Burnout

People are happy enough rich, and people are happy enough poor. But it’s hard to imagine anyone happy without a feeling that their actions have some impact, however small. Even if you’re not going to be remembered by history, you want to be remembered by your barista. The prisoner, though largely robbed of power, is probably happier if he can vex h... See more

The antidote to burnout and the existential inquiry it brings seems to be doing things that don’t scale in pursuit of things that can’t scale. It becomes exciting not to see what you can do without limits, but to see what you can do with them.

When an industry fails to address the societal and structural factors that make this type of work harder, and rely on workers’ passion to power the whole industry through a snowballing crisis....in those cases, not even a strong union can protect the worker from the burnout built into the system. You go beyond burnout to demoralization, which is th... See more