Latest news with #burnout
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
She Spent Years Paying Off $300,000 In Student Debt. Now That It's Gone, This Doctor Wants To Quit Her $190,000 Job
Kristina, a physician from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, called into 'The Ramsey Show' with a surprising dilemma. After spending four years paying off over $300,000 in student loans, she said she no longer wants to work full time. 'I feel crazy saying this,' she told hosts Dave Ramsey and John Delony. 'But I don't want to return to work.' Kristina, who just had her third child, explained that she's feeling burned out and wants to stay home with her kids. Her husband, who had been working part-time and caring for their other children, recently started a full-time job at a bank. He currently earns $56,000 a year, with the potential to reach $70,000 after training. Don't Miss: Maker of the $60,000 foldable home has 3 factory buildings, 600+ houses built, and big plans to solve housing — Peter Thiel turned $1,700 into $5 billion—now accredited investors are eyeing this software company with similar breakout potential. Learn how you can If she were to return to work, she would earn around $190,000 annually. Quitting would mean a massive income drop, but Kristina said that part doesn't scare her. They would be able to make it on $70,000, she said, as their only debt is a $95,000 mortgage, and they have about $230,000 saved for retirement. When asked if she was fully done with medicine, Kristina said she wasn't sure. 'It's really hard to give my all to my husband and my children when I always have that stress on me,' she said. She already reached out to a few rural hospitals about possibly working one or two days a week in the future, when the baby is older. Trending: Maximize saving for your retirement and cut down on taxes: . Ramsey and Delony encouraged her to take a break but urged her not to completely walk away from the profession. 'You have paid such a price of commitment and diligence to become a doctor and then to pay off the $300,000,' Ramsey said. 'To go do nothing with it for the rest of your life seems extreme.' Delony pointed out that many physicians who step away often come back to the field in some form. Ramsey agreed and gave this advice to her: 'I would quit doing what you're doing so that you can be with your kids... I wouldn't work the hours you're working. I would not stay in the $190,000 position,' he said. 'But I would try to find some greatly reduced middle ground that you can stand on because I think you'll be happier.'Kristina seemed open to that. She said maintaining her medical license wouldn't be difficult and that she'd consider light telemedicine or rural clinic work. Ramsey noted that even part-time work could still result in significant income: 'You're going to make plenty of money... the natural result of that is going to be $100,000 a year probably.' The hosts praised Kristina and her husband for their financial discipline. 'Good for you guys,' Ramsey said. 'Very well done.' Read Next: Up Next: Transform your trading with Benzinga Edge's one-of-a-kind market trade ideas and tools. Click now to access unique insights that can set you ahead in today's competitive market. Get the latest stock analysis from Benzinga? APPLE (AAPL): Free Stock Analysis Report TESLA (TSLA): Free Stock Analysis Report This article She Spent Years Paying Off $300,000 In Student Debt. Now That It's Gone, This Doctor Wants To Quit Her $190,000 Job originally appeared on © 2025 Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Entrepreneur
13 hours ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Successful Entrepreneurs Outsource These 5 Tasks — Do You?
Strategic outsourcing is a way for busy entrepreneurs to reclaim valuable time and avoid burnout, allowing them to focus on core activities that drive real business growth. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. If you're running a business in 2025, you're probably juggling more than ever with marketing, operations, customer service, finances and maybe even a rental property on the side. And while hustle culture once glamorized this all-in approach, the truth is clearer now: Doing everything yourself isn't sustainable, but rather a growth killer. A 2022 survey by Capital One found that 42% of small business owners had felt burned out in just the past month, and that's no surprise, as juggling too many roles was one of the biggest reasons why. These days, time, above money, is the most valuable asset an entrepreneur has. Smart outsourcing helps you reclaim your focus and protect your energy for the work that truly moves your business forward. The key is knowing what to delegate and when. Here are five strategic areas where handing things off can free up your time and support real growth. Related: Your Time is Money, Start Saving It By Outsourcing Task #1: Property management for passive income properties Entrepreneurs love the idea of passive income, but rental properties rarely live up to that promise when you're managing them yourself. Between screening tenants, handling 3 a.m. plumbing calls, tracking down late rent and coordinating repairs, what seemed like a smart side investment can quickly turn into a second full-time job. Even if you own just one or two units, the distractions add up. The good news? You don't have to do it all. Delegating tenant screening, rent collection, maintenance coordination, and compliance paperwork can restore that "passive" quality you were aiming for in the first place. However, not all property managers are created equal. These questions to ask a property management company will help ensure you hire someone who protects your time and your assets. A good manager brings local expertise, vetted contractor networks and a system for handling issues before they become expensive. You're not just paying for convenience, you're investing in stability and peace of mind. Task #2: Bookkeeping and financial reporting It's easy to put off bookkeeping. Many founders tell themselves they'll get to it next week, then next month, and before they know it, they're sorting through a pile of receipts under pressure. The problem isn't just about missing paperwork. When your finances are out of date, every decision becomes harder. Clean books make your business easier to run. Unorganized ones quietly hold everything back. You don't need a full-time CFO. A lightweight setup using Quickbooks or Xero, paired with a part-time bookkeeper or outsourced accountant, can make a big difference. They'll help you stay ahead of taxes, track profitability and keep your margins from slipping. If you're planning to raise funding or bring on a partner, clean books are non-negotiable. Task #3: Customer support You can't grow a business if you're glued to your inbox. Still, one support email turns into five, and suddenly, your morning is gone. Customer support is one of the first things you should consider handing off. Whether it's outsourced chat support, a virtual assistant or a call service, plenty of options can scale with you. What matters most is that whoever handles it understands your business. Customers don't need perfection, but they do need to feel like someone's listening. Companies that take customer experience seriously tend to see real results. One study found that businesses focused on customer service grew revenue 41% faster than those that weren't. Related: What Not to Do When Outsourcing Task #4: Content creation and marketing Writing your own content can seem manageable until a quick blog post turns into hours of edits and second-guessing. Most entrepreneurs don't have the time or headspace to do content well. Writing blog posts, SEO copy, newsletters and LinkedIn updates is one of the easiest things to outsource once you know what you need. That said, handing it off blindly doesn't work. Before bringing someone on, get clear on your voice, your audience and your goals. Once you're aligned, hire someone who gets it. Even a few good pieces of content each month can go a long way in keeping your business visible and credible. Task #5: Admin and scheduling Founders spend more time on admin than they realize. These small tasks don't just eat up time; they interrupt focus. Virtual assistant (VA) support is one of the most straightforward ways to reclaim that time. Whether it's managing your inbox or rebooking travel, a reliable assistant can quietly remove hours from your week. VA services are more flexible than ever. Some founders prefer U.S.-based assistants for time zone alignment; others choose offshore teams for affordability. There's no right answer, just what fits your workflow. Start with a clear handoff. Delegate recurring tasks like scheduling, inbox triage and travel logistics. How to outsource the right way: 3 rules to follow Outsourcing only works when it's done with intention. Before you delegate anything, it's worth thinking through what should stay in-house, and what really needs to go. This guide can help weigh those decisions based on your goals, team size and growth stage. Vet like you're hiring: Treat each potential partner like a new hire. Skill matters, but so does attitude and communication style. Treat each potential partner like a new hire. Skill matters, but so does attitude and communication style. Be clear on expectations: Define scope, timelines and deliverables. Ambiguity creates tension; structure builds trust. Define scope, timelines and deliverables. Ambiguity creates tension; structure builds trust. Keep the vision: Delegate the how, but keep the why. Your vision sets your business apart. Related: 7 Ways to Make Outsourcing a Success Time After Time Buy back your time The most successful entrepreneurs don't just manage their time, they protect it. Outsourcing lets you focus on what only you can do: product, vision, leadership. Everything else? Simply hand it off.
Entrepreneur
a day ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
How to Quit the 'Hustle' Grind Before It Breaks You
Research shows productivity drastically declines after working 44 hours per week or more. So why is hustle culture still pushed in entrepreneur circles? It's time to forget that mentality and lead like a real hustler. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Death by overwork. In Japan, they call this phenomenon "karoshi," a term coined to capture the ultimate cost of the "rise and grind" hustle culture — the human life. With 70% of the C-suite reporting they're seriously considering finding another career, turnover costs due to employee burnout have reached a staggering $322 billion globally. Add burnout being linked to a host of physical and mental health struggles, from depression to heart disease and it's not a far reach to theorize that something isn't working. Undoubtedly, there's always another goal to crush, but is it worth working until we quite literally…drop? Are our greater efforts leading to greater rewards, or are we simply paying a price we never intended to pay? Related: Why Hustle and Work-Life Balance Are 2 Clichés I Wish Would Go Away How did we get here? While hustle culture didn't happen overnight, by 2015, the average full-time worker in the United States was logging a 47-hour workweek. Somewhere between Silicon Valley tech startups, the explosion of the gig economy in the early 2010s and the rise of social media influencers, overwork became a normalized way of life. Not only did the emergence of startups like Apple and Facebook glamorize the full-throttle, no-excuses grind, but after the 2007-2009 recession, hustling felt like a lot more than a mindset — it became a survival tactic. Wanting to prove our worth, we listened as influencers like Grant Cardone or Gary Vaynerchuk told us from their G-Wagons that the recipe for success was to grind harder. As our physical, mental and emotional resources were slowly sapped, what we once valued was forced to take a backseat. Wellness, relationships and sleep be damned. Just a little more hard work, more hours, more networking, more output, more…more. After all, our worth was measured in the number of hours we worked, wasn't it? If hashtags were to be believed, #sleepisfortheweak. Soon, we were a caricature of our former selves, swimming in a sea of sameness fueled by adrenaline, caffeine and the latest "self-improvement" mantra we picked up on TikTok. After all, if we were going to reach that unreachable dream, someone had to pay the cost. Does hustle culture deliver what it promises? Earlier this year, Elon Musk posted on X that "Very few…actually work the weekend, so it's like the opposing team just leaves the field for two days! Working the weekend is a superpower." Twelve hours later, the world learned that the DOGE employees were working a staggering 120 hours a week. Was Musk right? Does working more hours give us superhuman powers, or does his "simple math" fail to add up? Let's take a closer look. A Stanford University study found that overwork comes with diminishing returns. Logging more than 55 hours a week actually decreases your productivity. According to Gallup, the risk of burnout for engaged employees doubles when an employee works 45 hours or more per week, with the risk climbing even higher for employees who aren't engaged in their jobs. After recognizing burnout as a global health issue in 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that working long hours can put you at a significantly higher risk of stroke and heart disease. According to another study, the life of an entrepreneur doubles your risk of depression and triples your chances of becoming an addict — all thanks to factors we've normalized, like the stress and isolation of the job. Despite these alarming statistics, new findings show a shift is happening. While the Baby Boomers may still be stuck sipping on the hustle-culture Kool-Aid, younger generations like millennials and Gen Z are increasingly prioritizing healthier lifestyles and work-life balance over a bigger paycheck. In fact, work-life balance is their number one priority when choosing a new job, with millennials leading the charge. In other words, they're waking up and realizing there's truth to Dolly Parton's words: You don't have to "get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life." Related: Hustle Culture Is Lying to You — and Derailing Your Business How to de-hustle your way to a life worth living I don't know about you, but if my #alwaysbeclosing mantra has me so locked in that I'm on the fast track to barely recognizing myself, are all those late-night hours still the badge of honor I thought they were? If I hustle my way from an abundant life with loved ones to a one-man show, will my "success" really justify the cost of what I've lost? If relentless stress has my mental health nosediving, are soaring profits truly worth making short work of the one life I've got? Seven years ago, I decided I was done being another mindless cog in the hustle machine. I'd taken a hard look at what I'd become and realized I no longer recognized the man in the mirror. I'd lost my authenticity, what made me…me. My creativity was sapped, and my work was essentially a carbon copy of my colleagues. My hustling hadn't just cost my creativity — it had cost my company, my customers, my relationships and my well-being. It was time to de-hustle my life. No, I didn't decide to take up forest bathing or goat yoga, but I did integrate a set of "de-hustling" principles I still follow today. Adopting these hasn't just transformed how I live, but they've been a game-changer in how I run my business. It turns out that de-hustling didn't kill my business — it's increased our revenue every year by at least 30%. A real hustler operates like this: Works no more than 30 hours per week and often enjoys three-day weekends Prioritizes time with loved ones and themselves Keeps work as a second, third or fourth priority Explores diverse cultures and ideas to develop a richer intellect Rejects systems and recipes for chasing the dollar Operates with true strategy and purpose, where every action is connected to a measurable outcome Leads with empathy and compassion In the end, adopting a living-first mentality isn't about dreaming smaller or capping your potential. It's about slowing down, ditching the autopilot of the grind and being intentional and efficient. It's about caring for ourselves and choosing presence over the quick plateaus of performance. It's about spending time with those we love and doing the things that make us feel alive. It's about building a life and business without sacrificing what matters most at the altar of rhetoric disguised as self-improvement. Welcome to de-hustling — where your life as a real hustler begins.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Microsoft Warns AI Alone Won't Solve The 'Infinite Workday'
A wave of burnout impacts employees across industries as the 'infinite workday' blurs boundaries ... More between work and life. You wake up early, only to find your inbox full of work emails. Throughout the day, notifications interrupt you every two minutes and by evening, you're still trying to catch up. Sound familiar? You're trapped in what Microsoft calls the "infinite workday"—a seemingly endless cycle where work has no clear beginning or end. Microsoft's recent analysis reveals that workers face an average of 275 interruptions daily, with 40% of people already scanning emails by 6 a.m. and nearly one-third returning to their inboxes by 10 p.m. While AI promises to rescue us by automating routine tasks and streamlining workflows, technology alone can't solve the infinite workday crisis. Instead, organizations need to embrace a cultural shift toward healthy boundaries, thoughtful leadership and a focus on well-being. The timing of meetings creates a particularly insidious problem. Half of all meetings occur between 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., precisely when neuroscientists identify natural productivity peaks due to circadian rhythms. Instead of leveraging these optimal focus periods for deep work, organizations fill them with collaborative activities that fragment attention. According to the data, nearly 60% of meetings are ad hoc calls without calendar invites, and one in 10 scheduled meetings are booked at the last minute. PowerPoint edits spike 122% in the final ten minutes before meetings, suggesting widespread last-minute preparation. "It's the professional equivalent of needing to assemble a bike before every ride," Microsoft researchers observed. "Too much energy is spent organizing chaos before meaningful work can begin." Microsoft's research reveals that meetings after 8 p.m. have increased 16% year-over-year, driven by geographically dispersed teams and flexible work arrangements. The average employee now sends or receives 58 instant messages outside core working hours, a 15% increase from the previous year. This urgency extends beyond traditional work hours. Nearly 20% of employees actively work on weekends, with more than 5% returning to email on Sunday evenings, creating measurable "Sunday scaries." Organizations are turning to AI in hopes that automation will restore balance by handling routine tasks. Microsoft highlights 'Frontier Firms,' where successful AI integration has led 71% of employees to say their company is thriving, compared to just 37% globally. But this level of success takes more than simply adding new tools. These companies redesign entire business processes around AI to see real results. Research from Cornell University reinforces this point. In a study of over 7,000 knowledge workers, AI tools helped reduce the time spent on email and documents but made little difference in meetings or collaborative work —the real drivers of the infinite workday. The research makes it clear that without rethinking how teams coordinate and communicate, AI alone won't fix an always-on work culture. Becoming a Frontier Firm requires more than deploying AI tools. Jamie Teevan, Microsoft's chief scientist, explains that crafting effective AI prompts "actually increases our metacognitive burden." Workers must think clearly about the steps they want AI to perform and provide detailed instructions, a process requiring concentration and the ability to transform tacit knowledge into explicit directions. "AI is delivering real productivity gains, but it's not enough," Teevan notes. "The speed of business is still outpacing the way we work today." Many companies treat AI as simply another software tool rather than a catalyst for restructuring work processes. Alexia Cambon, a lead researcher on Microsoft's Work Trends Index, suggests viewing AI "like a digital colleague" to which entire tasks can be assigned. Out of the 31,000 companies Microsoft analyzed, only 840 met Frontier Firm criteria. Most were technology companies or "AI native" startups that designed processes around AI from the beginning. The infinite workday persists because leaders haven't fundamentally questioned how work gets structured and valued. Microsoft's research shows that successful AI adoption requires changing organizational management structures, not just implementing new tools. Breaking the cycle requires leaders to move beyond viewing AI as just another productivity tool. Instead, they must embrace a fundamental reimagining of how work gets done, focusing on outcomes rather than activities and designing processes around human capacity rather than technological capability. Frontier Firms demonstrate several key leadership approaches: • Prioritize impact over activity: Focus on the 20% of tasks that create 80% of business value. • Redesign workflows, don't just automate them: Question whether status reports are necessary rather than just making them more efficient. • Deploy AI as autonomous agents: Use AI to handle entire workflows, with employees becoming "agent bosses" managing AI systems independently. • Adopt flatter organizational structures: Form teams around specific projects rather than functional expertise, allowing organizations to leverage AI to fill skill gaps and move quickly. Organizations can begin with concrete changes that don't require massive AI or technology investments: The companies that successfully escape the infinite workday will recognize the problem as fundamentally organizational, not technological. They will use AI not to work faster within broken systems but to redesign work around human capacity and organizational purpose. Leaders who recognize this distinction can create workplaces that leverage both human potential and AI to achieve sustainable high performance. The question is not whether AI will change work but whether leaders will use this technological transformation to finally design work that works for humans.
Forbes
2 days ago
- Business
- Forbes
Talent Vs. Toil: Taking Care Of Business
Agur Jõgi, CTO of Pipedrive and expert in scaling technology and organizations. Experienced as an innovator, founder and C-level manager. getty One of the lenses through which tech leaders view their plans for success should be balancing talent and tedium. That is, the skills, attitudes and capabilities of your team versus the toil they must overcome in their day-to-day activities. One of the major keywords you've probably already flashed up is "burnout." Most of us can't maintain our best focus and output over either a long or acutely stressful period. The easy analogy is that of an athlete. A 100-meter sprinter trains for their event, and they may well be pretty good in a longer race. However, they haven't prepared for a marathon—mentally or physically. Tech workers are—either naturally or by career development and practice—primed for certain types of roles and responsibilities. If these are inconsistent, too onerous or often simply too tedious, then attention can slip, and the risk of burnout or disengagement rises. For teams with complex and mentally taxing tech roles that are facing mercurial economic pressures and rapidly changing tools and products, it helps to have a methodical approach to monitoring and supporting the right working environment. Time And Motion, Toil And Team In the mid-20th century, time-and-motion studies became a big business efficiency technique for improving work methods. Factories (or anywhere where there was physical motion, such as assembly lines) were increasingly optimized for better business efficiency. This kind of thinking influenced businesses of all kinds as it evolved, and the IT industry may be the most obvious inheritor of this style of process management. It would be reasonable to say workers didn't tend to get the better end of the drive for efficiency in times past. Speak of "the factory floor" or an "assembly line worker," and many people may have a bias that such working practices make a person a cog rather than an active agent. It's now well understood that employee experience and productivity are known to be entwined. Only leaders who keep their finger on the pulse of the holistic employee and business experience will keep their project and business performance in the green over the medium to long term. Leaders must understand the processes of their teams and be on hand to offer the benefit of experience. They must also advocate if the cost of toil and poor experience ever degrades their ability to deliver on business goals. KPIs, OKRs and metrics define the company goals and deliverables, but these must be translated into "human-readable" behaviors and processes to avoid work becoming a rote lever-pulling exercise. Starting Right And Continuing The Same Way Culture begins in many places, one of them at the point of hiring. Right from the get-go, find people during recruiting who know why they want to work for this company, fit in and strengthen the existing culture. A person with the right "why" will collaborate on the "how." Of course, it's good sense to offer great pay and benefits to go with a great culture as part of the whole employee experience. Equally importantly, choose people who want to develop and want to do it themselves rather than waiting for someone to develop them. Showing agency and a future orientation is a great way for employees to show they can overcome challenges, show resilience and positively support their teams. From there, every manager has a major task—to ensure the continuous professional and cultural development of their people and help out those whose desire for development has stopped. As a guide, my team members know that if they decide to leave, they will generally be trained and experienced enough to get a job offer from the market that's a level higher. Other companies will see a mid-level Pipedrive developer as a new senior as a result of our culture and drive for individual development and excellence. Experience Supporting Excellence The "greed is good/work 18 hours a day in the boiler room" style of management doesn't build a culture of excellence or long-term success. Collaboration and trust are what's needed to unlock really compounding strength and value. That's not to say the best teams don't have some high targets, tight deadlines or some healthy stress. That's how all athletes and professionals maintain a winning mindset and overcome challenges. What's needed is a culture of trust and a great working experience that supports teams in delivering their best over sustained periods. Working experience is very hard to get perfect. It's probably not perfect. People and their varied circumstances are always changing. Leaders at every level must regularly consider the kind of environment they want for their talent and make the right choices to balance experience, resources and expediency to stay on top of the challenge. Leaders must avoid "setting and forgetting." Culture changes with every act made and impression received. A poor hire, the wrong decision, a disruptive customer demand—anything can change it. Culture is made up of so many parts that it doesn't take much to send it down a different path. The mission/vision set from the top is a great start, but it must be backed by evidence that it's taken seriously and meaningfully across the majority of working activities. Taking Care Of Business "Taking care of business" in terms of making a great working experience means tending to factors like employee autonomy and empowerment. Merely taking a temperature check as part of an annual review cycle is a great way to uncover problems a long time after they should have been solved. Some areas, like recognition and appreciation, don't require much more than a thoughtful and empathetic approach to management. Toil must be transformed into meaningful work, and taking care of business doesn't merely refer to delivering on company goals. The company is an organization of people collectively. When they pull together, they grow collectively. When they lose the rhythm, that growth is hampered. Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify?
