Adam Larson: 00:05

Welcome back to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson. And for our final episode of twenty twenty five, I'm thrilled to be joined by Ting Song, executive director at JPMorgan Chase and Co. With the holiday season upon us, this conversation couldn't come at a better time. For many of us, it's a chance to rest, recharge, and reflect before heading into a brand new year.

Adam Larson: 00:25

In today's episode, Ting and I dive deep into the realities of burnout, what it really means, and how to spot it before it spirals, and why it's not more than just everyday stress. Drawing from her experience in leadership and her own personal journey, Ting shares practical advice on building healthier habits, recognizing the early warning signs, and making room for play and relaxation during the busiest times. So if you're feeling stretched thin at the end of the year or simply want to start 2026 with more energy and renewed focus, this episode is packed with tips and strategies to support yourself and your team. So take a moment and pause with us, and let's wrap up the year by investing in your well-being. Let's get started.

Adam Larson: 01:11

Well, Ting, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I'm very excited to be talking about burnout. And I think what we could start with is maybe a little bit about your story. What kinda drew you to focus on burnout as a topic?

Ting Song: 01:22

I'm very passionate about this topic. I experienced myself, and I have friends and colleagues and everybody I've seen. They experience this so much these days. So that's why I think it's so important for me to talk about it because I want people to be aware of it. It's happening.

Ting Song: 01:38

It's happening around almost every single people these days.

Adam Larson: 01:42

So have you experienced it personally? Mhmm. And what was that like?

Ting Song: 01:46

It's not great. You know? Because, you know, I never experienced when I first started my career. It was you know, I think I can get everything done. You know, I'm the purse I'm the hard worker.

Ting Song: 01:56

I'm you know, I had good grades in school, so I never saw it will be something, you know, I would experience in my life. But then later on, you know, after years and years working, I started to realize I can't work the same way I was working when I was younger. You know you know, my energy that was just not there, and, you know, it just I can't do this years and after years. And then that's when I started to realize maybe there's something wrong. So I, you know, I started to ask people.

Ting Song: 02:23

I go to different retreats. I do yoga personally. So I do different things and just try to try to explore, you know, what's going on because I'm just tired all the time. And then I, you know, when I start to go to a yoga retreat, that's when I start to learn about, you know, that's probably is burnout. And and then I started seeing some therapists, which really helped me to understand, you know, this is something every oh, it's very common these days because people work so much.

Ting Song: 02:51

And that's when I decided, okay. I need to make a change because I think that the first thing is to be aware what's going on. Once you're aware and then you had to work to make a change. So that's why I think it's very important. And then because I have achieved so much improvements in my own, you know, well-being, so that's why I think I should share this with other people so people people can learn from me or just learn from whatever else that out there.

Adam Larson: 03:15

So what what you're describing can some would describe as maybe everyday stress. So maybe we can take a step back and define, like, burnout in contrast to maybe everyday stress, and maybe what are some key differences that people should be looking for?

Ting Song: 03:28

I think stress is more temporary. It's short term. It's always your reaction to a certain certain scenario, but burnout is more long term. So I think one thing is that if you don't manage stress very well or you don't manage it at all, it will eventually turn into burnout. And then that at that time, it's very difficult to reverse back.

Ting Song: 03:50

Then you're gonna you'll be experience a long term burning out period, and it's really, really it will take a lot of work in order for you to reverse. And then that's why I think it's very important for you to discover the signs of stress and then you can, you know, start to manage the stress and before it actually turn into a burnout situation. Yeah. I think some symptoms you can see, from stress, I think it's very important that you're aware of these when they have stars. Symptoms such as have trouble sleeping, I think that's a big one.

Ting Song: 04:31

You know, if you don't you are the person who are typically very healthy, you don't get sick that often, and all of a sudden, you get sick, you know, every month. And then that's something, you know, you can see is probably because of stress or even burnout. Some other symptom is like, okay. You when there's a scenario, when there's a situation in your face and then you breathe very fast or you have heartbeat, like fast heartbeats, or you just start to forget about things. And people always think, oh, because we're getting old, that's why I start to forget about things.

Ting Song: 05:02

But, actually, that's not true. A lot of times, it's because of stress, you start to forget about things. So those are those are small signs I think you can manage on a daily basis. And if happens to you, you can just start to, you know, take a pause and think, okay. I need to take a break because I'm stressed.

Ting Song: 05:20

Because you have to know, like, when you are stressed. If you know when you're stressed, you can stop. I think that's very important.

Adam Larson: 05:27

Mhmm. Yeah. So you you have to kinda recognize stress because what you're saying is stress kinda turns into burnout?

Ting Song: 05:34

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it turns into a burnout if you don't manage. And it's always after it's not like one day, you know, overnight, your stress will turn into a burnout.

Ting Song: 05:44

It always takes years and years, and people only start to be aware of that after it turns out to be a burnout. And at that time, you just feel like you can't even go back to work anymore or you take you know, if you take a vacation and you take a week and you come back, you still feel tired. That means you are burned out. Yeah. But then people only realize that, you know, when you are actually burned out.

Ting Song: 06:06

And I think one thing also I feel like I always tell people is that I feel like everybody needs a therapist. No matter, you know, no matter you feel great or not feeling great, I think it's very important. This is just like a workout. You know? You you go to the gym because you wanna be healthy.

Ting Song: 06:20

So you go to a therapist so you can stay mentally healthy. So it's almost the same thing. There's nothing to be scared about it or ashamed about it. These days, I think it's very common, especially, you know, in today's world with all these crazy things happening. It's just very common that we have some sort of stress and seeing a therapist and having a therapist that fits your style, it's always very important.

Adam Larson: 06:43

Cool. I like those. Mean, I those are some good practical advice. Do you have any maybe some real world examples of burnout that you can share that you've seen, maybe experienced? I mean, I know that I've been very close to burnout a number of times in my life, and it took a while to get out of that.

Adam Larson: 06:57

You know? And then maybe we can talk a little bit about some of the experiences we've seen and kind of help share people connect to to this.

Ting Song: 07:04

Yeah. I mean, I have friends, you know, like, you know, I work with or people I know in the past. You know, they are so so there's a one example. Like, I have a friend. You know, one day, I think there's no no reason all of a sudden.

Ting Song: 07:22

He couldn't move his thumb anymore, And then he has to go to the hospital, and then it's just hard to diagnose any reasons. Because when you are burned out, you know, some sort of your body like, physically, there's probably some reactions, but you couldn't be diagnosed. And then that's usually caused by either stress or burnout or some other emotional or mental issues. But because you can't have diagnosed, so it's not physical. But but but if you don't treat it, then it become physical from a mental, which you don't you can't diagnose and then become a physical, which you're able to diagnose.

Ting Song: 08:02

That so that's why things you know, that's how people get sick. Most sickness is coming from something mental and then coming and then transition because we don't treat it. And then they transition into something physical. And if we don't even treat it at that point, it transitions to something even more serious physically. And so that's how it usually works.

Ting Song: 08:24

Daughters can treat the patient. They can treat the symptoms, and they can treat the physical problems, but they cannot treat the mental problem. And then who can treat the mental problem? It's ourself. Like, we're the only one that can control ourself.

Ting Song: 08:38

I, you know, I work with so many people. They're trying to control every single thing that's happening. But I think people need to be realized that you can only control yourself. Apart from yourself, you cannot control anything. And then because you are trying to control the things you cannot control, and that's why you're so stressed.

Ting Song: 08:57

I mean, it's one of the causes of stress. It's not every you know, it it's there's other causes of stress as well. But this is one of the common causes that you're trying to control everything at work or your your life because you think it should happen a certain way. So it's more about changing your mindset, how you perceive, you know, what's going on and, you know, everything has two sides. You know, there's always a positive side as well as a negative side, and they just how you see it.

Ting Song: 09:29

And then once you can see it in a positive side, you are not feeling any burnout or stress or depression and, you know, always, like, stress, anxiety, depression, burnout. These all come together. It doesn't just come fun. You know? It doesn't just like, oh, it's just stress.

Ting Song: 09:46

No. There's always some other things come together. It's all these negative emotions that you're dealing with.

Adam Larson: 09:53

So what would you say to, like, the skeptic who's like, well, that sounds great. I'll just change my thoughts and everything will be fine. You know, that that's it sounds too good to be true. And so maybe we can talk a little bit about, like, you know, some tangible things because it it's more than just like, hey. I'm gonna change my thoughts, and now my thoughts are good, so I'm all better now.

Adam Larson: 10:09

And that that's not really how it works.

Ting Song: 10:11

I I I agree. It takes takes practice. You know? It's habit change. It typically says it takes twenty one days change a habit if you do it every single day.

Ting Song: 10:24

So it's not something you can change overnight, but I think step one is always be the awareness. The first Mhmm. You have to be aware. You know? The moments that cause you stress, you know, under what situations.

Ting Song: 10:36

It could be, oh, because the time is not enough. So your stress is coming from limitation of the time. Or it could be the volume or the volume work is too high, so that's the cause of stress. Or it could be the environment, the people you work with who are not the best people or they're not the most relaxed people or positive people to work with. So I think it's very important to identify what is the cause of the stress.

Ting Song: 11:04

Once you can identify, you had to practice moment by moment, which means, you know, it's a mental habit, so it comes and goes. And then the more you allow it, it comes more. You know? Probably during the day, you know, some days, you're probably more stressed than other days. Sometimes it's because you didn't sleep well, because you didn't eat well.

Ting Song: 11:25

Physical and mental health is always go hand in hand. So if you're eating well, you usually have a more clear mind. So certain days, are just more moody and other things happen in your life. So that day, you probably have more stress, and then you need to notify that. Note notice that when it's happening and then identify, like, moment by moment.

Ting Song: 11:45

Once the thoughts come to you, and that's when you start you had to start to tell yourself, okay. This is not right.

Adam Larson: 11:52

Mhmm.

Ting Song: 11:54

Start small. You start from very small, and then you implement again and again and repeat again and again. And they're always going back and forth. A lot of times, you know, we think things are black and white. Either it's you are good or not good.

Ting Song: 12:11

But in the real world, it's always in between. It's in the gray area. So when you change your habit, you it always go back and forth beef you know, between good and bad, good and bad. And then you can start to notice. You go if you work hard on your habits, you're changing the habits.

Ting Song: 12:29

You start to notice the frequency of good. It become more and more. So it's actually slowly shifting in a different direction. So that's when you start to notice the change. Mhmm.

Ting Song: 12:45

But there's always days that are gonna coming back. They're gonna come back to exactly where you start. You need to be not be dis discouraged. You know you're still doing well. Although it seems you go back to the same place, but it is not exactly the same place.

Adam Larson: 12:59

Mhmm.

Ting Song: 12:59

Like a a shape of a sparrow. You know? It's always like this and this. It's go by going into the same direction, the direction you're working towards.

Adam Larson: 13:09

I like that. You know? Because it's I think a lot of times, people will kind of hear you say, you know, change your mindset, change your thought patterns, and not really recognizing like, hey. It's a process. It takes time to kind of undo habits that have caused stress in your life, and you have to undo those habits in order to get to a place where you're that's not happening anymore.

Adam Larson: 13:28

And that takes time because you can't always just change everything that you're doing at work on the drop of a hat. You can't always put boundaries around things that are causing you stress. Those think you have to balance it and and and it looks different for each person. And I think a lot of times people try to fit everything in one cookie cutter thing and every person's journey is different and what works for you may not work for me. And I can find what works for me in order to make that work.

Ting Song: 13:51

Yeah. Exactly. You can't just you can't check the boxes because it's different for everybody and different scenario for even one person every day so that you have to really put a set aside energy or, you know, just time to manage, you know, those process. Like, oh, if we determine, okay. I'm gonna start to change my habits.

Ting Song: 14:13

So every day, you had to designate a certain amount of time and energy to work on that habits and day by day. And that's you know, you you're gonna make some progress. It's not going to be okay. I gave you a prescription. I will take it every day.

Ting Song: 14:28

Is it gonna work? It's not like that. You had to make shift. You know? Today, you're working on different things, and tomorrow, you change direction.

Ting Song: 14:36

You notice the change in yourself, and then you change your strategy according to what you change your in your body. So it change every day. So you put you had to put enough energy in doing this. Like, I would say, like, managing the process. It's not just, like, going through the process.

Adam Larson: 14:54

Yeah. So we've talked talked a little bit about this, but I wanted to maybe really focus on, you know, are there early warning signs of burnout that you've seen that people should like, that they sometimes miss or ignore that they should be looking out for if they're saying, am I am I almost in burnout? Am I in burnout?

Ting Song: 15:10

Yeah. I think some signs, for example, if you have trouble sleeping, sleeping is a very important thing. I I think you should at least sleep between seven to eight hours. And Yeah. I think study shows women needs more sleep than men, typically by one hour more.

Ting Song: 15:26

But it varies. Everybody is different. So I can't really say, okay. You had to sleep how many hours a day. But you feel if you ever feel like you have trouble falling asleep, and it become more consistent, like, you know, it's not just one day or it's always always, then that's the early sign.

Ting Song: 15:44

One of the biggest cause of loss of sleep is actually mental. It's not yeah. A lot of people think, you know, it's because of other things, but it's actually because you think too much.

Adam Larson: 15:56

Yeah.

Ting Song: 15:57

Yeah. And then that's why, usually, sleep is one of the very early sign of your stressed or your burnout. And then some other people, they might experience, for example, you know, they dramatically put on weight or lost weight because they their habitat appetite changes because of the stress. It is something gonna affect your body, you know, physically or you can't eat well or you don't wanna eat or or you just don't. Sometimes, I think another example is that you don't feel whatever you do, you don't feel like you're interested in doing that anymore.

Ting Song: 16:37

Yeah. It it it happens. You know, if you lost interest on the things you always interested in, I think it is a sign you need to look at it, why it happened.

Adam Larson: 16:48

Yeah.

Ting Song: 16:49

Yeah. And then I think some other signs, like, for example, you forget about things. You know? I always had a good memory until one point I realized, okay. I I have to have a calendar for me to remember everything.

Ting Song: 17:02

And before, it wasn't like that because I start to be stressed and burning out. I start to forget about things. I think that's a very big sign as well. I think other signs, it just stress gonna impact your personal life. If you start to think, you start to realize the people around you probably is all stressed, or you start to be, you know, be more connected with people that experience, you know, like, burnout or stress, that's because you're actually burned out and stressed.

Ting Song: 17:38

Sometimes you have to put yourself in the environment of people who are happy or positive because energy pass on. Stress pass on the other way around. You know? Positive energy pass around as well. I always I actually took a workshop, I think a while ago.

Ting Song: 17:58

They talk about play. Kids like to play. That's why they're so happy. Adults Yeah. Us.

Ting Song: 18:03

We don't play. That's why, you know, we're always stressed, and we're not happy about our life. But if you get if we treat every single thing in our life as play a game, even if you've been through exactly the same thing, you might be much happier than, you know, just just treating it as a task or something you have to finish.

Adam Larson: 18:29

And that's probably why the there's been the rise of adult in adult learning, the gamification of elements, and the gamification of things that are dealing with adults because we're also stressed and we're all doing tasks all the time. Making something gamified helps us learn it and helps us get out of that monotony of of trying to learn new things.

Ting Song: 18:47

Yeah. And then when you play games, you are so competitive and you wanna win, and you never feel like you're tired or stressed, but you're putting the best energy and best clear the best mind out there to win the game.

Adam Larson: 18:59

Yeah. I like that. So we talked a little bit about we talked about, like, changing habits and some things we can do to kinda help avoid the stresses that cause burnout. But, you know, are there challenges that like, what are some big what are some of the biggest challenges that people face when they're trying to recover from burnout that you've seen?

Ting Song: 19:16

My personal sorry. You are a little bit cut off. Could you repeat the question again?

Adam Larson: 19:20

No problem. Sorry. Yeah. That's okay.

Ting Song: 19:22

Uh-huh. Maybe it's my Internet. I

Adam Larson: 19:24

don't know. That's okay.

Ting Song: 19:25

Yeah. Sometimes it happens. It's too hot outside, so the network is burning out as well.

Adam Larson: 19:31

Jeez. Yeah. It's funny. Over here in New York, it's like, it's only, like, not even 60 degrees Fahrenheit today that it was a cool it's a cool day. It's really weird.

Ting Song: 19:39

Yeah. That's pretty cool.

Adam Larson: 19:41

Yeah. Alright. Let's see. What was I saying? Oh, oh, I know.

Adam Larson: 19:45

Okay. Yeah. So we talked we talked a bit about some actionable strategies, some things that people can do to kinda get out of burnout to to kinda help reduce some of the stresses that take hold that cause the burnout. But from your experience, what are some of the biggest challenges that people face when trying to recover from burnout or even admit that they're burned out? Because I'm that's a problem too that people don't want to admit, hey.

Adam Larson: 20:07

I actually have a problem.

Ting Song: 20:09

Yeah. Exactly. I think most people the biggest challenge for people is because they they are not aware of. They're stressed. They're not aware of their burning out.

Ting Song: 20:18

They just keep going. Because if you're in a moment of doing something, you don't think too much. You just think, oh, I need to get it done. I need to get it done. You do it day by day.

Ting Song: 20:26

You don't realize there's a shift than, you know, mental shift. So I think the most important thing at first is to be aware that this is happening, and this is common. You have to admit it, and then you can start to allocate time and energy to manage it. Yeah. And it's not easy.

Ting Song: 20:49

I mean, because everybody, you know, is burning out. Everybody's stressed, and then working in the environment of everybody's burned out and stressed is not easy if you wanna recover from that. So you do have to have a game plan, a game plan that, you know, requires time, energy. And I always tell people, have a therapist or coach just to be able to help you through the process. You need to get a need to get one that fits your style.

Ting Song: 21:16

Not every professional, not every therapist works. You know, you can face your style. So you had to find somebody that fits your style. And then you have the tool. You have to have the tool, the time and energy, and the determination.

Ting Song: 21:33

Mhmm. But I think it's really important that you have the time because if you work eighty hours a week, a hundred hours a week, it's really hard. The rest of the time you have, I'm pretty sure you'll just sleep or eat or do whatever is needed to do. Then so the first thing you need to look at if you have enough time it doesn't have to be a long period of time, but it has to be often, like, the frequency. Mhmm.

Ting Song: 22:04

Set alarm to yourself, for example, like, a couple time a day. Every time you have a five minutes break is not a long time, but you can step outside. You know? Just five minutes if you can, or just go to the bathroom or take drink some water, just walk around a little bit. And I think that's very helpful.

Ting Song: 22:22

So you do have to set aside a time and change the habit. I always feel like in order to combat combat combat, In order to fight with what's the best word? In order to manage the negative energy, like, negative negative styles, like stress and depression, anxiety, you would do something totally opposite, such as play, have fun, you know, have a hobby, you know, see just talk spend time with somebody that you like. You know, you have to really play and have fun. I think that's very important.

Ting Song: 22:56

Relax is good, but the best thing is having fun.

Adam Larson: 23:00

Yeah.

Ting Song: 23:00

Having fun is yeah. It's like I like that. Yeah. If you do, like, negative negative, you need to do positive positive. And having fun is positive positive.

Ting Song: 23:10

Relax can make it better, but then you really need to be having fun.

Adam Larson: 23:17

Yeah. I really like that. I like that attitude and and remembering that it's okay to play. Remember, it's okay to have fun. It's okay to laugh.

Adam Larson: 23:24

It's okay to kind of get out of our heads. And so in that vein, are there like, when we think about organizations and leaders, and I'm sure there's people listening to this thinking, you know, are people in my team burnt out? You know, are there ways that we can better support our team, our team members, and our teams to help reduce burnout risk? And sometimes we're in high pressure environments, and there's a lot of stress in high pressure environments. And we all know we've established that high stress and long term stress leads to burnout.

Adam Larson: 23:51

So how can organizations help support their teams better?

Ting Song: 23:54

I think you need to start from yourself first. Yeah. Because you can't change other people without changing yourself. So you change yourself first if you can be a happy person, relaxed person, and that can slowly maybe impact with the people you work with. Maybe they just not aware or they never have the tools and are told or educated, you know, or facilitated or just they they never really learn about how to manage this.

Ting Song: 24:24

So it's not like they don't wanna do it. It's more about they might not know how to do it. So once you can show them as example and then you can slowly impact them and maybe even teach them about it, and they can start to learn and do themselves. It's like the energy pass around. If you have two people, you might be able to impact four people.

Ting Song: 24:48

And then you have four people, you can might be impact more. But it is not easy. You know? There's always organization culture. So if you're not in the position of changing the culture, you might not be able to change, you know, everything, but you can at least change yourself.

Ting Song: 25:06

And I think it's very important. The more you change yourself, you can show other people as example. It's also a boundary setting settings. You need to set a boundary for to protect your energy. Right?

Ting Song: 25:19

So sometimes maybe you're the only person that you're happy, but not everybody else is happy, but you you have to really stay in that environment because it's your work or something. So you do need to set your boundaries somehow so that you don't get impact by them either. So it is, like, a process you might need to work on yourself and slowly impact other people. But, meanwhile, you should not be impacted by other people if they have a negative energy. And that's why it always take time, energy to manage and monitor.

Ting Song: 25:59

And trust me, good things happen when you're happy. Or good things happen, you know, when you're really working on yourself and trying to impact other people. The universe, they have an energy they can pass around. You always notice I don't know. People always there's a saying like, oh, when something going wrong, there's always something else going around.

Ting Song: 26:22

Right? It's always channel reaction. It's the same same theory when you're having something good happen. It's another good thing that always happen at the same time. It's always a channel reaction.

Ting Song: 26:35

So sometimes you don't know how you can change it, but at least you can start from yourself. And Mhmm. And then you can slowly impact other people, and then maybe good things will happen. There are gonna be more people impacted. Yeah.

Ting Song: 26:48

So it is a process. And that's why I think it's always about, you know, understand yourself, understand your boundaries, understand what make you stressed, what make you relax, you know, what is more important for you. If this is not a right environment, for example, if you're working under a toxic environment, then you might need to leave. So you have to make the best judgment what is what is right, what is wrong. Right?

Ting Song: 27:14

People, if this is not a good environment, everybody knows about it. There is gonna be something happening soon. Trust me. Yeah. Because yeah.

Ting Song: 27:26

Because that's just how things usually work. Think I think there's always I was in this workshop, and it's talk about when you have a high high in your life, you might next experience a low low. And then when you have a low low, the next moment you might experience a high high. So it's always going up and down. Mhmm.

Ting Song: 27:48

Just how you experience

Adam Larson: 27:49

always balance.

Ting Song: 27:50

Yeah. You're always a balance. Yeah.

Adam Larson: 27:52

So when I'm thinking about burnout and I think about organizations, a lot of times there's, like, this tension between, you know, personal mental health, self care kind of stuff, and career progression. Because if you look at society, a lot of times the people who work those hundred twenty hour weeks and, you know, slept in the office and built these beautiful billion dollar businesses, and you think and you look at what they did to build that, and I'm like, I don't know that I wanna do all that so I can build a billion dollar business because I wanna actually sleep and enjoy life. And so, you know, there's this tension. Is is there a way to to balance your ambition with self care?

Ting Song: 28:28

I think it's a choice.

Adam Larson: 28:30

Okay.

Ting Song: 28:32

If I mean, if you a lot of people people, they're not happy about their life. But there's there's also people, you know, they work very, hard, a short period of their time, and then they're using the rest of their life to fix the problem that was generated from that short period of time. So so it's about, do you want a long term success, or do you want a short term success? If do you really want a lot of money? Is that the ending goal of your life?

Ting Song: 29:08

Or you wanna have a fab happy life? It's a I think it's a personal choice. I always feel you can achieve a lot in a short period of time. If you work really, really hard, which means my it might be sacrifice your time to do any other things or your personal health or well-being, but it's not sustainable. At least it's not sustainable for most people.

Ting Song: 29:31

It might be happening for some people, but for most people, it's not sustainable.

Adam Larson: 29:36

Yeah.

Ting Song: 29:37

So you can see their short term success. Yeah. They're very success. But that was maybe for many now, like, ten years, five years, but they are they really successful at the end of their life? Right?

Ting Song: 29:50

It's a marathon. So you always wanna, you know, look at the full picture to see what is you wanna do, your choice, how you wanna live your life. And then, you know, you might also make adjustment. You know? Sometimes when you're in your twenties, you make a choice different than what you're doing in your thirties.

Ting Song: 30:12

In your forties, it's different again. So you make adjustment. You know? But I think the most important thing is that you have to understand. You you're you have to understand yourself, and everybody is so different.

Ting Song: 30:29

If you you know, the work the way you work, some people, they are just good at working long hours, and that's how they can produce results. Whereas other people, they might have short you know, they can only focus a short period of time, but they generate even better results within a short period of time. So you have to understand what is your style. I think most time, burnout and stress is because you're trying to make your body to do something your body doesn't wanna do because you don't understand your body very well.

Adam Larson: 31:06

Yeah.

Ting Song: 31:06

You in yeah. You're intervene in you intervene the natural rhythm of your body, which, you know for example, you body will tell you it's time to sleep, but your in use you tell yourself, no. I can't sleep because I have so many things I need to think about. So it's yourself telling yourself, okay. I need to do something that's against my nature.

Ting Song: 31:30

And that's why it's burnout. You get burnout. You got stressed because you're forcing yourself to do something you're not naturally able to do. Whereas, you know, some people, they their body are built different than us. They are able to do, you know, long hours.

Ting Song: 31:46

Or when they're working, they might actually taking breaks in the middle, but you don't see that. You only see what they presented to you. You don't really see what's actually happening to them. Mhmm. Because of that, you know, you think, oh, they work long hours.

Ting Song: 32:02

Yeah. Success. You know, they work hard. They get success. No.

Ting Song: 32:05

It's not always the truth because you don't know the details. Yes. So I think it's because yeah. We all see, you know, what's happening from the surface, and then we think that's what's gonna happen, but that might not be.

Adam Larson: 32:20

Yeah. I like that. Yeah. It's it's it's really hard, and I think sometimes we hear these stories of people, but you don't see what what their day to day was like. You don't see what they did to maybe avoid burnout as they went built their careers.

Adam Larson: 32:31

And so you can't make assumptions that, oh, I have to work eighty hours a week to to be successful. You know, a lot of times with everything that's happening and all the, different advances in technology, you know, we should be working smarter and and finding ways to cut down the amount of hours that we need to work to still be successful.

Ting Song: 32:49

Exactly. And it's all about, like, if you know what you're good at. Right? If you're good at Mhmm. Doing certain things, you focus on more than that.

Ting Song: 32:56

And then you you'll be able to be more successful in that area, and then you don't feel as tired because that's something you're more talented in. Whereas if you do something you're are not good at, even working one hour a day might make you tired. Yeah. And that's why

Adam Larson: 33:12

You know? Yeah. I feel like this has been an amazing conversation talking about burnout, and I think we've covered a lot of different things. And I kinda wanna leave our listeners with, you know, maybe somebody's been listening to this and they've identified, hey. I I think I am burnt out or about to be burnt out.

Adam Larson: 33:26

Maybe we can maybe you can we can kinda end the conversation by, like, what's one small small step that they could start by, like, kind of, I wanna reclaim my energy. I wanna reclaim my well-being. I wanna take a step in the right direction.

Ting Song: 33:38

I think it from okay. If you can go home and start to set alarm for yourself to take a break after one hour of working for five minutes. Okay. That's the first step you can do. It's very small step.

Ting Song: 33:52

Just take a five minutes break every hour you work. I say small, but it takes a lot of energy or, you know, management in order to do that. But I think it's very important. Just start to take a break during the day. I think that will be the the best first step for you to start with this process.

Adam Larson: 34:08

Yeah. I like that. Well, Ting, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming and sharing your expertise with our listeners today.

Ting Song: 34:17

Thank you. Thank you. It's my honor to be here as well. And it's great chatting with you, and I'm so happy I can share all these experiences and advice to whoever listens here.

Announcer: 34:30

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.imanet.org.