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Be Brilliant - Proving the Hypothesis: Exhausting Trying to Keep Pace

Delivered August 12th, 2019

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Be Brilliant - Proving the Hypothesis: Exhausting Trying to Keep Pace

Not many people would argue that the pace of life has slowed down over the past century. Humans face chronic exhaustion from the pressures to keep up with social and work expectations. This mental, emotional and physical exhaustion interferes with the ability to work effectively and can result in burnout in the workplace.

SOCIAL AND HOME LIFE PRESSURE

  • Qualitative evidence points to the fact that humans are faced with the need to be "good enough", or measure up to some external metric that defines a worthwhile life.
  • Life experiences and internal emotions create the idea that there is something wrong with the person rather than with the environment around the person. There is increasing pressure to be better, and a resulting lack of satisfaction with self.
  • The curated content found everyday on social media allows opportunities for people to compare and contrast their lives with the lives of others. By constantly making comparison to unrealistic expectations, and finding themselves lacking, humans compound the feeling that they are not "good enough".
  • Social media use, the most common way of keeping up with other's lives, has been linked to increased depression and loneliness. Subjective reporting on satisfaction with one's life decreased as time on Facebook increased. Another study of teen use of social media confirmed that less time spent on social media correlated with less reported loneliness and depression.
  • FOMO, standing for Fear of Missing Out, is an extension of human need for love and social acceptance. With the rise of social media's obiquitousness and the ability to constantly compare ourselves, there is increased mental health concerns leading to emotional exhaustion.  

WORK LIFE PRESSURE

  • To keep pace with technological changes and changes in work expectations, work has crept into personal lives. Smart phones, easy access to emails and never "unplugging" means it's easier for work to be done outside of the office during hours typically reserved for home life. This has led to work intensification and longer work hours.
  • "The 2019 Sleep in America poll shows a strong correlation between sleep schedule consistency and feeling well-rested the following morning. When contrasting the most disciplined sleepers to those with the most variable sleep schedules, those with the strictest schedules were nearly 1.5 times more likely to report feeling well-rested." The inability to unplug from work, remote work that can be done at any hour, and communication that keep us engaged at all hours interferes with sleep schedules, leaving American exhausted physically.

EXHAUSTION LEADS TO BURNOUT

  •  Burnout is defined as " a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed." Burnout is exclusive from other mental health concerns such as adjustment disorder, stress, anxiety or mood disorders.
  • Burnout is associated with the following symptoms: "overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment".
  • The chances of burnout increase when expectations are unrealistic, employees don't feel "good enough'', employees aren't in a job that is a good fit for them, and they feel underappreciated. The risk of burnout increases for overachievers.
  • As the gig economy increases, flexible work arrangements become more normal, and social media-type platforms such as Slack become increasingly popular, the pressures and stress from home life have found a way to creep into work life increasing the odds of burnout.

Did this report spark your curiosity?

Sources
Sources

Understanding the burnout experience: recent research and its implications for psychiatry

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Publication Year: 2016
Quotes
  • "Burnout is a psychological syndrome emerging as a prolonged response to chronic interpersonal stressors on the job."
  • "The three key dimensions of this response are an overwhelming exhaustion, feelings of cynicism and detachment from the job, and a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment. The significance of this three‐dimensional model is that it clearly places the individual stress experience within a social context and involves the person's conception of both self and others."
  • "Given that the treatment goal for burnout is usually to enable people to return to their job, and to be successful in their work, psychiatry could make an important contribution by identifying the treatment strategies that would be most effective in achieving that goal."

ICD-11 - Mortality and Morbidity Statistics

icd.who.int
Publication Year: 2019
Quotes
  • "Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed."
  • "Exclusions: Adjustment disorder, Disorders specifically associated with stress, Anxiety or fear-related disorders, Mood disorders"

Does Wanting To Be ‘Good Enough’ Drive You and Your Career Choices?

forbes.com
Publication Year: 2019
Quotes
  • "In the past, everything in my life - especially professionally/career-wise - was motivated by a desire to prove or achieve being enough. There was very little that I did that came from any genuine wanting to do it. Everything I did, I did because I thought I “should” - it would give me a stamp of approval, allow me to fit in, meet expectations, be worthy of love (the last one being what I think our desire to be enough is really about)."
  • "I found any sense of being enough which a professional achievement brought was fleeting as the next thing to work toward came into focus; there was no rest, no finish line."
  • "And while I wasn't able to articulate why at the time, I always felt that no accomplishment ever deep down really made me feel enough. Because, to approach being enough as something to be earned - predicated on me getting it “right” - felt precarious. This all led to tremendous anxiety as I tried to control the world and myself to produce only the acceptable outcomes. "
w

Managing Workplace Issues: Burnout Response

workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.com
Quotes
  • "Burnout is more likely when employees: Expect too much of themselves, Never feel that the work they are doing is good enough, Feel inadequate or incompetent, Feel unappreciated for their work efforts, Have unreasonable demands placed upon them, Are in roles that are not a good job fit."
  • "Those who are overachievers are at a higher risk of burnout."

NSF’s 2019 Sleep in America® Poll Shows Disciplined Sleepers Reap Reward | National Sleep Foundation

sleepfoundation.org
Publication Year: 2019
Quotes
  • "The National Sleep Foundation’s (NSF) annual Sleep in America® poll shows that disciplined sleepers can afford the occasional shift of at least one-hour in their sleep schedules without paying the price the following day. "
  • "As compared to those with poor sleep health, U.S. adults with excellent sleep health are 28 to 31 percentage points less likely to say that a one-hour departure from their normal sleep schedules affects their next-day physical and emotional well-being, as well as their productivity. "
  • "The 2019 Sleep in America poll shows a strong correlation between sleep schedule consistency and feeling well-rested the following morning. When contrasting the most disciplined sleepers to those with the most variable sleep schedules, those with the strictest schedules were nearly 1.5 times more likely to report feeling well-rested. In fact, those with excellent sleep health are nearly 3.5 times more likely to report feeling well-rested on a typical weekday than those with poor sleep health"
g

No More FOMO: Limiting Social Media Decreases Loneliness and Depression

guilfordjournals.com
Publication Year: 2018
Quotes
  • "After a week of baseline monitoring, 143 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania were randomly assigned to either limit Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat use to 10 minutes, per platform, per day, or to use social media as usual for three weeks."
  • "The limited use group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression over three weeks compared to the control group. "

Facebook Use Predicts Declines in Subjective Well-Being in Young Adults

journals.plos.org
Publication Year: 2013
Quotes
  • "We text-messaged people five times per day for two-weeks to examine how Facebook use influences the two components of subjective well-being: how people feel moment-to-moment and how satisfied they are with their lives. Our results indicate that Facebook use predicts negative shifts on both of these variables over time. The more people used Facebook at one time point, the worse they felt the next time we text-messaged them; the more they used Facebook over two-weeks, the more their life satisfaction levels declined over time."

Social Media Increases Depression and Loneliness

healthline.com
Publication Year: 2018
Quotes
  • "He notes that even if individuals are aware of the “curated” nature of many online platforms, “they nevertheless feel like, ‘How am I stacking up?’ or ‘How is my life stacking up?’ compared to what these people are presenting. I think that what happens is that the more you use the platforms, the more social comparisons tend to induce, and that relates to these decrements in how people are feeling.”"
  • "Amy Summerville, PhD, a professor of psychology at Miami University in Ohio, is an expert on issues of regret and the psychology of “what might have been.” She explains that FOMO is an extension of larger issues of inclusion and social standing. Once our basic needs are met, like food, shelter, and water, the need for inclusion and social interaction ranks right up there, she says."

The Feeling that You Are “Not Enough”

psychcentral.com
Publication Year: 2019
Quotes
  • "We are not born feeling inadequate. Life experiences and emotions create that sense within us in a variety of creative ways. For example, when we were little and we felt afraid or anxious, our mind told us something was wrong with us, not with our environment. "
  • "Mike learned to recognize how not enough felt physically. “It is like an emptiness — like a hole inside. I know I have been successful at times and I believe my family loves me. Emotionally, it doesn’t feel that way at all. Good stuff comes in but it goes right through me like a bucket with a hole. I’m never filled.”"

Intuit: Gig economy is 34% of US workforce

money.cnn.com
Publication Year: 2017
Quotes
  • "The gig economy is now estimated to be about 34% of the workforce and expected to be 43% by the year 2020"

Fifty Percent of U.S. Workforce Will be Remote by 2020; ULTATEL’s Cloud-Based Technology Paves the Way | Markets Insider

markets.businessinsider.com
Publication Year: 2018
Quotes
  • "It's anticipated that over the next few years, 50% of all employees will be working remotely"
  • "Since 2005, the non-self-employed population who can regularly work at home has increased by 115%, which is almost 10 times more than the rest of the workforce. Additionally, 80% to 90% of the U.S. workforce report that ideally they would like to work remotely two to three days a week."

Email rival Slack says it has 10 million daily active users

reuters.com
Publication Year: 2019
Quotes
  • "Slack, the business messaging service challenging email, now has more than 10 million daily active users, its parent company said on Tuesday. The number of paying customers using Slack has risen by more than 50 percent over the past five years to over 85,000, Slack Technologies Inc said in a blog post. "
e

Working anytime, anywhere: The effects on the world of work

eurofound.europa.eu
Publication Year: 2017
Quotes
  • "New information and communications technologies (ICT) have revolutionised everyday work and life in the 21st century. They enable people to connect with friends and family – as well as with work colleagues and supervisors – at any point in time; however, they also facilitate the encroachment of paid work into the spaces and times normally reserved for personal life. The uncoupling of paid work from traditional office spaces has been a crucial factor in this development"
  • "Regarding the positive effects of T/ICTM, workers report a reduction in commuting time, greater working time autonomy leading to more flexibility in terms of working time organisation, better overall work–life balance, and higher productivity. Companies benefit from the improvement in work–life balance, which can lead to increased motivation and reduced turnover as well as enhanced productivity and efficiency, and from a reduction in the need for office space and associated costs. "
  • " The disadvantages of T/ICTM are the tendency to lead to longer working hours, to create an overlap between paid work and personal life (work-home interference), and to result in work intensification. Home-based teleworkers seem to report better work-life balance, while ‘high-mobile’ workers are more at risk of negative health and well-being outcomes. "