Going beyond the how and why of burnout, a former tenured professor
combines academic methods and first-person experience to propose new
ways for resisting our cultural obsession with work and transforming our
vision of human flourishing.
Burnout has become our go-to term for talking about the pressure and
dissatisfaction we experience at work. But because we don't really
understand what burnout means, the discourse does little to help workers
who are suffering from exhaustion and despair. Jonathan Malesic was one
of those workers, and to escape, he quit his job as a tenured professor.
In The End of Burnout, he dives into the history and psychology of
burnout, traces the origin of the high ideals we bring to our dismal
jobs, and profiles the individuals and communities who are already
resisting our cultural commitment to constant work.
In The End of Burnout, Malesic traces his own history as someone who
burned out of a tenured job to frame this rigorous investigation of how
and why so many of us feel worn out, alienated, and useless in our work.
Through research on the science, culture, and philosophy of burnout,
Malesic explores the gap between our vocation and our jobs, and between
the ideals we have for work and the reality of what we have to do. He
eschews the usual prevailing wisdom in confronting burnout ("Learn to
say no!" "Practice mindfulness!") to examine how our jobs have been
constructed as a symbol of our value and our total identity. Beyond
looking at what drives burnout - unfairness, a lack of autonomy, a
breakdown of community, mismatches of values - this book spotlights
groups that are addressing these failures of ethics. We can look to
communities of monks, employees of a Dallas nonprofit, intense
hobbyists, and artists with disabilities to see the possibilities for
resisting a "total work" environment and the paths to recognizing the
dignity of workers and nonworkers alike. In this critical yet deeply
humane book, Malesic offers the vocabulary we need to recognize burnout,
overcome burnout culture, and find moral significance in our lives
beyond work.
