The "Great Resignation" on the Bookshelf

Fri, 01/21/2022 - 3:04pm by howarde

Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski | How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell | Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman | Laziness Does Not Exist by Devon Price

Feeling tired? Exhaustion is always present in our society, especially for people who are overworked and under-paid. But over the past couple of years, an idea shockingly anathema to the American work ethic has gone mainstream: if you’re feeling lazy, burned out, or unaccomplished, perhaps the problem isn’t you, but the system. So many newly published or re-published books on this topic have appeared on best seller lists recently. The four listed above seem to go perfectly with frequent news articles I read about people walking off the job after having re-assessed their life priorities. None of these books offer “life hacks” to help you use your time or resources more efficiently. Rather, they all argue in one way or another that being human is an un-hackable condition. They don’t claim to make work, education, or childcare magically easier, but they aim to stop readers from beating themselves up for feeling tired and overwhelmed. Whether or not these ideas are here to stay, they are definitely of our moment.

Emily and Amelia Nagoski’s Burnout addresses the question of exhaustion and unrealistic expectations placed on women specifically; Jenny Odell in How to Do Nothing advocates unlatching our attention from an extractive economy in which we are considered consumers rather than people; Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks asks us to give up on the delusion that we can do everything so we can focus on spending our limited time meaningfully; and in Laziness Does Not Exist, Devon Price argues that pushing ourselves to exhaustion in the name of productivity is bound to backfire. Add them to your hold list and then maybe take a nap.