Yufa

Coping with burnout

The brain devotes lots of effort to mapping where our loved ones are while they are alive, so that we can find them when we need them. And the brain often prefers habits and predictions over new information. But it struggles to learn new information that cannot be ignored, like the absence of our loved one.[…]Grief is a heart-wrenchingly painful... See more

Whatever your profile is, burnout is not necessarily just an individual experience. It can be shared, and even become contagious.

We spend our lives trying to discern where we end and the rest of the world begins. We snatch our freeze-frame of life from the simultaneity of existence holding on to the illusions of permanence, congruence, and linearity; of static selves and lives that unfold in sensical narratives. All the while, we mistake chance for choice, our labels and... See more

Form, in music, is inherently temporal. It gives some shape to time, or at least designates the pace and manner at which we move through a particular piece. Where do we fare forward or cycle back; which moments expand, and which contract? Likewise, memory — that most universal and yet individual of temporal structures — lends form and shape to... See more

In four billion years, our own star will follow its fate, collapsing into a white dwarf. We exist only by chance, after all. The Voyager will still be sailing into the interstellar shorelessness on the wings of the “heavenly breezes” Kepler had once imagined, carrying Beethoven on a golden disc crafted by a symphonic civilization that long ago made... See more

While the dimensions of exhaustion, cynicism and inefficiency give us a good idea of all the ways burnout can affect us, they don’t address why some people are affected differently. Why is it that two people in a similar role, with similar team support, and similar levels of pressure react differently to burnout?