Another Pointless "Solution" For Burnout
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, 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.
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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?”