Exhausted? You’re Not Alone. Here’s What to do About It

Jennifer talks with The Globe and Mail about chronic exhaustion, particularly among certain groups who are more prone to burnout.

Jennifer Moss, author of The Burnout Epidemic, calls the latter segment of the population the “chronically exhausted.” Into this category fall such people as health care workers, small-business owners and front-line service employees who are working harder than they ever have before – with no end in sight.

“This group has been in fight or flight mode for months on end. There has been no slowdown, no reprieve, which goes a long way to explaining why Canada has the highest level of mental-health claims we’ve had in years,” Moss says. (Claims paid out to support mental health have climbed 75 per cent since 2019, according to the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association report card, published last September.)

As Jennifer talks about in her popular keynote From Stressed to Best: Navigating Modern Work Challenges, it took 41 percent of the global workforce to resign for us to admit this may not be sustainable. And yet, here we are in 2024, growth expectations have not slowed, workloads are still unmanageable, and people keep quietly quitting or quitting outright.