The Burnouts

Simon Sinek says the quality of your relationships determines the quality of your life.
“It’s not the years in your life, but the life in your years.” is generally attributed to Abraham Lincoln (although Adlai Stevenson really made this thought popular).

Both point to something deeper than today’s favorite corporate buzzword: burnout. This morning I counted almost 20 emails, blogs, comments or courses that referenced burnout. I may need to take PTO just to recover from seeing and hearing it this much. 

The World Health Organization (in the ICD-11) frames occupational burnout as a work-related phenomenon (not a medical diagnosis) characterized by three core dimensions:

1. Energy depletion or exhaustion
2. Mental distance (or cynicism) toward one’s job
3. Reduced professional efficacy or performance 

What I found particularly interesting — because many “burnout” statistics come from self-reported surveys (rather than clinical diagnosis) is that only one definition of burnout resembles how human beings have felt about being overworked for thousands of years and, most of the time, we measure it in anecdotal ways. For instance, if asked: “Have you felt burnout in your job or life in the past year?,” my guess is very few of us have lived the year without any sense of stress or anxiety (or the three WHO reasons) even for just a moment.

Lately, burnout has become the shiny object in coaching circles, surpassing “overwhelm.” We are social animals, and like laughter, yawning, or denim jackets in high school, ideas are contagious. Psychologists call it social contagion — the unconscious mimicry of emotions and behaviors. Sociologists stretch it further: whole norms, practices, and movements ripple through communities, from fashion trends to protests to health behaviors. Sometimes the mix creates sweeping cultural shifts. (See: high school burnouts behind the gym — intimidating, denim-clad, and contagious in their own way. Mom didn’t let me get that denim jacket until college. She thought otherwise I would smoke behind the gym.)

So maybe burnout isn’t simply exhaustion. Perhaps it’s contagious? Maybe it’s the latest story we’re telling each other, amplified until it feels inevitable. In the last year, occupational burnout went from a give-or-take percentage to 65%! That’s pretty high, yes? In 2024 it was 38% and in 2023 it was 33%. Holy crap! Back up the coach truck and let’s air drop the Xanax on my command! A lot happens from day to day, and here in the United States, we are having our share of what seems like unusually chaotic times. (Europe doesn’t spend as much time talking about burnout, they seem to limit their studies to only certain sectors so far. Japan seems to score the highest in workplace exhaustion based on their current measurements and surveys.) Yet, for me this increase sings of social contagion.

Can all of us really be burned out right now, at the same time? Clearly we suffer in life from myriad things, making me curious and even suspicious that ALL of us have “caught” whatever is the hashtag of the year. Yes, there have been instances where we as a society have been extremely overwhelmed; world wars and pandemics and elections come to mind. So yes, there is evidence of mass stress globally. 

The numbers always seem to bely something else, especially at the front end of any wave of human experience.

That doesn’t mean being overwhelmed doesn’t exist. It does — life is hard.  

From a psychological and social contagion standpoint, several dynamics are relevant:

1. Normalization & social amplification
   As more people talk about burnout, people are more likely to recognize and label their own experience. The spike in “burnout” mentions on platforms like Glassdoor suggests increasing social legitimization of the concept. This can act as a feedback loop: more talk → more awareness → more reporting.
2. Emotional contagion in workplaces
   Stress, exhaustion, cynicism can propagate through teams, especially when leaders or influential peers model burnout behaviors (e.g. working constantly, skipping rest). Over time, what starts in one part of the organization can spread more widely.
3. Boundary blurring & spillover effects
   With remote/hybrid work and pervasive connectivity, the boundary between work and nonwork is more permeable. That increases the risk of continuous exposure to work stressors (even off hours), thereby raising baseline stress and burnout risk.
4. Resource depletion & resilience erosion
   When workers’ psychological, social, and cognitive resources are taxed (especially chronically), the buffers against burnout erode. Over time, even those with better coping might find themselves slipping.
5. Borrowed stress & secondary exposure
   In teams dealing with high-stress tasks or crises (e.g. healthcare, cybersecurity, customer support), the stress from one role or individual can affect others (vicarious strain). Some newer studies in fields like cybersecurity show high proportions of practitioners reporting stress or burnout. Also, the introduction of tech oversight or monitoring may amplify perceptions of surveillance, accountability pressure, or lack of control.

As a result, burnout is not just an individual-level problem but is socially mediated, systemically embedded, and in many ways contagious. 

So, in reflection, when an overwhelming feeling — burnout — shows up, these are questions I ask myself and others: 

• What is specifically burning me out?
• Is it stuff, or is it something bigger?
• Are we still having fun?
• How much do we like those with whom we are in the midst of burnout?
• If I wasn’t burned out, what would I do next? With myself? With others?

Burnout, it appears, is firmly part of the workplace experience; it’s not transient according to recently anointed burnout experts. I support that burnout, how it’s currently defined, is and always will be here because it always was here. It’s also exhibiting social contagion behavior given its meteoric rise these last months. Avoiding burnout boils down to relationships. The relationship we have with others, people, our job, our bodies, our finances, even our faith.

Sinek challenges us to measure life by the quality of our relationships. Lincoln urges us to measure by the life in our years. Taken together, maybe that’s the real way out of the burnout contagion: not just rest, not just resilience, but life through connection. 

If you’re facing a tough transition or trying to navigate change in business or life, let’s talk. Coaching through complexity is my specialty.  Here’s a link to start creating that discussion right now!”