Danielle Roberts

The last time I was burnt out, it got to a point where I was struggling with cognitive abilities.

I couldn't

use my critical thinking skills without very quickly hitting what felt like a wall in my brain.

Constantly exhausted, irritable, mentally checked out and never able to rest without guilt.

Never feeling like I'm caught up at work, no longer finding joy in my job.

I related to it a lot as a millennial myself.

I recently graduated from college a few years ago.

I think with the state of the world, it can get a little bit...

I guess depressing because it feels like AI is taking all the jobs and I'm like, you do get this job, you're so thankful to have it, but then you're kind of overworked and undervalued and it can, yeah, lead to feelings of burnout because you just feel like you're stuck in this hard place of, I don't want to give up this job, but I don't really find joy in it anymore.

I think we are at a point where dream jobs don't exist, and we have to start questioning the systems and the structures that are causing burnout in the first place, rather than making it a personal problem or a professional weakness.

She says burnout isn't just something millennials feel.

I grew up in a very blue-collar family.

I'm one of five kids, and my dad did tile and marble for a living.

For 40 years, he just retired, and what he got for a lifetime of hard work was a broken body and a pin to say thank you for your service.

Older generations, our family, their burnout often looked more physical.

Gen X, their burnout often looks more mental.

And then millennials and Gen Z, our burnout often looks more emotional and existential because we were taught that our work equals our worth and to pour so much of ourselves into it.

So I think it's not that one generation is more burnout than the other.

It's just that it manifests differently based on the world in which we grew up.

We can learn so much from Gen Z and what they are teaching us about modeling the boundaries that would have prevented all of us from burning out in the first place.