Burnout is built on the idea that if we skip a meal and work more hours, we might finally get ahead.

Not coincidentally, the worst jobs tend to be the ones that ask you to do just this on a regular basis.

Experiencing burnout in places that you care deeply about and volunteer your time or energy towards are kinds of burnout I completely and fully understand. This very website has caused a reasonable amount of burnout in myself when I was hyper-focused on resolving all of the drama/problems I ran across and shouldering more burden than I can or should. The opening line, and this title, really capture the essence of what burnout is, in an extremely tangible and digestible way. When its a project you are doing because you want to do it, I think it’s easy to burnout when the project involves others or is at scale, because you often don’t have control over other individuals.

When it comes to work, however, I’ve never really understood why people are so tied to positive outcomes. I’ve only ever experienced something akin to burnout at work once, and it was more exhaustion than it was burnout. Throughout the end of 2019 and very early 2020 I discovered some blog posts and articles from the epidemiologists at the company I work for talking about how COVID was going to be the next big thing. I had some time on my hands and I decided to start structuring some data so that we’d be able to keep an eye on patients who had COVID, where they were located in our hospital, who tested positive and basic information about them, and pieces of information like this. Because of this I ended up in charge of all the COVID data in our system and ended up the chief architect of everything COVID data related which rapidly expanded to inventory and purchasing (masks, filters, vents, etc.), more expansively from lab into pathology, into additional clinical spaces and more. Because of this I ended up working 80+ hour weeks for a few months until things started to vaguely settle.

Even during this period, where I deeply cared about the outcome, my framing was not about whether the system did everything correctly, but whether I was able to offer my input and then disconnecting from the results as much as possible. I realize that I’m not an expert in everything, and when my thoughts are countered by a senior epidemiologist or clinican or operational manager, it’s coming from a place of knowledge and similar concern for patient safety and quality of life. However, for the vast majority of work that I do, it’s not the difference between a patient living and dying and a healthy amount of disconnect from decision making has always spared me burnout. I’m more than happy to explain to people what I think is the best route forward, and while I’m often correct in the fields of knowledge that I possess, I do not care a whole lot whether they listen to me. When things break down and need to be fixed later, I’ll be around to correct the mistakes that others made in their judgement. I don’t hyper-focus on that judgement because that leads both to burnout and dissatisfaction with a job.

I think the argument to disconnect a little bit more from work isn’t aptly presented in this article, but then again, I am probably biased towards it because it’s always been particularly helpful for me. On one final note, the author just barely touches on some amazing insight at the very end

Someone I know who’s in alcohol recovery told me, at the root of our problems is the belief that individuals can bear responsibility for personal failures caused by societal oppression.

I wish they had spent more time talking through this, because this is such wonderful insight that many seem to miss. In America we have a focus on individuality, that everyone can become president or simply pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and it’s extremely harmful to everyone in society.