Trying to be a functional human being in 2020 can feel exhausting. Our devices send us constant notifications, social media demands all our attention, and even simple daily tasks start to feel Sisyphean when they pile up. In many ways, the same technology that was supposed to make our lives easier and more efficient has led to a mental health crisis that shows no signs of abating: widespread burnout.
This week on Gadget Lab, we talk with Anne Helen Petersen, author of the book Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, about the ways that tech has driven many people to the breaking point. Also, we've got some tips on how to prevent burnout and cut yourself some slack.
You can find Anne Helen Petersen’s book here and read an excerpt about how work became an inescapable hellhole in WIRED here. Subscribe to Anne’s newsletter here.
Anne recommends the show Pen15 on Hulu. Lauren recommends WIRED’s 2020 election coverage, in particular this story about the battle over voting machines in Texas. Mike recommends practicing Qigong to help your peace of mind, starting with this video teaching Qigong for beginners.
Anne Helen Petersen can be found on Twitter @annehelen. Lauren Goode is @LaurenGoode. Michael Calore is @snackfight. Bling the main hotline at @GadgetLab. The show is produced by Boone Ashworth (@booneashworth). Our executive producer is Alex Kapelman (@alexkapelman). Our theme music is by Solar Keys.
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Michael Calore: Lauren.
Lauren Goode: Mike.
MC: Lauren, do you ever feel burnt out?
LG: What's water? Yes. I think I'm just in it. I think I'm so steeped in it that I don't realize it.
MC: Well, hopefully, we have some answers for how to resolve that for you. Well, at least, our guest does. She's going to share it on this week's show.
LG: That sounds great.
[Gadget Lab intro theme music]
MC: Hi everyone, welcome to Gadget Lab. I am Michael Calore, a senior editor at WIRED and I'm joined remotely by my co-host, WIRED senior writer, Lauren. Goode.
LG: Hey Mike, I'm just responding to 736 Slacks, but I'll be right back.
MC: Silence that shit. We are also joined by writer Anne Helen Petersen, who is the author of the book. Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. Anne, thanks for coming on the show.
Anne Helen Petersen: My pleasure.
MC: So, a couple of weeks ago, we ran a story on WIRED.com that really resonated with our readers. It was titled How Work Became an Inescapable Hellhole. You authored the story, and the story was actually adapted from your book. It's basically about how the technology that was supposed to make our lives easier and more flexible, has instead co-opted our energy and our free time. And it isn't just about work. You've probably felt it in a lot of aspects of your life, the constant notifications on your phone, the dooms growling on social media, the never-ending barrage of news and obligations and responsibilities. If everyday tasks often feel like impossible hurdles and each little interaction feels completely exhausting, then you are probably burned out, and you're far from alone. It's a social problem and it's one that we're only just starting to reckon with. So, later in the show, we're going to try to offer some specific tips for alleviating this burnout. But first, let's get into why it's gripping us in the first place. Anne, why am I tired all of the time?
AHP: Well, I think that it is overwhelming precarity in every corner of your life. I think that's what we can say for most people who are experiencing something like burnout, and that can be precarity in the workplace, precarity in terms of knowing where you're going to live next month, precarity in terms of your health or your future savings, or just living with the idea that you're going to work every day until you die, which I certainly do. People are like, "I'm concerned about my retirement savings or, elder care." And I'm like, "Well, I'm just going to work every day until I die because that's the only scenario that seems possible to me."
LG: Well, you've said before, that millennials are actually expected to go backwards in terms of life expectancy, which I want to ask you a serious question about that, which is, why and how is that possible? But also, maybe that means you won't have to work all that long?
AHP: I don't know enough about the very specific health components, in terms of... I think a lot of it has to do with increasing obesity rates and increasing heart disease, that sort of thing. But all of that can be connected, in some way, to overarching burnout in some capacity. I think that the big takeaway from the idea of us taking a step back, it's not only life expectancy, it's also, in terms of accumulated savings, that the age at which we achieve "adult milestones," feeling that you have enough stability in your life to start a family, all of those different things.
MC: Well, I'm a little bit ahead of you two because I'm a gen Xer. I was born in the '70s and I am of that generation, which is the first generation that is going to be failed by social security and is not expected to have a fulfilling retirement. I'm fully expecting that I'm just going to die at my desk. It's like work until... I mean, also, writing is the thing that makes me feel alive and happy, so I think that I'll keep doing that right up until I kick it. But I'm also feeling burnt out. I know that people older than me are feeling even more burnt out because our energy levels are starting to dip noticeably. And I just I'm curious if you have anything to say for the people of the other generations who are not millennials, about burnout.
AHP: Yeah. I mean, there's a huge component of the book that is about essentially acknowledging that boomers were also burnt out and were grappling with precarity, and some of the strategies that they embraced to try to deal with that, included some legislative and voting choices that actually further unraveled the safety net. So they made the world more precarious for both themselves and for subsequent generations. But I was just reading this piece, I think it was in the Times, about the increasing homeless population of elderly people in Arizona, like people who moved to the Sun-belt to retire in some capacity and have just run out of their savings or have been forced out of their jobs by COVID.
And thinking about an elderly homeless crisis is just devastating, just like on a fundamental level, thinking about people who are old and who have tried to do their best their entire lives, then now in old age, grappling with not having a home is just heartbreaking. And that, to me, there are all sorts of things that are going to point towards the ways in which overarching precarity is going to affect every generation. My point with the book was pointing to how a lot of these forces have consolidated on millennials, the tech component that we started talking about at the beginning, but also the massive amounts of student debt and how our generation was set back in pretty fundamental ways by entering adulthood, at the same time as the great recession, just has these ramifications that are going to last our entire lives.
LG: Absolutely. I mean, this is something that doesn't just affect millennials, of course, it affects everybody. It particularly, at this moment in time, I know when you started writing the book, it was pre-pandemic, but now, everyone has such incredibly heavy burdens on them. I would just like to say too that, Mike, I'm on a cusp of millennialism in Gen X. I guess I was born in the timeframe that, now, if you look, social scientists define millennials differently. So I'm like, "I feel for you, Mike." Let me just say that.
AHP: Wait, what age ... What year were you born?
LG: I was born in 1981.
AHP: Same. So we are technically elder millennials, but we are definitely cuffs. And I think that you can... Millennial is a state of mind, you can feel like a millennial if you entered into adulthood for whatever reason. Like maybe, you had to quit school and move back home to take care of your parents, or maybe you went to grad school and then didn't enter the workforce until like 2008, which is the case with a lot of people I know, you have more in common, you feel like more of a millennial than someone who went right into the workforce at 21. Does that make sense?
LG: Yes. Absolutely. And in my case, I also have older siblings who are firmly gen X. And when you have older siblings, they're sometimes influencing your culture and your experiences in a way that makes you relate to a different generation. And one of the things that you said about working forever, both of you said, also resonates with me because, in sort of the calculation of what career to choose, and when I think about being a writer, I think about it, knock on wood, generally being something that you can do, you can have extensions of throughout your career, it can take different forms as opposed to... and granted, there's a certain amount of privilege attached to that because you can choose a desk job as your job, but for some people, they're doing incredibly physically grueling work, and to think about that going on forever, particularly in these precarious times, is a real challenge to think about.
AHP: Yeah. Whether that's truck driving, driving an Uber, sorting packages at Amazon, that is physically taxing work, in a way that... I actually think, sitting in a desk all day is physically taxing in a different way. All of these studies have shown just how horrible it is for our bodies. But at the same time, I think my concern is media privileges the young and the perspectives of the young, unless I think you're a columnist for the New York Times opinion section, then you can just be a boomer having opinions forever. And so, I'm scared of like, "Well, what's going to happen when I'm older and I'm not an interesting cool thought leader. Do I need to start editing so that I have some sort of escape route when I'm not interesting anymore?"
MC: I can tell you, as a voice from the future, it's pretty easy to stay interesting. All you have to do is stay interested and then you can be interesting.
LG: That's right. If you're bored, then you're boring, right?
AHP: Exactly.
LG: So, Anne, another thing that you've talked about before in your stories and in your book is that small tasks can be really daunting when you're burnt out. So, some people may associate burnout with the inability to make big decisions because you're stuck in a rut. But you talk about how running errands or going through personal paperwork that you have to go through, in fact, I think that was the Buzzfeed article that really sparked this whole book for you. Why does that happen?
AHP: So, I think there are two things going on. One is that a lot of the errands of every day have been rendered needlessly complicated. And part of that is the sheer number of choices. Like I'm trying to find an electrician right now and I feel like I need to find the best electrician, and I go on Yelp and I'm like, "I don't ... Are these Yelp reviews reliable? Should I trust them? Who do I call of all of this list?" Whereas before, you would open up your yellow pages and be like, "Oh, look, Trician." Or you'd ask your parents or someone because you lived in the same place or in the neighborhood, then you knew you had some sort of understanding of who the best electrician was.
And now you're just like, "I can't make a decision. There's too many choices here." Or something like ... I don't know, sending in your rebate for your contacts. They make this incredibly complicated, so as to disincentivize you actually completing it. Same thing with any sort of health insurance claim. And that intersects with this overarching idea that I think a lot of millennials have internalized, that all time needs to be devoted to work. So, there's almost a fear that if you allocate time to doing these other tasks, then you won't be working and you'll fall behind in some capacity. And I think that that is irrational, but that doesn't mean that people don't still feel it.
MC: Anne, I think technology has already exacerbated that. And I think ... The point that you made in the adaptation that we ran on WIRED, and one of the things that really jumped out at me, is the big shift that happened when Slack arrived. That sort of ... I forget what you call it. It's like it's presentism, or the pressure to always be green on Slack. I'd like to just ask you a little bit about that before we move on.
AHP: Yeah. I borrowed the term LARPing your job, from John Herman, who's a technology writer, now for the New York Times, that, if you'd feel the need to be proving that you are doing your job in some capacity, like dropping in links to show that you are online instead of actually doing your work, you're showing evidence of work instead of doing work. And that, I think it's a really complicated psychological moment because you feel this pressure to keep doing it even if your editors or your managers say, "You don't need to be doing this. Just concentrate on your work. You don't need to be participating." It still feels like you are somehow being less of an employee if you are not participating in that digital presentism.
LG: So how do you stop that?
AHP: Well, I quit Buzzfeed to start my own Substack and now I don't have Slack. That's great. That's one way. I cannot tell you what a relief it is. Just a huge psychological lift off my shoulders. I think that talking about culture in a company is a very fraught thing because oftentimes it's unstated. The things that people say are actually culture aren't really culture, they're aspirational components of your company. And it's oftentimes, in many ways, the opposite of what your company actually does.
But if, as a team, you can have conversations about expectations, and really actually rejigger those expectations, and I think something like having kind of like a discussion happy hour at a certain time of day, where you're like, "OK. Everyone drop in the things that they have been reading, and we can talk about them a little bit more," then puts that... kind of consolidates that stress of, "Let's have a conversation, let's talk, let's show that we've been thinking," into one space that feels interesting and less like you have to spread it over the entire workday. And for journalists and some other fields, there is this compulsion to like... even beyond Slack on the weekends, just to show that you're keeping up with stuff like, "Oh, just checking in, just open it up on my phone, seeing what's going on." And that's somehow, even if that isn't something that anyone has ever told you you should be doing, it evidences that you are more dedicated to your job in some capacity.
MC: Well, that is a good place to hit pause because we need to take a break and take care of some business. But when we come back, we want to talk a little bit more about some of the things that we can do to avoid feeling burnt out.
LG: Mike, when you say take care of business, do you mean you're going to go work on your side hustle now, in the time that you're not working on the podcast?
MC: I got to go feed the Substack beast. Yes.
LG: OK. All right.
[Break]
MC: Welcome back. So, if burnout is a real society-wide problem, what do we do about it? How do you remain an informed, relatively productive person without succumbing to all the chaotic demands for your attention? I would say let's just run away to the woods, but we can't all just do that. It signals a certain amount of privilege to suggest that you can just run. And also the woods here are on fire right now, so that's not really an option. But Anne, let's start with some technological tips since that's what your WIRED story focused on. Tell me, should I just delete Slack and then tell my bosses that I communicate exclusively via a carrier pigeon?
AHP: Well, I think, having frank discussions with a manager about expectations, sometimes liberates you from that feeling. I think there's a certain amount of FOMO with Slack, especially with groups that aren't necessarily formal groups, so you have the group that is your team or whatever, but then there's all these other subgroups that people develop that are just like friends chatting and that sort of thing. And there's this feeling that if you are not on Slack, you're somehow missing out of those important conversations. And I don't know, I feel better when I transfer those to group texts anyway because then it's not part of something that's discoverable within my company. And it's actually a better place to gossip and talk about things that matter.
But there's just certain ways that, I think, people have told me that they've found effective for monitoring those Slack usage, which includes physically deleting the app from their phone. That seems like a harsh measure, but otherwise, you're... I, for one, my thumb goes to places naturally on my phone. It has like a... I don't know, it does like a little cycle of all of the different social things in my email and that sort of thing, and I'll be like, "Why? Wait, why did I just open that app? I don't care about that thing but my thumb just opened it." So, if it's not there, in any capacity, then you can't open it. And that also just kind of cuts you off from it, for spaces that you want to preserve as non-workspaces.
LG: I totally agree with that advice. And I have to say that, me offering any kind of advice around this is a bad idea. It would be like someone with a desk that currently looks like mine saying you should condo your apartment. Because I just don't feel equipped to offer positive advice. I'm a very bad doom scroller, and I have too many notifications and too many apps. But I will say that when it comes to notifications and apps and subscriptions, I prefer the all or nothing approach. Like if notifications on a specific app like LinkedIn or something, are bothering me too much on my mobile device, just delete it. If there's a subscription offer that pops up and I'm trying to decide, "Should I do three months? Should I do six months on this app? Should I do a free trial, then figure it out later?" I'd rather just not do it because I feel like it's death by a thousand paper cuts. All these little decisions and tiny little management systems you're supposed to use, they just add up over time.
AHP: Yeah, absolutely. And if there's some way to consolidate your calendars in one place, I think that that's useful. I personally live and die by the physical planner. I hate Google Calendar. I hate a culture where people can look at your calendar and drop in time, that you somehow have to schedule out all the times when you're unavailable, like that, I think that that's actually a pretty toxic strategy for working. I understand why some managers have to do that, but if you can avoid that in any capacity, I think that it's ... that is a recipe for ... Unless you, actually, are very good at being like, "OK. These three hours in the morning, I'm going to ... Every morning, going to be blocked off so no one can schedule a meeting during this time, either because I'm a parent, I'm working with my kids or whatever, but also, that's the time when I'm actually dedicated to working and I don't want any interruptions." So I think, in those scenarios, they can be a positive thing.
MC: I started actually doing that. I started actively putting blocks on my calendar, and then people will Slack me and say, "Hey, I want to schedule a meeting but it says that you're busy." And I'm like, "Yeah. I'm busy." Because, like you said, that... sort of it's become very accepted to just look at somebody else's calendar and just plop a meeting in the middle of their day, if there's nothing there. So, you have to be vigilant about your calendaring. And I think that's fine, it's good, mostly. It's a good habit to get into now, especially now that that's becoming like a more pervasive thing. The other thing for me is that there are all of these built-in tools on Slack or whatever messaging system that your company uses, that are made for productivity.
There's hours where you can say, "No notifications at all." You can snooze notifications for 30 minutes or 60 minutes. I always snooze notifications before we record this podcast, so you don't hear my Slack notifications going off while we're talking. Learning that scheduler just for this show has helped me in my life as well because now, I can't ... Somebody Slacks me at 7:00, I don't even see it until like 8:30, and that's really important for my sanity and also for that sense of like, "I don't need to be ... I don't need to respond to this right away. It's OK if I wait two hours to respond to this because it's not working hours yet." That pressure is just gone.
AHP: Yeah. So, one thing I want to try, that a friend told me about, is that they invented an assistant, a male assistant who had their own email address, and they would use... so, it'd be like, "I'm going to CC my assistant and they're going to handle this." And that assistant could be very firm about scheduling times. Just be like, "She's not available during this time. And also very firm about things like speaking fees, which, oftentimes, people try to guilt women into accepting less than they would. And essentially having an alter ego who can draw boundaries for you, was very effective for this person. And I've talked about this now, I think, with two different people, so I have to stop talking about it otherwise people are going to be like, "You don't have an assistant, you have a fake assistant. Don't pretend." But I think, even just thinking about that as an exercise, what would my assistant do in this scenario? Would my assistant say, "I guess I can do that phone call at 6:30 AM," or would my assistant say, "There's absolutely no way. We have to find another time." Right?
LG: Right.
AHP: Or would my assistant say, "This is going to have to wait until tomorrow when my boss is back online," or would my assistant feel like, "I need to email back right away," even though it's something that I could absolutely wait.
LG: Well, Anne, AIs are just so great, they learn over time. So, if you just give it access to all of your data, I'm sure, over time, technology would help solve the ails of technology. I think that's just-
AHP: Google Assistant?
LG: So, Anne, I'm curious, I know you live in a bit of a remote location, so I'm wondering if you were a commuter before the pandemic or if you've always worked from home. And if so, how you create guardrails between work and life when you're home all the time?
AHP: I always used to work from home because I moved from New York to Montana in 2017. And at the beginning, my partner and I, who is also a journalists, we were like, "Oh, we're going to have so much time to be outside. It's going to be amazing." Yeah. We just worked more. We took all that time that we regained from not commuting and just worked all the time. And it was a gradual process of reclaiming our time of being like, "Well, I can sleep a little longer," or... We worked at East Coast hours mostly, so we would sign off at 4:00, which is great, there's still a lot of Montana day left for you at that point. That has deteriorated since the pandemic because it's just felt like you have to be glued to the news all the time.
News is always... I mean, it was always happening before, but it feels like it's even more always happening. So, a lot of bad burnout habits have reaccumulated. I'm trying to be just kind of forgiving of myself in this moment because I think that it's really hard to practice good digital hygiene when the world is collapsing around you. So, I can recognize behaviors as bad burnout behaviors, but also be like, "I can work on that. I can try to counter it," but I'm also not going to be pissed off at myself about it either.
LG: Mike, you seem pretty good at that, about creating guardrails around the start and finish of the day.
MC: Yeah. See, this is Lauren sub-tweeting me here on the show.
LG: No. Yeah, Mike, sometimes I send you copy at 4:30 and you're checked out. No, I'm just kidding. You're really good at it. You have a very healthy... You have a healthy relationship, I think, particularly with the end of the day.
MC: For me, it really started with using the tools that are built into all of the things that we surround ourselves with, like using the tools that are built into Slack, using the tools on the phone. I have an Android phone. Android, as of a couple of years ago, both of the big mobile operating systems got loaded up with all of these like digital wellness and digital wellbeing tools, so you can set like sleep schedules, bedtime mode, where it turns your screen grayscale, dashboard timer, so you can see how long you're spending in each app and then set like limits. When I first did that, when I first started limiting my app usage, I set like 30 minutes on Twitter and 30 minutes on Instagram, and I was ringing the bell before noon, every single day.
AHP: Of course.
MC: And over time, I go three or four days without ringing the bell on either one, which is great. So, it's really, it has sort of trained me. I can see it. It's trained me, and it's not like I'm thinking like, "Oh, I only have 20 minutes on Twitter, I got to be quick." It's just sort of like, "You don't need to look at this right now. You don't need to look at this right now." And if your phone tells you that enough times, then you start to believe it.
AHP: Yeah. The times when I've been in remote locations, either in the United States or like, I don't know, in an Island in the middle of the ocean, and Instagram takes forever to load and you're just sitting there, redoing it, waiting for it to load, I'm like, "Oh, I don't really need to be looking at this right now." It's a very good reality check of like, "Why am I waiting to see a picture from the person I went to high school with? Why am I doing that?"
MC: So you can fade it, obviously. Tap, tap. So, let's take another break, and when we come back, we will each give our recommendations. All right.
[Break]
MC: Welcome back. This is the last segment of the show where we tell our listeners the things that we are enjoying, that we think they would enjoy too. Anne, let's start with you. What's your recommendation?
AHP: Mine is this show, it's on Hulu, PEN15, which is set in around 2000, 2001. And the premise is that, it's two girls or two women who are now in their early thirties, who are playing their teenage selves. And I didn't watch it for a long time because I thought that that was weird. Because like, "That's going to be awkward or whatever." I can not tell you how pitch-perfect this show is. I watched one episode and then I need to take a break because it is so incredibly evocative of that particular time. The best part is that they really get how bad that era's fashion was, instead of making it cool, like whatever Urban Outfitters is doing now, they're like, "No. People wore like long skirts down to their ankles that were cargo skirts." That was the thing that people did. And it is so weird and so funny and so warm. And I think that it is a perfect pandemic watch.
MC: It's a great show. I think it's pronounced "Penis." [LG and AHP laugh] Am I wrong? It's a great pick. I absolutely love that show. Lauren, what's your recommendation.
LG: I recommend WIRED's voting package. So, in case you've been living under a rock, there's a monumental United States presidential election coming up in less than a month at this point, some States already have started with early voting. You may live in one of those States. I recommend doing a little bit of research on that, but we have put together a series of stories that are on WIRED.com, that point to a more hopeful future, I think, with regards to voting. There's a great story by Ben Wofford about two Texans who were battling over voting technology in Travis County, Texas, and ultimately decided to work together. In fact, I did a podcast about that on the Get WIRED podcast. There's a great story by Stacey Abrams, about ways in which we can fight voter suppression. They're all just these cool things, I think, that point towards a more healthy voting future. And so I know things feel pretty dire right now, we've just had a pretty dire conversation, but I think that if you're looking for something that feels hopeful, check out our WIRED guide to the 2020 election.
MC: Nice.
LG: And Mike, what's your recommendation?
MC: So, I'm going to recommend Qigong. That's Q-I-G-O-N-G. It is a system of body movement and breathing exercises and meditation. It has roots in traditional Chinese medicine and in martial arts. If you live in a big city, you may see people doing this in the park, where it's like these arm movements where you sort of... It looks a little bit like Tai Chi, it's different than Tai Chi. So, I got into this a little while ago because I'm a runner and I want to go out in the morning, but there's just smoke everywhere. The sky is just completely filled with smoke, and your lungs burn and your eyes burn. And it just sucks. And it's from all the fires in California. So, I started looking for other things that I could do for movement in my body. And that relaxing high that you get from physical activity, first thing in the morning. So, I started with this video by this woman, her name is Marisa Cranfill.
She runs Yoqi, Y-O-Q-i.com. And she has all these videos, for free, on YouTube. You can also subscribe. So, I would recommend starting with her beginner video or any beginner video that you find. It really just teaches you the basics about what qigong is about. So it teaches you how to breathe. It teaches you about movement and relaxation, standing meditation, stuff like that. There is always something to be found in it, even if you're not really feeling it that day, when you're done, you always feel different when you're done. So, I really like it. It's very hippy-dippy. There's a lot of... You're like pulling energy from the earth and then showering yourself with it, and then realigning the energy sources within your body, so it's like... If you're a firm believer in science and reality, it may seem rather alien to you, but just go with it because it's a great relaxation technique. And it's also a great way to just start your day. It's like a cup of coffee for the soul.
LG: I love that. Do you feel like, with some of these tools that we use to relax, we'll eventually be able to detach them from screens? I think about that a lot. Like if you became well-practiced enough in your qigong, would you be able to then not have to look at YouTube to do it? Which would be great, right?
MC: Yeah. I have never really been able to do yoga with a screen because it's really hard for me to do the position and also look at a screen to make sure that I'm doing the position correctly. And, people notice this, if you ... Remember, yoga classes and when we all used to go to yoga classes, you would be able to look around the room and see the other people and know how to check in with yourself that way. But I've never really been able to do it with a screen. And that's the thing about qigong is, you mostly stand in one place facing the same direction, so it's easier to follow along with the screen. But yeah, my goal after doing it like a dozen or so times, is to get away from needing the screen. I think an audio recording would probably be really good, but after, I think, doing it for a couple of months, you just don't need the instruction manual any more. And you can just go off.
LG: Both your recommendations are great.
MC: So, watch PEN15, read up on voting, and then control your surroundings with the power of your breath.
LG: Yeah. What you should do is, read the voting package first, and then you should go do the other two recommendations because they're more relaxing.
MC: And definitely read Anne Helen Petersen's book, Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation. And it's not just for millennials, as we discussed. Anne, thank you for joining us on the show.
AHP: My total pleasure. This is great.
MC: All right. Thank you all for listening. If you have feedback, you can find us all on Twitter, just check the show notes. This show is produced by Boone Ashworth. Our executive producer is Mr. Alex Kapelman and we will be back next week. Goodbye.
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