16 ms·

The Burnout Society

277 points by q-base 5y ago

roenxi 5y ago
This article looks a bit rambling and unfocused to me. I'm not really sure where it wants to go. But there is a pretty easy explanation for why people are burned out. All the really manual jobs are being slowly automated away or are low-status, so everyone is chasing creative, thoughtful or social jobs. And those jobs are getting more full on. People are being pushed to do things that evolution really hasn't equipped them to do - sustained periods of low physical activity, high mental activity guided by willpower rather than instinct. That is pretty tiring. Software is a great example. All engineering fields. Anything involving computers. Anything involving investment. Most creative work. Any customer service work (not mentally stimulating, but very demanding of continuous social engagement & othen in tense situations). Mechanical work. It used to be everyone was a farm labourer. We don't have much work like that any more. Most of us have to plan out how we'll get physically tired out because it doesn't happen by accident any more.
- FranzFerdiNaN 5y ago
  > But there is a pretty easy explanation for If you ever find youself typing a sentence that starts with this, please stop and hit the backspace button until it's gone. You are most likely going to to say something that is completely wrong or misses 90% of the actual reasons something happens.
- Burnafter186 5y ago
  I think it escapes the domain of work. It's widely propagated in a variety of different mediums. I don't operate under the pretense that me and my direct friends and kin are a good representation of the world at large, but to give an example: You've got to go shopping, and there are occasions where you're confronted with a mass of people. I actually like people, and social interactions generally, as I suspect most do, but there's this weird undercurrent- which to be fair may exist regardless of social/economic organization- I don't want to rethink my path through the store, I don't want to maneuver through the crowd, I don't want to talk with people, I fume at the idea of people chatting in the middle of the aisle. I'm in this considerable, and evidently consequential hurry, to rush through life on autopilot. Rushing to get back to doing literally fucking nothing. But this phenomena seems to be a shared experience among my friends and relatives. I've read pretty widely, I generally don't traipse into the territory of pseudo-religious woo-woo, but Eckhart Tolle fairly elegantly explains that the world as we know it is largely structured around what he defines as the ego. The ego is exhausting, it's all consuming. But it's continuously demanded as we move evermore towards the speed-of-light society. Decision after decision, projections of the future made from a patchwork-geist stitched out of the past. Closely attending to arbitrarily defined time. Balancing accounts. Superficial chats with disassociated people trying to think their way out of the bag. Meanwhile there's the internet, and its widespread integration into nigh-every facet of life, I don't need to make the list for you, and I'm sure you can point out a litany of negative consequences and their cascading effects on you personally and society at large. I for one am running in an ego-depleted state almost constantly, so yeah, I agree with you. All this to forward some unknown and undirected agenda, blindly. You specialize in some repetitive task, go in to the same building day after day to do what you did every other day, and with negligible respite. The undirected part, I think is one of the things that really gets people. We're social animals, we want a function in a community, perhaps even need it to be made whole, but that's been extracted by the abstraction of bureaucracy and organization, you toil for some faceless, dispassionate, and disconnected c-suite exec you'll never be in the same room with. You don't do it for your boss, you probably don't do it for yourself. One could aggrandize the economic impact you have on your community servicing your amorally defined debt to a bank that you've never walked into, and purchasing goods from a chain supermarket which contributes pennies to a few dozen workers. Companies that are headquartered in a state a thousand miles away, selling goods from all over the world- countries and their cultures you know next to nothing about, people who you'll never know. It's not just work though, it's everything, everywhere I think. I could write pages about it, suffice it to say I don't like where we are.
  - gen220 5y ago
    You’ve hit the nail on the head, I think. We evolved in close-knit family units and groups over hundreds of generations. There are downsides to that form of existence. It is not optimal for extracting maximum contributions to society from every individual. Our current social configuration seems to optimize for maximum “extraction” of social contribution from individuals. But it follows some dark patterns: unless you’re fabulously wealthy, your contributions are generally opt-out instead of opt-in, and it coerces people into settling for local maxima (flipping burgers instead of writing code, writing code instead of research, research instead of etc.) I also agree that the impersonal nature of this configuration is disturbingly dissociative, and it’s sad that the only antidotes are (1) work harder, so you have less time to think (2) opt-out.
- hef19898 5y ago
  There is something really satisfying about manual labor that knowledge doesn't come close to IMHO. And I am not talking about physical exhaustion, but rather about the fact you can see and touch the results of your work, it is tangible. Whereas a lot of the office jobs I held basically just produced a lot of digital paper. And those operational ones, well, they moved numbers from one column in an ERP or warehouse management system to another. The physical labor part of that would fall under the unfulfilling, boring and exhausting category so.
  - bamboozled 5y ago
    Working here as a software engineer, remote. I usually spend 2-3 hours a day doing something with my hands now, outside in the sun, working out, gardening, farming. I've decided that if I couldn't do it anymore, I'd quit my job. I just bought an old house and I spend hours on it, working on shelves, building new floors etc, it's absolutely paradise.
    - bluejellybean 5y ago
      It's funny you mention buying an old house to fix up, I was literally searching online this morning before reading this comment to do the very same thing. Overall I would say that your post, and the parent, resonates quite well with me. I work as a software developer (and love doing so!), but I need physical work to really feel satisfied. I've been a farm hand in the past, spending the evening hours feeding chickens/goats or putting up fence posts, it's a great way to burn excess energy after being inside in the mental quagmire that is modern work. More recently it's been woodworking for me, having spent this last Sunday building a small coaster set that someone commissioned from me. Completing the order was the absolute highlight of my month, the physicality of the thing allows for knowing every intimate detail about it that feels somewhat similar to the early programs many of us wrote. With early and simple programs, the ones written purely by a single person without management or team input, the programmer is able to fully encapsulate their ideas of the thing at the time of creation. This includes the good parts, the corners cut, the ideas they had when crafting it, and even the memory of where they were in the world when they created it. The problem with a program is that this can get lost over time, a change here, an update there, a PR from someone random, a critique from a new team member, and after a couple years it's different, the feeling of the thing is somehow lost. Having spoken to many building construction laborers, who if you survey them will typically say they have a high level of job satisfaction from seeing their work stand before them, I think the constant churn in the work we see today contributes to the sense of burnout many of us have felt. With a physical good though, the essence of the craftsmanship in an item remains as long as the item is intact. I can still look at an old shelf a made a decade ago and have it put me directly back into the scene I was in during the time. The slightly odd pattern on one corner an indication of losing some footing while using an orbital sander, a scuff mark from transporting it from it's original home to a new apartment, the physicality creates a true mental time capsule. I'd encourage anyone who is in this field, especially if they've never done so before, to try building real things or to work with their hands in some way. Even if you don't make money from the activity in a direct sense, the stress reduction and life satisfaction it creates can go a long way in avoiding burnout and misery.
- littlecranky67 5y ago
  > All the really manual jobs are being slowly automated away or are low-status, so everyone is chasing creative, thoughtful or social jobs. And those jobs are getting more full on. Exactly. The problem is that more and more of the "easy tasks" that high-skilled jobs are automated/moved to computers. 30-50 years ago, an Engineer still would find to make some copies, sharpen a pencil or get fresh paper from storage, check his mailbox etc. So even high-skilled jobs had a lot of repetetive, simple work parts that gave the brain room to relax. Nowadays the easy tasks are removed, and we mostly deal with hard problemes 8h+ a day.
  - neutronicus 5y ago
    Not Child, Elder, or Medical care, though Those things are mostly "easy" in that they're monotonous and no individual task has much risk of failure, but in aggregate it's demanding enough that it's super-hard
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - martindbp 5y ago
    I'm not sure it's so much about dealing with hard problems 8h a day, I don't think most people do. But like you say, there's no slack left in the workplace, which makes it ever harder to go into "diffuse" mode thinking. Scrum, standups, email, Slack, open office floor plans and other interruptions of all kind prevents the brain from ever relaxing. Unfortunately, besides just being unhealthy it's also quite unproductive because we need to switch between focused and diffuse modes of thinking many times during a day to effectively solve problems and see the bigger picture.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    Oh, I would love to work on hard problems 8h a day. Or with people that do that. Reality is, and basically was since I started my career 15+ years ago, that we have north of 6 h per day in pointless meetings and politics. With some admin work for documentation thrown in for good measure.
    - 5y ago
- LightG 5y ago
  Personally couldn't disagree more. "High mental activity guided by will power" sounds like a fantastic foundation for any role and my ideal. There is a place for manual labour (been there, done that), and both can work. People are burned out due to understaffing and/or misallocation of resources. This is intensely acute for some right now due to the chips falling back down to earth while people adjust to pre-post-pandemic.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
    I’m a bit “on the spectrum.” That means that, while writing code, I can go into what I term a “fugue state.” Hours can pass, and I barely notice. This has one fairly visible artifact: My GH Activity Graph is almost solid green. When I come out of this state, I am done. Totally exhausted. Not sore, like I was working out, but definitely physically tired. I sleep well, those nights.
    - myth_drannon 5y ago
      What's GH?
      - blitz_skull 5y ago
        I'm guessing "GitHub" given the context of the green activity graph.
        ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
        Bingo. I apologize for the acronym. I thought it was common terminology.
        RoyBean 5y ago
        Guessing the quality of (some of) the threads here attract non-software workers and flaneurs, probably in surprising numbers. I thought GH meant Ghislaine Hackswell :-)
- tdrdt 5y ago
  "But there is a pretty easy explanation for why people are burned out." You name one reason. And it's a true reason but there are many others. Your explanation doesn't cover them all. There are only two reason people get burned out: long periods of mental or physical stress. A dancer can burnout when asking too much of the body. A fit person can burnout when the lie of an affair is going on for too long. And of course your explanation is also a very valid one. A burnout is 100% physical (the body is exhausted), but the cause can be mental or physical (or both). Unfortunately I have experience with being burned-out. So I can give my best advice to others who are struggling with a burnout: the key to recovery is acceptance. A burnout is potentially life threatening so you really need to step on the brakes and accept that you can't go on like you do. Also accept that it might take at least a year to fully recover. And accept that you will experience very strange thoughts and feelings because everything in your body is messed up. If you don't accept that you are burned-out you will really struggle to get better. Get help!
- Zababa 5y ago
  > But there is a pretty easy explanation for why people are burned out. All the really manual jobs are being slowly automated away or are low-status, so everyone is chasing creative, thoughtful or social jobs. And those jobs are getting more full on. That resonates with me. As a developer, I feel an intense desire to either contribute to open source, or go into a more "creative" field. And it's not the "good" kind of desire that gives me energy or pushes me to do things, but it's the kind of "bad" desire that feels like it's eating me alive sometimes. I have a master's degree, and a nice job with very good people. But somehow it doesn't feel enough for me. I know this is a mental health problem, and I know that this may be a "real" calling instead of just a kind of FOMO. But a few people around me suffer from the same thing, so I wonder if there's not some kind of mechanism at play here. While I don't spend much time with "regular" people on social media, I spend time looking at open source developers, and creative people. When I was younger I felt kind of immune to the social media trap (showing your perfect life and all of that). Now, I realise that I may have fallen from it, just with different values.
  - meheleventyone 5y ago
    What you say resonates with me as well. I think this is a two-fold thing. A desire for self-actualisation and a desire for recognition. I have a very creative job and it provides me a lot out creative outlet but that doesn't stop me daydreaming about making something of my own and that desire is something I struggle with a lot. Interestingly it's become more acute as I've got older, had kids and have more time that is taken up by home-life. Before I could throw myself into other hobbies that have largely fallen by the wayside. It doesn't help that my health took a large oopsie this year and I'm still getting back on my feet from that. I've very slowly started scratching that itch and every time that I do I definitely feel more relaxed. My other issue is that I've spent so long being creative in a commercial setting I find it very hard not to look at everything through a product lens.
    - RoyBean 5y ago
      Unseeing through the product lens is like tape on finger. It just sticks.
    - 5y ago
- lcam84 5y ago
  I agree although I would add that many of the creative jobs although technically challenging have useless or even destructive goals. Just look at the attention economy and the surveillance industry. We try not to contemplate this fact by occupying our lives to the limit and by focusing on the "how" instead of the "why". We engineers are probably the ones who do this the most. Funny by coincidence I bought this book just a few hours ago :)
- pydry 5y ago
  >People are being pushed to do things that evolution really hasn't equipped them to do - sustained periods of low physical activity, high mental activity guided by willpower rather than instinct. That is pretty tiring. I don't think it's a mental vs. physical thing at all. I've had jobs where I had certainty about what I was doing every day, I witnessed the fruits of my labor and I had certainty about where I stood in the organization. I never suffered burnout from them. I've also had jobs where I was always uncertain about what I ought to be doing, where the fruits of my labor often didn't seem to amount to much (e.g. perpetual project cancellations/always changing requirements/sudden architectural direction changes) and I was really uncertain about where I stood the whole time. I tried dealing with it with sustained periods of heavy physical activity (e.g. jogging between tasks), meditation, etc. It only helped a little. This perpetual miasma of uncertainty and consequent stress built up over time and when it became too much - that's when I burned out. I don't doubt that working on a farm doing heavy physical labor under similar conditions would burn me out too. My parents used to sometimes give me vague gardening tasks when I was a teenager and I absolutely hated that.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    Marx’s observation of the alienation of labor holds true. Have to wonder too if there’s such a thing as the ambiguity of labor. Not knowing where one stands in an organization is a continuous passive stress, a background drone of worries. It’s an emotional labor that even comes with jobs that aren’t primarily social.
    - pydry 5y ago
      Perhaps. I never really "got" alienation. I had imagined it was something Tony at "Tony's artisanal, signature burgers" wouldn't feel but Tommy the McDonalds fry chef would. I think I've always found there to be some individuality and creativity in software work, so in this respect even when I'm burning out I feel more like Tony than Tommy.
      - Apocryphon 5y ago
        The description of where "the fruits of my labor often didn't seem to amount to much" seems to be summarize labor alienation.
- bserge 5y ago
  I would love to spend the rest of my life assembling some machinery. But not the modern way, doing one operation all day, every day on an unlimited assembly line, being pushed to do more, more, more.
jboynyc 5y ago
Shameless plug of a thing I wrote about the same essay. Might be useful for added context. https://axyl.us/post/3048516084/waking-up-to-fatigue-society https://axyl.us/post/3048516084/waking-up-to-fatigue-society I wrote it before an English translation was published, so I called it "fatigue society", which I still think is a more appropriate term than burnout society. (Knowing that the essay is more than a decade old should help explain the strong assertion right off the bat that we aren't living in a "viral" age.)
- atoav 5y ago
  The German title of his book is "Ermüdungsgesellschaft" which literally translates to "fatigue society". Han lives and works in Berlin, as a professor of philosophy I am not sure if he writes in German or English tho.
  - bloak 5y ago
    Amazon's description of "The Burnout Society" says: "His work is presented here in English for the first time." Interestingly, Amazon doesn't say anything about the book being a translation, but goodreads.com names the translator.
  - mudita 5y ago
    "Ermüdungsgesellschaft" is indeed the original title, it was written in German and published in 2010. The translated English version came out in 2015.
  - waschl 5y ago
    The book is called „Müdigkeitsgesellschaft“
    - atoav 5y ago
      Ah yeah thanks for the correction, I am not sure why my memory faild me there.
  - lcam84 5y ago
    In Portugal is "Sociedade do Cansaço" which translates to "fatigue society"
calferreira 5y ago
To me what usually burns me is working on places where there's no organization, people ignore feedback. You just spend days working in a stupid, disorganized and unproductive way. Makes you feel like you're working to earn money and do whatever someone ask you to do. It feels pointless.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  That is literally every job ever. You're not paid to make the world a better place. You're paid to fix/produce whatever foobar of the day.
- NoGravitas 5y ago
  This is a big part of what Marx means by the alienation of labour.
atoav 5y ago
Having read a few of Han's books I always liked the way he analyzed things (in a very observant way) in the first sections of his books only to be let down (or downright annoyed) by the conclusions he draws out of this analysis in the later sections. And I say that as someone who studied Philosophy and Media science, so I am definitly not just allergic to hard theoretical jargon.
sirodoht 5y ago
The Burnout Society is probably one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read. I tried to crystalise its essence as well [1], in a chapter-structure way. The book talks about many things that were on the edge of my eyes. I knew them, yet I hadn't realised they were there; that they were a thing. I hadn't realised it was us who introduced them. This is the definition of Castoriadis' imaginary [2][3]. I'd recommend The Burnout Society to everyone yet I hesitate because it challenges very foundational ideas, in an unpopular way as well. Maybe the book's two things that struck out to me the most are: * We strive for achievement so much that we tire ourselves to depression * Burnout and depression are intrinsically connected And the question that I ask myself after having read the book is: How can we achieve things with no burnout or ego-driven mindset? [1] https://nutcroft.com/blog/book-the-burnout-society-by-byung-chul-han/ https://nutcroft.com/blog/book-the-burnout-society-by-byung-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_(sociology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_(sociology) [3] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/imaginary-institution-society https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/imaginary-institution-society
- winternett 5y ago
  Cities are like a wall that block people off from viewing the true reality of life... They put huge buildings up that create "bosses" and "corporate culture" and "stores" which all feed being over worked and the ideals of constant desire for more (consumerism). You can only work in a city if you adopt the mindset, which truly is "grind till you die" to your detriment. People need to burnout in order to fuel a world like ours, it's no different than in the past. Some would say there are simply "too many people on this earth" to escape the constant drive for workplace-related abuse, social inequality, criminal behavior, and injustice when people are tightly packed into cities unfortunately. You realize a different way of living when you escape the city and live in a less populated environment that fosters more of what really matters - Family, Health, Creativity, Communication, Mental Well Being, Nature, and Less of a Competitive/Combative Enviornment. Once you visit other (more rural and natural) places where people live in communities, where the pace is much more slow, like farms, mountains, beaches etc, most thoughtful people pause and realize that none of the "concrete jungle" accomplishments really matter in terms of life merits. Unfortunately, the poor and working classes rarely if ever have a chance to escape on a vacation, so they are burdened most by burnout... That burnout feeds bad things like suicide, drug abuse, poverty, depression, crime, etc, while the rest of society simply remains ignorant to the root causes of those things. Not to say that those rural and natural places are perfect to live in, but they allow for less distraction from meaningful life goals in many ways over city environments. Many (wealthier middle class) people occasionally get to take that nature vacation at points in their life, and then later return to the city grind, hoping to recapture the vibe in retirement, but they forget the true motivation as they get behind the city walls again often. The super-wealthy buy homes in relaxed environments at their whim... And many even work in the city without leaving their super comfortable beach and mountain "vacation" houses. Some would say that's one of the major reasons they often think far beyond the constraints of their (less paid) employees who live in the city and work in the city office... Not because they are "smarter" it's possibly because they are far more often less "mentally distracted" and weighted down by finances, work commutes, and burnout culture of city living.
sleepysysadmin 5y ago
It's remarkable to compare this to buddha's early teachings, modern psychology, economics, cancel culture, and the woes of social media. Such a huge subject that nobody can seem to see or understand in whole. The deep boredom that wasn't. We must throw people to the lions in a colosseum. People are suffering because they desire to solve this deep boredom. They will constantly escalate the risk or thrill to satisfy this desire but the cure to the boredom is impermanent. Pleasure must be fleeting and therefore the cure for the deep boredom is to not desire. This isn't to say you cannot live life. You must give up control, give up greed, hatred, and ignorance.
known 5y ago
Maslow solved it in http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/maslow/ http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/maslow/
Aunche 5y ago
As someone who considers myself lazy, it baffles me that so many people are encouraging others to do the same. It seems like someone discovers that work-life balance is a thing, and then concludes that everyone else has yet to do the same and that we should all relax more. On a personal level, working less may be beneficial because society has more than enough hard workers to make a difference. However, if everyone loses ambition, the goods are services we all take of granted would get more scarce and we would all be worse off as a result. I'll clarify that I do think post-industrial areas of Asia are actually "burnout societies." In the US, I don't get that sense at all.
- dymk 5y ago
  Depends on what social pocket you reside in in the US
wonderwonder 5y ago
I think burnout in engineering (at least for me) is just the endless building of widget after widget to make money for someone else while racing against some arbitrary deadline. You just sit in your chair every day, endure mindless meetings where half the people have no idea whats going on and then you try and cram in development while praying that no one will ping you and force you to context switch for an hour. Repeat everyday forever, and this is made worse because now most of us work from home so its all done in isolation. Don't get me wrong I like working from home for the freedom it provides but it is isolating and you are now essentially always at work. Deadlines seem to always get shorter and requirements murkier. Stress is always ramping up and rarely resets. This is fine.
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  I know scrum and sprints get a lot of hate, but I've found them to be extremely effective tools for combating this.
  - greenyoda 5y ago
    Could you describe more about how scrum/sprints can help combat burnout for you? That hasn't been my own experience.
    - bsedlm 5y ago
      they set boundaries? i.e. the set explicit limits to activities, provide structure, make responsibilities clear from the get-go, ...
      - greenyoda 5y ago
        In my experience, whatever boundaries are set within an agile engineering group can be overridden by the priorities, roadmaps, etc. that are imposed from above by the corporate executives. Responsibilities can change overnight as staff are reorganized or laid off by powers beyond their control.
NoGravitas 5y ago
I don't buy the distinction between the discipline-subject and the achievement-subject. Our society runs very heavily on the threat of discipline, it's just naturalized and made invisible by a bunch of intervening social structures. And it's more invisible to some people than to others; if you're working a low-wage service job, you know that you're always at risk of being made homeless, lacking reliable access to food, shelter, and medical care, and subject to being brutalized by security forces. Even people who think they're driven by achievement may well just have internalized the threats to where they can't see them as external anymore. I know nobody actually reads Foucault, but doesn't anyone at least read the Cliff's Notes?
- bsedlm 5y ago
  > Nor are we free of conflict. The traumas of the achievement-subject are not those of the Freudian age, where we repressed our desires out of a sense of social duty, compulsively washed our hands, and dreamt about our mothers. No, the manias of our age are depression, exhaustion, and burnout. and then near the end of the article: > I’m not really sure external coercion has gone away, so much as it has been made indirect.
- thewarrior 5y ago
  The way I synthesize it myself is that at the lower levels of society the burn out is because of harsh discipline and poverty. However people at the upper echelons of society who you would expect to be all happy and cheerful are also burning out because of what’s described in the book.
human 5y ago
This is one of my favorite read in a while. I love how it frames the question of burnout and addresses the ills of modern life. As far as my personal experience goes, I am unhappy when I do the same thing for too long. I believe that we aren’t creatures designed to repeat the same tasks over and over. People talking about the grass always being greener on the other side are right in the sense that we enjoy a change of scenery. I have to admit that I am a fan of capitalism and I believe it’s the best socio-economic model we have. However, my main critique is that it’s a theft of joy for the artisans in us. The introduction of the assembly line and the fact that workers do not feel the same pride in the final product is a sad conclusion. I get so much pride and joy out of making things. I wouldn’t be able to be the one inserting a bearing into the wheel of the car because I wouldn’t get the same pride.
- teachrdan 5y ago
  > I get so much pride and joy out of making things. I wouldn’t be able to be the one inserting a bearing into the wheel of the car because I wouldn’t get the same pride. What you're describing sounds a bit like alienation, where workers are alienated from the products of their labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
wanderingmind 5y ago
I strongly suspect one of the important reasons for burnout is because of doing work without a strong purpose. And the problem is, software is rarely created for a greater good. You can see people who work in charity for chump change can go on for hours of work day after day for years without burning out because they gain energy from the work due to their strong alignment with the purpose, on other hand people who work without a strong alignment of purpose do work as transactional that drains energy and burns people out.
Barrin92 5y ago
I've never read Han (hadn't even heard of him), but what this immediately reminded me of, in particular the notion of the achievement subject being reduced to basically some sort of stimulation machine, made me recall something from Baudrillard's America "This ‘into’ is the key to everything. The point is not to be nor even to have a body, but to be into your own body. Into your sexuality, into your own desire. Into your own functions, as if they were energy differentials or video screens. The hedonism of the ‘into’: the body is a scenario and the curious hygienist threnody devoted to it runs through the innumerable fitness centres, bodybuilding gyms, stimulation and simulation studios that stretch from Venice to Tupanga Canyon, bearing witness to a collective asexual obsession. This is echoed by the other obsession: that of being ‘into’, hooked in to your own brain. What people are contemplating on their word-processor screens is the operation of their own brains. It is not entrails that we try to interpret these days, nor even hearts or facial expressions; it is, quite simply, the brain. We want to expose to view its billions of connections and watch itoperating like a video-game. All this cerebral, electronic snobbery is hugely affected - far from being the sign of a superior knowledge of humanity, it is merely the mark of a simplified theory, since the human being is here reduced to the terminal excrescence of his or her spinal chord." There's also a great Nick Land piece called Meltdown from his saner CCRU days that captures the 'Burnout' notion very well: http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm
techsin101 5y ago
Agile/Scrum <==== Cause of Burnout lol... How would you like to be put in a place everyday where you estimate a vague tasks and then be held responsible for your rough 30s estimate. Why can't we hire people?

277 points by q-base 5y ago

This article looks a bit rambling and unfocused to me. I'm not really sure where it wants to go. But there is a pretty easy explanation for why people are burned out. All the really manual jobs are being slowly automated away or are low-status, so everyone is chasing creative, thoughtful or social jobs. And those jobs are getting more full on. People are being pushed to do things that evolution really hasn't equipped them to do - sustained periods of low physical activity, high mental activity guided by willpower rather than instinct. That is pretty tiring. Software is a great example. All engineering fields. Anything involving computers. Anything involving investment. Most creative work. Any customer service work (not mentally stimulating, but very demanding of continuous social engagement & othen in tense situations). Mechanical work. It used to be everyone was a farm labourer. We don't have much work like that any more. Most of us have to plan out how we'll get physically tired out because it doesn't happen by accident any more.

FranzFerdiNaN 5y ago
> But there is a pretty easy explanation for If you ever find youself typing a sentence that starts with this, please stop and hit the backspace button until it's gone. You are most likely going to to say something that is completely wrong or misses 90% of the actual reasons something happens.
Burnafter186 5y ago
I think it escapes the domain of work. It's widely propagated in a variety of different mediums. I don't operate under the pretense that me and my direct friends and kin are a good representation of the world at large, but to give an example: You've got to go shopping, and there are occasions where you're confronted with a mass of people. I actually like people, and social interactions generally, as I suspect most do, but there's this weird undercurrent- which to be fair may exist regardless of social/economic organization- I don't want to rethink my path through the store, I don't want to maneuver through the crowd, I don't want to talk with people, I fume at the idea of people chatting in the middle of the aisle. I'm in this considerable, and evidently consequential hurry, to rush through life on autopilot. Rushing to get back to doing literally fucking nothing. But this phenomena seems to be a shared experience among my friends and relatives. I've read pretty widely, I generally don't traipse into the territory of pseudo-religious woo-woo, but Eckhart Tolle fairly elegantly explains that the world as we know it is largely structured around what he defines as the ego. The ego is exhausting, it's all consuming. But it's continuously demanded as we move evermore towards the speed-of-light society. Decision after decision, projections of the future made from a patchwork-geist stitched out of the past. Closely attending to arbitrarily defined time. Balancing accounts. Superficial chats with disassociated people trying to think their way out of the bag. Meanwhile there's the internet, and its widespread integration into nigh-every facet of life, I don't need to make the list for you, and I'm sure you can point out a litany of negative consequences and their cascading effects on you personally and society at large. I for one am running in an ego-depleted state almost constantly, so yeah, I agree with you. All this to forward some unknown and undirected agenda, blindly. You specialize in some repetitive task, go in to the same building day after day to do what you did every other day, and with negligible respite. The undirected part, I think is one of the things that really gets people. We're social animals, we want a function in a community, perhaps even need it to be made whole, but that's been extracted by the abstraction of bureaucracy and organization, you toil for some faceless, dispassionate, and disconnected c-suite exec you'll never be in the same room with. You don't do it for your boss, you probably don't do it for yourself. One could aggrandize the economic impact you have on your community servicing your amorally defined debt to a bank that you've never walked into, and purchasing goods from a chain supermarket which contributes pennies to a few dozen workers. Companies that are headquartered in a state a thousand miles away, selling goods from all over the world- countries and their cultures you know next to nothing about, people who you'll never know. It's not just work though, it's everything, everywhere I think. I could write pages about it, suffice it to say I don't like where we are.
- gen220 5y ago
  You’ve hit the nail on the head, I think. We evolved in close-knit family units and groups over hundreds of generations. There are downsides to that form of existence. It is not optimal for extracting maximum contributions to society from every individual. Our current social configuration seems to optimize for maximum “extraction” of social contribution from individuals. But it follows some dark patterns: unless you’re fabulously wealthy, your contributions are generally opt-out instead of opt-in, and it coerces people into settling for local maxima (flipping burgers instead of writing code, writing code instead of research, research instead of etc.) I also agree that the impersonal nature of this configuration is disturbingly dissociative, and it’s sad that the only antidotes are (1) work harder, so you have less time to think (2) opt-out.
hef19898 5y ago
There is something really satisfying about manual labor that knowledge doesn't come close to IMHO. And I am not talking about physical exhaustion, but rather about the fact you can see and touch the results of your work, it is tangible. Whereas a lot of the office jobs I held basically just produced a lot of digital paper. And those operational ones, well, they moved numbers from one column in an ERP or warehouse management system to another. The physical labor part of that would fall under the unfulfilling, boring and exhausting category so.
- bamboozled 5y ago
  Working here as a software engineer, remote. I usually spend 2-3 hours a day doing something with my hands now, outside in the sun, working out, gardening, farming. I've decided that if I couldn't do it anymore, I'd quit my job. I just bought an old house and I spend hours on it, working on shelves, building new floors etc, it's absolutely paradise.
  - bluejellybean 5y ago
    It's funny you mention buying an old house to fix up, I was literally searching online this morning before reading this comment to do the very same thing. Overall I would say that your post, and the parent, resonates quite well with me. I work as a software developer (and love doing so!), but I need physical work to really feel satisfied. I've been a farm hand in the past, spending the evening hours feeding chickens/goats or putting up fence posts, it's a great way to burn excess energy after being inside in the mental quagmire that is modern work. More recently it's been woodworking for me, having spent this last Sunday building a small coaster set that someone commissioned from me. Completing the order was the absolute highlight of my month, the physicality of the thing allows for knowing every intimate detail about it that feels somewhat similar to the early programs many of us wrote. With early and simple programs, the ones written purely by a single person without management or team input, the programmer is able to fully encapsulate their ideas of the thing at the time of creation. This includes the good parts, the corners cut, the ideas they had when crafting it, and even the memory of where they were in the world when they created it. The problem with a program is that this can get lost over time, a change here, an update there, a PR from someone random, a critique from a new team member, and after a couple years it's different, the feeling of the thing is somehow lost. Having spoken to many building construction laborers, who if you survey them will typically say they have a high level of job satisfaction from seeing their work stand before them, I think the constant churn in the work we see today contributes to the sense of burnout many of us have felt. With a physical good though, the essence of the craftsmanship in an item remains as long as the item is intact. I can still look at an old shelf a made a decade ago and have it put me directly back into the scene I was in during the time. The slightly odd pattern on one corner an indication of losing some footing while using an orbital sander, a scuff mark from transporting it from it's original home to a new apartment, the physicality creates a true mental time capsule. I'd encourage anyone who is in this field, especially if they've never done so before, to try building real things or to work with their hands in some way. Even if you don't make money from the activity in a direct sense, the stress reduction and life satisfaction it creates can go a long way in avoiding burnout and misery.
littlecranky67 5y ago
> All the really manual jobs are being slowly automated away or are low-status, so everyone is chasing creative, thoughtful or social jobs. And those jobs are getting more full on. Exactly. The problem is that more and more of the "easy tasks" that high-skilled jobs are automated/moved to computers. 30-50 years ago, an Engineer still would find to make some copies, sharpen a pencil or get fresh paper from storage, check his mailbox etc. So even high-skilled jobs had a lot of repetetive, simple work parts that gave the brain room to relax. Nowadays the easy tasks are removed, and we mostly deal with hard problemes 8h+ a day.
- neutronicus 5y ago
  Not Child, Elder, or Medical care, though Those things are mostly "easy" in that they're monotonous and no individual task has much risk of failure, but in aggregate it's demanding enough that it's super-hard
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- martindbp 5y ago
  I'm not sure it's so much about dealing with hard problems 8h a day, I don't think most people do. But like you say, there's no slack left in the workplace, which makes it ever harder to go into "diffuse" mode thinking. Scrum, standups, email, Slack, open office floor plans and other interruptions of all kind prevents the brain from ever relaxing. Unfortunately, besides just being unhealthy it's also quite unproductive because we need to switch between focused and diffuse modes of thinking many times during a day to effectively solve problems and see the bigger picture.
- hef19898 5y ago
  Oh, I would love to work on hard problems 8h a day. Or with people that do that. Reality is, and basically was since I started my career 15+ years ago, that we have north of 6 h per day in pointless meetings and politics. With some admin work for documentation thrown in for good measure.
  - 5y ago
LightG 5y ago
Personally couldn't disagree more. "High mental activity guided by will power" sounds like a fantastic foundation for any role and my ideal. There is a place for manual labour (been there, done that), and both can work. People are burned out due to understaffing and/or misallocation of resources. This is intensely acute for some right now due to the chips falling back down to earth while people adjust to pre-post-pandemic.
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
  I’m a bit “on the spectrum.” That means that, while writing code, I can go into what I term a “fugue state.” Hours can pass, and I barely notice. This has one fairly visible artifact: My GH Activity Graph is almost solid green. When I come out of this state, I am done. Totally exhausted. Not sore, like I was working out, but definitely physically tired. I sleep well, those nights.
  - myth_drannon 5y ago
    What's GH?
    - blitz_skull 5y ago
      I'm guessing "GitHub" given the context of the green activity graph.
      - ChrisMarshallNY 5y ago
        Bingo. I apologize for the acronym. I thought it was common terminology.
        RoyBean 5y ago
        Guessing the quality of (some of) the threads here attract non-software workers and flaneurs, probably in surprising numbers. I thought GH meant Ghislaine Hackswell :-)
tdrdt 5y ago
"But there is a pretty easy explanation for why people are burned out." You name one reason. And it's a true reason but there are many others. Your explanation doesn't cover them all. There are only two reason people get burned out: long periods of mental or physical stress. A dancer can burnout when asking too much of the body. A fit person can burnout when the lie of an affair is going on for too long. And of course your explanation is also a very valid one. A burnout is 100% physical (the body is exhausted), but the cause can be mental or physical (or both). Unfortunately I have experience with being burned-out. So I can give my best advice to others who are struggling with a burnout: the key to recovery is acceptance. A burnout is potentially life threatening so you really need to step on the brakes and accept that you can't go on like you do. Also accept that it might take at least a year to fully recover. And accept that you will experience very strange thoughts and feelings because everything in your body is messed up. If you don't accept that you are burned-out you will really struggle to get better. Get help!
Zababa 5y ago
> But there is a pretty easy explanation for why people are burned out. All the really manual jobs are being slowly automated away or are low-status, so everyone is chasing creative, thoughtful or social jobs. And those jobs are getting more full on. That resonates with me. As a developer, I feel an intense desire to either contribute to open source, or go into a more "creative" field. And it's not the "good" kind of desire that gives me energy or pushes me to do things, but it's the kind of "bad" desire that feels like it's eating me alive sometimes. I have a master's degree, and a nice job with very good people. But somehow it doesn't feel enough for me. I know this is a mental health problem, and I know that this may be a "real" calling instead of just a kind of FOMO. But a few people around me suffer from the same thing, so I wonder if there's not some kind of mechanism at play here. While I don't spend much time with "regular" people on social media, I spend time looking at open source developers, and creative people. When I was younger I felt kind of immune to the social media trap (showing your perfect life and all of that). Now, I realise that I may have fallen from it, just with different values.
- meheleventyone 5y ago
  What you say resonates with me as well. I think this is a two-fold thing. A desire for self-actualisation and a desire for recognition. I have a very creative job and it provides me a lot out creative outlet but that doesn't stop me daydreaming about making something of my own and that desire is something I struggle with a lot. Interestingly it's become more acute as I've got older, had kids and have more time that is taken up by home-life. Before I could throw myself into other hobbies that have largely fallen by the wayside. It doesn't help that my health took a large oopsie this year and I'm still getting back on my feet from that. I've very slowly started scratching that itch and every time that I do I definitely feel more relaxed. My other issue is that I've spent so long being creative in a commercial setting I find it very hard not to look at everything through a product lens.
  - RoyBean 5y ago
    Unseeing through the product lens is like tape on finger. It just sticks.
  - 5y ago
lcam84 5y ago
I agree although I would add that many of the creative jobs although technically challenging have useless or even destructive goals. Just look at the attention economy and the surveillance industry. We try not to contemplate this fact by occupying our lives to the limit and by focusing on the "how" instead of the "why". We engineers are probably the ones who do this the most. Funny by coincidence I bought this book just a few hours ago :)
pydry 5y ago
>People are being pushed to do things that evolution really hasn't equipped them to do - sustained periods of low physical activity, high mental activity guided by willpower rather than instinct. That is pretty tiring. I don't think it's a mental vs. physical thing at all. I've had jobs where I had certainty about what I was doing every day, I witnessed the fruits of my labor and I had certainty about where I stood in the organization. I never suffered burnout from them. I've also had jobs where I was always uncertain about what I ought to be doing, where the fruits of my labor often didn't seem to amount to much (e.g. perpetual project cancellations/always changing requirements/sudden architectural direction changes) and I was really uncertain about where I stood the whole time. I tried dealing with it with sustained periods of heavy physical activity (e.g. jogging between tasks), meditation, etc. It only helped a little. This perpetual miasma of uncertainty and consequent stress built up over time and when it became too much - that's when I burned out. I don't doubt that working on a farm doing heavy physical labor under similar conditions would burn me out too. My parents used to sometimes give me vague gardening tasks when I was a teenager and I absolutely hated that.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  Marx’s observation of the alienation of labor holds true. Have to wonder too if there’s such a thing as the ambiguity of labor. Not knowing where one stands in an organization is a continuous passive stress, a background drone of worries. It’s an emotional labor that even comes with jobs that aren’t primarily social.
  - pydry 5y ago
    Perhaps. I never really "got" alienation. I had imagined it was something Tony at "Tony's artisanal, signature burgers" wouldn't feel but Tommy the McDonalds fry chef would. I think I've always found there to be some individuality and creativity in software work, so in this respect even when I'm burning out I feel more like Tony than Tommy.
    - Apocryphon 5y ago
      The description of where "the fruits of my labor often didn't seem to amount to much" seems to be summarize labor alienation.
bserge 5y ago
I would love to spend the rest of my life assembling some machinery. But not the modern way, doing one operation all day, every day on an unlimited assembly line, being pushed to do more, more, more.

jboynyc 5y ago

Shameless plug of a thing I wrote about the same essay. Might be useful for added context. https://axyl.us/post/3048516084/waking-up-to-fatigue-society https://axyl.us/post/3048516084/waking-up-to-fatigue-society I wrote it before an English translation was published, so I called it "fatigue society", which I still think is a more appropriate term than burnout society. (Knowing that the essay is more than a decade old should help explain the strong assertion right off the bat that we aren't living in a "viral" age.)

atoav 5y ago
The German title of his book is "Ermüdungsgesellschaft" which literally translates to "fatigue society". Han lives and works in Berlin, as a professor of philosophy I am not sure if he writes in German or English tho.
- bloak 5y ago
  Amazon's description of "The Burnout Society" says: "His work is presented here in English for the first time." Interestingly, Amazon doesn't say anything about the book being a translation, but goodreads.com names the translator.
- mudita 5y ago
  "Ermüdungsgesellschaft" is indeed the original title, it was written in German and published in 2010. The translated English version came out in 2015.
- waschl 5y ago
  The book is called „Müdigkeitsgesellschaft“
  - atoav 5y ago
    Ah yeah thanks for the correction, I am not sure why my memory faild me there.
- lcam84 5y ago
  In Portugal is "Sociedade do Cansaço" which translates to "fatigue society"

calferreira 5y ago

To me what usually burns me is working on places where there's no organization, people ignore feedback. You just spend days working in a stupid, disorganized and unproductive way. Makes you feel like you're working to earn money and do whatever someone ask you to do. It feels pointless.

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
That is literally every job ever. You're not paid to make the world a better place. You're paid to fix/produce whatever foobar of the day.
NoGravitas 5y ago
This is a big part of what Marx means by the alienation of labour.

atoav 5y ago

Having read a few of Han's books I always liked the way he analyzed things (in a very observant way) in the first sections of his books only to be let down (or downright annoyed) by the conclusions he draws out of this analysis in the later sections. And I say that as someone who studied Philosophy and Media science, so I am definitly not just allergic to hard theoretical jargon.

sirodoht 5y ago

The Burnout Society is probably one of the most amazing books I’ve ever read. I tried to crystalise its essence as well [1], in a chapter-structure way. The book talks about many things that were on the edge of my eyes. I knew them, yet I hadn't realised they were there; that they were a thing. I hadn't realised it was us who introduced them. This is the definition of Castoriadis' imaginary [2][3]. I'd recommend The Burnout Society to everyone yet I hesitate because it challenges very foundational ideas, in an unpopular way as well. Maybe the book's two things that struck out to me the most are: * We strive for achievement so much that we tire ourselves to depression * Burnout and depression are intrinsically connected And the question that I ask myself after having read the book is: How can we achieve things with no burnout or ego-driven mindset? [1] https://nutcroft.com/blog/book-the-burnout-society-by-byung-chul-han/ https://nutcroft.com/blog/book-the-burnout-society-by-byung-... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_(sociology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_(sociology) [3] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/imaginary-institution-society https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/imaginary-institution-society

winternett 5y ago
Cities are like a wall that block people off from viewing the true reality of life... They put huge buildings up that create "bosses" and "corporate culture" and "stores" which all feed being over worked and the ideals of constant desire for more (consumerism). You can only work in a city if you adopt the mindset, which truly is "grind till you die" to your detriment. People need to burnout in order to fuel a world like ours, it's no different than in the past. Some would say there are simply "too many people on this earth" to escape the constant drive for workplace-related abuse, social inequality, criminal behavior, and injustice when people are tightly packed into cities unfortunately. You realize a different way of living when you escape the city and live in a less populated environment that fosters more of what really matters - Family, Health, Creativity, Communication, Mental Well Being, Nature, and Less of a Competitive/Combative Enviornment. Once you visit other (more rural and natural) places where people live in communities, where the pace is much more slow, like farms, mountains, beaches etc, most thoughtful people pause and realize that none of the "concrete jungle" accomplishments really matter in terms of life merits. Unfortunately, the poor and working classes rarely if ever have a chance to escape on a vacation, so they are burdened most by burnout... That burnout feeds bad things like suicide, drug abuse, poverty, depression, crime, etc, while the rest of society simply remains ignorant to the root causes of those things. Not to say that those rural and natural places are perfect to live in, but they allow for less distraction from meaningful life goals in many ways over city environments. Many (wealthier middle class) people occasionally get to take that nature vacation at points in their life, and then later return to the city grind, hoping to recapture the vibe in retirement, but they forget the true motivation as they get behind the city walls again often. The super-wealthy buy homes in relaxed environments at their whim... And many even work in the city without leaving their super comfortable beach and mountain "vacation" houses. Some would say that's one of the major reasons they often think far beyond the constraints of their (less paid) employees who live in the city and work in the city office... Not because they are "smarter" it's possibly because they are far more often less "mentally distracted" and weighted down by finances, work commutes, and burnout culture of city living.

sleepysysadmin 5y ago

It's remarkable to compare this to buddha's early teachings, modern psychology, economics, cancel culture, and the woes of social media. Such a huge subject that nobody can seem to see or understand in whole. The deep boredom that wasn't. We must throw people to the lions in a colosseum. People are suffering because they desire to solve this deep boredom. They will constantly escalate the risk or thrill to satisfy this desire but the cure to the boredom is impermanent. Pleasure must be fleeting and therefore the cure for the deep boredom is to not desire. This isn't to say you cannot live life. You must give up control, give up greed, hatred, and ignorance.

known 5y ago

Maslow solved it in http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/maslow/ http://www.netmba.com/mgmt/ob/motivation/maslow/

Aunche 5y ago

As someone who considers myself lazy, it baffles me that so many people are encouraging others to do the same. It seems like someone discovers that work-life balance is a thing, and then concludes that everyone else has yet to do the same and that we should all relax more. On a personal level, working less may be beneficial because society has more than enough hard workers to make a difference. However, if everyone loses ambition, the goods are services we all take of granted would get more scarce and we would all be worse off as a result. I'll clarify that I do think post-industrial areas of Asia are actually "burnout societies." In the US, I don't get that sense at all.

dymk 5y ago
Depends on what social pocket you reside in in the US

wonderwonder 5y ago

I think burnout in engineering (at least for me) is just the endless building of widget after widget to make money for someone else while racing against some arbitrary deadline. You just sit in your chair every day, endure mindless meetings where half the people have no idea whats going on and then you try and cram in development while praying that no one will ping you and force you to context switch for an hour. Repeat everyday forever, and this is made worse because now most of us work from home so its all done in isolation. Don't get me wrong I like working from home for the freedom it provides but it is isolating and you are now essentially always at work. Deadlines seem to always get shorter and requirements murkier. Stress is always ramping up and rarely resets. This is fine.

SkyPuncher 5y ago
I know scrum and sprints get a lot of hate, but I've found them to be extremely effective tools for combating this.
- greenyoda 5y ago
  Could you describe more about how scrum/sprints can help combat burnout for you? That hasn't been my own experience.
  - bsedlm 5y ago
    they set boundaries? i.e. the set explicit limits to activities, provide structure, make responsibilities clear from the get-go, ...
    - greenyoda 5y ago
      In my experience, whatever boundaries are set within an agile engineering group can be overridden by the priorities, roadmaps, etc. that are imposed from above by the corporate executives. Responsibilities can change overnight as staff are reorganized or laid off by powers beyond their control.

NoGravitas 5y ago

I don't buy the distinction between the discipline-subject and the achievement-subject. Our society runs very heavily on the threat of discipline, it's just naturalized and made invisible by a bunch of intervening social structures. And it's more invisible to some people than to others; if you're working a low-wage service job, you know that you're always at risk of being made homeless, lacking reliable access to food, shelter, and medical care, and subject to being brutalized by security forces. Even people who think they're driven by achievement may well just have internalized the threats to where they can't see them as external anymore. I know nobody actually reads Foucault, but doesn't anyone at least read the Cliff's Notes?

bsedlm 5y ago
> Nor are we free of conflict. The traumas of the achievement-subject are not those of the Freudian age, where we repressed our desires out of a sense of social duty, compulsively washed our hands, and dreamt about our mothers. No, the manias of our age are depression, exhaustion, and burnout. and then near the end of the article: > I’m not really sure external coercion has gone away, so much as it has been made indirect.
thewarrior 5y ago
The way I synthesize it myself is that at the lower levels of society the burn out is because of harsh discipline and poverty. However people at the upper echelons of society who you would expect to be all happy and cheerful are also burning out because of what’s described in the book.

human 5y ago

This is one of my favorite read in a while. I love how it frames the question of burnout and addresses the ills of modern life. As far as my personal experience goes, I am unhappy when I do the same thing for too long. I believe that we aren’t creatures designed to repeat the same tasks over and over. People talking about the grass always being greener on the other side are right in the sense that we enjoy a change of scenery. I have to admit that I am a fan of capitalism and I believe it’s the best socio-economic model we have. However, my main critique is that it’s a theft of joy for the artisans in us. The introduction of the assembly line and the fact that workers do not feel the same pride in the final product is a sad conclusion. I get so much pride and joy out of making things. I wouldn’t be able to be the one inserting a bearing into the wheel of the car because I wouldn’t get the same pride.

teachrdan 5y ago
> I get so much pride and joy out of making things. I wouldn’t be able to be the one inserting a bearing into the wheel of the car because I wouldn’t get the same pride. What you're describing sounds a bit like alienation, where workers are alienated from the products of their labor. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

wanderingmind 5y ago

I strongly suspect one of the important reasons for burnout is because of doing work without a strong purpose. And the problem is, software is rarely created for a greater good. You can see people who work in charity for chump change can go on for hours of work day after day for years without burning out because they gain energy from the work due to their strong alignment with the purpose, on other hand people who work without a strong alignment of purpose do work as transactional that drains energy and burns people out.

Barrin92 5y ago

I've never read Han (hadn't even heard of him), but what this immediately reminded me of, in particular the notion of the achievement subject being reduced to basically some sort of stimulation machine, made me recall something from Baudrillard's America "This ‘into’ is the key to everything. The point is not to be nor even to have a body, but to be into your own body. Into your sexuality, into your own desire. Into your own functions, as if they were energy differentials or video screens. The hedonism of the ‘into’: the body is a scenario and the curious hygienist threnody devoted to it runs through the innumerable fitness centres, bodybuilding gyms, stimulation and simulation studios that stretch from Venice to Tupanga Canyon, bearing witness to a collective asexual obsession. This is echoed by the other obsession: that of being ‘into’, hooked in to your own brain. What people are contemplating on their word-processor screens is the operation of their own brains. It is not entrails that we try to interpret these days, nor even hearts or facial expressions; it is, quite simply, the brain. We want to expose to view its billions of connections and watch itoperating like a video-game. All this cerebral, electronic snobbery is hugely affected - far from being the sign of a superior knowledge of humanity, it is merely the mark of a simplified theory, since the human being is here reduced to the terminal excrescence of his or her spinal chord." There's also a great Nick Land piece called Meltdown from his saner CCRU days that captures the 'Burnout' notion very well: http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm http://www.ccru.net/swarm1/1_melt.htm

techsin101 5y ago

Agile/Scrum <==== Cause of Burnout lol... How would you like to be put in a place everyday where you estimate a vague tasks and then be held responsible for your rough 30s estimate. Why can't we hire people?