Conversation

Anyway, I say all of this to provide background to what I’m about to say next: A huge chunk of mainstream burnout advice appears to be “get better work-life balance” or “do self care”. But this is NOT what the research says. The research says fix the work env or … get out!

This is either depressing or amazing news, depending on where you stand. Depressing: if you’re an employee with no power over your workplace, it’s just a matter of time before you burn out. Amazing: if you’re an employer, there are systematic ways to stave off burnout.

In fact, and this goes further, and this is a TRULY WILD thing, the thing that people don’t seem to want to talk about — your goal can be more than just “stave off burnout”, your goal can be “create work so engaging that your employees work long hours and feel totally energised.”

In the burnout literature this is known as “work engagement” or “engagement”, a state that is the opposite of burnout. It comes with its own inventory. commoncog.com/g/burnout/#wha

What I Miss About Working at Stripe

There was a piece sometime back by

@zebriez

about what she missed working at Stripe, and the piece generated a lot of the usual “work-life balance” vs “no work-life balance” arguments. One way of reading it is just “this is what engagement looks like”.

every.to

Nostalgia for another way of working

I’ll end this thread here. tl;dr — most people think in terms of ‘work-life balance’ but the research seems to be more nuanced. The reality: burnout is about a mismatch of job demands and resources, and if you align it, you can create ridiculously engaging work environments.

Whether that’s an unalloyed good is an exercise that’s left to the alert reader. But I guess there’s no harm if you design a workplace that’s somehow as engaging as, say, tennis? 🤷‍♂️ I’d like to see more writing on that!

Replying to

The most helpful thing ive ever come across on this subject is David whytes book the three marriages. To be polemic: the general idea of work life balance is ridiculous in the first place.

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and

The more subtle point: life is dynamic and asks different things of us at different times - in our relationship work, family, partners, kids, friendships. The best we can do in the pursuit of an authentic experience of life is to make sacrifices as consciously as possible