I find fear and burnout fascinating, even if most people are scared of them (hey)
Been reading some really good research by the always interesting folks at Early Studies, about what Brits are most afraid of. It's a new a tracker thing they are building, and one of the areas I am fascinated by is people's fear of burning out.
Some interesting bits that caught my attention:
1/ Only 6% of people claimed (unprompted) they were afraid of burnout.
2/ But more specifically, 41% talked about financial strain and 22% feared lack of fairness and a rigged system, both of which probably lead to said burnout.
3/ There is a -17pp gap between women and men around feeling the system is rigged, which genuinely makes me wonder about the false promises of meritocracy (this isn't just a male thing, but if you work hard and see little to no returns like you were promised, then yeah it's very normal to feel meritocracy is a big fat century long con; or, how to understand the psyche of someone who entered the job market post 2008, and most definitely post 2019)
4/ On the flip side, there is a +10pp gap between women and men around financial strain, meaning women feel it more. We need better systems that allow women to gain financial independence, or at least a greater sense of autonomy around their own money, as most wealth accumulating mechanisms (e.g. investing) are still mostly used by men. Low cash precedes low confidence.
5/ Back to burnout, people are more likely to talk about it affecting those closest to them (7%), and recognise it affects their local communities (10%), and yet at a societal level, fear of this goes down to 0%. It's a deeply felt thing, but at some point in the scale we feel like it's not as big a deal for larger systems.
And this last point is the one that opened up more questions for me.
Because it means that, while things like money and a sense of progression feel like big serious important things, it feels like 'burnout' is something that is still too encoded as a merely psychological thing, or working too hard, or needing to "rest a little", or something to handle through therapy rather than policy.
When in fact, burnout is something that is far more embodied and complex than that. It's something that, once you begin feeling it, it means you've already been experiencing it for months. And that makes it much harder to pin down the sources of that burnout, which may not always be working a lot. Sometimes it can just be a lack of meaning attached to the work you are doing, whether it's a lot or a little, or simply the learned helplessness of realising that effort ≠ reward.
Anyway. Just a little reflection to brighten up your day. The full report is genuinely wonderful, check it out here: https://feardiary.com/
Marielle Kouroushi-Phillips
