TECC 257: How to Manage Burnout, Fear, and Uncertainty and Remain a Productive Engineer

In this episode, we talk to Zachary White, a career coach known for helping engineers, about the importance of work-life balance. He also provides some great tips to manage burnout, fear and uncertainty and remain a productive engineer. Engineering Quotes: Here Are Some of the Key Points Discussed About How to Manage Burnout, Fear, and Uncertainty: Engineers like to compartmentalize in their conscious mind, but 95% of the processing power of your brain is in your subconscious, which does not distinguish between your personal life and your work life. The patterns or habits that are blocking you, or creating problems for you, outside of work are almost always manifesting in an unrecognizable way in your work life. When you release the brakes and get back on track in your areas of resistance and failure outside the office, it will create an upward spiral into your work life where you can identify areas you need to work on. Burnout is an engineering, industrywide, organizational problem that must be addressed and taken seriously. The consequences of not addressing burnout in your life will end up being permanent. It can harm your health and relationships. The first thing you must do to start combating burnout is to change your focus from the things you are doing that you think are causing burnout to the things you are not doing, because that is where the real cause of burnout lies. Some things that cause burnout are not prioritizing sleep, your health, not staying connected to your passion, your relationships, your self-care, and not taking time for recreation. You blame things that you cannot control for your burnout when it's your own choices that are slowly creeping you toward burnout. Courage is not just something nice to have as an engineering leader, it is mandatory. Your subconscious mind automatically draws you to your comfort zone. Your brain automatically seeks safety and security, but none of the things you want to accomplish in life are in your comfort zone. When you go to the edge of your comfort zone, fear is right there to meet you every time. If you think you can wait for fear to go away before you grow into the size of your life, you will be waiting a long time. You need the courage to exceed the fear so that you can face the fear and do it anyway. Courage must be greater than fear for action to happen, and action is the antidote. The Happy Engineer Podcast is a podcast where you can learn to build your career while you balance your life in the pursuit of happiness, fulfillment, and satisfaction over your entire life. It has many important conversations distilled into actionable insights that you can immediately take into your career and life to help you get results. More in This Episode… In the Take Action Today segment of the show, Zach talks about how you can take your engineering career to the next level by investing in yourself. About the Guest, Zachary White Zach White is a widely regarded coach known for changing the game in engineering career coaching. He has worked with engineers at all levels from dozens of top companies worldwide to escape burnout and achieve breakthrough results. These companies include tech giants Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google and industry leaders like General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Nike, and Whirlpool. Zach is the founder and CEO of Oasis of Courage, known as OACO, a fast-growing company with unique and proven coaching programs exclusively for engineers. He also hosts The Happy Engineer Podcast, where listeners discover the steps to engineering success through expert interviews and Zach's transformational framework, the Lifestyle Engineering Blueprint. As a coach, Zach understands the engineering journey firsthand, holding a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Purdue University and a master’s degree in Mec...