millennial burnout

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-23/ ... t/10737016

Millennial burnout won't be helped by 'resilience building'
The Conversation By Rajvinder Samra
Posted Wed at 3:00am

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In a popular BuzzFeed article, Anne Helen Petersen describes how millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) became "the burnout generation".

She describes some of the stark consequences of edging towards burnout and identifies what she calls "errand paralysis", marked by a struggle to do even simple or mundane tasks.

Many of the factors contributing to this burnout are rooted in the challenging job and economic conditions that millennials face, according to Petersen.

She also describes "intensive parenting" as a contributing factor, because millennials have been relentlessly trained and prepared for the workplace by their parents. They have internalised the idea that they need to be working all the time or engaging in the never-ending pursuit of self-optimisation.

The six risk factors for burnout
Millennial burnout has a lot of similarities with regular burnout, otherwise known as work burnout.

Burnout is a response to prolonged stress and typically involves emotional exhaustion, cynicism or detachment and feeling ineffective.

The six main risk factors for work burnout are having an overwhelming workload, limited control, unrewarding work, unfair work, work that conflicts with values and a lack of community in the workplace.

People who have to navigate complex, contradictory and sometimes hostile environments are vulnerable to burnout.

If millennials are found to be suffering higher levels of burnout, this might indicate that they face more problematic environments. It is quite possibly the same stuff that stresses everyone, but it is occurring in new, unexpected or greater ways for millennials, and we haven't been paying attention.

For example, we know that traditional social comparison plays a role in work burnout. For millennials, social competition and comparison are continually reinforced online, and engaging with this has already been shown to be associated with depressive symptoms in young people.


PHOTO: High expectations and social competition contribute to burnout. (Unsplash: Steinar Engeland)
Even if you avoid social media, using technology and going online can be physically and emotionally exhausting. Excessive internet use has been linked to burnout at school.

These are just some of the ways that millennials have been increasingly exposed to the same stressors that we know can negatively affect people in the workplace.

We know very little about how millennials experience burnout. Early research suggests there are generational differences. Specifically, millennials respond to emotional exhaustion (often the first stage of burnout) differently to baby boomers (people born between 1946 and 1964).

When feeling emotionally exhausted, millennials are more likely to feel dissatisfied and want to leave their job than baby boomers.

Burnout research shows that complex environments and stressors, coupled with high expectations, create the conditions for traditional work burnout. The same can be said for the millennial burnout, which draws on similar notions of perfectionism.

Perfectionists, especially the self-critical ones, are at greater risk of burnout. Naturally, the self-critical type of perfectionist works hard to avoid failure, thereby putting themselves at high risk of burnout.

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Resilience as protection
A recent approach to tackling work burnout is to train people to be more resilient. This is underpinned by the assumption that highly competent people can improve their working practices to avoid burnout.

However, as I recently argued in an editorial in the BMJ, highly competent, psychologically healthy and seemingly resilient people are likely to face an increased risk of burnout.

It seems counterintuitive, but one of the earliest studies on workplace burnout showed that workers who were happier, less anxious and more able to relieve stress were more likely to develop burnout than those in a comparison group without these traits.

This largely forgotten study involved air traffic controllers in the US in the 1970s; it followed more than 400 of them for three years. Most of the cohort (99 per cent) had served in the US Armed Forces, so we can expect that they had experience of extreme stress and most likely had developed resilience.

This study shows us some of the conditions for creating burnout in this seemingly high-functioning and resilient group.

Their work was continually becoming more complex, with new technologies being introduced, without the necessary training to use them.

They worked long shifts without breaks and had poor environments to work in. Their hours and rotas were challenging and could be unpredictable.

These characteristics probably look quite familiar to millennials and anyone working in the gig economy.


PHOTO: The precariousness of the gig economy can contribute to burnout. (triple j Hack: Avani Dias)
It might have the opposite effect
The recent focus on training workers to avoid burnout by encouraging them to be more resilient is likely to become another stress, pressure or high ideal. It is likely that this serves to increase the risk for burnout, especially for the types of perfectionists who are highly self-critical.

The importance of our ideals, our view of what we are and should be, also shows us why labelling millennials as "snowflakes" is probably harmful.

Similarly, any intensive parenting that attempts to create resilient children may be counterproductive. This is because the core messages of intensive parenting are actually about social control and conformity, and these probably feed into children's internal and external ideals for the future.

What we can learn from burnout trends is that work is becoming rapidly and overwhelmingly more difficult and complex.

This is driving higher burnout levels in many professions and in informal workers, such as caregivers, and also, potentially, in millennials.

The solution is to simplify complex, contradictory and hostile work and personal environments, rather than giving us all another job of training ourselves to be more resilient to these environments.

Rajvinder Samra is a lecturer in health at The Open University. This article originally appeared on The Conversation.

While I am by the definition given in the article, Gen X rather than a millennial, I do feel for the millennials with the current financial situation. Its harder to save up enough money to have the same standard of living their parents had.

[K. A. Pital]

Millenials want to leave their job at the first signs of dissatisfaction because a lot of them do shit jobs which are worth nothing to them and don't even provide decent pay, much less anything else...

[madd0ct0r]

https://

While I am by the definition given in the article, Gen X rather than a millennial, I do feel for the millennials with the current financial situation. Its harder to save up enough money to have the same standard of living their parents had.

Its also a rat race against other millenials. You are paying rent to one person and trying to save faster then everyone else in order to at some point buy property from someone whos seen a zero added to its value while living there.

And the relative cost of the items my parents value is so much higher and the job worth so much less (job for life laff laff) that saying fuckit and sitting back for a bit does not leave you significantly worse off compared to chance. Theres less cost to burning out, as well as far more pressures.

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

Millenials want to leave their job at the first signs of dissatisfaction because a lot of them do shit jobs which are worth nothing to them and don't even provide decent pay, much less anything else...

Not to mention that automation has been literally killing job prospects because their fight for a living wage simply made corporations go 'fuck it' and go full on the automation train and fuck anyone left behind.

[madd0ct0r]

Millenials want to leave their job at the first signs of dissatisfaction because a lot of them do shit jobs which are worth nothing to them and don't even provide decent pay, much less anything else...

Not to mention that automation has been literally killing job prospects because their fight for a living wage simply made corporations go 'fuck it' and go full on the automation train and fuck anyone left behind.

If a job isnt worth a living wage to the company or society, why force or even expect anyone to do it?

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

If a job isnt worth a living wage to the company or society, why force or even expect anyone to do it?

Because our society is built upon the preconception and assumption known as 'work to live', where everyone has to work to live. That would have been alright when practically everything was manpower intensive, but that hasn't been reality since the days of the Industrial Revolution.

Since our society is built upon that preconception/assumption, you have to force companies to pay a livable wage or you'll get the sort of shit that almost got the US undergoing a socialist/communist revolution. Corporations are now acting like their Trust predecessors, which isn't good for everyone involved if it boils over.

[aerius]

Not to mention that automation has been literally killing job prospects because their fight for a living wage simply made corporations go 'fuck it' and go full on the automation train and fuck anyone left behind.

This is what happens when you have globalization and free trade along with economic policies which encourages foreign outsourcing of pretty much everything other than a Mcjob.

[GrosseAdmiralFox]

This is what happens when you have globalization and free trade along with economic policies which encourages foreign outsourcing of pretty much everything other than a Mcjob.

No, this is what happens when you don't have corporations on choke collars and leashes so short that if they make one wrong move they choke themselves to death.

[K. A. Pital]

Governments are but tools of the corporations by now. The Masters are keeping the government on a short leash and not the other way around.

So they enact pro-corporate policies and cannot do otherwise. Supporting automation & outsourcing without any compensation to workers is just one of the many pro-corporate acts by the modern governments.

[ray245]

Governments are but tools of the corporations by now. The Masters are keeping the government on a short leash and not the other way around.

So they enact pro-corporate policies and cannot do otherwise. Supporting automation & outsourcing without any compensation to workers is just one of the many pro-corporate acts by the modern governments.

This is what will happen when you have competition among nation-states, and the overall wealth of a country is what matters?

The other alternative is to have major power blocs or empires you have competing economic spheres.

[K. A. Pital]

We have empires, blocs and spheres. There is the US empire, and the nascent Sinosphere, there used to be other empires or blocs in the past.

[ray245]

We have empires, blocs and spheres. There is the US empire, and the nascent Sinosphere, there used to be other empires or blocs in the past.

Do you think this would be a better system? Especially for poorer regions?

[K. A. Pital]

Better than what?

[ray245]

Better than what?

Choosing imperialism/regional blocs over a free trade system.

[K. A. Pital]

Free trade isn‘t free; if countries cannot protect their own citizens from corporate abuse, the free flow of goods helps them pretty little. Imperialism and free trade are not mutually exclusive; the absence of challenging empires just mean there is one global beneficiary as opposed to several.

[ray245]

Free trade isn‘t free; if countries cannot protect their own citizens from corporate abuse, the free flow of goods helps them pretty little. Imperialism and free trade are not mutually exclusive; the absence of challenging empires just mean there is one global beneficiary as opposed to several.

I'm not saying it's free in terms of cost. I'm saying free trade in the sense that countries by and large have a large degree of freedom in choosing who they want to trade with. With the exception of certain countries under embargo, most countries are not locked into an exclusive trading sphere. This is a system that underdeveloped states can ( and did) take advantage of.

It's not just the free flow of goods, but also the free flow of capital. I am not saying this is somehow a morally beneficial system, but rather this is a system that allowed capital and technology to flow into an underdeveloped country. The Chinese economy itself is not what we'll call a free trade economy, but China had benefited from the international free trade system that allows western capital and technology to flow into the country.

If China had been subjected to colonial rule, it would have been much harder for capital and technology to flow into the region. There would have been far less incentive to encourage the industralisation of the Chinese economy under the older imperial trade system.

[FaxModem1]

Well, this explains some of the things myself and a few of my friends have been going through.

[K. A. Pital]

China is the opposite of free trade. Importing consumer goods into China was hell from a customs view or downright impossible due to prohibitive tariffs (eg on cars), which disallowed Western companies to flood the Chinese market with their goods. They had to, due to the extreme tariffs and complicated customs rules, rely on local industrial partners to assemble „Chinese versions“ of their products.

So, a very different story.

[ray245]

China is the opposite of free trade. Importing consumer goods into China was hell from a customs view or downright impossible due to prohibitive tariffs (eg on cars), which disallowed Western companies to flood the Chinese market with their goods. They had to, due to the extreme tariffs and complicated customs rules, rely on local industrial partners to assemble „Chinese versions“ of their products.

So, a very different story.

I'm talking about the free trade system that actively encourages companies to move their production lines to places like China and etc. The free trade system created by the west made it easy for companies to move away from their "home country", because that is what the system is designed to do.

An imperialistic trade system will not actively move key industries to the colonies.

[K. A. Pital]

You mistake Western Empire for no empire, ray. That would be all.

[ray245]

You mistake Western Empire for no empire, ray. That would be all.

You're referring to the American hegemony? If so, I will say yes, that's certainly in place, but its own self-imposed rules of "free trade" also enabled its own companies and factories to leave the country at will.

It is still a system that developing countries can take advantage of, like what China did. You don't have to be fully American aligned to gain economic benefits from the system.

[K. A. Pital]

True, but China gained because of US imperial games (using it as a counterweight to the USSR/Eastern bloc), not because the US companies are really free to trade with whomever they like.

The plight of Cuba and the sanctions against Iran prove that quite decisively, although by most sane standards neither Cuba nor Iran even pose a serious threat to the US. Free trade isn’t free.

And same arguments could be applied to the British Empire (muh railways!), Japanese Empire (helped industrialize Korea and also Manchuria, take that ingrateful Koreans and Chinese), and so on.

Why single out China and the US at all?

[ray245]

True, but China gained because of US imperial games (using it as a counterweight to the USSR/Eastern bloc), not because the US companies are really free to trade with whomever they like.

The plight of Cuba and the sanctions against Iran prove that quite decisively, although by most sane standards neither Cuba nor Iran even pose a serious threat to the US. Free trade isn’t free.

And same arguments could be applied to the British Empire (muh railways!), Japanese Empire (helped industrialize Korea and also Manchuria, take that ingrateful Koreans and Chinese), and so on.

Why single out China and the US at all?

China only became a member of the WTO in the 2000s, so I won't say it's down to cold war politics alone. The difference between the current "free trade" system and the imperial system should not be ignored.

The British building railways is very much done for the sake of the strategic interest and not really about lighting colonials from a life of poverty.

Whereas China do have a sufficient degree of control over the way they can make use of the wealth they have gained from industrialization.

[K. A. Pital]

China is a large, independent state which never fully lost its sovereignty to Western masters. It controls its own destiny to a greater degree than most small and/or previously colonized states. China benefited from a particular arrangement in world trade much more than others because of its ability to centrally invest in infrastructure and be a rule-setter, not just a rule-taker vis a vis the US. There were other nations that tried “free trade” on US rules, but just got shafted (Washington consensus, South America, Philippines etc.).

[Civil War Man]

And same arguments could be applied to the British Empire (muh railways!), Japanese Empire (helped industrialize Korea and also Manchuria, take that ingrateful Koreans and Chinese), and so on.

There is a difference in that the British didn't rip up their railroads in London in order to build them in Delhi. Outside of large items like cars and airplanes, or items needed by the military-industrial complex like guns and also airplanes, America's lost a lot of its manufacturing capabilities.

It is a bit of a misnomer to call it an American hegemony these days. There was one at some point, but it's since been hollowed out and replaced by a global corporate hegemony, with America as its most powerful vassal state. You've said it yourself in this thread that the US government is not in charge of its relationship with large corporations.