Off work, reading in short bursts, and the recommendations I keep getting are either corporate wellness books that boil down to 'do yoga at 6am' or academic ones I cannot hold in my head right now. I'd like one book, ideally under 300 pages, that gave you something you used rather than something you agreed with. Bonus points if it doesn't assume I'm in a position to change my job.
The Nagoski sisters' one — 'Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle', 2019 — is the one I've reread twice. The idea I actually used, rather than merely nodded at, is that dealing with the stressor and dealing with the stress in your body are two separate jobs, and you can finish the second one on days when you can do nothing whatsoever about the first. That's the bit that works when you can't change your job. It's framed around women's experience specifically, which some readers find limiting and I didn't.
It's the one I've lent out most and never got back, which is its own kind of review.
'You can complete the stress cycle even while the stressor is still there' is exactly the shape of thing I was hoping existed.
Counter-recommendation: read something that isn't about burnout. Four months of reading about my own condition kept me inside the topic every waking hour. A novel did more for me than any of the six books on the list I'd bought, and I say that having bought all six.
The philosophical ones about exhaustion as a condition of modern life are genuinely interesting and did precisely nothing for me on a Tuesday morning. Diagnosis of society, no instructions. Excellent once you're better, maddening while you're in it.
Audiobook. Short bursts of reading were impossible for me for months but I could walk and listen for an hour. Same book, completely different accessibility, and walking was the one thing I was already doing.
Hadn't considered that at all. Walking is about the only thing I currently do reliably.
@deadline_dee · 4mo ago · 2 replies
The Maslach research is what most of the popular books are sitting on top of, and it's worth knowing the three dimensions — exhaustion, cynicism and a collapsed sense of your own effectiveness — because once you can name which one is loudest, the advice sorts itself out. My exhaustion was honestly fine. My cynicism was off the scale. I'd spent six months reading rest advice that was aimed at a problem I didn't have.
Reply
Report
@mature_student_j · 4mo ago
Naming which of the three is loudest is the most concretely useful thing anyone has said to me in a month.
Reply
Report