Burned Out at 30, Thriving at 88: The Power of Purpose

Drained at work and yet alive at 88, according to study finds. Nearly half of U.S. employees, 46%, have considered quitting due to emotional exhaustion or feeling numb. Workers summed up their jobs in one word. Tired, surviving, even meh. Most aren't thriving. Just 8% say they are. Many don't ask for help because, as 38% put it, I don't think it would make a difference. Meanwhile, The Telegraph profiles 88 year old David Hock, the artist who says, I assume I'll die soon, so I want to work every day, and adds, I'm happiest when I'm painting. The contrast is striking a workforce on autopilot and an octogenarian bursting with purpose. Study find attributes the numbness to years of disruption and digital overload. Hockney credits routine focus and meaningful craft. The lesson isn't hustle worship, it's that purpose beats ping pong table. As Hockney puts it, I've done a lot of work. I'm rather proud of what I've done. The question for leaders, are you designing jobs people can be proud of? What's the real message here? If you're feeling burned out at work, drained, exhausted, it's not necessarily because there's a boss cracking a whip or you're digging in coal mines, you're doing the wrong thing. You're not really finding something that engages you, your talents, your skills, your interest. Don't give up your day job yet. But you've got to keep searching until you get to that David Hockney level. Let's dig a little deeper. What does that really mean? We can't all become world famous artists, okay? If you're David Hockney, you're incredibly rich, famous, respected, anywhere in the world you go, they have art shows for you. People praising you, praising your brilliance, paying millions of dollars for your painting. That's good for the ego. There's a lot of psychic income and real income. We're not all going to be world famous artists. There are a lot of people who have to clean hospital beds and be home healthcare workers and do janitorial services, all needed. There are people who have to perform surgeries and don't want to look at blood and guts all day long. But it is in fact essential. So I'm not just telling you something glib like, oh, follow your passion, everything will work out there. There are those who say that, you know, when you listen to someone talk about follow your passion, it's typically from someone who's already rich, who made their money doing something really boring and now they're telling you to follow their passion. There's some truth to that, but there's also truth. The idea that if you are, you know, 40, 50 years old and you've been working in something for decades, and Monday morning is a real bummer for you, having trouble getting out of bed, you're doing something wrong. Now you've got a mortgage to pay, you've got mouths to feed, you have kids depending on you. I'm not telling you just to quit your job, but I'm telling you it is your job to find some meaning in what you do, to find some joy in what you do. I know some people who are surgeons and people like, wow, you're getting all this respect, all this money. It must be great. They're bored out of their minds. They want to quit. I know people who are selling shoes and they love their work. They find meaning in the people they help, the people who, their clients, their customers who become their friends. So you can find meaning in any work. You don't have to become a world famous artist like David Hockman, although kudos to him and to people like a Paul McCartney. People in their 80s, still practicing their craft, still creating, still sharing what they do with the world. I mean, that's essentially what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to share with you my insights, my help, what I do and I love doing. That's why it's Sunday morning and I'm doing. That's why I do this seven days a week. I find it fun. But TJ what do you do if you got to pay the bills and you worried about last month's rent? I get it. You've got to do what you got to do to support yourself. But at some point, whether it's because you own, are in a pension system with your federal government and here in the United States, you have Social Security or something else, your other work life, your savings work out and you have enough money. Money alone is not going to motivate you to take a particular job and to continue doing a job if you don't like it. That's why so many people retire. 65, 62, 55. Sometimes because they're bored with their job. The only problem is now they're bored with life. I've seen it countless times. People retire, oh, now it's me time. Now I'm going to enjoy life. Now I'm gonna do what I want. And so what do they do? They get up, they look at their phone, they look at their news they have coffee putter around. Before you know it, the day is over and life is still kind of meaningless. Life is still kind of exhausting. Getting through it now in the middle of a new book, I believe it's actually called Exhausted. And it's all about how we as human beings are really exhausting ourselves by going from application to phone, to cell phone, to, to iPad, to this broad, to, to this server, to this app, to this website. Every single one of those requires some transition. Void every app you use, every piece of software you use. It's not like the old days. It's continually updating. So you have to continually think about how to learn this new thing and it becomes overwhelming. And it's not just old people. I've experienced this myself just recently upgrading to I've moved into a new home. And when you do that, there's so many new things to learn. The TV is new, the sound system is new. And I'm ashamed to say I have not learned how to use my Sonos sound system. Spent a lot of money putting in great quality sound throughout the house, movie theater, etc. And I haven't taken the time because I just feel mentally exhausted about learning a new app, a new technology, a new set of passwords to learn. So it can happen to everyone. That's happened to me, it's happened to you. The key is you've got to find something you're excited about. Doesn't have to be a job, doesn't have to be about making money. It just needs to be something you're excited about. I've had to learn a lot about technology to do a show like this. I've had to learn a lot about how ChatGPT works, about how Streamyard, the application I'm using now works. I have had to learn how to what I'm doing right now. I am simulcasting on Facebook, on LinkedIn, on YouTube, on Twitch, on X, on Instagram, and yes to my friends over here on TikTok. I've had to learn a little bit about all those technologies and it's been exhausting. But it's fun for me. It's therefore motivated me do it. It's not that you should just follow your passion, but you want that overlap of what stuff you're good at, what stuff that other people value and what is stuff that you like doing. David Hockney figured that out. He likes painting. Other people like David Hockney paintings. That's why they're willing to pay millions and millions of dollars for. That's why museums are willing to pay millions of dollars for his artwork. You hits all three. He likes doing it, he's good at it. Other people like it. And if you're stuck in a job now selling insurance, for example, nothing wrong with that. I have a lot of clients who sell insurance. They're passionate about it, the ones who are really successful. But for some of them, it's just a job. Well, here's my recommendation. Every second you have when you're not working, focus on doing something else you actually enjoy doing. One of two things may happen. You may get to the point where you're so good at it, other people value it that you can make a living doing. And maybe it's just a hobby. And you get to the point where a higher percentage of your day is spent doing fun stuff giving you or your week is spent doing fun stuff you actually enjoy so you don't feel exhausted. Many of the best run corporations in the world require employees to take vacation time. In fact, at well run companies like Netflix, it's required. They have some rule, I can't remember it was a month or two weeks. They require even the CEO to take lengthy vacation. Not because they're so generous, but because they have looked at the research. And the research shows you're more productive when you get away from work. You're more productive when you're rested, when you relaxed, when your brain can shift into other things. So sometimes you do need a break and you need, you need more in your life. You need real friends, you need real hobbies, you need real exercise, preferably some kind of sport that engages you, because we already do. We are devolving into a species where for countless people, life is lonely. Life consists of staring at a phone, connecting with people by clicking like buttons and nice vacation photo, rather than actually going on vacations with friends, rather than actually meeting them for lunch or dinner or talking. And if more and more of your life is, and excuse me, my TikTok friends that are watching live now, if more and more of your life is devoted to just looking at a screen, several things happen. You're going to be more emotionally drained because you're going to see all these other people who have fancier lives and more stuff than you do, and look better than you have better hair than you do, perhaps. So it gets depressing and it's alienating you from having actual human contact with others. You know, one of the advantages of being world renowned, David Hockney can attest to, is people are constantly reaching out to you. They're inviting you to art gallery openings, they're inviting you to parties. You're respected just for showing up. It makes life more enjoyable. Yeah. Counter to what Andy Warhol once said, we're all going to be famous for 15 minutes. That's not really true. It's just a nice sound bite. Most of us are never going to be famous, but it doesn't mean we can't be well respected among some subset of our community, some people in our industry. And when you do that, it fosters human connection. So if no one ever cares if you come to an industry event or a party or anything else you need to think about, what can I do to add more value to the world? If you're simply showing up for a job just to get a paycheck. Okay, we've all done that at some point and our lives. I've done it early in my career. But you need to figure out how you can do something that you have a passion for and maybe get make some money on, too. If you're waitressing and you've been doing it for 10 years, and let's say you've got a couple of kids and you're a sole supporter, I understand your time is limited, but at some point the kids are going to leave. Don't just fall into the habit, oh, now I can relax and spend your time watching TikTok videos and playing video games. Spend some time reinventing yourself so that you're excited. Easiest way to not feel exhausted all the time, especially on a Monday morning, is knowing I'm excited to do what I'm going to do today. If you're genuinely excited about what you're doing, it becomes extraordinarily difficult to be exhausted and burned out. Let's take a look at what some of the viewers and listeners are saying right now. Claus writes in Happens. But certainly it's not easy to spend most of your time doing what you like to do. I continue trying and learning. Thanks for insisting on how important it is. Cause you're right, it's not easy. If it were easy, we would all be professional baseball or soccer players and professional actors and movie stars and singers. They were easy. It's not easy. You have to try. I think you put your finger on it right here. I continue trying and learning. Just keep trying things. I'm successful in what I do. And some of you who may know me know I have 12 million online student enrollments for my online courses. The only reason I'm successful at that is I've tried hundreds of other businesses that all failed. Basically, I simply try more, I risk more, I fail more. And that's what's created success for me. Now. I hope you can be a lot more successful with a lot less failure. We don't. Far better to do the. The Mark Zuckerberg way of just for first thing you do, being wildly successful. But if you don't get it right, we can't all be Mark Zuckerberg. You can't get it right at the beginning. Do what Claus says. Keep learning. Keep trying new things. I was at a festival, Diwali festival, last night with some friends, and one of the mothers of a daughter of my friend of my. My own daughter was there. She was up there as the DJ for the whole night. I'm like, how'd you learn how to do that? Were you. Did you go to school? Did you study this? Were you a musician? No, she's. No. I just watched YouTube videos. I bought the equipment, and I trained myself to be a DJ. And now she does DJing, and it's fantastic. She's learning. She learned a new skill. She learned a new art form. She learned to craft. And there she was performing in front of 500 people last night. You can do the same thing.