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TRANSCRIPTION  of Bonus Interview with Anne Helen Peterson Season 2

Author Anne Helen Peterson on Millennials: They Arent Lazy, Theyre Just Burned Out

00:00:00 – 00:05:02

Hey friends. Welcome to the design speaks podcast. This is Julie. End Today we have a bonus episode for you guys Brandy is going to be talking with an Helen Peterson about millennials and burnt burnt out. I personally think that millennials early interesting maybe I just think that because I am lineal I duNNo. So this conversation I thought, it was really amazing with and Brandy just talking about how millennials are getting lots of burnout in dealing with Burnell in what you can do about it as well, and also has a great book coming out called can’t even how millennials became the burnout generation I can’t wait to read it. So go ahead and take a listen to today’s bonus episode. I had the privilege of watching you present for the ninety nine you conference online and it was it was obviously different. Conventional but you had a lot of really interesting perspectives and I can’t wait to chat with you about your new book. But if you would, can you just tell us a little bit about who you are and sort of the journey that brought you to the place where you are now the author? Yeah. I grew up in a small town in North Idaho and thought I was going to be a mathematician didn’t work out that way. Then, I went and got my PhD in Media Studies at your the University of Texas and was a professor for awhile but had been writing online throughout that time just kind of I needed a creative outlet. The sort of writing and thinking that is not. Usually. Accepted in academia, it’s just a different sort of writing and thinking right. So I wrote online for a wordpress blog and the mid-2000s when all. And as started writing. Really for free for some sites in the early two, thousand ten, this was when they were just a lot of kind of upstart new sites, the hairpin where people without people who are willing to rate for free who might not have a traditional journalism background. I didn’t know how to anything I didn’t. Know How to even ask for money. I just I wanted I wanted people to read myself. So I started writing for them in that expanded into two more things and eventually was asked to rate a piece on. Jennifer. Lawrence, in the history of cool girls for buzzfeed up win super viral. This is two thousand fourteen at the height of Jennifer Lawrence Yeah Frenzy. Basically wrote my job description at buzzfeed they were like come and do whatever you do and. Thank the job offer. I gave my last final and the next day plane and went to move to new. York to work fulltime for buzzfeed and that’s what. I did for the last six years as a culture writer and. Culture expands to include so many. And then I just recently this last past month. I decided to take my newsletter which I’ve been writing for free on the side for the last. Four years I decided to turn it into kind of a full-time GIG. So I’m in that brave new space of. Figuring out how to do everything by myself. Oh Man I know that feeling I have been there. I am still there. It’s exciting and kind of talk about this in the book but. That space of having complete control is really invigorating and. Liberating. But nothing. Does you’re the boss of everyone. Think you can always be saying I could be working more on this. Yes. Yeah. That is the downside to. Being Creative Entrepreneur or just an entrepreneur period is you have all the freedom but also do you really and so that’s sort of we’re talking about your book is called can’t even how the millennials became the burnout generation I believe and So I have a few questions so we’ll just start off with sort of a a softball. How do you define millennials? So I know like the dictionary definition says that they are people born between one, thousand, nine, hundred eighty and I think nineteen ninety-four, which I’m nineteen eighty-one on like right on the line we’re the same age we’re old. But it’s a great question because like you’re born in one, thousand, nine, hundred, ninety, nine.

00:05:02 – 00:10:25

You can still be a millennial because it’s sort of a mindset a little bit. Of a mindset I think a lot of to you know. I think of myself as. Having a lot in common with kind of more prime millennials and that’s because I went to Grad school and so like didn’t really enter into adulthood. And Tell my early thirties and so that’s when you know like set my. Back so I graduated, I was in Grad school still during the downturn but my PhD right into the slow slow recovery from the down. Like those. I, think those ramifications those Patients throughout the economy, a lot of how you experienced that. Has To. Do with whether or not your millennial ray or whether or not you experience the world in a quote unquote millennial type way. other things include massive mountains of student. Debt. And Still failing that Hill Mountain. Mountain. Also constant, just always there. and. So that contributed to it but then the other thing that I think really. Compounds the sense the feeling of burned with millennials is our relationship with digital technology. So I think older millennials like we actually experienced time. In College. In High School without phones ray like the added. In until I graduated from college and even the even to the extent of having a cell phone it it was just a phone, right? Live phone. You didn’t take a photo. I know text messages like texting. That is what is so novel, right? texting until I think like two, thousand, six or seven at least. Just with my boyfriend I didn’t take any wild right. And I think that. We also, we remember a time and were reared inexperienced college in and learned how to like develop our social relationships in a time before facebook. But anyone who’s even even two years younger than US three years yet. Really, hide their lives and their social lives in the way they interacted with the world came to be mediated in a very different way through those social technologies. Yeah. So. The stereotype of the millennial. Is is what versus how you feel is the reality of the millennial. Let’s start there. Because we’ve been called at all of our lives that we are lazy and entitled and Ask for too much and all sorts of things, and you know something that say several times in the book is like I do not know I. Don’t know a single lazy millennial anything. Most people probably have a similar experience. The only people I know who are super lazy and entitled has less to do with them being a millennial and more to do with being raised in complete privilege in isolation. Any sort of economic precarity right will there be lazy people in any generation, right? Yes. People are often times quite lazy. Yes. I think that. What the know the characteristics that I see running through millennials just hustle all time trying to like make your side-hustle into an additional primary hustle trained on your hobbies trying to figure out how to Eke out just slightly more time allowing work to really spread into all the corners of our lives and part of that is that we just internalized that like if you work harder than you might get those things. that. You were promised or that were. You internalized as promised to you so like if you can just Carter you’ll find stability in some some form, but it’s very allusive right because and you talked about this in the book you know our parents generation. For to some extent that was the reality for them like you work hard and you get to a place where you are stable. Even, though you know our parents lived through a different recession, like they were able to come out of that and SORTA, come out on top while at least for for me here are where we are when I was in high school is probably about the point where my parents started to. Really you know we were not. We did not have money growing up but by the time we were in high school like my dad’s. Business had kicked off and we were very comfortable and so I had that perception of like you know what I saw this growing up I saw my mom and my dad both working super hard and encouraging me to work super hard and you can have anything if you work hard enough and so while you know on the surface that seems like it is a really great thing and you know to some extent, it is What, what can you speak to sort of like the negative things that have been maybe internalized that maybe we don’t even realize because of those things.

00:10:25 – 00:15:01

Right will I think that idea that hard work? Yields success instability is at the heart of our understanding of how America Works Ray. Dream. It is it is intertwined with the American dream and also with the myth of meritocracy like who works hardened does the best will succeed. That work will be rewarded right. And I think anyone who has thought extensively about the ways in which. A. Class and social standing and race and location work. An immigrant status in all sorts of like even first language there. So many different things not even take into account the influence her. Raid. The. There’s just so many things that make it so that it does a I know people who’ve worked hard their entire lives and they’re still poor that doesn’t mean that they have not worked hard. It means that it’s really really hard to get past a certain. There are just there are they stopping point season that. If you can never get firm grounding if you’ve really struggled to get credit, right if for some reason, your credit is blown out of the water by eviction or a late student loan payments or. The. Moon happens in your twenties than it’s so hard to get up over that it is. And so I think that. A lot of us don’t see that correlation between the amount of work we put in and subsequent stability. and. What do you do when you see that most of us? So we weren’t taught that you give up we were hyper harder. Yes. Lane goal the boundaries. Right like you, then you get to burn out like that that is a burnout pass. I really I really like How you said that and I can’t remember if this was in the book or in the article that started out. The journey towards the book but basically Anyone can have burn out. And it doesn’t look the same for everyone. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Yes. So I think not only a lot of our parents have burnt out in some capacity. It’s not quite the same because I think you know. I’m not trying to say that burnout is a uniquely MONOP- millennial phenomenon of course not. Burnett has can like consolidated onto our generation in a way but like. Millennia burnout is related in my mind. So closely to precarity to precariousness rate to not having that stability. To not have an economic stability but also just like you know what’s going to happen in my life like He’s GonNa. How pandemic anyone? Pandemic what is going to happen with the environment like we’re living in so many different like forms of precarity, and the one thing that you can do to try to feel like you are working towards stability is to work all the time because you’re in control of that. People like I think the classic understanding of Burnout is what I thought like only happen to foreign correspondents at wartime in life doctors. You know that like you hit the wall so strongly that you like bounces back and you collapse in Your Lake Hospital is free. Although exhaustion, which is why I couldn’t recognize what I was going through as burnout like my editor was saying to me like I. Think you might be a little burnt out and I was so offended. How dare? An. I mean fine. I cry a retirement, get on the phone. And I think for a lot of people burnout looks like. A continual dullness. There’s a lot of characteristics with depression in sometimes is accompanied by depression it looks like. The feeling of everything in your life can flat. And this is also pandemic. Does this flattening into one long to do list the highs, the lows things that used to give you joy the things that used to Piss you off at all is just one long ever recycling to do list. and then it can also look like just the inability to get stuff done that you really do. WanNa get done. So whether that’s errands or even for me the way that I recognize a burnout behavior.

00:15:01 – 00:20:18

Is That I. Really love reading books. I love watching movies in full now distraction. But when I find myself just like scrolling through instagram instead of reading. Affection Bach. Only wanting to watch law and order SVU instead of. Those are indicators to me that I am so. You’re born hauer all depleted. All depleted and so I do not have enough energy to do the things that are actually restorative. Yeah. So I feel that I think I learned I learned a little bit more about like how to recognize things like that in myself when I learned about like the any Graham. Because I am a three which. Is means that I am constantly going like I’m always pursuing Doing something of value for others for myself for being recognized for what I know like number of things and so for a long time, I really prided myself you know. On this ability to multitask and you know. Well other moms might be in the Carpool Lane listening to music while I’m in the Carpool Lane waiting for my kids writing a blog posts like I’m more productive like that and you know there, there came a point where I realized that that’s not sustainable and using every spare minute isn’t even necessary and when I learned about the Graham and learned that when I sense myself being tired more. Like. Not Not wanting to use those spare minutes that doesn’t mean that something’s wrong lake. Why? Why am I not motivated today? It’s like. This is a hint that you need to chill the heck out and like rest and replenish, and so what is your advice to people on looking for signs of their own burn out I know that it took some time for me through the any Graham recognizing what that looks like for me like it’s good to rest like rest is value like rest is work for me like if I’m resting, I have to put that in like this is going to make you better later category. But what what have you learned through this in in some ways that people can recognize the signs of burnout Well there’s two things. One is like Irish remember when I used to work in an office in Brooklyn like around. Five PM. My Body like I’d start to get kinda like a sour feeling in my stomach and like my back would really hurt the sing with my eyes were like it hurt to blink. Lord. Now like uncommon characteristics and I was like. Oh, look I. Probably been at the computer whatever all day and then you like to our rate distress, you’ll be fine. Your body starts to feel a crab. Your body is trying to tell you. That you have been working too long. Your body is trying to send you signals that you have been working too long. Not that like, oh, I need a trick it into figuring out how to sit. Haida Hawk, your body. Is Done. Your body is like Glenn me do this anymore. and. So listening when you. When you have signals like that, instead of thinking them of them as like problems to be solved. Just, listening to your body in that capacity the other big ones something that I referenced a little bit earlier but. If you make like a small mental list of things that you actually really like doing nothing you like doing for instagram like. Actually that you’re like this is something that I really definitely like doing rain. And then you think about. ’em I, actually making any space in my life for this or am I. So tired that I find myself doing other things instead like doing the easiest the lowest common denominator. A lot of people scrolling instagram. Their phones broadly or you know whatever it is everyone has different things. And that to me is an indication that you are running yourself into the ground so much that you’re not actually doing the things that give you genuine pleasure. Yeah, Oh, man I, I totally feel that I have yesterday I literally I just told my husband I said, well, today I decided to play Lego with Cayden, our son instead of doing my video for instagram today and he was like good for you. It is it. It was very much like an accomplishment on the other side to go. You know what? Ultimately right now what’s more important like? Yes my audience of twelve hundred or whatever people that I have following along on Instagram is important to me and I value every single person. But what’s going to be more valuable to my my son to my relationship with him to my my life right now living in this pandemic, my sanity was to spend an hour building lego instead And I think that Parenting as a millennial has.

00:20:19 – 00:25:31

Has a whole other. Bizarre level of challenges what what did you find in your research in regards to this? So this is a subject that I’ve thought a lot about I am not a parent, but like part of the resume not apparent is because I’ve spent so much time thinking about this. and. At I think there’s two things going on one is that Even the most aspirational equitable households still really really really struggle with division of Labour division of Labor. And a lot of that has to do with the fact that we are. A country. In. Probably a society that still pretends that there is a caregiver fulltime caregiver at home, right? So like the way that the school year in the school day is organized is really predicated on having someone in that home fulltime. And the other thing too is any trace this in the book as there’s Women started to go into the workplace on mass starting in nineteen sixties, seventies, eighties. There was so much anxiety about women going into the workplace that the waited that anxiety was diffused was by making sure that they still did everything that they did in the home. and. So most women today. In a heterosexual households still perform. All of that Labor of their job, and then almost all of that Labor, they would’ve as a housewife essentially there really is you know like people Like the term the second shift has become so commonplace that I think we sometimes forget how literal it is that it is. US, like a Mama’s doing two jobs most of the time a data’s doing like one job, and then everyone’s patting him on the back for simply doing more labor than he had done historically right than his his data done. Maybe right that is a real real struggle and a big part. Of the exhaustion and the burnout parenting to do with carrying what this French cartoonist referred to. As the mental load rate it’s like basically the to do list for your house. All I am always. Always in their women are. It is their responsibility to hold the to do list in their head. and. One set to do list is in one person in the households head it’s really hard to transfer it out. Right and. It’s really it’s a conditioning thing that you know like I was. The other day with my partner and I were outside gardening. I turned him for a second I was like have you once pulled a we’d like if you just been like walking outside in our house and then like there’s a weaver there, I’m just going to pick it up right? He’s like, no, never rape he’s. thinking like he’s like he’s happy to like, okay. I’m going to go mow the lawn, but he is never keeping all of those like maintenance. Maintenance of the home and of your lives. In the in your head in. Your Mind Yeah. So exhausted. It’s interesting that you say that so. I think it. There there’s A. There’s a really interesting dichotomy of Men and women of our generation. Right it’s like on one hand we all a lot of US grew up With either a parent or parents or people in our lives that we could look at in these relationships where it was very much like that. My mom even though she did work as she was and still is to be honest the primary person that takes care of the home, the laundry, the everything my dad works super hard all the time he has his own business and he works outside and like does the housework and like the like the. The House. Fixer upper type things he’s a contractor. So he does all like the outside stuff and there’s like this very clear lines, right so growing up with that I, I thought to myself I don’t think that’s fair. I don’t like that idea and my husband was very similar. So now that we Are Together Even though we both SORTA didn’t want that right it’s like I don’t I don’t want to always be this person, and so we try super hard to make sure that like things are. Equally, divided and. Neither one of us only does laundry or only does you know certain things but I really resonate with the whole To-do list thing because even though he is very exceptional as men go in the sharing of the parenting and the housework and the dishes and quite honestly he could probably more and better than I do but there is that thing where I will walk through the House and do things to upkeep that he doesn’t even think about and that’s not that’s not bad on Hamish just.

00:25:32 – 00:30:02

I never really thought about this idea that it’s just conditioned that we are the ones responsible. Sort of to keep things on track YEP and that is a huge mental burden that I don’t think that without pointing it out in this way, people may realize an especially. Kind of where I want to go with this is. My audience for this podcast is. Creative entrepreneurs. So designers, photographers, illustrators, all those kinds of people and especially now during the pandemic, right, the majority of us are working from home because we can, and so I have been working from home doing my own business since my son was born. So that is seven years now and. I have the distinct privilege that I am able to do that. My husband works a job that he can. support us for the most part. So mice myself like extra. So I have been able to balance like parenting a bit however much you balanced parenting with having your business at home but. What? What is the impact of burnout on creative entrepreneur specifically do you think in compare compared to maybe other sort of? Jobs that millennials might have right. Well I. Think it’s huge in impart because I think creatives. So much of the work of creativity is not doing work. Is, restoring yourself and letting your mind do work inside internally yeah. Rest so much work gets done in the rest, and if any of your listeners have not read headed Athene by Jenny Odell. I I’m not that. It is was the she is a creator of and she teaches art at. Stanford and. It was a revelation to me just in terms of she is so great a positioning rest as essential for good work essential for creative work. But the problem is, is that rest looks like laziness residency. AC, ness rate and few are not programming that rest into your life and I don’t just mean sleeping although that includes sleeping. But time for your brain. To have solitude and I use finishing of solitude, it’s from the sky cal. Newport’s book but. The idea of being free from other people’s minds I. Love that. On a packed subway, you can have solitude in your house if you’re like like if your kids are there, but you’re just hanging out in your mind But you can’t have solitude. I think a lot of us have gotten bad at this if you’re listening to podcasts while you’re working on. A Lake that is not solitude that is an input, right that not letting your your brain echo around and I think so much of like how much creativity in kids is the result of being Super Board, right? Like just having nothing to do you have to come up with something and whether that is a game or writing a weird story or coming up with like a big imaginary space like in your mind like a friend old leg, there’s just so much that derives of actual boring or boredom and doing nothing, and so again though I think that like that space of nothingness perceived as non work. As, a space of non work it thus becomes readily filled readily filled with. Tasks with child care with. Errands with. Other work like. There’s all sorts of creative when you’re a creative, there’s all sorts of other work that you have to be doing like invoicing. Is Actually restful space it. is necessary work, but it is work I am so trying to to give yourself permission and asking others to give you that permission to create those faces in your life is really hard. Yeah. When I was a, I was an art creative director for an in house business awhile back and I I had. I had installed little like name plates for everybody’s doors that were names they were basically for our status. So people can see what we were up to inside the room before they come in.

00:30:02 – 00:35:06

So it could be in a meeting or whatever and I. Don’t remember where I heard. This analogy are found out that like. Cows are always making milk right there. They look like they’re just doing nothing but inside like they’re always making milk, they’re always. Doing something. So I I kind of implemented this this idea into my team and I would give them A. Certain amount of time every day to make milk like this is your time where people cannot come into your office and. You May and you may look like and may actually not be doing anything. that doesn’t give people permission to coming in bother you because it looks like you’re not doing anything until the Sino just say like do not disturb making milk or something it was sort of an incident it was sort of an inside joke but it is that idea right like as creatives like. We’re always that way like we have all these stomachs and we’re always processing something and. I think I have found. Only while two things, I had a local along KLOPP’s two years ago and so i. was in the hospital for two years to your sorry that was that was lot twenty five days two years ago and I couldn’t do a lot. I couldn’t focus, and so I was forced to be in the space where I was in silence a lot with the exception of like you know, I, didn’t want the TV on in the hospital room and so between that and now this pandemic I have found that. It is so crucial to find that that empty space and to be okay with it, and where my mom will still come over and try she’ll come over and I’m like mom just come hang out as she’s like can idear dishes can I do your laundry and I’m like no, I did not invite you over to do my chores like just sit down just do nothing and so because she is that generation where nothing is lazy and Kenny’s like my husband, he’s like, Gee, I wonder why you can you have a hard time sitting down and? During. This pandemic I have found great solitude in playing animal crossing of all thanks because I’m not able to do two things once right because my brain and my body are uptight to this thing where if I’m watching TV or listening to a podcast or even doing dishes or anything, I’m always doing two things and so I have really embraced. Doing. This and I used to feel lazy playing video games and now it’s become. This is my time to like how zen moment. Let my brain just relax and it has been so. So, important to my sanity. What are things that you do to find that that little space? Well. One thing I do is I feel okay about telling people I don’t listen to podcasts Like. One podcast you’ll listen to this episode, right I’ll listen to it for. Then I’ll be like I can’t hear my voice anymore. This is impossible. Does take some getting used to? Yes. I totally understand like why I there I love podcast in when we go on drives and stuff like that I love. But in my everyday life I up until about two years ago I found myself really trying to cram podcasts. Those interstitial life. And what it was doing was making it impossible to have any of that that solitude that I was talking about. So I have I have two dogs and we I live in Montana in this area that has all of these beautiful trails and I would like listen to podcasts on my walk and be focusing on the puck as they were Great. Right. There was nothing wrong with the PODCAST, but I wasn’t getting that space. Same thing for when I was cooking dinner and so I really really love. Just. Like forcing myself out there on the trail. Like. It’s like some like Patagonia Bertha. Like community. Today. About all sorts of things, but it is it’s just in my head. same thing with running like I never listen I don’t even listen to music when I run. And I liked that meditative space that results out of there. But those things to me like just giving yourself permission to feel like you have to optimize every weird little space in your life and turn it into a a learning opportunity. Yeah. We’ll people I can totally see some people listening to this podcast or reading your book and thinking like well, of course, you’re writing a book on how millennials can relax right? Because everyone’s lazy but.

00:35:07 – 00:39:18

I I hope that that this actually shed some light on like how Your book has so much value in and without giving away all the secrets I. I wanted to have this conversation to to let people have sort of different outlook on maybe themselves ’cause millennials are the. Core of lessons to this podcast, which is one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on here So before we go, the bad news right is we’re all burnt out or on the pro in the process of burning out. But what’s the good news how what’s the? What’s the redeeming quality of this whole thing? Well the good news, and this is the refrain of the entire book is that it doesn’t have to be this way right so if so much of our Bernau is related to precarity. There are countries out there that have really fixed that question of precarity. That have reinstalled safety nets that here in America, we had for most people even like our grandparents generation post World War Two. There were these safety nets in place for whole lot of people not just way people not just rich people it made us so that you could go about your day. and not worry about being bankrupted by a medical bill or how much student your college education. Back for your children’s College Education Yes. There are things whether it’s workers protections. You know different updating laws to deal with the GIG economy about workers protections in and how we think about freelance labor and that sort of thing the things that can be done that will take a lot of that precarity out of our lives and we’ll still have to deal with a lot of other crap rate always. have. You can take that away and that can be accomplished by us, thinking about how we can regulate. Our economic world, differently all sorts of things but so that. It doesn’t have to be this way and our recent past is proof. While you must have rehearsed that. That’s a line in the Vegas stole. It yeah. Well that’s okay because that’s that’s your prerogative and I I read the book when you guys sent it to me a little bit goes I. Obviously don’t have it memorized but I definitely was very encouraged by it was really eye opening and a lot of ways to be able to kind of recognize things that I’ve seen but didn’t know how to explain maybe. Behaviors or or thought patterns or anything like that and so I really think that it’s going to be a valuable resource to our generation for sure. So correct me if I’m wrong, it is being released September twenty second is that correct? Number twenty seconds, and is there any anything special you’d you’d like to share with people about like when it launches or where they can find it or? You can go to my. To my newsletter, which will have like updates about events and step. Several events. All Zoom of course. Yes. Never, launch but the newsletter you can either Google my name and Han Peterson and newsletter or it’s an Helen substance dot com and find it there and how on social media where can people find you on Helen? Basically. Everywhere And her on twitter and Helen Peterson on instagram okay. Awesome. I appreciate you joining us here today. It’s been very educational and I opening an encouraging even though a lot of it can can seem a little depressing on the surface I. think There’s a lot of hope there and Understanding who we are as generation is probably the first step and I think you’re going to do a lot to help people really. Grasp grasp all of that. So thank you. Thank you so much. This is. Well. I hope that you have an awesome day and maybe get some of that solitude in and. I May I may get off and go play some animal crossing because my son and my husband aren’t here today so For. All right we’ll have a good day. Thanks so much.