Why do so many millennials suffer from burnout?
My dad has a superhuman work ethic.
I can’t remember a weekday throughout my childhood when he didn’t wake up to an alarm at 4 a.m., then steal into the early morning light with his thermos of black coffee.
In the evenings, our Labrador would excitedly bark at the window when my dad pulled into the driveway around 5 p.m. After dinner, television and a welldeserved glass of wine, he’d fall asleep on the couch.
And then his routine would start over again.
My dad lives and breathes by entrepreneurship — but he masters the balance between his career and life outside of it.
Maybe that’s why he’s never suffered from burnout.
Burnout is a job-related medical syndrome, defined as “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed” by the World Health Organization.
It differs from your standard exhaustion. It’s separate from depression and anxiety disorders, but can overlap.
Burnout is a beast of its own, created by extreme, drawn-out stress. It’s characterized by the feeling of emptiness.
Overwhelmed with cynicism towards your job? Is it difficult to start your work day — or motivate yourself to get there in the first place? Having trouble concentrating or finding the energy to complete tasks?
The Mayo Clinic lists these as symptoms of the condition:
❚ Cynical or critical at work. ❚ Trouble getting started.
❚ Hard to concentrate.
The syndrome can eventually lead to a weakened immune system, heart disease, high blood pressure or type 2 diabetes.
Psychologist Herbert Freudenberger coined the term burnout in 1974, later describing it as “a response to a demand that an individual may make upon themself in terms of a requirement for perfectionism or drive.”
He specifically discussed the impact it had on doctors, nurses and other helping professionals that focus on others’ needs.
But, in actuality, burnout affects an even wider scope — including twothirds of Americans working full-time.
Twenty-three percent of employees experience burnout “very often or always,” with another 44% feeling it “sometimes,” according to a Gallup survey.
Is it a coincidence that the largest age group in the U.S. workforce also recently earned the title of the “burnout generation”?
I think not. But it’s easy for others to dismiss.
Currently aged 23 to 38, millennials are criticized as entitled, spoon-fed, self-obsessed, sluggish and addicted to technology.
I find myself at the youngest end of the millennial spectrum and roll my eyes at these fault findings. Older folks always have and always will chide the youth, eyeing us with both dismissal and envy. But they’re also the ones who raised us into exactly who we are.
It’s a fact that millennials are more educated and open-minded. We also have an unparalleled drive to succeed — not just towards traditional materialism, but also in the pursuit of fulfillment.
We’re not simply after the white picket fence and three-car garage (as if the majority of us can afford one car). Instead, we aim to find happiness in our careers — to look back on these finite years and believe we’ve invested our time wisely. The problem is that we often equate satisfaction with “this one leadership position” or “that one major accomplishment” in our life plans.
Maybe that’s because, since middle school, we’ve been pushed to build, build, build our resumes. Join clubs and sports. Hold leadership positions. Manage honors and AP curriculum. Excel on the ACT or SAT. Complete unpaid internships for “experience.” Maintain at least one part-time job.
In part, it might be because of the world around us. It’s difficult to even imagine a society where positions are plentiful and housing is affordable. We say to hell with the work to play ratio because we have bills, student debt, so many loans and even more goals.
“The ‘greatest generation’ had the Depression and the GI Bill,” writes Anne Helen Petersen of BuzzFeed News, “boomers had the golden age of capitalism; Gen-X had deregulation and trickle-down economics. And millennials? We’ve got venture capital, but we’ve also got the 2008 financial crisis, the decline of the middle class and the rise of the 1%, and the steady decay of unions and stable, full-time employment.”
On top of these prospects, we’re constantly comparing ourselves to each other on social media. A perpetual stream of posts about achievements in life, love and friendship are what we absorb as we click through apps.
So we doggedly chase after our own American dreams, refusing to veer from the course until we reach those feats — even when we’re stretched in all different directions.
“The message that we can work harder and be better at everything — even rest and relaxation! — results in a strange composite of exhaustion and anxiety, a permanent state of dissatisfaction with who we are and what we have,” writes psychoanalyst Josh Cohen. “And it leaves us feeling that we are servants rather than masters of our work.”
Sometimes, it’s like shouting into the ether.
This all might sound trivial to older generations. But it’s an ever-changing world with distinct struggles and demands. My father is a child of the 1950s, and society placed different burdens on him than it does on me. There’s no basis for comparison.
To this day, when my sister or I call my dad to ask what he’s doing, his classic response is “work, work, work — like always.”
And he always has — since he was 8 years old, building fences with his father. He’s done everything from stocking shelves to installing car burglar alarms, lugging dry wall to hawking greeting cards. But it’s a rare moment to catch him stressed in any situation. Growing up, he always told me that he’d leave work at work.
I try wholeheartedly to embrace my dad’s philosophy, but it seems like the lines blur more with each passing day.