TURNING TO SLOP FOR COMFORT
A majority of millennials, 66 per cent, according to a report from Aflac, claim to feel moderate to high levels of the occupational phenomenon. Six years ago, a Gallup study found only 28 per cent of millennials reported feeling frequent or constant burnout at work.
This feeling of mental overload is commonly positioned as a consequence of unmanaged workplace stress. Being overworked is hardly new. In fact, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, a standardised and quantitative way to measure the sensation, was developed in the early 1980s.
Nearly four decades later, the World Health Organization categorised it as a syndrome that results in “feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion, increased mental distance from one’s job”, which could include cynicism, “and reduced professional efficacy”.
But this definition doesn’t quite encapsulate the full scope of why people end their days exhausted and turning to slop for comfort.
The suffocating pressure of modern life beyond work breeds anxiety and tension for which we need a salve. That salve often comes in the form of the same device that induces so much angst.
Millennials were indoctrinated from early adulthood to be fully accessible all the time. When it wasn’t work messages lighting up phones, it was family, friends, news alerts, push notifications from apps or even spam.
This constant, attention-grabbing communication is a drain on energy and brain power – and that’s before you add in caring for children, parents or pets. (We millennials do love our pets.)
Once the reviled new kids on the block tagged the “Me Generation”, the 30-to-mid-40-somethings have ascended into the position of the “sandwich generation”. Our predecessors to this squeeze, Gen Xers, are already familiar with the exhausting and mind-numbing pressure of caring for ageing parents while raising children.
And that’s before attempting to care for themselves physically, mentally and financially. It’s probably why they’re the second most burned-out cohort, with 55 per cent reporting experiencing moderate to high levels of the syndrome, according to the Aflac report.
