This Is A Voice
This Is A Voice
Student Burnout, Time Poverty & The Perfectionism Trap. With Dr Ayan Panja & Richard Delaney
If you’ve ever felt exhausted, cynical or “not good enough,” this episode will help you spot the signs, set boundaries and start recovering - without guilt.
What really causes burnout in musicians, singers, teachers, and students?
In this second episode of This Is A Voice on burnout, Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher discuss the physical, emotional, and systemic roots of burnout - with two special guests offering different perspectives.
Dr Ayan Panja (NHS GP, Saving Lives In Slow Motion podcast) explains why burnout isn’t just “being tired” - and what really happens when empathy and perfectionism collide.
Richard Delaney (Programme Leader, BA Hons Acting: Contemporary and Devised at Royal Central School of Speech & Drama) reveals how time poverty and constant assessment are burning out a generation of creative students.
Plus, Gillyanne and Jeremy share their own stories of freelance burnout, people-pleasing and finding balance as performers and coaches.
Listen now and share it with a friend who might need it.
Featuring clips from Saving Lives In Slow Motion (used with permission).
You can find out about Ayan's work and join his podcast on https://drayan.co.uk/
You can find out about Richard's work on https://www.richardddelaney.com/
Remember to like, subscribe, and hit the bell icon for more insightful episodes. Leave a comment below on what inspired you the most! 👇
You can find out about our Teacher Accreditation for singing teachers, vocal coaches and choir leaders and start your own journey here
https://vocalprocess.co.uk/teacher-accreditation/
We've also got this ↓
For the best self-guided learning, check out the Vocal Process Learning Lounge - 22 years of vocal coaching resources (over 600 videos) for less than the price of one private singing lesson.
Click on the link https://vocalprocess.co.uk/learning-lounge/learning-lounge-level-2-deep-dive/
If you want to discover if our singing teacher training programme works for YOU, message us - we can share the process for joining Cohort26. https://www.cognitoforms.com/VocalProcess1/TheAccreditationProgramme
Get the One Minute Voice Warmup app here, it's got a 4.9star rating
Appstore https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/one-minute-voice-warmup/id1212802251
Google Play https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=co.speechtools.warmup&hl=en_GB
Check out our Voice Journal, written with Rayvox's Oren Boder https://www.rayvox.co.uk/products/voice-journal?ref=VOCALPROCESS
Find us - follow us on the socials!
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/Vocalprocess
📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/vocalprocess
📖 Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/vocalprocess
#vocalprocess #teacheraccreditation #voicetraining
This is a Voice. A podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher. Hello and welcome to This is a Voice, season 12, episode two, the podcast where we get Vocal about voice. I'm Jeremy Fisher. And I'm Dr. Gillyanne Kayes. And this is episode two of our burnout series. Yes. We thought it would be useful to get a perspective from a working GP that's a general practitioner, and we're delighted to have been given permission to play some snippets from Dr Ayan Panja's Saving Lives in Slow Motion, and this is season one, episode 32. Burnout, spot the signs and stop it in its tracks, and it is included with permission. So here we go. Here's the first couple of minutes. In its simplest form, burnout is a state of complete physical and mental exhaustion. And that definition comes from a psychologist in the 1970s called Herbert Freudenberger who described it as almost one potential endpoint of long-term stress. And one of the difficulties is it's not something that is diagnosable very easily. And I remember as a GP trainee covering burnout very briefly and we were shown something called Maslach's Burnout Inventory. But as a new GP, I didn't really think too much about it. I just thought I can see after doing this job for many years, you can become a little bit burnt out. But I didn't really know what it meant. So what does it mean? It can present in many ways and common signs of burnout would be feeling tired or drained most of the time. A lot of people feel like that, I realize that. Feeling overwhelmed or not taking tasks at work seriously where you just don't care if you miss something. Doubting yourself or being cynical, feeling detached, all of these things. Many of us might feel now and again, but if they're persistent and there's more than one of them, then you might be at risk of burnout. And it's also one of those things that colleagues might spot in you. Are you grumpier at work? Are you leaving things undone? Has your performance reduced? Are you alienating yourselves from your colleagues? Are you obviously exhausted? And not performing at work. And the real kicker is that the world we live in now. Is all about those things. It's constantly about performance, isn't it? And the blurring of lines between your home life and your work life. I mean, What's happened there in the last 10 to 20 years, it's no wonder people are more likely to feel burnt out. And all you've gotta do is add into that problems with say, sleep or your relationships, or if you are lonely. Or if you've got money worries, who doesn't have those at the moment? And you've got a real recipe for disaster. There are of course other factors at play. So there are certain personality types who are more prone to burnout. So people who are real empaths, for example, or people who are perfectionists. And if you're both, then again, if you like, the analogy for that would be that if your cup overflows and that's burnout, then that group of people already have a cup that's fairly full. We are just gonna stop there and talk a little bit about this course moment. Yeah. Yes. In episode one we talked about Maslach's Burnout Inventory and, uh, the fact that it's in three parts and that there is a special one for educators, which I think is really fascinating. I think what was interesting about what Ayan said at the beginning is that it's not something that's diagnosable very easily. Yeah. And I think that's probably why we miss it. And I don't just mean in the medical sense, which obviously he does, but sort of in life in general. You know, we talk about, oh I'm stressed, I'm stressed. Oh I'm tired, I'm whatever. I don't think we see that. You know that almost like an amalgam of things that take us to a place where we don't realize we're on the brink of something. And then you get to that point, that end point that he talks about of burnout. Mm-hmm. I also think that there are lots of symptoms and we talked about that in episode one as well. But they're persistent and there's more than one of them. Yeah. And also reference to the world we live in now. You know, when we didn't have smartphones, yes, there was life before smartphones. Uh, we didn't have that constant contact. And in a way also constant stimulation. So therefore we couldn't get, you couldn't get the ebb and flow of, excitement and, rest in the body. And I, I do think that's a really, really significant thing in these times for all of us. And a special shout out to empaths and perfectionists. Hello, I'm Jeremy, and I'm a recovering perfectionist. Mm-hmm. It's been really interesting. Journey to go through the whole perfectionist thing and, we are actually going to do a third episode with a special interview where the person that we're interviewing talks about this. Yeah. And I was so recognized the things that were coming up in that. The whole business of wanting to do a perfect job because then you won't be criticized. It's not true, but it's a lovely idea. Yeah. So it's all, do you, are you thinking that there's always something underneath that drive for perfectionism? Yes. Yes, exactly that. Yeah. Interesting. So we have some more from Ayan. Let's have a listen. The first thing to do is to acknowledge it and make some quick changes. So for example, if you know you're a people pleaser, then learn to say no. Do not say yes when you mean no. Which comes under the realm of being more boundaried. Other things that can take some pressure off you. For example, we've covered this in other episodes, really try and compartmentalize things. If you're someone who gets overwhelmed and bogged down by emails, for example, just check them twice a day. There may be, you may not have a job that allows you to do that, in which case that's gonna be difficult, but there'll be something else you can do. Don't look at your WhatsApps all day. There's no rule book that says you have to get back to people straight away. That's another source of stress. Toxic people is another one. Do you have someone in your realm who is actually sort of dumping work on you or stealing your energy? If that's the case, avoid them. Talk to someone. That's another really key thing. Internalizing things can lead to catastrophizing, and if there's ever an area where early intervention is important, it's burnout. Ask for help. Tell someone, whether it's your line manager, your partner, another colleague at work. Sometimes it can be very difficult to ask for help. I know everyone's roles are different but definitely telling someone how you are feeling is key. Because it gets it off your chest and suddenly it's out there in the world and someone can do something about it. I like a quote as well. How do you find a quote on burnout? And a lot of them, in previous episodes I've put in quotes like one recently, which was almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. And that rings true slightly for burnout. But of course, burnout is a much bigger problem than just unplugging yourself for a few minutes. But the one that really resonates for me with burnout is this one. If you do not pick a day to relax, then your body will pick it for you. That one really hits home. That's so fascinating. It it does. And, uh, forgive us if we mentioned it in a previous podcast, but one of the biggest take homes that we had from a business coaching period that we went through was that I set out a timetable for our mentor and I said, these are all the things that we're doing. These are when we do them. And she looked at it and she said, well, one thing leaps out at me. You guys never take two days off together. Mm-hmm. Now, she did not mean you don't take two days to be together. You don't take two days off in a row. And from that we instigated midweek weekends, which by and large we keep to. Jeremy, doesn't sometimes. Um, so work in progress. But it's made a huge difference, hasn't it? It has. The difficulty, I think is the freelance mentality.'cause I've been freelance almost all my life and it's that business of somebody offers you a job. Oh, that's great. Uh, I'll do that then. And it can be on any day of the week, at any time of day or night. And also particularly as a coach and a performer, you're coaching during the day and you're performing at night. And those two might alternate. They may even be on the same day. And so your timetable is not a standard nine to five or, or an eight till four. It's across quite a wide range, and the fascinating thing for me about energetically performing in the evening is it's not that your job finishes
at 10 30 or 11:00 PM because you are still on stage at 10 or 10 30. There is a quite a long sort of drop off after you've done, in order to get back to a place where you can sleep. So hours wise, you are doing shifts a lot. Mm. And that business of you get so used to it, particularly when you get to our age, you get so used to it that you just go, oh, this is normal. And then you realize that it isn't, and you don't have the energy anymore. So the idea of doing a two day midweek weekend, 'cause we could, we work quite often on Saturdays and Sundays. Mm-hmm. Uh, was quite interesting and I loved the idea, but it did take some time for me to actually do it. Mm-hmm. And I'm getting better at it now. I may maybe taking a day and a bit, or a day and a half. We've been doing it all this year, haven't we? Yeah. Yeah. And, and it does make a difference. It does. I liked the point that Ayan made about the first thing to do is to acknowledge, Hmm. And to make some doable, some quick changes. Something that I use to avoid getting overwhelmed. I mean, I have a notebook so that when I'm bursting with ideas, when I'm in a bit of an up phase, I'll just write them all down and then they maybe get sifted later. But I in fact have three color-coded post-it notes. I'm the queen of post-it notes and uh, one is for, these are the business tasks I have to do today. These are household tasks, and family tasks. For example, I am a co-manager of the estate of my late brother. So there are always things to do with that. So that goes on another piece. And then the third one is about a project, a writing project that I'm doing at the moment. So if I compartmentalize like that, that really helps me. I want to talk about compartmentalizing. Mm. Because I think you have to find a version that works for you. And our life coach helped me find mine. Um, he sort of likens it to a computer and having lots and lots of folders open and lots of tabs open. Mm. And he said the thing that you're gonna have to do when you have 35 tabs open is, you're gonna have to close some of them down. And we literally do a physical movement, which is close and move close and move close and move. And it's one of the weird things that helps me. Realize that I don't have to do all of these things to a perfect standard immediately. Picture us in the evening after we've had our evening meal and you know, a bit of postprandial relaxation has happened. And Jeremy, who's ADHD, which we've spoken about before, suddenly he's buzzing. And then I will have to say, uh, how many tabs have you got open? Yeah. And that's when he goes through that process. And it, it does help, doesn't it? It does help, yeah. I mean, and that's, that's a form of acknowledgement. It is, it is. And uh, we should also talk about the fact that we have different timetables, and we have talked about this in previous podcasts. We have different timetables and I tend to be fully on first thing in the morning and at around 7, 7 30, which obviously coincides with performing times. Mm. Uh, and the time, my worst time is actually around about three or four o'clock. Mm. Uh, and always has been. So, uh, yeah. And you get a spike at about 10 o'clock at night when Dr. Kayes has had enough, thank you. She's either been doing her reading or she's watched an episode of her favorite thing on Netflix and ready to switch off. And I'm bouncing up and down on the surface going, oh, by the way, I forgot about this. Uh, what about this one? And going into great detail. Oh. So yeah, that's fun. And Jeremy, can I just pick up on the thing about WhatsApp and there being no rule book that says you have to get back to people straight away. This is a real problem for freelancers and small business owners and for teachers that sense of, oh, so and so's in trouble. Oh, I need to get back. Um, actually in my case, if I'm overworked, I dunno if you are the same. If I'm overworked and overwhelmed, I'll reply straight away because I know if I don't, I'll forget. Well, and it won't get done. That's the, um, I have to do it now, or because it, it'll, I can get it off my brain. Mm-hmm. Uh, that's a really dangerous trap to fall into. I actually think that's a sign. I think that's a sign that you're already overwhelmed. Hmm. And so I just want to share that with other people who are working, particularly in our sector. Notice if you are needing to do that, what can you change? And sometimes after my morning meditation, I have to sit down and go, do you know what? It just feels like we're doing too much. Now, actually we aren't doing too much. It's about the way that we're doing it, or maybe even the way that I'm doing my bits. And I kind of then go through a sifting process in my mind. And then that just helps me to move forward and not to try and do too many things. And the truth is there are often many tasks that can be left until tomorrow or the day after. Can I talk a little bit about the hero thing? Mm-hmm. Uh, which hasn't been mentioned, but it's implicit in everything that Ayan was saying. There's a thing which is you feel like a hero when you are rescuing people. And so when somebody arrives in an email at 10 o'clock at night with a problem and you go, oh, I must rescue this person. And it makes you feel good, and it's a really difficult thing to give up because obviously it's a dopamine hit. Um, having said that, it's not very good for you. And this is about boundaries. Boundaries for them, and boundaries for you, which is, no, I don't need to deal with this now. Yeah, I'll just leave that person chain to the rock with the dragon for another 12 hours. They can cope. Mm-hmm. It's fine. Mm-hmm. Or if you need to do a holding, which is, I'll come back to you tomorrow. I, the, when I learned about holding emails, it was such a relief because it's like I'm, I feel I have to reply immediately, but I dunno what the decision is yet, or I dunno how I can help, and just that which is absolutely, seen, heard, understood. Get back to you tomorrow. Write yourself several versions of a holding email or holding WhatsApp or holding text. I recommend chat, GPT for that. Mm mm Lots of fun. Okay. We're gonna go to Richard Delaney. Richard wrote a very, very good piece that was in medium.com and we saw it on LinkedIn on students and student burnout. And I think it's so relevant to a lot of the people who are gonna be listening to this podcast to find out what's going on with your students. Yeah. We all know about teacher burnout. That's been documented, but those of you who are working in higher education. I think that what Richard has to say is extremely helpful. Yep. In you being able to help your students map that they might be in burnout. Yes, he does. He makes a call for industry change, really the way that we educate people, but we'll leave him to speak for himself. There's something I've been giving a great deal of thought to recently, and that's burnout. Specifically student burnout and, and I need to say this upfront, it's not personal failing. It is systemic. And whilst my observation of it is drawn principally from experiences in higher education and the conservatoire, I believe its impact is observable right through society and the arts at large. I, I've just taken over as one of the program leaders at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and we've been through a big revalidation process and honestly, a huge part of that work for me has been about trying to understand where student burnout actually comes from. Rose Bruford, Stephen Farrier and Randall Whitaker sharply named Time Poverty as a major impact on learning, and it is that same time poverty that feeds into burnout. And look, when you're exhausted, when you are burnt out, there's just no chance of being creative. So if we're interested in training artists rather than than marionettes, then then something has to give. Here's what it looks like on the ground. Students are in class from nine in the morning until seven at night, for example, 40 hours of contact time every week, and then they leave school and go straight to night shifts because the maintenance loans don't cover rent and food. Recent research shows that the average student rent in London now exceeds the maximum maintenance loan available, and Farrier and Whitaker put it perfectly. Only those who can afford not to work can afford to train. So what does burnout actually look like in the room? It's a student falling asleep in your afternoon rehearsal, not because they're lazy, but because they have four hours sleep. It's the talented performer who starts missing rehearsals because they can't sustain the schedule anymore. Vocal fatigue becomes commonplace. Students stop asking questions, they, they stop taking creative risks. They're in survival mode and in survival mode, learning becomes impossible. So here's what I've really been noticing, especially since the pandemic. Burnout shows up as an inability to sit with uncertainty. Students arrive absolutely desperate for the right answer immediately. They ask, Hey, am I doing this wrong? Rather than what happens if I try this? And that resistance to not knowing, that craving for certainty. It's not about the personality or generation, it's burnout. When you're financially precarious and exhausted, you simply can't afford the psychological space that creative exploration needs. You need things to work first time because you don't have the energy to fail and try again. I am just gonna stop there just for the moment. Richard is so a it. Everything he's saying is so apt here and it's so concise. Time poverty. Think it's a really important phrase for us to bear in mind, let alone the other kind of poverty, which in the long term. If we don't change policies, it's going to impact on the demographic of students who are successful in their training, which means it's going to be the students who are wealthier, who are more likely to be successful. I also think he hit on something very important, which is being absolutely desperate for the right answer. And we are working in the arts, there isn't a right answer. There are 15 right answers. There are 20 right answers. There are the right answers for you that might not be the right answers for somebody else. And I think looking for the right answers so that they've conquered it, they've done it, they can move on. We are seeing this a lot. And I know that the people who are working in higher and further education are saying the same things and they often have teachers in that area have targets that they need to hit. And the students have targets that they need to hit. And it's very difficult not to let the whole lesson become, here is your target, here's how you make it go. Bye. Thanks. And there's no sense of artistry. There's no sense of creativity. That's a very hard path to tread. So the teacher feels pressured. Yep. And the student feels pressured. And then there's no, what is it, zone of proximal development or something like that. You don't get into that zone. And, yeah. I think that's really important. And when you add the students being so tired because they're having to support themselves as well as doing a full-time education. Then there's very little opportunity for them to expand and grow. Yeah. What they're doing is they're just adding a list of achievements to their list of achievements. This is, so this is good stuff from Richard. Okay. Let's go back. So watch out for these signs, chronic fatigue that doesn't get better, withdrawal from things that they used to love, performance dropping in ways that seem out of character and, and crucially that shift from curiosity to defensive certainty. Questions that are looking for the one right way rather than exploring what's possible. And that's exhaustion speaking. There's another thing I keep seeing. Assessment fatigue. Students and performance training are always on show, right? And we're not always clear about when something's being assessed versus when it's time for exploration. And when everything feels like it's being marked, when every moment feels like performance, students can't take risks. They feel they can't fail. They go for safe choices because burnout has taken away their capacity to experiment. Absolutely spot on, Richard. Just so interesting that the capacity to experiment requires you to feel safety in some way. So that you can then reach out and you can try things that are unusual or new or different to what you would normally do or different from your first instinct even. And I think this impacts on teachers who are working in he as well, because you know they have to deliver. Success in their students. There are certain, as you mentioned, targets certain assessment criteria that have to be met and that can interfere with the, the real personal progress of the individual student. A lot of our teachers in HE talk about this, how they balance those factors. And that in itself can also lead to burnout. I'd say on both sides. I think. Going back to what Richard's saying about people in particularly elite performer training, which is what you would get to the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, I think that potential for burnout is real, and I think we need to be aware of it in HE, particularly in the performance sector. So Richard has some solutions. We're gonna go back and hear what they are. So, so what can we actually do first, recognize this is systemic, not individual. And when you see those signs, the defensive certainty, the assessment anxiety, the inability to take risks, ask about working hours, ask about living situations, be flexible, where you can be really explicit about when things count protected. Create protected time where failure is not expected, not penalized. Build in low stakes opportunities where students can experiment without worrying about grades. Make those boundaries crystal clear between assessment and exploration. We've got to reimagine what intensity even means in training. Can we guarantee non-contact periods? Can we rethink schedules? These traditional, almost archaic schedules, these aren't just nice ideas, they're urgent. If we want to train and be genuinely equitable, but, but you know what? Individual institutions changing isn't going to be enough. We need policy change. The UK spends 16 billion pounds every year on student loans, and nearly half of that will never be repaid for already spending the money. We're just spending it badly. Creating the precarity that causes burnout instead of the stability that would let people actually learn. Burnout isn't inevitable. It's not. Character building is the totally predictable result of forcing students to work two full-time jobs while we demand creative excellence from them. That inability to sit with uncertainty, the assessment fatigue, the constant performance anxiety. These aren't personal failings, the symptoms of a system that desperately needs rethinking, and if any of this is caught your imagination or reverberated in any way, you can find more of my writing on this and similar topics on medium. I look forward to continuing the conversation. Thank you so much. Thank you Richard. Thank you to Richard for these very telling and profound comments. And do check out his blogs and his articles because I personally have found them very interesting. Yeah. So I really hope that, people listening to this, teachers and students can begin to compassionately recognize themselves in some of the things that both Richard and Franka have offered. And my feeling is working in the profession that, that we do singing voice professionals. One of the ways forward is that sense of social connection that takes us more in, into the green zone so that we can problem share and also problem solve rather than getting caught up in these cycles of lack. Am I good enough? Do I have enough money? Have I got a high enough level of work? All of those things. And I think making those changes in our profession will really help. Because this is such an important topic. We're actually going to do a third episode. Mm-hmm. And this is a special interview. I had a wonderful conversation with my pal, Dr. Marisa Lee Naismith of her own podcast, the Voice and Beyond, where she shared some of her personal insights into getting into burnout and beyond. It's really worth listening to. So we'll look forward to seeing you then. Bye. This Is A Voice, a podcast with Dr. Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher.