Books like The Burnout Society

I am in awe of how Anne Helen Petersen was able to weave together a cathartic validation of how exhausted our generation is with a clear historical explanation of where American burnout culture actually comes from. As someone who has fallen victim to cycles of overwork despite my best efforts to inject my life with balance, I needed to read about how overworking is not my fault, but it is also not necessary.

This also gave me some great data points to cite in debates with well-meaning family members who still look upon our entire generation as lazy and entitled.

For me, beating burnout involves knowing yourself well, and this book helps with a critical aspect of that: understanding my interactions with others.

The book is so easy to read and understand without being oversimplified. I’ve used the material to help teach people how to create and maintain healthy boundaries in life and work.

You can’t talk about gender equality without tackling care—that women are expected to do it all, that somehow, we don’t think men are capable. Kate Washington (who has become a personal friend of mine and is a lovely human) takes on this topic with grace and humility.

The book is an easy-to-read story about Kate’s personal story of taking care of her husband through his fight with cancer. But she also manages to sneak in data points and teach an overall lesson about gender and caregiving. I listened to this book over several Sunday afternoons, folding laundry and cleaning—and I highly recommend the audiobook. The narrator had a soothing and familiar voice that made me miss her when I finished. 

I like this book because it’s very complementary to Peter Thiel’s book.

It emphasizes how to make yourself the focus of your “zero to one” effort.

Too many entrepreneurs burn out before they go the distance, usually because they’re exhausted and frustrated trying to manage their employees and all the tasks associated with the business.

Brantley, a successful entrepreneur, proposes a new approach that gets entrepreneurs out of micromanaging (which they tend to do) by leveraging the time and talent of their best people.

I tend to get myself into the weeds on things that are important to me (like a business), and this book helped me see what I was doing before I did any real damage.

I think you’ll feel like he wrote the book for you. No fluff, just great advice and tools you can actually use.

Originally published in 2002, the author took a revolutionary approach to burnout, suggesting that burnout could be an opportunity for making overdue changes rather than a reason to panic. Ignoring the warning signs of burnout, feeling exhausted, frustrated, empty, disconnected, spent, or cynical will ultimately lead to a state of collapse, but listening to the message of burnout and exploring life alternatives will enable you to make beneficial changes. One of the founders of Skyros Holistic Holidays in Greece, psychotherapist and imagework practitioner Glouberman promotes alternative ways of living and being that actively promote psychological health.

This soothing invitation to care for my feminine magic read like a meditative affirmation dusted with quiet prayer.

Cosy in bed, I held this gem to my chest on closing the back cover. I often hug and thank books without questioning how ridiculous that is. Resonant and encouraging, it evoked reverent appreciation for the return to self that I’d (somehow) navigated the year prior. The pages echoed a comforting conversation, a soft yet powerful call to arms, an awakening for women.

Perhaps it was the luxurious-red cover and gracefully spaced and paced verse with practices towards the end that compelled me to enjoy slowly. As a woman who has woken up, She Who Remembers stirred my motivation. May we no longer be last on our own lists, consumed by expectation.

This book is about a new and elegant approach to healthcare called ‘energy management’. Dr. Manga’s passion is in bringing mindfulness into medicine and in inspiring conscious living as a way of restoring and supporting health and wellbeing. She teaches high performers how to access authentic energy instead of relying on adrenalized energy. Dr. Manga offers simple yet powerful ways to integrate what she calls “recovery loops” into our everyday lives. This book is full of real-life stories about the effects of stress and is a treasure trove of practical tips for preventing and recovering from it. In fact, I believe that this book will do more to help you prevent and recover from stress and burnout than anything you have learned or that has been published to date.

A book list on burnout would not be complete without something from the key original researchers in the field.

I love this book because it not only brings to life all their important research but also puts the research into practical action. I have used it over the years as a go-to in my research and in my work as a practitioner because it brilliantly straddles both areas well and in a way my clients can process and work with.

It just doesn’t date!

I never realized how much I was overvaluing work and productivity until I read this book. I have been very good at achieving, hustling, and grinding, and have bought into the belief that hard work is a moral virtue, unlike laziness. I believed that being unproductive was fine for other people but not for me.

This book helped me see how my culturally constructed beliefs were feeding into my overworking tendencies. As a lifelong “people pleaser” in recovery, Chapter 6 (“Your Relationships Should Not Leave You Exhausted”) was especially powerful for me! 

I LOVE the author’s voice in this memoir: she is eloquent, funny, and blisteringly honest about the dehumanization that has plagued medical training from its inception to this day.

I found it enlightening to see that a woman who is a concert pianist and turned down a full scholarship to Oxford to go to medical school suffered the same level of self-doubt as a medical student and resident that I did! I found her descriptions of sleep deprivation, the anxiety of being on call, and the pager as “the box of pain” highly relatable, even as I laughed out loud—or sometimes shed a tear.

I was inspired by her redemption through what she called “Doctor Rehab,” a Zen mindfulness retreat which gave her a whole new take on her calling.