Burn Out

The Burnout Generation

I've been listening to an audiobook, The Burnout Generation, by Anne Helen Petersen. It's a short listen, less than 2 hours, and I found it engaging all the way through. Ms. Petersen is a culture writer, and in this piece, she interviews five millennials about the complications of their lives. They are at the beginning of their careers, intelligent, industrious, motivated, and burned out. Their stories gave me a glimpse into the world of a generation with whom I don't have a lot of personal connection. It's given me a lot to think about.

Time for reflection

Burn out sneaks up on you

The interviews reveal commonalities as each story unfolds. The millennials have been busily engaged in their lives, doing what they had been taught to do at school or by their families, what they were expected to do by their colleagues or cultural norms, along with strategies they had figured out on their own. And each story describes an underlying thread of despair and helplessness over how to change their situation.

Juggling more doesn't help

Those seem to be the elements that lead to burn out, and burn out sneaks up on you. You're busily doing the things that you've been told will bring you success, and you don't feel successful. You look around you and back at how your life has been going, and it dawns on you that you're burned out.

And maybe you don't figure it out yourself. Maybe you read an article about burn out that, amazingly, lists your symptoms, and you realize that you're not doing things wrong, you're simply burned out. Maybe a friend or colleague recognizes it and suggests you might be burned out. However the realization comes to you, when you hear about it, you recognized its truth, and reality shifts.

Cultural expectations are flawed

Working harder doesn't help

The most important aspect of burn out is that the problem is not a lack on the individual's part. No matter how hard someone works, or how many hours he or she works, it doesn't get better. The solution is not to work harder or work longer. The problem is that the cultural expectations are flawed. If there is no separation between work, social, and personal, our brains don't get to shift gear. We are always on. There is no break, no recharge, no balance.

Doing more doesn't help

Ms. Petersen doesn't offer solutions, which is just as well, because the solution is going to be different for each person. Her message is simply that burn out is real, it's not you who is flawed, it's the system, and recognizing that gives you the chance to find solutions.