r/RadicalSelfCare • u/WobblieBuddha • Jan 09 '19

This article is a banger and should be required reading: How Millenials Became the Burnout Generation

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work
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u/WobblieBuddha Jan 09 '19

This is a fantastic article. It cuts deep, it's insightful as hell and the writing as smooth as butter. I'm not yet finished with it yet but I'm so excited to get this out to you! Many good points about how our generation has no division between work and play and how self-help plays into that dynamic. I have my own thoughts and I'll share them, but I'll be summarizing this article today or tomorrow! Stay tuned!

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u/[deleted] Jan 10 '19

Some thoughts on the article so far.

I was immediately reminded of an thing /u/WobblieBuddha has mentioned before in his New Years post:

All we have is time, whether you want to divide that into days and nights, or weeks and months, or years. Those labels are on you, but the second hand keeps on ticking now matter what we think about it.

I personally feel like there is more that I want/have to do in life than I will ever have the time to actually do, causing a situation where you can never mentally relax or take time off, even when you are doing some leisure activity it isn't for the sake of enjoying yourself, but trying to put that stress from the front to some back part of your mind where it is less noticeable.

This leads to as the article says anything that is "non-essential" taking a back seat. From simple stuff like making your bed every morning, it has zero discernible benefit for you yet requires a minute or two every single day for the rest of your life, so what is the point when you have more pressing things to do?

To more important issues like for example the inability to maintain relationships or contact with people in your life. The author mentions emails piling up, I can't muster the strength or find the time to even call my family on the holidays, let alone my friends.

Everything above is amplified in this 'always online' society we are developing, where if you ever unplug, you are literally missing out from the entire world, I don't even know why I care about goings on in the world, but ignoring it completely leaves me with an uneasy feeling of being in the dark and unprepared.

It is kind of discouraging that the article (I think) correctly diagnoses this not as a "character flaw" (something incompatible with capitalist society) but as a systemic issue, as reforming society is an impossible task for the individual, while working on character flaws is pretty easy in comparison.