Sneaky Burnout Is a Thing | Episode 28

In this episode, Gary takes over for David with the help of special returning guest Juan. They talk about motivation, burnout, and where to go from a designer and developer's standpoint. They also discuss the new Mac Studio, their top 3 favorite apps, and Juan's childhood dreams of collecting old video games.

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David Baxter - CEO of Big Pixel

Gary Voigt - Creative Director at Big Pixel

The Podcast

David Baxter has been designing, building, and advising startups and businesses for over ten years. His passion, knowledge, and brutal honesty have helped dozens of companies get their start.

In Biz/Dev, David and award-winning Creative Director Gary Voigt talk about current events and how they affect the world of startups, entrepreneurship, software development, and culture.

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Transcript

Unknown: 0:08

Welcome, everybody, to the biz dev podcast, our podcast about developing your business. I'm Gary Voight, your host for the day as our fearless leader David is on vacation, but I'm sure that we will be very happy and fill that gap more adequately with our very, very special guest today. He's basically the third member of the podcast, and I'm referring to the returning champ and get guru Juan. Hey, well, thank you. I appreciate the intro. At this point. I feel like I'm second in command with David's not around. Which I'm sure that's not true. Yeah, well, this is your third time on the podcast. So it begs the question, are you just trying to take my job? Yeah, see, I was told that my episode is always the most popular one. So I don't know. That's I guess the that is the ongoing joke. David and I had an ongoing joke the first time he was gone. And you and Siva, were assisting me with a podcast. That episode got the most downloads of all our episodes. And I mean, don't get me wrong, our episodes get so many downloads. It's hard to keep count. But that one was by far the the biggest. And then I did hear something that when I was a few weeks ago, and you were on that you were asking for the download numbers of that episode to to see if you were the special sauce and that magic number. Yeah, no, it wasn't. No, no, no, no. I think it was a fluke. So maybe it's the combination of me and you will figure we'll figure out what that's a very good point. We're gonna figure that out today. Yeah, I don't think we need anybody else in the tech topic dominating recently is the Apple products, the MAC studio and the MAC studio display. David has given us his take and his opinions about the studio display. Now we both agree that the MAC studio computer like regardless of what you think it looks like, or whatever, just as far as performance for a computer, if you take out the gaming factor, and just look at the way these new Apple silicon chips are performing, it's awesome. It's leading somewhere that I think the other chip companies are going to have to get on board and compete with which can really only benefit everybody that uses a computer so pretty stoked on that. But he did have some choice words about the display. So I was going to ask what you think about the new Mac Studio either the computer the display or both of them. So if I'm not mistaken they announced the new iPad Air as well and I think I'd be honest, I missed that part. I think this lamp an M one and that one as well. So it seems like they want to sprinkle the M one everywhere they can which I know the North America I think is it's a fantastic product. Yeah, it seems like the trend to replace everything is either going to have the a bionic for their mobile and anything bigger than a phone is probably gonna have an M big M going forward. I appreciate what they're trying to do with their pro quote unquote pro products so they're trying to appeal more to the professionals that actually use their products and not trying to go with like prosumer I know there was a big deal when the iMac pro came out because the professionals kind of felt like abandoned but now it feels like it were almost only being tailored to professionals with the Apple products which I think is fantastic. Because let's be honest, those are the people that use them extra you know that there is the cool looking dude in the in the coffee shop with their MacBook Air. But in reality most of the people that are buying these products are using them nonstop hardcore for 10 hours a day five days. I mean sure there is that you know fashionable kind of cool you know you have an Apple product like I think that extends for the phones more than the computers probably because it's it's kind of like a brag I guess if you have an Apple iPhone versus whatever Samsung or Google phone but I think I was actually expecting an update to the iMac pro this time around and was not expecting the MAC studio which is you know like Mac Mini on steroids like at all and I totally was not expecting a display you know I I have mixed feelings about the display. I think it was right around the time that the iMac pro came out that everybody was was kind of hyped but a little bit disappointing when they came out with a will not really came up with what they announced they were going to partner with LG and they brought like a Thunderbolt three LG, 4k and 5k displays and they were considered grabbing that the LG 5k But I chose otherwise Yeah, they're a little overpriced. I'll be honest, I you know, I have a 4k LG Display, which was like 400 bucks. I think I got it off of Amazon and the apple counterpart the one So the Apple store was worth$900 Definitely not worth it. But a lot of people didn't like him despite the overpricing that's when these new ones came out a couple weeks ago. And the studio's you know, the reviewers got them, they were looking at them, they were comparing them to obviously the pro display XDR, the 10, grand, big boy. And a lot of comparisons between the old iMac 24 inch and the LG Display because basically those are from what everybody's saying the same screens with just a little bit of a bump in specs. But I think that the display is more of a, the new Apple studio display is more of like an amalgamation of that screen plus software inside that's going to help out things with the webcam, the speakers from the iMac and, you know, basically, I hate to say it, but they did the taco bell thing where they just looked at whatever ingredients they had laying around and formed a new product. That is a fantastic way to put it. But ya know, and I think the consensus around it and now is that it's if you're a very specific person that is you have peripherals you have an eye like a Mac Mini or, or Mac Pro and do not have a decent display. Sure, go for this one. Other than that, it seems like it's not really that is a good deal for most people, you're better off just picking up the LG. The one thing that hits me is all the reviewers will go and you know, they'll evaluate the value, they'll evaluate the specs. But then at the end, they'll all come back and say, but when you sit down, and you look at this thing, and you use it, it is just beautiful. Like the display, everything you're seeing on the screen is sharp, clear, colorful, bright, when it needs to be they said the experience like you could sit side by side between that and the big, what the XDR or whatever, and there's no much difference. For people that are like web professionals, UI professionals, Video Professionals, photo professionals that aren't doing, you know, cinema 3d renders, or cinema movies or whatever are saying that this is like the visually just looking at it, it's for some reason better than any other of the 4k 5k displays that are out. Yeah, because we understand that the price gap is a lot to choke. But at the end of the day, I want to see one in person. And I want to see like just how clean and clear and crispy it is. Because when those old Apple Thunderbolt displays came out with the cinema HD displays, like they were ahead of the game for those. And I had one I luckily the company that I worked for, they had the newest stuff every year and, and I drooled over those things enough to where I saved up my money so I can get one for a home. But now I'm on a Samsung 4k UHD, which is I guess it's like basically a Retina display. But without the actual Retina display. I like it, it's great. I thought it was crispy, clean. I'm a little, I just want to see the new one. Like, I don't think I'll buy one. But I just want to see it. I get the feeling. And I think with the with the cost thing, my justification, it really is just a justification when buying Apple products. It's not so much as me buying into the company and you know, the ecosystem, but more the consistency, I know I can go to one place, grab that same product anywhere in the country or the world for that matter. And it's going to be the same price, it's going to behave more or less the same. And I'm going to get the same quality. And I think he's that you know reliability that they're going to be very well calibrated, they're going to be very well built. And the worst thing that I saw, yeah, one of the guys that did a review, used, you know, professional onscreen calibrator and said that just out of the box, this is the closest to perfect he's ever seen any monitors, and he calibrates every single monitor that he uses or tests or reviews or whatever. But that's the only like, everything I use is Apple bass and just taking a small little display cord, and just from like my MacBook Pro into the display, and it'll charge my MacBook Pro as I'm using it. Like, that sounds great. But at the same time do I need I think you pay for for consistency and reliability more so than the actual brand. Sure there's, you know, a little bit like the Apple tax in there. But I do like, you know, the consistent Yeah, that's the apple tags Israel. Absolutely. But at the end of the day, if it's, I always I was thinking back as this is a tool, and if you want your unit, your tools to work and be consistent, and therefore you're willing to pay for a good, reliable, consistent tool. If that's if that's what it is. And I guess the the cost is justified. It's like my dad used to say like, if you're gonna buy a tool, get the good tools get snagged on a craftsman otherwise, you know, they'll last you forever or you can go to, you know, Walmart, Target, whatever, and just get one that's going to suit you for that specific task or job but don't expect it to be around. So yeah, Otherwise your David's swapping out laptops because his crappy Microsoft bugged out? Yeah, David and his tech gear. I don't even know if all these quote unquote, problems or issues are actually real or valid if because it seems like whenever something new comes out, all of a sudden his current one is having issues as I go through doesn't laptop doesn't work anymore. I gotta buy another one. Yeah, my, my iPhone 13 just magically got wet. And I know it's waterproof. But I thought it would be past 20 feet, so I had to get them Do you have three apps that you use every single day that you can't live without whether it's work or life related? Yes, absolutely. 100%. I think one of them which I guess everybody uses a password manager now. But I've been using one password. Probably around the time they were still in beta. And they were in the test flight. And they got I was this was before I got married. I bought one password back when iPhone was on. It's like second version. And it was one of the first few apps in the iTunes store. Yeah, I think it was like iPhone five or six, I think it was six. It was when they were going with the bigger phones, the pluses. It was like 299 or something, whatever. And it was, I thought it was a fantastic app on my car. I don't need to keep a very sketchy Excel sheet with all my notes. This is this works for. And I've been using that consistently, reliably ever since everyday, same subscription I keep on paying it. We have an author devices and our family in the household. Fantastic. I think that's one the other one is drafts, which is a bit of an odd application isn't really a note taking app, but more of like a, this is where you start writing, you open up a canvas, you start writing whatever it is. And you can automate everything about this app with JavaScript. It's an iOS app, it's 100%. It's like a thumbing through iOS app, not a hybrid app. But the developer went out of his way to include the JavaScript engine into the app. And you can just write your JavaScript scripts, and just automate everything, which is a very program react but freaking love. It's amazing. A third one. I don't think there is a third one that I will say like I can't live without, but I do use my most common Yeah, most commonly used things. Yeah, things is my like my quote, unquote, To Do app, I suck at to do's, I suck at reminders, I just let them pile up and have 14 under applications on the app and never open and forget it exists. It makes paradox at this point, like, Yeah, sounds great, and looks great. But my problem is, I used to have a system that I relied on, and then that system got derailed by adding other apps into that system. Because now I have to have like a to do list for things that you know, works with everybody else's to do this, and then migrates to this to do this. And then even task management or, like it's gone far beyond to do this. So at this point, I'm just writing stuff down, like in in a little had the little field notes, notebooks or whatever, as my daily just like a quick little draw a little checkbox, right, the main, you know, name, or whatever, but I'm not really taking notes on what I need to do that way. It's just a visual reminder of things that are on my plate. But I used to love using Asana. Ah, yeah, and then Asana got kind of a, I guess, there was a weird phase in between where it was good. And then they got a little heavy, trying to push more for like the Pro users. And things started getting a little clunky. So then I switched to notion, which I liked notion a lot too. And then that started getting a little clunky. And then I was kind of forced to move over to what we use in our office clickup Which Oh, we have a huge fan of neither am I Yeah, but I mean so I'll use that when I need to but yeah, I don't have one consistent like and I'll be all note taking kind of reminder app and I would like to get back to that place but I think you're I feel like you know personally but you're on the right track with the pencil paper. I've been seeing more people go back into something simple just lower the bar as you know as much as possible to entry just grab a piece of paper jot down what you want to do for the day and cross out whatever you get done if not moving on to next page next day. Here's the you know the spillover from yesterday here's the new stuff I need to complete today and just keep on doing that consistently every day. And if I'm obviously not adding like you know dates or drawing boards or anything like that, it's just quick little kind of like a fixed I wouldn't even say it's like the post it version but yeah, little fix thing where I just Get the page flip the page flip the page, I get the little graph one. So you could draw a little checkboxes. Yeah, yeah, no. And I think the thing here is that we focus so much on trying to set up the system and trying to meet those, you know, dates. And I, as a creative yourself, and I think that trying to meet deadlines is, it's a very fluid concept just because in reality we never do. You know, we get a spec of what we need to design what we need to code. And we say in our head, it's going to take three days, it takes six, because you know, there's changes, there's iterations, there's unexpected stuff that comes up and things take a while. And having that date to scream at you and your face every day. It's due, it's past you, it's three days past due, it just creates entirety, it does not make it any brighter. Dark red, I know it's over, you're not getting more productive. You just getting anxious, and now you're feeling pressure by your GM phone. It has a purpose. So I think that the note dates, just the pencil and paper, probably you guys are going to work better for me as well. I've been trying to do that a little bit more and try to get away from actual apps, I think I downloaded things just because I want to there's some stuff that is like time sensitive, for example, hey, you need to you know, go pick up something or drop off something to the post office, you probably want to set up a date for that. But other than that, yep, just pencil and paper I think it's gonna work on. Yeah, I've tried it a moment. I even tried Evernote for a while. There was another one to do. But it was like the EU x and it was based on like, the Swiss design style, or it was just something very simple. And there's like six of them, they do something. Yeah, I think I've gone through them all. And I was like, Oh, this is definitely going to help me, you know, organize my life. And then at the end of the day, it's no, they didn't really help much at all, that they got subscriptions in some of them as well. And I don't know, I don't know how I feel about 10 bucks a year for you know, come on, I'm trying to think of there's three apps that I use every day that may or may not be work related. You know, besides email, Slack calendar and all that stuff. And, obviously, Chrome browser, I think, figma I use every single day. Because whether I'm working in it or not, it's just a fun app to use. Yeah. And it's also got a great community attached to it. So even if you're not working, you just open figma. And then you go into the community and check out the new either files people have put up or, you know, UI kits, icons or plugins that will help. You know, it just seems like a very fast growing and super efficient design tool. Now, I'm getting, trying to find ways to kind of avoid the Adobe products. Yes, I for 1am. Very happy with that you switch to figma. And now things are much easier to see. Understand. Yeah, x d when it came out. See, it was the promised land. But man, that thing just fell off a cliff. Yes, it did. When we started when I started to big pixel, that's what you were using. And that's the first thing I complained to David about, like, why we're using XD This thing's awful. I can, like I can't figure out what the next page is. This is how I think he's telling you for someone who lived in the Adobe, you know, realm for many, many years. As far as like the, the tool patterns, shortcuts and stuff like that, just that ecosystem was very easy for me to pick up between, like using Illustrator and Photoshop to XD But, uh, yeah, figma slight learning curve, but not much, because obviously, they're smart enough to realize that most people are coming from an Adobe, you know, environment. So they've done a lot of similar if it's not key commands or whatever. They've done a lot of similar things to the UI into the tools that make it work, kind of like someone who's used to Adobe, but it's just a fun app. Even today, are we recording this on April 1, which is April Fool's Day, just without any mention, or any kind of press or anything. I just saw someone posted on Twitter. And then so I went check that out. figma added a little fake tool underneath a little pen tool. It looks like a roll of tape. So you click on it and you just drag across your screen and it puts like masking tape across whatever you're saying saying like final design, version five, six, just joking around but they do fun little stuff like that for the community where it kind of keeps you motivated to use it. And you have heard them so final version. Yes. One of the topics I wanted to talk today about is a little different now recently over the last few episodes, David and I have been going over kind of ways and processes give Thinking advice and information about starting to develop either your startup business or your current business into a new product or whatever in a strategic way, that's probably going to save you money in the long run and help you make the smarter decisions. Instead of just jumping right into throwing out a bunch of money to a dev team to build an app. You know, we started with just creating your idea and then validating that idea in different ways. And then after that idea is validated, working on a model, whether it's just hands on, or a digital product, that'll get you in the door to make the first couple sales or requests or whatever, and then building on from there. And I don't want to derail that series. But I definitely want David to be here as we continue on that series. But for now, in today's episode, we're going to take it a little different subjects, David touched on this before. He mentioned burnout, a couple weeks back, talking about the way it affects a business owner. So I'm kind of bringing up this idea of passion, drive motivation, and burnout, as one whole group, coming from my perspective as a designer or creative professional. And then I'm sure it could be related to anybody who works either in tech or any business for that matter. But it seems to be more prevalent, have a conversation or topic for people that work within tech as creatives as developers, or as someone who sits at a desk, and does a repetitive task every day. And lately, it's been from home in the same setting for the last couple of years. And just how that can kind of weigh on you. In no way. Am I an expert on this. And no one should actually take what I say as as a step by step process to do what they're doing, you can find so much information out there ways to either help curb burnout or stay away from burnout altogether. But I'm trying to find a way that helps me make an actual choice every day, I direct my mental path in a positive direction. And I want to make sure that regardless of the weight of the world, and everything that's going on around me, that that doesn't filter into dampening my outlook and squashing my motivation and drive for what I'm doing. And that's hard to do. And it's been very hard to do lately, it just seems that no matter what's coming in to my job list, or to my, you know, current projects or upcoming projects, I immediately get excited about every single one of them. And I immediately start crafting these designs and ideas and pictures in my head. And I immediately start thinking of best case scenario outcomes and where this can go and how awesome that would be and how it's going to make us look great, because of all the good work that I know we can put into this. And then I kind of sit there, and I start thinking about how I'm going to, you know, get these ideas out of my head and first onto paper then into, you know, our talking points on wireframes. And we discuss it and then I kind of I develop a blank spot. And then it kind of feel a little less motivated, even continue from that process from my head out of my mouth or hands into, you know, the big pixel system of moving forward. So lately, it's been a lot of, okay, these are my tasks just go out and one at a time. And then sometimes you're motivated to do the best job you ever can on just revising, you know, the color of a box. Because that's one other thing that kind of gets the seeing on social media, people complaining about the, the job description of designers versus UI designers versus UX designers is constant endless battle, that's just a circle of, in my opinion, it's just a circle of dumb, like, regardless of what kind of designer artist you are, if you're if you're creating something, and it's visual, and you're putting it out there for other people to use and enjoy, or you're putting it out there for other people to use as a way of like, especially in design for UI and UX is different than creating layouts and stuff for magazine ads. But at the end of the day, you're still communicating. It's just communication. So it doesn't matter what it's labeled. But there's a lot of people that say like, oh, you're a UI designer, so you just basically draw squares, pick colors and fonts. Yeah. Okay. I mean, there's so many UI kits out there. And design systems. I guess that's the new thing. You just buy one and use it, you're done. So that weighs in on you. Obviously, the news about everything that's going on in the world weighs in on everybody, especially here in the United States. I know it's probably everywhere, but It just seems that we're in a very weird place. Enlist. That could also be just because of my age and that I have a family and young kids in school and stuff like that. You know what, now that I think about it, maybe in the 80s, when I was a young kid growing up, maybe our parents felt the same way. And I just didn't know it because they didn't let on. Because it's the parents job to shield their kids from that. And it's something that I've thought about as well, like I have in my 30s Right now, I'm relatively younger than kids still. And I do not have any kids. I am married though. And I do feel the, you know, the sense of dread from time to time, anxiety, everything that's happening around me, obviously, don't feel the same weight they you would have in my field where you're carrying a business, or you're carrying kids with you, and there's a lot more responsibility. But I do feel the weight of things. And I do often wonder if that is something exclusive to us right now. Or if it's something that everybody feels in adulthood, and it's just that I just was unaware of it when I was a child. And I make it makes me appreciate my parents a little bit more than I just was, did not have to feel that when I was a kid. Yeah, I think also when you're a kid, you tend to hyper focus and bury yourself into the things that you're passionate about, because I'm sure I just dove headfirst into, you know, drawing, music cartoons, kung fu movies, skateboarding BMX, and like my friends, like I had no idea what was going on past that, like, I lived in my own personal little bubble of awesomeness. What I thought was awesomeness. So yeah, I guess once you get out of that bubble, it's probably hard to get yourself back in, which is what I'm trying to do like the the constant bombardment of information and news and stuff like I've weaned myself off of social media as much as possible. But it's like you can't escape it. If you own a smartphone, you can't escape it. You can delete your apps or, but I can't because, you know, I have to use these apps for marketing. Sure, there's not a day that goes by that I don't have to check like LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, all this stuff, just from a marketing perspective. So let's be honest, here, it's not something that you actually can disconnect from unless you completely disconnect, go off grid, as I can, you know, throw away my phone and turn on the news just to watch news from actual professionals. And they're referencing Tik Tok. I know their stuff on Twitter. So obviously, I can't escape it. If I just, if unless I completely disconnect, which now is that's not solving a problem. It's just avoiding, and especially living and working in the fields that we do, like, as a creative professional and developer in the tech world, you know, you are tethered to these things, whether it's your devices or these apps, there's, there is no going off grid, you know what I mean? Yeah, comes with the territory, unless I go back to using a Field Notes notebook and drawing out all my ideas and then sending them via paper airplane to someone else. But yeah, oh, no worries, you're gonna take a picture of every phone and then go off grid. I mean, I can mail it. Yeah, I can mail if we still have a postal system, and three or five. I'll send it via Amazon. And then I'll catch backlash on that. But no, I'm just kidding. But it's interesting that you mentioned, you know, what you're bringing up, I'll be honest with you, I have not experienced burnout myself yet. And I'm grateful for that. But I do see the conversation happening often around me. So what I have tried to do is try to understand what it is and how can I avoid it. I am the the embodiment of the male stereotype, I see every I see everything as a problem that needs fixing. And because I do that, I usually do not tend to focus on the actual problem long enough for me to worry about it, which is usually doesn't help when you're married. But that's beside the point. What I had been trying to do is, let me avoid this stuff. Like you mentioned, social media and the constant bombardment of, oh, you should be doing this. If you want to further your career, you need to grind more, hustle more, if you're gonna get ahead. And there are a couple things, two or three things that I have been trying to draw and drill in my head for last couple of years. And one is I want to find what makes me happy content. I don't want to feel like I have everything I want. But enough that I feel happy. And that could be that I'm gonna be the same developer for the next 30 years and maybe to somebody in my field that might seem like I failed, but to me, if I was happy during those three decades, that means, you know, I was successful. I made it I was happy. I did what I loved for as long as I could, living healthy and reliably without having to worry about money. In a shelter, and that could be conceived as like you found your your niche to like, as a, in a business sense or whatever, that's actually a good thing you could become an expert in. Exactly. And you know, I think I found what I like. So I want to keep doing this as much as I can. And when it comes to running a business, do something creative or working anything that has to do with some sort of engineering or programming development. There's always that that sense of either accomplishment, which is feels fantastic when you get a test on it when you finally make a product or ship a product. But there is more often than not the feeling of I was not able to ship this, I was not able to fix this, I was not able to make this in time, or reliably where now it's broken. And ternal struggle between read and dreaded failure. Constant, especially for designers. And I know, some designers might not admit this, some artists might not but it's true. Everything like you can start a project thinking, This is awesome. I am doing this so great. This is creative, it's going to solve the problem. It looks great. You send it out, you get one comment back that's like, huh, I don't know about this. And then it's like, Oh, my God, I suck. I failed. This is miserable. Where am I going to start? That was my best idea. Now what do I gotta go back to drive and this internal struggle you have in your head? You know, that's a constant thing. But typically, when you're not burned out, you just move past it like taking a breath, then you just move on, move past it. But this weird burnout thing. Like, and I'm not bringing this up to be topical for the times or for clickbait for this podcast. But it creeps up on you. And you don't know it's there. Because you'll never admit to yourself, you know, oh, no, no, no, that's just for other people. I'm fine. All I gotta do is just take a break, drink some water, go skate for five minutes in front of the house, do something, you know, athletic or exercise, move my body around, just get this out of my system and start over. And well, yeah, that kind of stuff does help. That's typically that helps when it's like a normal situation. Yeah, but this weird burnout thing kind of creeps up, where I guess burnouts, not really the best term for it. But it's pretty descriptive. If you think about the way a match after the flame has gone. Just keep getting darker and darker and darker, the further it goes down. It's like if you stopped it, you put out that flame. But it's still there's still embers back there. You know what I mean? So even if you do these things to help drive your motivation to help free your mind of that weird internal struggle of You're doing great, and you're doing bad. There's still this looming thing in the back your head it's like, but I don't feel like doing it. Like, what happened. I used to love designing these things, getting a fresh perspective, finding, like even stupid little things like, Oh, look at this new icon set the way that's animated, that's gonna motivate me to animate an icon I have in a project somewhere else who I get the jumper to after I get to render this, as you know, and you get excited for this process again. But this burnout thing just says like, Yeah, whatever, I'll just put this icon in there. And then if they want to animate it, you know, fine, I'm not gonna go out of my way to animate it were without burnout, I was always trying to do that, oh, he's trying to go that extra step. It doesn't help that in our field. It isn't, it is inherently remote. And as much as a lot of companies want to pretend like you can only do this job at you know, in an office setting. The reality is you can grab a laptop, pop it open, and start working anytime during the day anywhere you're at. So if if you have something stuck in the back of your head, you're going to take it home, it's going to be very hard for you to just leave it at the door. And what ends up happening is that you don't go home and destress Are you gonna leave your home office and the strife you know, go ahead and let let that go and start focusing on your family on yourself and stop thinking about work. That doesn't go away, especially in our case, we were 100% remote. It's maybe like 8pm and I'm sitting in the living room watching TV. I'm not watching anything. I'm stuck in the same issue I had six hours ago, and I just can't let it go. And right now it feels like I got the energy. I got the motivation. I let me just quickly open laptop again. Maybe I have another idea. Maybe let me try this. And I've done that often. But I think that's how you eventually lead to get into that point where you just can't do it anymore. He's just That's a great point that that burnout thing is, for me anyway. So in my scenario, it is exactly what you just said, where there's a distinct kind of click in your brain where it's like, yeah, I'm only 12 feet away from my laptop. I have an idea. I want to I want to, you know, change this one little thing on their website to look so awesome or this one little, you know, interactions gonna be really cool, but it's like from that idea and even being 12 feet away. Don't get up and do it. And now you can say, Okay, if I was not remote, and I was working in office, and I left it at the office, and it came back home, and I had that idea, I'd be writing it down excited to do it tomorrow. Okay, that makes sense. But after having that idea, being excited to do it, and then doing it, when you're, you know, offices, 12 feet away, for like, two years consistently. At that point, you're like, you know what, you're gonna make the choice that I'll do this tomorrow. But then you do that for a few times. And then it's like, you know what, I'm just not, I don't feel like doing it. Like, I'll just wait. You're burnt? You don't you don't feel that motivation, or that energy or that passion, and then you feel really guilty about it. That's the hard part is feeling like, what's wrong with me? Why? Why don't I have this passion? And motivation that I had? You know, before? Like, is there something am I? Did I make the wrong choice? Do I feel like I need to change or, you know, maybe we got to spruce up by, you know, desk area, if you're working from home, just the stuff around, you can have a big impact on your, you know, outlook for the day, or maybe I need to change or maybe I should go outside. And it's just weird that you start questioning yourself, and you start wondering, you know, why am I feeling this way? So then I think, bringing it up, talking about it and admitting like, yeah, this burnout thing. It's not just a trend, it's actually real thing, it happens to everybody. And it can happen to anybody at any point, but it hasn't happened to you yet. So. So, you know, like I was mentioning before, I have learned to feel content with where I am, and I'm very, very happy where I am right now. That's definitely one thing that has helped, I don't, I don't, I'm not going to say I don't feel envious of watching peers, not necessarily co workers, just peers in the same field, making X amount of money or x company making this product, here's a monkey wrench for you. I'm super happy with where I am. And I'm super happy with where my family is and how my kids are doing. They're doing great. Like an things outside of this weird mental prison I'm putting myself in are actually pretty good. Other than, you know, the obvious things like inflation and prices and stuff like that, but I mean, overall, arcing, like, things are going pretty well. So it's, it's, that's another weird factor. That's like why am I feeling like it's important to disconnect your feelings, your personal life, sentiments with how you feel about your job, and what you're doing your job. And in I know that sounds very easy to say out loud, but I do my utmost and usually fail to just disassociate what I'm doing with my job with my personal life. And the stupidest and simplest thing I found that helps is having a little bit of dopamine hit me right after work. Because nine times out of 10 I probably do not fix the bug I needed to fix before I left my job. So what I do is that I get up I go wash the dishes, you know I cleaned the kitchen, which is something nobody prepares you what your adult you're gonna do every single day five times a day until you die. So I clean the kitchen it's nice to spotless there's no mess I sit down I feel that sense of accomplishment I feel like I Okay, it's been satisfying and even though it's still itching in the back of my head the the problem that I had at work and it's not done it's not fixed but I don't feel like a need to scratch it that much anymore. So you being a very task oriented person just being able to do something and check that box is like your hit of okay accomplishment I did something you know I fix something you did something and my wife knows that when I when I am done work the first thing I'm going to do is just find something to clean or fix the house or maybe the house is clean so I don't know you know there's this there's they're having issues with my Wi Fi and I have a overly complex network situation at home Let me go mess with that for a little while but bring down the internet for a couple hours four hour try to figure something out. Or you know what the Apple TV is acting up let me reset that crap and rewire everything maybe that will fix it it just do something either technical or simple or a chore related. Or he's some people go to the gym I don't do that. But some people go to the gym. Maybe I'll just lose myself into into some new music and either take a walk or roll around on the street, something like that for like 1520 minutes and see if I can get out of this weird cycle. It is weird though because like I mentioned before everything like there's really nothing bad going on in my whole life. There's definitely nothing bad going on at work life. We're you know, we're doing great we have great clients and I love working with all the people that you know we have at Big pixel it's nothing like that. It's it's it's a deeply And oddly, just a weird personal mental block about motivation and drive just for something that you know you love doing. It's it's complex and simple at the same time, and it's just hard to get through. But, you know, hopefully you don't experience it. And hopefully no one does. But eventually, it seems like people are going to just with the new environment that we're getting used to in business with the remote work working from home and staying at your desk. But I think this it's important that we talk about this in like, it's like you said, it's not that it's trendy to talk about is that more people feeling a little bit more comfortable speaking about this, that I'm sure it's been happening for a very long time. And we've just recently started to put a word to it and start understanding it and seeing for what it is, and the more we speak about it, the more we can, we can learn from each other because I don't think you become a professional at burnout. And like you say, you're not a professional, I'm definitely not one. But if we speak about it a little bit more, if we can learn from each other, we can at least be we'll be able to better figure it out, find it and maybe stop it before it gets to that we're gonna do something to prevent it. And I think one thing I do want to point out is that it a lot of people in our field tend to have personal projects, side projects, stuff that either you monetize, you don't you just do for hub for passion, that aren't directly related to the the field you're in, whether it's designed to work, whether it's development work, as much as it itches to just have that personal project and say, you know, I feel pretty bad about my job today at work. I mean, work on my personal project, you're just doing free work that's unrelated to your other work, but you still doing work, you're doing the work that you quote unquote, want to do versus what you have to do. Yeah, and it's in there has to be a balance, because you can also get burnout, just because you keep on doing so much coding or so much designing. It has happened to me where I leave work, I have an issue. And you know, I just want to keep on coding, but I don't want to work because it's so it's not going to help us it's going to make it worse. I've been you know, redesigning my personal site, let me work in that. And now I'm stuck in something in my personal site. And now it's 10pm, I'm going to keep on working I need to sleep. So now I have two things stuck in my head, and I can't sleep. So I didn't do anything I just, you know, intensified the issue. I just made it worse. So it's it's finding a fine, it's, you know, it's finding that line and, and in being very careful not to cross it to the point where you're just burning yourself out intentionally. It's nice to have side projects nice to enjoy your job outside of just being paid for it. But you don't have to do it. Although everybody on Twitter seems to believe that we should be working 90 hours a week. Oh, well, yeah. David and I have went over this hustle culture side project, hustle porn, like thing for a few episodes and how ridiculous it is. It's good to be passionate, it's good to be motivated. It's good to have a direction and a drive. And yeah, of course, if you're gonna pour your heart and soul into something because you believe in it, that's great. But it is not great to make other people feel bad that they're not doing that. If that's not there. It's completely okay to just get up and go to work, get paid and live your life. You don't exactly. This doesn't have to be like a burden, passion, the work to live versus lift the work thing like that's, it's different for everybody. And so as I mentioned before, David did talk about this burnout issue from the perspective of a business owner. That's a few episodes previous to this one. I just kind of gave you a quick, weird emotional diatribe about burnout from I guess you could say a designer's perspective, but it wasn't really related to design as much as it was just, I guess, a part of the process I'm very excited about an overpriced purchase that I made recently. And I am excited for this purchase. So I have been feeling very nostalgic like all of us because of you know, big corporate media. And I've I wanted to reconnect with my childhood gaming days, and I'm gonna get there was glued on to a Gameboy while the whole family was having fun on the Grand Canyon. Now remember that trip anyways. So I'm looking at I can't make fun of you because I'm seriously contemplating buying a brand new, set up skateboard with new shoes and everything. And I'm way too old to be doing this. But yes, I'm reconnecting with my youth. So go ahead and your gaming. So I want to eat them. Like what is the console that I want to buy first? I'm like, You know what, I love my 3ds and tell that was a couple years ago. That wasn't that long ago. I want to get a 3ds I want to get a Gameboy I go to eBay. I want specifically this one because of this design because of this specific reason has like that's the one that you had. Are you trying to find the one that you had or trying to find the one that you wanted? Both actually it's the one I had, and I found a interesting piece of information where it seems like Nintendo used to make IPS panels for a random number of their 3d assets. It was completely random. Sometimes you got it sometimes Didn't you get the crappy TN panel? And it was like, I want that model and with an IPS panel, I found one dude in Japan, only one. There's only one $400. This console is not foreign to us when it came out. Taping her is that? No, it's like the cost was 400 bucks. And it's like $30 to ship but I'm like, Should I do it? Should I do it? I mulled over this fleet seven days it could you know, that was like the last day I could bid on it. eBay. Bought it. I got it. It's the ship today this morning. And I have never felt this excited. Got it? Probably. Since I got married. It's more awesome. Since you brought up being married. How did you split this one by your wife? Well, we paid for it with her credit card. So I would say that she she was very supportive about it. I was we don't? Obviously we we don't have kids. So we can justify a couple of these expenses. Because they know I'm just joking around typically in a good relationship. Good partnership. Everybody's supportive of everybody else. I was just, it's just the old joke of spending that much on Yeah, no, but it's good that you brought it up. Because she was very supportive. She was very excited and got that mediative and more, you know, awesome. But yeah, so I'm very excited to get my overprice 3ds and load some games on it and start playing, you know, sell different 10 years ago, I got better tell them I switch but that doesn't matter. It doesn't have to say this thought. So what are you going to do when it comes to the games? Like do you have any of those weird mods that you can download? Like all the games onto one cartridge, and then put it in there and play all the games? Or like are you going to start buying the old games as individual cartridges and track those down to God, you touched on a different point, which I've been debating for a couple of years now. It's like should I just keep on buying all digital, I have like 10 terabytes of digital stuff in my house, like, but I also want to have them just for preservation for archival purposes. Just looking at it, I still have boxes of cassette tapes made, I've made old Hip Hop tapes that first came out like I have is is a very, I guess you can say it's a very rare and sought after version of a tape. It's called the purple tape from Raekwon, the chef of the Wu Tang Clan, when they first pressed it, it was purple. So only like a certain number of are purple. And then they switched to blue. But I still have that original purple one. And I'm holding on to that forever. Because you can see that about like, you know, an mp3 file. That's true. In that's the thing. And that's why I keep on thinking back should I just start investing in physical media? Sure, it's dumb, if you're wasting money, but I am not going to be able to go back 10 years from now and find that damn mp3 that I probably lost and that company doesn't sell anymore and they don't want me to download even though I pay for it. You just did. You just describe the antithesis of what created the whole new boom in vinyl and cassettes like vinyl when that went out. And then people started going back for nostalgic reasons and buying records and record players and then that industry blew up. Now there's even you know, the musician Jack White was he created his own vinyl press. So now he puts out albums that are actually albums and he's trying to encourage the other labels to build their own presses because it's a pretty booming industry. Now. It's not just a niche little weird thing. And cassettes are becoming the new vaporware. That's making a reappearance so yeah, buying the old video games and stuff like that, that's just right in line with that and your feeling about it having you know holding it in your hand blowing the dust out of it if it's not playing right the first time putting it back in like yeah, that that little tangible piece of nostalgia or memory or whatever passion that you had. There's there's definitely something to say for it. And it's funny that you mentioned that because last night I was watching this this YouTuber which happens to be like an art historian that's a huge Magic the Gathering nerd and he was talking about like, a$30,000 card. That is that was it's out of print, they came out like 20 years ago and it's it's great and a four out of 10 plus the edges there's some history to it. And it was saying how this is absolutely not worth four grand and this is not a four out of 10 This is a tentative attempt there's history and that card you pull it out you hold it you see a little you know a little ink in the back from a pen or you see some across it edges a little bit of watermarking at the bottom because somebody dropped something on it there's it's a library on itself as a history we see him on itself. Yeah, that's the collectors mindset. Exactly. It doesn't have to be human condition because this is your copy that you've carried on for a couple of years and it brings a lot of value to it because we can name price to anything but we don't necessarily give it value with that price. And I think that's why I want to like start buying all those things that I miss and because it was a dumb kid and might be sold or threw away and now that you know I feel like I need them back in my life just it's it's gonna bring you that little spark of joy which is popping open man I wish you luck on your search to try to find these things again. That sounds pretty awesome. Yeah, cuz everybody's commercializing it and now something that is worth probably 10 bucks is being sold for 300 Yeah, just watch out for the knockoffs and Uh, you're gonna get a lot of fake stuff out there. And you get a lot of people trying to sell things and then never ship them. Just be careful the scammers happen. Yeah, you did bring up something that I cannot believe we glossed over. You brought up Magic the Gathering, which then made me think of Dungeons and Dragons, which reminded me of David starting this little d&d Club within big pixel, which opens up a world of jokes and ridicule and what kind of stuff I'm just joking. But we'll get into that the next time you're on, I got my books, my dice, and this Friday, next Friday, a nice like custom wooden table to throw my dice and it's coming in the mail and I'm excited, you're gonna pay for someone to embroider a custom pouch for your dice with some weird flourishes from already that mat that's coming in the mail too. Okay, guys, hopefully, you'll be able to get some of the information we gave out here about burnout and take it for what it's worth with a grain of salt. See if there's something stuck in your mind, wondering you know, to yourself, why you're not as motivated as you should be. And I wish you the best of luck and getting out of it. Go explore some resources from far more credible sources and actual professionals from us, but just understand that we empathize and we know if you have any questions or comments for us, as always, you can email us Hello at the big pixel dotnet. If you go on YouTube and find any of our podcasts that are put up there, you could put comments in the comment section. That's going to wrap it up for this week. David should be back next week, but for today's episode, it was me Gary boy along with one and one how do you pronounce your last name for yella yella? Yes. All right. We will see you next week. Thanks again guys.