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Jennifer Senior's excellent article on burnout, "Can’t Get No Satisfaction" [1], contains this gem of a quote, from psychotherapist & burned-out burnout researc
by shoo 5y ago
Jennifer Senior's excellent article on burnout, "Can’t Get No Satisfaction" [1], contains this gem of a quote, from psychotherapist & burned-out burnout researcher Prof Barry Farber:
> [...] their level of caring couldn’t be sustained in the absence of results
> Farber often calls burnout “the gap between expectation and reward,”
Also:
> “My clients are perfectionists,” says Alden Cass, a therapist to both corporate attorneys and men on Wall Street. He’s young, about the age of a hungry broker, and he looks like the men he treats—strong features, dark teased hair, Turnbull & Asser striped shirt, nice watch. “They have very rigid ideals in terms of win-lose,” he continues. “Their expectations of success are through the roof, and when their reality doesn’t match up with their expectations, it leads to burnout—they leave no room for error or failure at all in their formula.”
> Yet ask Cass why his clients are burning out, and his answer isn’t any different for a banker than it would be for a public-school teacher; there’s a gulf between what they expected from their jobs and what they got. “I can’t tell you,” he says, “how many people come into my office and ask, ‘How come I have this money and I can’t find happiness?’ ”
> So what does he tell them? “That happiness equals reality divided by expectations.”
[1] https://nymag.com/news/features/24757/ https://nymag.com/news/features/24757/
- m0zg 5y agoIt's not even this for me, as much as it is feeling "trapped" in a situation. I like to keep my options open. When I feel trapped, I move on. "Rewards" can't keep me sane, and without sanity everything else loses meaning. Part of the reason why I got out of big tech: their MO is to keep you trapped, a compliant, good little cog wearing pretty, gold plated handcuffs. As an ex-Microsoft VP once told me: "it's a warm Gulag".
- yoz-y 5y agoWow. Comparing a cushy desk job with massive pay to a prison labour camp. By a millionaire no less…
- m0zg 5y agoDoesn't matter how "cushy" it is or how big your paycheck is if you're depressed and going insane. That's the point.
- toxik 5y agoAh yes, temperature is surely the big difference between - let me check my notes - work camps where people starve to death and an office job that you signed up for and are free to leave, with good prospects for your future career. Apt analogy there.
- ignoramous 5y ago> So what does he tell them? "That happiness equals reality divided by expectations." Reminds me of, "I asked for wealth and found it in being content with little" / Happiness is in being content. طلبت الغنى فوجدته في الرضى باالقليل
- js8 5y ago“That happiness equals reality divided by expectations.” I really like this way to put it. Lots of people, who talk about how our happiness is driven by our expectations, are politically on the right and emphasizing the idea of personal responsibility. But putting the reality into the numerator, we can also recognize that there might be systemic problems with the "reality" itself, for example social inequality or lack of inclusivity.
- djhn 5y agoI like this model, but shouldn't reality be replaced by a person's subjective perception of reality? Various states of delusion (intoxicated, in love, religious, depressed, manic) can modulate reality as experienced by the person.