Burned Out? Start Here.
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What personal struggle does Ezra Klein discuss at the start?
From New York Times Opinion, this is The Ezra Klein Show. And we're back. I hope y'all had a wonderful holiday. I like to begin the show each year with an episode about something I'm thinking through personally. It's resolutions adjacent podcasting. And what was present for me as we near the end of last year was a pretty real case of burnout. I took some of December off, took a vacation. I'm feeling more grounded now. You don't need to send me concerned emails. But that was the frame of mind I was in when I picked up Oliver Berkman's Meditations for Mortals. And the book connected for me. Berkman's big idea, which he described in his bestseller a couple years back, 4,000 Weeks, is that no productivity system anywhere will ever deliver what it is promising, a sense of control.
a feeling that you have mastered your task list in some enduring way, that you've built levees strong enough to withstand life's chaos. And so his question is really the reverse. What if rather than starting from the presumption that it can all be brought under control, you began instead from the presumption that it can't be? What if you began with a deeper appreciation of your own limits? How then would you live? Do I think Berkman or anyone really has the answer to that question? No. But I do think he asks good questions and he curates good questions and insights. And questions are often more useful than answers. As always, my email, ezraklineshow at nytimes.com. Oliver Berkman, welcome to the show. Thanks very much for inviting me.
So I Understand Your Book largely is a book about burnout. How do you define burnout and how do you think it's different than anxiety or depression?
How does Oliver Burkeman define burnout?
Wow. I mean, I think that burnout really is probably best understood as having this sort of component of a lack of meaning. This component that you're not only working incredibly hard, but the harder you work, it doesn't seem to get you any closer to the imagined moment when you're actually going to feel on top of everything and in control and like you can relax at last. I think anxiety is a big part of that, but anxiety can obviously manifest in so many different life domains i think this idea that i love from the german social theorist hartmut rosa about resonance the vibrancy that makes life worth living i think that is what is gone in burnout right it's that sense of working harder and harder and harder just to stay in one place and it's not even working and what's the point of it all anyway
My producer, Kristen, and I were kicking this back and forth as we prepared for this conversation. And one of the definitions we came up with, or one of the descriptions maybe we came up with, is that burnout is this persistent feeling that you don't have the energy or the resources to meet the present. And when that feeling persists day after day after day, when the mismatch between you and the life you're living seems like a constant of the life you're living,
eventually throws you into some other state i'm curious how that resonates for you yeah that does resonate i think that um we really feel an extreme pressure from inside and from the culture and from all sorts of sources to overcome our built-in limitations you know to fit more in to the time that we have than anyone ever could to exert more control over how things unfold because we feel that we must just to keep our heads above water in the modern world. But I say that we can't because they're built-in limitations. You know, there's always going to be more that you could meaningfully do with your time than the time you have to do it. You're never going to be able to feel confident about what's coming in the future because it's in the future, all the rest of it.
And I think sort of Throwing yourself at that wall again and again and again and never getting to that place of feeling in control is a thoroughly dispiriting and fatiguing way to live.
One response that I think can arise in people in a conversation like this, it arises in me. It arises in me sometimes when I'm reading your book and sometimes when I am talking to myself about myself is, is, oh, get the fuck over it. For most of human history, a quarter or more of infants died. Half of everybody died before they were 15. We were subsistence farmers after things got better.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What personal struggle does Ezra Klein discuss at the start?
0:05–2:22
2
How does Oliver Burkeman define burnout?
2:22–16:58
3
What is productivity debt and how does it affect us?
16:58–24:24
4
How can we embrace our limitations?
24:24–42:06
5
What is the three to four hour rule?
42:06–49:13
6
How does the expectation of productivity shape our lives?
49:13–1:04:28
7
How can we find peace in our finite existence?
55:55–1:04:28