You're reading a breach report. Third one this month. Last year a story like this would have lit something in you. Today you scroll past it. That's not you. That's the bill.

Episode 26 of Plaintext with Rich is the fourth installment of the Month of Mindfulness, a five-week series on self-care for people working in security and tech. This week we're talking about burnout, what it actually is and why the cybersecurity industry produces it reliably. We use the World Health Organization's classification of burnout as an occupational phenomenon and Christina Maslach's three dimensions (exhaustion, cynicism, reduced efficacy) to name what most of us feel but can't label. We get into the systemic causes specific to our field: always-on culture, headcount lag, and job designs that treat recovery as a perk instead of infrastructure. The episode lands with a Plaintext Starter Kit split between what the individual can do and what only leadership can fix.

If you've ever caught yourself scrolling past a breach report that used to light a fire and realized you don't feel anything, this one is for you. Whether you're the one carrying the load or the one supposed to be protecting the people who are.

Ten minutes or less. One topic. No panic.

Christina Maslach -> https://www.linkedin.com/in/christinamaslach/

World Health Organization -> https://www.linkedin.com/company/world-health-organization/

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