A Simple Solution to Millennial Burnout

Society has primed us to care about ego and status. Here’s how to get past that.

Earlier this year, Anne Helen Petersen wrote an essay for BuzzFeed entitled “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation.” The basic gist was that millennials, people between the ages of 22 and 38, tend to suffer from a combination of low-level anxiety, fatigue, and dread caused be a feeling that they should always be working. “I couldn’t figure out why small, straightforward tasks on my to-do list felt so impossible,” Petersen wrote. The answer she came to was “millennial burnout.”

The essay went viral and after it was published, there were a lot of articles written about millennial burnout — both its causes and potential remedies. These pieces have raised important points about student debt, the gig economy, the latest recession, and how America fails to provide adequate health care, childcare, and paid-time-off. It’s a quick route to burnout if you’re constantly struggling to meet your basic needs.

And yet, as recently detailed on the popular podcast The Ezra Klein Show, even if millennials have their basic needs met and enjoy their work, they still often report feeling burnt out. Research from Gallup backs this up, as does my own experience as a millennial — I’m 32 — and that of my…