Another Asinine Burnout Solution

Sometime around 2014, I remember a lot of online debates about whether work needs to be “purposeful,” which is an utopian thing to claim. The short answer is: No, it does not. And in reality, most of the time it cannot. People need vodka sodas and Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. Are the jobs dispensing those “purposeful?” You can argue yes, but most of society also argues “no” on the regular. (That’s called a stigma.)

I know no one is supposed to ever reference The Bell Curve again, but it gets a few small things right: namely, in an economy with a bunch of people chasing convenience and comfort (which is what America inherently is), someone needs to be providing the base-level service, and we sadly tend to not respect them as much as we should, which is a mirror to broader empathy problems we have. But that’s not the point here.

Within all these “Should work have purpose?” discussions, you have a cousin of a discussion, which is about burnout. We’ve had increasing discourse in the last half-decade about burnout and its various causes and how it can be fixed and all that. The short answer there is: burnout can’t really be fixed, because it occurs at a perfect intersection of individual goals and corporate culture, and most guys who come to run companies (and thus shape cultures) see “burnout” as a virtue, not something to “fix.” They want people going 80 MPH all the time, because to them, that means more revenue, more growth, more partners, more more more.

Into the burnout-purpose fray we now have Liz Wiseman wandering, as seen here on Big Think:

Wiseman goes back to the idea that you need to pursue impact at work in order to reduce burnout, which is among the three or four stupidest things I’ve heard about work in the last couple of years. Let’s briefly dissect this.

1. Pursuing purpose and impact at work is inherently a very involved process that involves a lot of kissing ass, staying late, going above and beyond for essentially nothing for years, etc. That actually directly burns you out, at least short- to intermediate-term. It doesn’t “solve” burnout. If anything, it extrapolates burnout.
2. Wiseman’s “research” here, as she notes in the video, “comes from professional sports.” That is one of the most deeply-flawed work connectors we have. A professional athlete is the very bottom of a massive funnel that begins the first time you hand your child a ball of some sort. Almost everyone who becomes a professional athlete or coach is elite in some way related to that sport. You cannot compare even the 10th guy on a NBA bench to Marty Middle Manager. The 10th guy is more skilled at what he does than Marty is. It’s apples and oranges.
3. One thing we never discuss in these burnout discussions and purpose/impact discussions is what the word “impact” means to an executive decision-maker. To that guy or gal, “impact” is almost solely a financial term. It means more revenue, more sales, more clients, more press mentions, whatever. As such, executives see “impact” from basically just sales, and sometimes operations or engineers. Everyone else becomes a cog in the wheel. The only exception to this rule is if an executive came up through a specific silo, and then he/she might value that silo, even if they truly don’t make “impact.”
4. This also invariably brings up discussions about what an “A-Player” is, because theoretically, aren’t “A-Players” the ones who make “impact?” The Problem at most places I’ve worked (anecdotal, yes) is that most executives look at C-Level Players and call them A-Players, because they serve some need for the executive. Usually this means deflecting bullshit. So Carly isn’t good at her base job, but because she deflects BS for the executive, he calls her “a star” and an “A-Player.” Meanwhile, every customer Carly deals with wants to vomit on their grass. This happens a lot. The definition of A-Player is too contextual, and in reality the only opinion that matters is usually the HIPPO.

Here’s the 35,000-foot problem with burnout vs. impact discussions: white-collar work has unfortunately become more meaningless in the last two decades, with “communication” drastically replacing “iteration” as what most people do all day.

At the same time, the life expectations of those within white-collar have only gotten more expensive, with Instagram throwing fuel on the “must compare to Sally” fire. So, we still need to work, even if COVID did cause some working shifts around both women and men.

Since we need to work but many of the high-paying jobs are meaningless drivel with decent salaries relative to what you actually produce or do in a given day, the main solution to “burnout” is a shift in thinking: this job is a means to an end, not some virtuous reflection of myself.

You can also reduce burnout at the individual level, but it doesn’t involve you suddenly morphing into Steph Curry, no.

A final brick in this wall: a lot of times, we talk about burnout in the media, but what’s really happening inside organizations is “Bore-Out,” I.e. most of your people are bored all day and performatively showing up to meetings and scrolling social media and taking two-hour lunches. I’ve worked with more of this kind of person than those who are constantly nose-to-the-grindstone and burning themselves out. A lot of white-collar work is boring, but people are afraid to say that out loud.

What’s your take on burnout in general, and/or solving it through some vague allusion to “impact?”