“Burnout” is a particularly modern affliction, feeling simultaneously overwhelmed and paralyzed. I’ve found it’s best to think of burnout not as a disease but as a symptom, with many different etiologies. The big three: permanent on-call, broken steering, and mission doubt.
It used to be most jobs necessarily had to give you time off, because they could only be done from the office/factory/etc. The 24/7 on-call rotation was made possible thanks to the Magic of Technology(tm) (eg. 80s Doctors w pagers). Too long on-call causes mental breakdown.
Broken steering is a metaphor for that feeling at work where your actions seem to have no impact. Turn the wheel, car still goes straight. This is rare in blue collar work: the car got assembled, now you have car. It is common in knowledge work: you sent some email, so what?
(Broken steering destroys motivation because it breaks the core feedback loop which makes work rewarding. When you throw a rock in a pond and it makes a splash, there is a little feeling of power in the impact on the world. Take away the splash and the intrinsic reward dies.)
Mission doubt happens when you start asking, why am I doing this work at all? It is the most common when people are very comfortable. If you really need the money from this week’s paycheck, it’s obvious why you keep at it. What if you’d be fine for 6 months? 2 years?
So burnout is becoming more and more common because (a) we can work from anywhere and then have bad boundaries, (b) our work is increasingly abstract and it’s harder to tell if it matters, and (c) we are collectively richer than our ancestors.
If you find yourself feeling “burnout”, it can be good to consider which of these might be the cause. The solution to permanent on-call is more vacation and time-off. But that can actually make broken steering worse, where you need to instead increase your impact per unit work.
May all beings obey the inscrutable exhortations of their soul.
May all beings experience flow.
May all beings yearn for the vast and endless sea.
May all beings experience flow.
May all beings yearn for the vast and endless sea.
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