to your point about,

danger that in a real friendship, there is not a real friendship, just in human interactions, there is a necessity for tolerance of incorrect behavior. Everyone's like, oh my God, this person is so toxic at work. Thank God. Because if they're toxic at work and you have to deal with them every day, your ability to manage toxicity is leveling up. So now what do we have? we have a bunch of people who cannot tolerate toxicity from other people.

You have a bunch of people who don't know how to manage toxicity from other people. And since I don't know how to manage someone misbehaving, and by the way, we have this attitude, right, is not my responsibility to manage someone else misbehavior, which makes sense. Like, I'm not saying that it is your responsibility, but if we look at the way that human beings have evolved, we all have collective responsibility, tribally,

for each other's bad behaviors. We keep each other in check. And now we don't keep each other in check. None of us accept responsibility for somebody else. Whose job is it to teach and in-cell how to talk to girls? Whose job is it to help a man articulate his emotions? It's not women's jobs, certainly, right? And it's not our jobs.

It's no one's job. It's the responsibility. of the person themselves. We put all of the responsibility on them. Whereas if we look at what happens, generally speaking, in human societies, is there's basically a diffusion of responsibility. And so I think all of those statements about,

it's not my responsibility to teach anybody anything. I agree. But then we're still left with the problem of, if it's that individual's responsibility, I don't think that that works. Most human beings are not able to live. themselves up by their bootstraps. So it's not an individual's responsibility, but then like no one's responsible for it, so everyone's to blame. And that's what we see. When no one's responsible,

everyone's to blame. I'm going to blame you, you're going to blame me. So I think it's a huge problem. And Discord is like not bad. I love Discord. I have friends on Discord, but I also have friends in real life. And the really scary thing is that people who are growing up nowadays, people who are like in their teen years, young 20s, they don't, they did not have the luxury of the world that you and I grew up in. And the world that you and I grew up in was fundamentally more forgiving when you fuck up. This world is not forgiving. That's real. All right. So with all that, I mean, how does somebody, because I'm sure there's a lot of people right now that this hits home for that aren't.

aren't, you know, putting anything in chat right now. How does somebody find these things? How do, I mean, really, I struggle finding friends nowadays. Like, it's, it's hard. Like, how do you fix this problem? So I think the problem is in your question. How does somebody find friends, right? That's the fundamental problem is we're putting the onus of responsibility on you to find friends. I think the question that we need, does that kind of make sense? Like, that's the problem. Is your, keep going. Right. Do you, you, you follow them? me so far? I follow the premise. I'm not sure if I agree with it. I just want to keep on going so I understand that. So I think that that question is what has created the world today. Because then what

happens is people like me who are experts answer that question. And then I say, if you're someone who's alone, you do X, Y, and Z to find friends. And then the real problem is I may give you an answer, but I have reinforced the fundamentally flawed structure that it is your problem to solve by giving you an answer. I'm playing into that discussion. So I think the real answer involves two things. One, there is something that you can do, but then like everyone needs to be asking themselves, not what can I do to find a friend, but what can I do to help other people make friends? How can I contribute to the community or the society that facilitates the growth and friendship of other people.

And the reason I know this is the right answer is because you have a Discord server and I have a Discord server. And it's been too long. I always love doing this, but never have the time. So about two years ago, I sat down with people who were like running things on our Discord server.

And listening to them talk, I was blown away by how amazing these people are. There was a guy who was like a personal trainer. And so he does like, fitness stuff on our discord. I don't know if he's still there. Criminal, I forgot his name. But and he was like, yeah, like, most of what I do is like mental health oriented on the Discord server. It's really helping people get over their body image issues, helping them, like,

get to the gym. It's not so much about what exercises to do. That's what he sort of teaches on the surface. But this guy is dedicated to helping other people, like, connect. Right. So I think a huge part of this answer is like, we need to step up. And so I think, A big part of this answer is, what can I do to help someone else feel personally connected? And there are things that you can do for yourself to feel connected, and you should take responsibility for that. And this is where things get really interesting from a scientific perspective. Because there are a lot of studies that show that the best thing, not the best, there are, there are a lot of studies that show that a very effective intervention for people who struggle with mood disorders or in the midst of a depressive episode is to help.

somebody else. One of the biggest mistakes we make in psychiatry is when you're depressed, we all rush in to help you. Should we rush in to help you? Yes. But if we can get you to help someone else, that will have a huge impact on your mental health. There's this really interesting approach to depression called behavioral activation, which is sort of a similar, but it's this idea that when someone's depressed, they have trouble getting out of bed. Let's heal their depression so that they can get out of bed. Behavioral activation says it goes the other way. you get out of bed first and your depression will improve. So if you can activate someone's behavior,

just get them to start doing things, depression will naturally decrease. And you even alluded to that, I think, at some point in the conversation. You can just observe this in working out, right? The worst part of any workouts, the first five minutes, right?

It's always the same thing. It's just like, I hate this. By the end, you're like, that was great. So you can kind of mini-experience these things just along the way all the time. And same thing with programming. When you first started any, like even me, the first thing in the morning, the first minute, I'm like, okay, here we go. Okay, where was I?

What was it? Like, it's a lot of just like, uh, work. And then all of a sudden it's just like, you just take off and you're like, I'm in the zone. I'm loving this all of a sudden. It's just like a change in that by simply almost stepping into the gap and then it gets filled up. So the one thing that I do want to address is you ask, what can someone do? And so I went off on this rant about you should focus on other people. But I do think that I'd say the single most important.

thing that you can do if you're struggling to make a friend is actually focus on your internal process that makes it hard when you're in a circumstance for friendship focus on your internal process that sabotages your ability to form connections so i know that sounds kind of weird but like you know dating apps are a mess but part of the reason that they're a mess is because we don't use them the more skilled you get at dating apps the less of a mess they become Right? And so similarly, like, we don't, yeah, I don't know. But, but like, you know, some people do really well. And the reason they do really well is because they have some social proficiency. Like, they're really good at texting. They know how to text. They don't text too much. They don't text too little. Right. So there's a new crop of social skills, which is in this current, like, Darwinian post-COVID environment. There are certain social skills which are valued way higher. Being able to take a good picture. Being able to make a good dating profile.

Everyone thinks it's about how you look. It's not just about how you look. So there's a lot of cognitive difficulties that people have. Internal anxiety. Becoming mental mind readers, which is like when I'm sitting with someone else, thinking that I know what someone else is thinking. These are the kinds of things in a social interaction

that will cripple your opportunity. for friendship. If I sit there literally in my own head, because if I'm in my own head, I'm literally relating to myself. I'm in a dialogue with myself. If I'm in a dialogue with myself, I can't have a parallel dialogue with another person. So the more in your head you get, the less empathic you become. The less empathic you become, the more your social interaction will not become a friendship. So I think there's a lot of stuff that people don't, we don't really articulate it this way, but the way that I think about it is a social interaction has a percentage chance to become a friendship. What are the things that you can do

that will increase the percentage chance for a social interaction to become a friendship? Because what I see people doing is kind of like, like a combat marine grunt, rushing into social phrase again and again and again and just getting fucking hammered. by like trying to storm the beach. They're like, I'm going to socialize, I'm going to socialize. They show up there. It's a brutal experience. They retreat.

They get traumatized. Their loneliness becomes so desperate. They muster up a bunch of willpower and once more into the fray. And they get ground up and they bounce back. So it's really about maximizing. It's not about going, finding this place to go or that place to go. Like, sure, you should do that. I think if you're a dude, like going to a yoga class is a great thing to do.

So they're like those kinds of practical tips. But I think a lot of it is like recognizing that you can prime yourself for optimal function in a social situation. And a lot of that has to do with like cognitive bias. If you're someone who has like black pill kind of mentality and you show up on a dating app, the likelihood that you'll match with someone in a healthy, happy way is really low. So focus on those internal things. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.

I would imagine if you have a negative outlook towards life, you, it's going to be hard. It's going to be hard to find good love in a good relationship. Yeah, right? Because that negative outlook is sabotaging it. It doesn't blame you for having the outlook because that outlook is a consequence of your experiences. But what people don't realize is that, I don't know if this kind of makes sense, but if I have an experience and my mind forms a conclusion, we assume that there's nothing in the middle of those two steps. This experience, therefore, this conclusion. but there is a huge, I think I mentioned this to you earlier,

like I think I called it, what did I call it, like gatekeeping or something between, I don't remember, but like when do you have an experience, the conclusion that you form is modifiable with intention. So the way that you receive feedback from people, the way that you, you know, all this stuff is actually modifiable. And I think that's a huge mistake that people don't realize. You can get dumped by someone and things. think, oh my God, I'll never love again, or you can get dumped from something, because you screwed up

really bad. And then you can think, oh, my God, I'm so fundamentally bad at relationships. I'll never love again. Or you can think, oh, my God, I'm so bad at this. And I have eight months of experience. Now I've learned some lessons next time I can do better. I like it. I like that. There's, we never even touched on AI. We'll have to probably, I'll send you some thoughts on that at another time, just because we've gone on for so long. Yeah. I think it's about time for you to end things. Yeah. How are you holding up? I'm doing, I'm doing pretty good. You know, this talk was actually really great, especially just to talk about burnout. I've been kind of in this, in this process of a small life fiasco, if we will, lost my, my voice. I've been going through a lot of pain in my throat and went to an E&T person and there's nothing wrong with it. And so I've been getting medical massages. I've had this weird, like, just nerve and muscle problem in my neck. I think it's because I talk. like, you know, if you've seen idiococracy, I talk like that guy. That's the problem is that I just don't, I don't control my voice well.

So I've been going to like speech therapy and all this kind of stuff to try to fix it. But nonetheless, it's just like, like this week, I was actually in pretty good amount of pain just doing nothing. So I just couldn't stream all week. And so trying to figure out that whole situation. And physical injuries tend to be one thing that gets me into like I carry with me like a lot of, like depression like symptoms whenever I get some sort of physical injury because it's just like that's it's just really hard. I don't know why that's like my big hard thing. It's like when I hurt my knee. It just made me just go into a dark spot for a long time in my life. And so I can

kind of feel the same thing right now with like the throat thing. It's just that I'm constantly in this battle and we're in the middle of like a remodel. So life's in the middle of like chaos right now. So I have all these things kind of going on. And I feel like in some sense I was almost like walking towards burnout again. And so hearing just that's even talking through you with this is just and super helpful to like, okay, I got to just remember all the things I already know. Yeah. I think we underestimate how easy it is to forget what we know. We blame ourselves a lot, but it's like, see, anytime, so you have like a default state

of programming, which is usually based on your upbringing. And this is what's really interesting is that when I see people who like come out of a shitty upbringing, they like learn how to do one thing. And then they really get frustrated and confused and sometimes beat themselves up because they're like, oh, I'm like not an idiot in this dimension anymore. Why am I still an idiot in all of these other dimensions?

And it's because when you... I can relate. When you knock one thing out of the park, your baseline programming is still the same. Right? So you have like one exception. That doesn't define you. You're still actually defined by your, your crappy performance for the first 20 years.

And then what you have to do is like, you have to take that second problem with the same amount of vigor. Just because you fix this, you have to understand that your baseline programming is still the same. Like the bones of your AI are still the same. Like it's like deep down, it's 4chan. No matter how many like,

you know, things you put on top. And no matter how many HR training sessions you go to, it's always 4chan at the bottom. At the bottom, right? So if it was built on 4chan, it's built on 4chan. That doesn't change.

change. And so, so like, it's normal to solve burnout in one dimension and then, like, encounter it in a new way. The good news is that each subsequent time you solve it will probably be faster than the first. But you got to do it like maybe four to six times is my my check, my gut check. And then, then you'll really, your programming will change. That's pretty cool. One thing, you know, it's just saying those phrases, it's kind of the last the last little thing. I know we keep going, but you know,

you say this thing, and I think a really nice way for someone to hear it as, and it's just something that's kind of like been an earworm in me for the last two years, and I've said it like 19,000 times on stream, I'm sure people are tired of it,

is that you've always heard the phrase there's like the known unknowns, the known unknowns, and then the unknown unknowns. Like everyone kind of frames life like that. Well, there's a fourth one that I think that we never talk about, and this is like the one that gets me the most,

which are my unknown knowns. The things I always, operate in and the things I do that I have never even thought about. It's like, why did I think this way? Hidden competencies. Why am I coming to this conclusion? Yeah. And it's just like, it's just this inherent, it's like this memetic transfer from all these other people into my, into my body. And also it's just like, I'm doing things. And I'm just like, why am I doing this? Why am I reacting in this way? It's just because I've always known. I love that prime. That's great, dude. I think I'm, one more person to like it. Yeah, no, I'm like, I want to plagiarize that. And, and.

Oh, please do. It's MIT. What we're doing is MIT right now for me, so it's okay. What does that mean? MIT. Oh, so that's a licensing. That means it's free, open for everyone. There's, yeah, it's a very permissible licensing in programming. Yeah, no, I think it's a really great framing for a lot of stuff. Yeah. Both for your unconscious programming, right? You don't realize, I love it for subconscious programming.

And then also, I think it applies to hidden competencies as well. that there's a lot of stuff that you know that you can actually handle things that you're not aware of. And that there's a lot of subconscious stuff that your brain knows that you're not aware of, that you're responding to.

One really good example. Actually, you know, best thing, not best, but a really, really great example of unknown knowns and how to access unknown knowns is dream interpretation. So dream interpretation is something that I thought was like super like,

Woo-woo and things like that. Yeah, it sounds woo-woo. And a lot of it is woo-woo, but the crazy thing that I discovered, so the dream interpretation is the most direct, dreams are the most direct way for your subconscious mind to communicate with you. And the moment that you realize that, it's kind of crazy, that the people who benefit the most from dream interpretation are actually people who are hyper-intellectual, people like programmers, people who think very mechanically.

because there's this whole storehouse of their brain that they don't really access. They're not familiar with, like these feelings and stuff like that. And those feelings are actually coming from other parts of your brain, like interpreting social stimuli, interpreting facial expressions. So there's this whole storehouse of like input data, which the more hyper-intellectual I become, I wall off all of that data.

And then my subconscious tries to like serve it to me through dreams. So I'm not a huge fan of some of the really super psychoanalytic dream interpretation, but I think recognizing that dreams are one avenue that your subconscious mind tries to communicate things to you and being really, really precise in your mechanism of interpretation has been. It's wild, like how helpful it has been for people who are like super analytical. But anyway. Oh, I would have never, I would have never known it. It's out of left field. But anyway, thanks.

I mean, I'm happy. I mean, I think if we, like, need to talk again about AI or whatever and things like that, like, I would love to talk to you about AI. But I think this just took precedence today. And I loved talking to you. So thank you very much. No, I greatly appreciate that. This was a lot of fun.

Likewise, dude. Take care, buddy. Yeah. So one thing I do want to say. So, like, you know, if this stuff resonates with you. you all. Awesome. I think if y'all are having problems with burnout, strongly recommend you'll check out our career coaching program. So we built it specifically to address things that I felt like were competencies that cannot commonly be found in therapy, like burnout, imposter syndrome. These are not

like diagnoses that people get formal training in. I want to say in some ways career coaching is the most successful program we've had because it's the one that we have all. We have all always needed more demand for. So we launched it maybe three years ago. So it's gone through several iterations. And it's the one that we started off with like 30 to 50 spots. And it's grown to like 300. So basically every six months when we look at which kind of coaching is the most helpful and what kind of coaching do we need to provide more of, career coaching is at the top of the list. And I think the key thing here to understand is that a lot of the problems, like, When I talked about this ego and internal stuff, that is huge.

So there are so many particular, let me see if I can, damn it. So basically, when we were designing our curriculum, I can just kind of talk y'all through it. When we were designing our curriculum, what we did is we sat down and we tried to figure out what are the most common, basically, situations or complaints for people who are struggling in their career. So for example, someone else takes credit for my work. Or my boss doesn't notice how much effort I put in. Or I'm really not happy with my job, but I don't have the energy to find a different one. So what we basically did is take all of the most common complaints and then analyze them and break them apart into like what's going on here.

So for example, if someone else takes credit for your work, there's a lot of. there's an external component, which is like, if someone else is taking credit for your work, there are certain things that you can do from a corporate sense for that not to happen. Make sure you have one-on-ones with your boss. Make sure you CC people when you submit work product. Make sure that if you make a draft that you're sending to your person who then edits it and then submits it to your boss, make sure you submit the draft to your boss. There are all kinds of things that you can do, potentially talk to,

potentially talk to your boss. There are all kinds of things that you can do. But there is also an internal component. Do you feel embarrassed claiming credit for your work? Do you feel like you're not able to interrupt? Do you feel like it sounds like bragging? Are you insecure in some way? Are you shy?

Do you get mansplained? Do you allow yourself to get mansplained? Do you feel like I'm a little bitch if I go to my boss and I say, I worked on this too. Do you feel like a tiny little brother or little sister tagging along? Right? So this is the key thing about how we designed our program and I think why it's hopefully successful is because solving that telling you, hey, you should go talk to your boss is only half the battle.

So the program we tried to design is something that works on the internal and it equips you with the steps on the extra. So the coaches are familiar with this framework of there's an internal problem that you have to solve and there's an external like action that you have to take. And giving people the external action without solving the internal problem doesn't work. Because if you're someone who's shy or feels like and then like the next step is, okay, if you feel like claiming credit is bragging, where does that thought come from? Where does that belief come from? How do you see other people? because you're like, oh, this person claims credit for my work. This guy is such an asshole.

I don't like him. I don't want to be him. So now you're put in a terrible internal situation where the very thing that you are complaining about, you have to become him. You have to start fighting fire with fire. I don't want to be that asshole. So there's an internal component

and there's an external component for the most common problems. Right? Oh, I'm burnt out. But I want to find a different job. I feel guilty leaving this job because even though the job is not ideal for me, my boss is really nice. I feel like I'm abandoning my boss. I feel like I'm letting my boss down, and they've done so much for me.

So how do you frame a conversation with that person? How do you work through those internal feelings? How can you feel good about that? How can you say, like, hey, I really appreciate what you've done for me. I feel like I'm abandoning you here, but I'm really not finding an opportunity for growth. I want to move on. I need to move on. I really appreciate what you've done for me. I'd love to stay in touch. If there's some way I can help you, let me know. Right. So there's certain ways to craft communications which honor the feelings that you have, honor the relationship.

And then if you say that to them, if you sort of honor what they've done for you, if you express appreciation, the guilt will go down. Once the guilt goes down, your ability to leave increases. right? So someone in chat is saying, I'm low-key just waiting for them to leave, so I have an excuse. Let me say this bluntly, okay? I love that you participate in chat, and I love that you said that. But for fuck's sake, is that the strategy we're using in life? We're going to wait until my nice boss leave, so I don't feel guilty abandoning my boss. We're going to wait until this person who claims credit for my job gets promoted out of my role, so they're no longer doing my job. Therefore, I don't don't have to compete with them. Like, oh my God. And I don't blame y'all for doing that, right? Why is that hard? Because of the internal stuff. The internal stuff is so powerful.

It's so powerful. It's so powerful to the point that the strategy that we have is we're going to wait until our circumstances get better before we improve our job situation. And I'm with you that it's hard. That's why we're trying to help y'all with it. Right? Does this kind of make sense? Like, I get that things are hard. Things are incredibly hard. Arguably the hardest they've ever been. And people may say, but Dr. K, what are you saying? No, like it's all the special snowflakes.

Things aren't that hard. No. No. We have a ton of objective data that shows us that existing on the planet today is the most difficult in here that it's ever been. record rates of depression, record rates of mood disorders, record rates of anxiety, record rates of social anxiety, record rates of suicidality, record rates of addiction, a whole new bucket of addictions with things like this. It's hard. Record rates of people who are under the age of 30 living with their parents, record rates of low birth, low levels of marriage, low levels of romantic connection, record levels of loneliness. It's hard.

right so when everyone is having trouble that's not your fault the more people that are having trouble the more circumstantial or systemic the problem is that's the whole that's how you know if it's a systemic effect if you are an outlier then it's your problem if you're part of the herd that is dying out then it's a systemic problem then the question becomes how do we fix this so we fix this by having conversations like this, by bringing light to things that people did not understand. By recognizing that burnout has a methodology of happening, has a methodology to avoid it or prevent it, and has a methodology of recovering, once we understand the methodology. But then we have another problem here at Healthy Gamer, which is that some people watch a bunch of things on the internet,

and shockingly, they're like, life does not improve, or their life does not improve as much as they want it to, or their life does not improve as quickly as they wanted to. And the whole reason I started this was actually out of urgency. I could have gone the research route, spent 20 years studying video game addiction, become an expert, written a book about it, given lectures, trained clinicians, like that would have been great. The problem is if I spend 20 years doing that, what happens to y'all in the meantime. So one of the things that I experienced, I'm sure Prime would experience something similar,

is how, how can I say this? How fucked your life can get from messing up one year? Like the price of one year, or even six months, like screwing up for one year or six months has ripple effects. explaining a one-year gap on your resume graduating from college after five and a half years, one year of Fs. So then the question becomes, how do we fix this? So if urgency and outcomes, if time is what you're interested in and outcomes or outcomes

or what you're interested in, then coaching is the way to go. If you guys have a clinical problem, see a therapist like yesterday. Right? So if you're struggling with addiction, if you're struggling with like, depression, or bipolar disorder or something like, see a therapist. If you're struggling with figuring out what to do with your life, figuring out what your purpose is, figuring out how to motivate yourself,

figuring out how to get promoted, figuring out what your career is, then do coaching. And honestly, y'all, if this was something that I could put on the internet, I would. But this is the key thing to understand. I can give you as many lectures as I want to, but none of them are going to be tailored to you. the reason that coaching works, the reason that individual works, individual stuff works, the reason that working with a therapy works, therapist works, is because that is going to be

a framework that is tailored perfectly to you. And your alternative is you can watch Dr. K for five years, pick up a sliver here, pick up a sliver there, pick up a sliver there, and we do a really good job because y'all pick up more than slivers, right? Some of the stuff that we share with y'all hits. Hello, Pouare's at the audience. sometimes it hits and sometimes it hits in a big way

and sometimes people fucking turn their life around which is great but y'all got to understand from my perspective it's like I don't know how to say this like we're firing blind here it's like

I'm sitting there in space and I'm throwing down water bottles into the desert and hopefully the water bottle is what you need and is in the area that you are. Because I don't know what you suffer with. Okay.

All right, y'all. Well, hopefully that was helpful. Hope you guys enjoyed the stream with Prime. I absolutely loved it. The dude is really, he's very good with words. So I was like low-key, not low-key. I was quite impressed, especially with his...

I was like, oh, that doesn't sound like redemption. He's like, that's not where... He sounds like you don't know what the meaning of redemption. I was like, damn, son, let's go. Really, it was great. I love that level of precision and thinking, does such a great job of sharing his story with enough, like, subjective, you know, resolution. And then I think the really cool thing about it is the way that he talked about it,

basically maps on to, like, a framework of burnout. So if y'all are struggling with burnout, you know, hopefully that's really helpful. and then if you all need help with other stuff, we have a couple of other videos on burnout. I'm sure he's got content on it. I'm sure he's talked about it. And he's pretty vocal about struggles with addiction and stuff like that. So hopefully you all can find more help there.

And then last thing is that if content is enough, check out coaching. So I'll see y'all in a little while. Like I'm going to be out. So on August 8th, we have Dr. Michaela coming on to do debunking. social anxiety myths from social media, I think. And so she's awesome at that kind of stuff. So we're going to have someone kind of who's an expert in the things that the kids are

saying nowadays coming in and helping y'all out with that. Just not something that I really am familiar with. Thanks for joining us today. We're here to help you understand your mind and live a better life. If you enjoy the conversation, be sure to subscribe. Until next time, take care of yourselves and each other. Thank you.