San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Anne Helen Petersen makes the case for combating burnout with boredom.
Author charts neverending struggle for stability in work, life
People in their 20s and 30s will see themselves in Anne Helen Petersen’s new book “Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.” But a lot of those in their 50s and 60s should, too. They just might need a different lens.
Petersen writes about the purported path to middleclass success: “Build your resume, get into college, build your resume, get an internship, build your resume, make connections on LinkedIn, build your resume, pay your dues in a soulsucking lowlevel position you’re told to be grateful for, build your resume, keep pushing, and eventually you’ll end up finding the perfect, stable, fulfilling, wellpaying job that’ll guarantee a place in the middle class.”
You don’t have to be a Millennial like Petersen, 39, to realize that “guarantee” is about as valuable as a lifetime membership to Blockbuster. And while you’re on that lifetime achievement treadmill, sometimes you lose a sense of what you’re chasing.
“Who am I, anyway?” a character sings in “A Chorus Line.” “Am I my resume? That is a picture of a person I don’t know!”
The show premiered on Broadway in 1975. That’s right: The biggest hit when millions of Baby Boomers came of age featured nearly two hours of people trying to get jobs.
“I think burnout arrives when you’re trying to find a modicum of stability and it’s elusive,” Petersen said in an email, “no matter how hard you work, no matter how diligently you try to organize your family’s activities, no matter how much you try to optimize yourself into a robot who doesn’t need sleep or leisure.”
Or, to put it another way, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” That’s from Henry David Thoreau ( not in an email).
We’re like the children in Stephen King’s “It,” terrorized by a monster that preys on our anxieties every generation or so. Take these three phases of adult anxiety: “What should I do with my life?” “What am I doing with my life?” and “What have I done with my life?”
The instability Petersen cites can make Millennials feel like phase one smacks right into phase two, skipping what ideally was a 10year recharging zone. Much to the chagrin of those in their 40s and 50s, phase two and phase three have forfeited their recharging zone, too.
Add the high cost of living in the Bay Area and the monster can pretty much rest its butt on our anxiety button, even without including trivial stuff like climate change, devastating fires and a global pandemic.
So what can we do? Simplify, for starters.
“I had a childhood punctuated by long, seemingly endless stretches of boredom,” Petersen said. “A lot of my peers and people older than me did, too. But there’s a compunction now to fill our time with activities, with experiences that are ‘ special’ in some way, with work and most of all with busyness. There’s great growth in boredom; I think all of us forget that.”
A lot of that time is swallowed up by social media, sometimes because of work, sometimes because of friendships, sometimes because of addiction. In “Can’t Even,” Petersen describes how Instagram can be particularly exhausting, as people spend hours trying to create, filter and post just the perfect photos — not as paid influencers, but to build a personal brand.
“I have a friend whose brand is ‘ Parenting is hard but always worth it,’ ” she writes. “Others include ‘ My kids are so bizarre!’; ‘ I’m a Cool Dad’; ‘ Wilderness overposter’; ‘ Books are life’; ‘ Wheels up’; ‘ Culinary adventuress’; ‘ Cosmopolitan nomad’; ‘ I ride multiple bikes’; ‘ I am yoga’; ‘ I have friends and we drink alcohol’ and ‘ Creative being creative.’ ”
It reminds me of cramming for exams in school. You get validation from likes instead of grades, but the whole thing rings hollow. You passed the test, but didn’t learn anything. Now you’re curating an experience, not savoring it.
Social media is great, as long as it brings you joy. But sometimes we’re so preoccupied with testing ourselves that we overlook the best answer of all: “I’ll pass.”
“Deep down, Millennials know the primary exacerbator of burnout isn’t really email, or Instagram, or a constant stream of news alerts,” Petersen writes. “It’s the continuous failure to reach the impossible expectations we’ve set for ourselves.”
Long before the Kardashians, people were keeping up with the Joneses. If your stereotypical neighbor bought a new car ( or a color TV!), you felt pressure to do the same, even if you didn’t need one. Human nature.
But instead of Baby Boomers competing with a few neighbors or classmates — most of whom we lost track of after a year or two — Millennials have hundreds or thousands of Joneses they follow on social media. Some are going to expensive schools, driving fancy cars, having the time of their Instagram lives.
Nobody’s brand is “Wallowing in selfpity.”
Here’s the insidious thing: Say you follow 1,000 people on Instagram and 19 of them have posts that are generally better than yours. Will you congratulate yourself for being in the top 2%? Nah. You’ll envy the 19. Human nature strikes again.
Twitter skews your reality, too. If 15 of the mythical 1,000 people you follow tweet about troubles with work or life, things can feel unstable even if they aren’t. And if another 15 tweet about new jobs or promotions, you can drown in a wave of Joneses.
The other 97%? They’re living normal lives, enjoying
simple pleasures or just putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe they’re not posting or you’re not noticing.
What they might do, though, is retweet the most dramatic posts from their feeds, so you see lots of peaks and valleys from people you don’t even know. And your reality shifts even more.
Workers have been told for decades to “make yourself a brand name,” not just Employee No. 24601 in some vast machine. It’s good advice, in moderation. Work hard and develop an expertise that maybe your colleagues don’t have? Sure. Get a huge student loan that will hang over your head for years or decades just so you can impress potential employers? Think twice.
Most of your coworkers outside academia won’t know or care where you went to school or what degrees you have. The ones who matter won’t care about your grade point average, but they’ll know if you’re kind or smart or arrogant, whether you laugh with people or at them, what kind of teammate you are.
If you’re genuine, they will never, ever see you as an impostor. They’ll see you as someone who wants to grow. And they’ll help.
Petersen doesn’t wrap up her book with magical suggestions for beating burnout, realizing that everyone’s life struggles are different and can’t be solved with 10 bullet points. But she offers this: “We don’t have to value ourselves and others by the amount of work that we do. We don’t have to resent our parents or grandparents for having it easier than us.”
But I will bring up a little magic, an oftrepeated quote from the TV show “Once Upon a Time”: “All magic comes with a price.”
Sometimes burnout occurs if you think things are unfair. It’s easy to resent older generations if you’re a struggling Millennial, but realize that you’re seeing another skewed picture.
You’re focusing on people who either conquered their monsters or made peace with them, not those who had to work until they were 70 or 75 or 80. And certainly not those who never made it past 50. Or 20.
“Quiet desperation,” remember?
Older people can have a skewed view of you, too. They envy you for coming of age at a time when you can stream millions of songs and videos, have job opportunities all over the world and never have to lose track of friends when they move away. They overlook the heavy competition, the longing for peace and quiet, the way brilliant technology can feel like a leash.
All magic comes with a price.
But if you’re burned out and want a change, try this: Stay off social media one day a week and spend that time being kind to someone.
Send a nice note to a friend or coworker, run an errand for a neighbor, cook a special meal for a loved one. Do something nice for yourself now and then, even if it’s just taking a nap.
If after two months you dread that day, then stop. But maybe you’ll actually look forward to it. Maybe you’ll do it twice a week.
Even scorched earth can create beauty. You just need the right seeds. And this time, the magic will be priceless.