I am a pusher. I love my work. I derive a significant portion of my fulfillment and identity from it. For this I I am a pusher. I love my work. I derive a significant portion of my fulfillment and identity from it. For this I am fortunate. And yet, if I don’t remain vigilant about pushing too hard, I’ll burn myself out. I’ve seen it happen to too many other people to somehow think it wouldn’t happen to me.
This was on my mind as I was reading the philosopher Byung Chul-Han’s book, The Burnout Society. He argues burnout is the natural byproduct of an ethos that relentlessly compels us to do more, better, and faster—without much (if any) reflection on if what we’re doing aligns with our values. It is his version of what, in The Practice of Groundedness, I called never enough syndrome.
Toward the end of his book, Chul-Han writes:
“Concern about living the good life yields to the hysteria of surviving… The mania for health emerges when life has become as flat as a coin and stripped of all narrative content, all value. Given the atomization of society and the erosion of the social, all that remains is the body of the ego, which is to be kept healthy at any cost. The loss of ideal values leaves, other than the exhibition value of the ego, only health value behind.”
Since Chul-Han wrote his book in 2015, the burnout society has intensified, and so, too, has an obsession with health and longevity. In Chul-Han’s telling, our modern day craze for optimization and productivity (and its subsequent burnout) and our modern day craze for health and longevity biohacks and protocols are not independent but actually complementary.
There is a difference between a) wanting to live longer because you find your life meaningful and connected and therefore you want to be around to experience it for as long as you can and b) wanting to live longer as an end in and of itself, as if those extra years are points on a scoreboard in a game you can win. For many, the former feels wholesome and good and the latter feels restless and frenzied.
When my own drive and hard work near their productive limits, I notice a few things about myself:
- I am less fun to be around, because I am always rushing to get to the next thing.
- I am more worried about my health, though I am not actually living in a healthy way.
- I search for meaning and love in all the wrong places, such as number of books sold, instagram followers gained, and so on.
In other words, I start to look more like a productivity and validation-seeking automaton instead of a fully textured human being!
The irony is that it’s not just my soul, but my work that suffers too. I don’t write well or think well or coach well from this place of near burnout. I am extremely efficient in the short-term, but the long-term value of my work is degraded.
The end-point of Chul-Han’s “burnout society” is loneliness, grumpiness, isolation, and an obsession with extending our egos as a balm for the frenzy we’ve spun ourselves into. The way we try to extend our egos is by working more and becoming obsessed with the literal extension of our lives. Look around and you see this everywhere.
The solutions are simple, but simple does not mean easy.
- Set boundaries. If you are a pusher, you’ve got to turn it off and step away, whether it’s a digital sabbath, a set time to turn off your work for the day, or an unplugged walk in the woods. Even if at times it feels like you are forcing yourself, you’ve got to step away and disconnect.
- Prioritize actual belonging. This means that you are proximate to people and see them as human beings versus “followers” or “sales targets” or “colleagues” or “competitors.” We didn’t evolve to be known by anonymous people on the internet. We evolved to be known by people we know too. Even in our online lives, we’d be wise to prioritize interactions in smaller and intimate communities versus massive and atomized ones.
- Maintain a few non-negotiables. Each of us will have a set of habits and practices that are crucial to our mental and physical health, such as sleep, movement, and community (see above). It’s important to never let these go beyond a certain minimum effective dose.
Many people gravitate toward the extremes: a job is just a job and the goal is work-life balance OR work is life and I am going to destroy myself until there is nothing left to destroy. Yet it’s possible to push hard and achieve great things, all without burning out in the process—if boundaries, genuine belonging, and a few non-negotiables are in place. This sort of effort requires intention. It’s why my book on the topic isn’t called Get Grounded but The PRACTICE of Groundedness.
You’ll still want to accomplish great results, be healthy, and live a long time, but the underlying texture of those drives will be less neurotic, restless, and empty and more grounded, firm, and fulfilled.
You can work hard in a burnout society, but it requires a bit of hard work.
— Brad
