In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) defined burnout as the workplace or institutional stress left unmanaged and made a rare decision to add burnout to their International Classification of Diseases (ICD 11). The announcement came on the heels of a multi-year joint study by the WHO and the International Labor Organization that found 750 000 people die from overwork annually.

People often ask me if burnout worsened during the pandemic. And my response is always yes, but with a caveat. Burnout was obviously at a boiling point – the pandemic just jacked the burner up too high.