Burnout Culture and the Fear of Rest

I am so tired but I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to acknowledge it because doing so, means forcing myself to rest. Resting, in turn, leads to me pausing on  tasks  and projects I have in my work and personal life. Everything feels urgent and pressurised. I refuse to stop.

I’ve spoken  about it in therapy, of course. My therapist gave me tips on organization and time management. She said, it could help me do what I need to do, without dying trying: my duties – without dying trying. She  also insisted on one task that I haven’t felt able to do: adding a meeting to my Google Calendar with myself, solely dedicated to doing nothing.

“Does playing chess or Duolingo count?” I asked.

“Definitely not, doing nothing is the absence of doing anything.”

This exhaustion is not new to me. I overload myself with projects, get burned out and then take a break for a while. During those pauses, I often become bored, which leads me to overload myself again with projects. Am I addicted to crossing off tasks on my to-do list? I feel a flood of power and self-pride, when the day or week ends, knowing I have survived another cycle of marathon workdays.

I know, that it’s affected my mental health. I struggle to enjoy my time off and even with this awareness and my efforts, not much has changed. 

I know, I am not the only one. Out there, many people like me glorify being busy, have their agendas filled with activities and feel desperate of the idea of doing nothing and having free time to dedicate to nothing.

Today I want to talk about that. The discomfort with leisure is no coincidence but the product of cultural and social conditioning that glorifies productivity. And that has severe impacts on our mental health.

The cult of productivity

We live in a capitalist world and that is precisely what has transformed our productivity dynamics. This is not new knowledge. Max Weber (1904) wrote about it in “The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism” when he analyzed how the Protestant ethic promoted constant work and accumulation of wealth as signs of virtue and salvation before God. This, together with the development of capitalism, created a culture in which success and personal value are measured in terms of productivity and work achievements.

Much over a century has passed since Weber wrote that and it is still relevant in our times. In 2012, “The Burnout Society Concept” was introduced by Byung-Chul Han. Han describes 21st-century societies characterized by saturation of self-exploitation and constant pressure to be productive and efficient in all areas of life. Does that sound familiar? It does to me. According to Han, our lifestyle is driven by the logic of neoliberalism. “In the era of late modernity, the human being exercises autonomy and becomes both victim and perpetrator because he exploits himself. He has no external pressure from power. The pressure is within him, and for the author, no pressure is harder than self-demand” (Camarena, 2017).

Have you had weeks and weeks where you’re juggling work, projects, hobbies, social life, exercise, healthy eating and sleep – all while trying not to lose your mind?  Sometimes, cloning yourself seems more viable than letting go of tasks to have a balanced life. The one who judges you the hardest for not being able to do everything perfectly is you, not others.

It happens to me and I am sure it happens to many people around me. But the worst part is not failing to be a super productive human. It is sacrificing our mental health in the process.

Burnout; my closest friend

In the 1970s, a term was formally coined: “burnout”. Herbert Freudenberger, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, described it as a state of fatigue or frustration when plenty of time is dedicated to a lifestyle (1974). Later, Christina Maslach and Susan E. Jackson developed the “Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI)”, the most used tool to evaluate this syndrome (1981), which consists of 22 items across three main dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduced personal accomplishment.

In very general terms, if you feel emotionally overwhelmed or tired from work, insensitive or distant towards your activities and have feelings of incompetence, very low efficacy or dissatisfaction with what you do, you might be experiencing burnout.

Right now, we know that more than 8 in 10 employees across different parts of the world are at risk of burnout. And Gen Z and millennial young adults reach burnout by age 25, according to a study with a sample representing the Chinese population (Mercer, 2024). This is an alarmingly clear fact: What is going on in our society that so many people feel these levels of exhaustion? In such a scenario, I am more convinced that my therapist is right when she asks me to please schedule time for rest and dedicate it to doing nothing. Could I do it?

Leisure as a revolutionary act

Leisure is resistance and self-care. We need time to do nothing, our mental health depends on it.  When talking about colonialism and racism, Gabriela Wiener said a statement in Huaco Retrato, that I find relevant here. “I know the theory, but how do I embody it?” (Wiener, 2021). I live this contradiction of praising leisure and my right to do nothing, without being able to put it into practice. I long to rest, only to then over-commit when overwhelmed by the desperation of not feeling useful or productive with so much free time.

A study in 2023 found out that doing different leisure activities, such as reading, hanging out with friends, playing sports or watching movies, reduces symptoms of depression. Weekly exercise is associated with a 39% decrease in the odds of depression compared to not exercising. Going to social gatherings is associated with a 23% decrease. And daily reading is associated with 20% (Bian Xiang, 2023).

The challenge now is not only to find spaces for leisure and use them, but not to turn these activities into another productive routine. Aren’t you tired of seeing how even recreational reading has become a competitive challenge of how many books we mark as read on Goodreads? Living in this society of performance is exhausting and frustrating.

Some evidence-based self-care practices to protect our mental health are establishing daily routines with regular breaks to rest and disconnect, even brief ones. Prioritizing leisure activities, creating tech-free spaces, practicing self-compassion and accepting that it is necessary to set boundaries, because we cannot say yes to everything, are also good practices. And, of course, when it is possible, to seek professional help.

The real personal revolution is to oppose a system that wants us to be productive every day, every hour, and every minute of the year. And always remember it is false that our worth depends on how many tasks we check off our to-do lists.

Even if I haven't reached that point yet, I will remind myself that whenever I can rest is an act of care and transformation, for myself and for this society that wants the opposite.

References

Bian, J., & Xiang, Z. (2023). Do the various leisure forms have equal effects on mental health? Frontiers in Public Health, 11, Article 1134854. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2023.1134854

Han, B. C. (2012). The burnout society. Stanford University Press.

Freudenberger, H. J. (1974). Staff burnout. Journal of Social Issues, 30(1), 159-165. 

Maslach, C., & Jackson, S. E. (1981). The measurement of experienced burnout. Journal of Occupational Behavior, 2(2), 99-113.

Mercer. (2024). Global Talent Trends 2024-2025. https://www.mercer.com/assets/global/en/shared-assets/global/attachments/pdf-mercer-2024-2025-global-talent-trends.pdf

Camarena, G. (2017). La perspectiva política de Byung-Chul Han y su comprensión de la autoexplotación. Reseñas Culturales, 1(2), 321-337. https://www.scielo.org.mx/pdf/cultural/v5n2/2448-539X-cultural-5-02-00321.pdf

Weber, M. (1930). The Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism (T. Parsons, Trans.). Scribner. (Original work published 1904–1905)

Wiener, G. (2021). Huaco retrato. Colección Random House.