Anne Helen Petersen

The Burnout Generation

Terry Benzie

The author lists her credentials as a Ph.D. in Journalism who wasn't able to break into academic so writes for Buzzfeed. This probably helps the reader understand why the book reads as more of a blog post than actual researched piece of literature and we quickly find out that this book is indeed the result of her most popular blog post which stated that millennials are the most burnt out generation in society. 

 Stringing together four anecdotes in the form of interviews with young people who each went to expensive colleges and graduate schools, the latter which is stressed repeatedly, racked up tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt to take relatively low-paying jobs and now find themselves "burnt out" though the burn out presented appeared to be more in the form of general, run of the mill stress from having to actually interact with people in society than having things directly lined up in front of you like in graduate school. 

The first interviewee was a man who had grown up with a hard driving father and ended up in the Marines, where he was injured in the course of duty. Following his discharge and recovery, he went back to school and finished a degree in social work leading to his employment in the field. This is the only person interviewed who didn't have substantial student loan debt (GJ Bill?) and who genuinely appeared to like his job outside of the paperwork required. He tells the author that although he doesn't really feel burn out, he knows that as a "white male" (the race of each interviewee is mentioned in the book and the author mentions that she doesn't entirely know if she can really experience burnout as a 'white woman') he obviously has it far better than most and the author drags out the fact that his day-t0-day life of finishing paperwork after helping people doesn't seem as engaging as what he knew as an infantry soldier. 

The second person was a young woman who went to the most expensive school in her area, took out nearly $100k (thus far?) and now despite working long hours as a Ph.D. student, doesn't feel that she will ever be able to pay off the debt that she is currently undertaking. This is described as "midwest burnout" because the author believes her situation is due to the fact that people from the midwest have, traditionally, had a puritanical work ethic and that children of such people push themselves harder than they need. 

The third person interviewed is an employee of "Bitch media" who has experienced trauma at two periods in her life. First, she finished her degree from a college (I don't believe it was named) that was more suitable for a "black woman" before going to Southern Illinois for her MA degree where her professors did not consider an incoming student to be on their level despite the interviewee having previously published an article of some sort in the NY Times. It was hinted that this had racist and/or sexist elements to it but did not expand. The second area of anxiety came from when the interviewee relocated to NY and found that it was...expensive. Oh, and she needs to incessantly maintain her 'brand' and the stress from needing to have her Instagram feed meticulously organized according to color and theme was cited as perhaps the greatest source of stress in her life, along with the anxiety she feels from constantly reading about white supremacy and police violence while worrying that her brother will be killed (though nothing further was said about this). 

The final subject was a young minister who appears to have written an article or blog saying how people are not responsible for their decisions and that their lives are largely the result of circumstance, which drew the author to his work. However, nothing further is said about this. The interview was fairly standard - he went to divinity school which was expensive and now he is a minister which has stress because he needs to deal with people and...I'm not really certain if burn out was mentioned. The author then suggests that most people that she interviewed didn't know that they were burnt out until she told them what the symptoms were and pulled out the realization that they, in fact, probably were. 

That's it. 

Ironically, I pulled this book out to read it because I had about an hour walk home and had just finished re-reading (listening to) Getting Things Done by David Allen, a book that talks about how to manage your responsibilities to let you have everything in front of you so that you know what you need to do with your time and attention. I kept thinking throughout "Burnout Generation" that the subjects should probably read GTD and figure things out. 

The author does mention that she is taking this audiobook which, as I mentioned previously, comes from a blog post and expanding it into another, longer book though I believe that I will pass on reading that. If she does proceed, I hope that she cites actual statistics on stress or simply defines what burnout means to her, as neither was done in this book. It's really an interesting topic - I'm simply not sure why this book was necessary if she's currently working on something more detailed.

Ozge Kara

Listened to this as an audiobook. I am happy it was included in my package and didn’t have to pay extra. There are podcast episodes that have more depth than this “audiobook”.

Nast Marrero

This was one of those short reads (audios) I do at the end of the year to catch up with my reading challenge. And I found it thoughtful and inspiring. This topic is a top concern of mine while influencing the construction of a new paradigm of work-life.

Other books I found specially insightful on this topic were: “Hustle & Float” and “Bullshit Jobs”.

Katie

I wished this had more research or statistics in it rather than simply anecdotes, but it was still fine. Many other reviews are really nasty and it feels like they weren't actually paying attention when Petersen outlined why millennials are feeling so burnt out. Don't be a condescending ass.

The Burnout Generation

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