Beyond Burned Out

I’ve studied burnout and worked with organizations to address it for years, but nothing would inform my understanding of the topic more than living through 2020. For some time I’d been sounding the alarm: “Burnout is getting worse. People are sick!” Then we were all suddenly thrust into unknown territory: By April 2.6 billion people had gone into lockdown, and places of employment for 81% of the global workforce were fully or partially closed. A huge percentage of knowledge workers began doing their jobs from home — many collaborating on Zoom, whose daily active users skyrocketed from 10 million to 200 million. This sudden shift did what little else had been able to accomplish before: expose how thinly stretched and worn down we all were — and had been for a while. And it also made our burnout much, much worse.

Today’s level of burnout is the result of an existing problem made exponentially worse. Yet despite how massive the problem is, it’s never too late to fix it. Combating burnout may feel like an overwhelming and herculean task, especially after months of emotional fatigue, but if you’re armed with the right tools, it can be easier than you might think. And ready or not, we can’t ignore the urgency — we are in the midst of a burnout epidemic.

Jennifer Moss authored Beyond Burnout for HBR, as well as The Burnout Epidemic published by the Harvard Business Review Press.