Can't Even

How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

By: Anne Helen Petersen

Narrated by: Anne Helen Peterson

Brought to you by Penguin.

An incendiary personal and cultural investigation of burnout.

Are you tired, stressed and trying your best but somehow still not doing enough? Has the bottom half of your to-do list been locked in place for months? Is everything becoming work as your job seeps into your evenings, you monetise your hobbies and perform your leisure time on social media?

This is burnout - what increasingly seems like the defining feature of our lives. We are exhausted. But burnout is not a personal failing. It is a creeping part of modern culture, shaped by deep-rooted political, historical and economic forces, and it is affecting how we work, parent, socialise and inhabit the world.

Anne Helen Petersen identifies burnout with moving clarity - what it feels like and how it manifests across communities. Through her own experience, original interviews and detailed analysis, she traces the institutional and generational causes of burnout. And, in doing so, she helps us to let go of our guilt and imagine a possible future.

Reassuring, insightful and galvanising, Can't Even is essential listening for all of us.

©2021 Anne Helen Peterson (P)2021 Penguin Audio

Be kind to each other - the world is shitty enough

It reads like a WebMD diagnosis of burnout. Burnout has many symptoms, and the author dives deep into each of them to show how and why they lead to burnout. The anecdotes are powerful, backed up by a narrative of how these problems came to be. Some chapters resonated with me. Others didn’t- maybe I’m not the target audience.

And so, at the end, it felt more of her reflection of a life where she did her best to battle societal expectations, oppression, and systemic inequity and despite doing everything she could, she still couldn’t live the life she was promised by the boomer generation.

In the end, I think the best message was that we shouldn’t try to save ourselves from burnout, but we should try to save others through pursuing better public policy, workplaces, and just being kind to others who are struggling.

Don’t make it worse for others.