Using Technology to Control Burnout

In Part 1 of this video, Psych Congress Steering Committee Member Steven Chan, MD, MBA, clinical assistant professor, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California, discusses the role of technology on burnout. Dr Chan gives tips on how to take advantage of technology to stay organized, instead of letting it take control.

In the upcoming Part 2, Dr Chan will discuss how to handle “information overload,” by organizing your inboxes, and using them as a tool to stay productive.

Read the Transcript:

Dr Steven Chan:  Hi, I'm Steven Chan. I am a steering committee member for Psych Congress and on faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine. Today, we'll be talking about how to beat burnout and still be productive with technology.

The first question we have is, "Does technology cause burnout?"

I think of how we use technology as something that is more important than the culprit itself, which is information overload. Technology can overwhelm us with information, with notifications, alerts, and our inboxes may be constantly overflowing.

On the other hand, technology can be used to automate and streamline a lot of the overwhelm. When I think about technology causing burnout, I think, "Well, there are some things that you can do to make technology work for you and not necessarily against you."

Here's another question. "How can we take advantage of technology to beat burnout?" I think of the work that we do, but also our personal lives. Technology for work, there are so many apps out there that can help you manage your calendar, manage your email, and, if you're a clinician, manage your clinical workload and patient scheduling, too.

If you think about personal life, all of the little tasks that add up throughout the day, such as going places, grocery shopping, ordering food ahead of time, a lot of those can be automated with apps so that you can streamline your day.

There's a lot of different technologies out there that can help you reduce some of the information overload, but also the calendar overload that can take place.

Finally, when we're thinking about smartphone apps and technology, there are so many different options out there for wellness and fitness. We're thinking about exercising, but also meditation, and mindfulness, too. A lot of different ways to access this. In fact, some smartwatches and phones already have a lot of this built-in.

Finally, it doesn't take additional cost to tweak a lot of these settings if you learn and explore how to set the notifications, the do not disturb settings and the focus settings. Those can go a long way towards reducing some of the overwhelm and burnout.

Here's another question that we have here. "Does spending time optimizing my computer setup really make a difference?" I have had many colleagues and many friends who would do things like complain that their computer is too slow or that their phone isn't loading things.

This is the thing where you have to think about the trade-off. Is it worth maybe an extra $100 or $200 to upgrade your setup and make things work for you? Here are some ideas and tips.

First, a lot of the hardware that we have, if it's a couple years old, there are ways to clean it, to optimize it, and if not, potentially recycle it so that you can upgrade it and make the computer systems faster for you.

Another idea, certainly, is thinking about the processes that you use. For the longest time, I would focus on transferring things via USB disks and SD cards. Then, once I got a certain type of phone, I won't name the name, but a phone that it would transfer things to the tablet and the computer almost automatically, it blew my mind.

Finally, with technology, too, a lot of the software, we can experiment and try different apps. There are some apps that are out there that are great at streamlining your time, and then some apps that are clunky and are not updated.

You also want to reassess what kind of programs you're using and seeing if it's continuing to work for you or against you.

Another question that we have about the topic of burnout and productivity. "Why is it important to use technology instead of things like paper journals, calendars, habits that I'm used to?"

Both have their time and place. If you think about paper, it is wonderful, because it's immediate, you can access it when you need to, you don't have to turn on paper and turn on your pen to scribble something.

If you're working in a large team, or even more interesting, a team that's remote or works across time zones, you need to have, say, project management systems set up so that you can have a lot of the information flow where you need it to go. We're thinking about processes here.

We're thinking about if you have a family and you need to coordinate with your spouse and your children, or if you are coordinating with other teammates, whether it's just yourself with other agencies, maybe even as a clinician, if you're working with pharmacies and other clinicians, too, then you want to have some way to streamline the information and organize it.

Take a look at project management systems. There are things that will integrate tasks, calendars, messaging altogether. I can think of some off the top of my head. A lot of clinics use Microsoft Teams, for instance. A lot of places use Slack, Asana, Trello as ways to keep the information organized so nothing gets lost.

Steven Chan is an actively practicing physician at Palo Alto VA Health, specializing in psychiatry, clinical informatics, and healthcare technology. Dr. Chan performs clinical research — funded by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — in areas of telehealth and digital mental health, with applications in underserved and minority health. Dr. Chan is a sought-after national speaker whose ideas, thoughts, and research have been featured by Talks At Google, JAMA, Telemedicine and e-Health, JMIR (Journal of Medical Internet Research), Wired, PBS, and NPR Ideastream.