Rest, Recharge, Resume: GenZ’s Guide to Prevent Burnout
Stuti | Jan 22, 2025, 01:22 IST
Gen Z finds navigating career challenges in a tight market with toxic work cultures, hyper-competitive job environments, and other obstacles challenging. Unrealistic self-expectations, fear of missing out, and reluctance to seek help add to the overall stress for youngsters. However, it is essential to differentiate between chronic burnout and a temporary lack of motivation. This article explores issues that cause stress in-depth and attempts to provide solutions to avoid them.
You are in your early 20s, aspiring to realise your dreams. You are juggling between striving for a high-paying job, starting a business with a friend, or investing in mutual funds for multiple income avenues to pay off education loans and move out of your parent’s house. Meanwhile, you scroll on social media platforms and see your peers enjoying extravagant trips, partying, and living their best lives. Despite being committed to your goals, an uneasy feeling sets in. Such things often leave you lost and demotivated.
Enter the trap of hustle culture, which demands all your energy and burns you out. Dealing with work stress and future aspirations is not easy. This article delves into how restless struggles affect productivity and take you off track, making even the most convenient tasks heavy.
Toxic work cultures, high living expenses, and hyper-competitive job markets are not new phenomena. But something still drains out the GenZ and tampers with their work and personal lives. This chronic state of zero motivation is called burnout. Trying to put your best foot forward in an environment where CEOs of renowned companies pass statements about working 90 hours a week and uncertain job markets that lay off thousands of employees globally every week is bound to cause chronic stress.
Despite all these issues, youngsters constantly try to set their boundaries right and be street-smart. However, these efforts don’t necessarily make them immune to emotional fatigue, detachment, and reduced performance risks. Spaces at both ends, i.e., employees and employers are saturated, creating a paradox where tons of new opportunities are up for grabs but simultaneously there are no new jobs. This has given rise to practices of freelancing and gig-hopping. Yet, these concepts don’t necessarily ensure stability in terms of income, adding fuel to the fire.
Every generation has its own set of challenges. These are the biggest challenges facing the GenZ right now:
When complex issues like burnout are actively discussed, it is natural to confuse low motivation, procrastination, and other issues with chronic distress. However, not attaching labels to daily-life issues can go a long way in helping youngsters take a reasonable break and then resume work with enhanced productivity.
For this, one needs to identify how one can make one's job more meaningful for oneself. Here, change should be the constant to break monotony. This needs a perfect synergy between employers and employees to eliminate the root causes of low productivity.
Are millennial employers reluctant to hire GenZ owing to a lack of perseverance? Is it truly a lapse on the part of the youngsters or does this issue have a bigger picture? Volatile markets force people to keep working at the same place, regardless of whether there are enough growth opportunities or not.
Fuzzing out respectable boundaries of time and space at the workplace drains out the ambitions of the youngsters. Due to this, they succumb to “quiet quitting”, where they fulfill the bare minimum tasks and do not try to go above and beyond for their company.
Ultimately, it's always darkest before dawn. Even though toxic work cultures cannot be transformed overnight, there are small steps that can salvage one from burnout:
Finally, understand that whatever the situation is- it is okay to take support. Not everyone has the same experiences, but even a little encouragement can make a huge difference in tough times.
Enter the trap of hustle culture, which demands all your energy and burns you out. Dealing with work stress and future aspirations is not easy. This article delves into how restless struggles affect productivity and take you off track, making even the most convenient tasks heavy.
GenZ is More Stressed Than Ever
Despite all these issues, youngsters constantly try to set their boundaries right and be street-smart. However, these efforts don’t necessarily make them immune to emotional fatigue, detachment, and reduced performance risks. Spaces at both ends, i.e., employees and employers are saturated, creating a paradox where tons of new opportunities are up for grabs but simultaneously there are no new jobs. This has given rise to practices of freelancing and gig-hopping. Yet, these concepts don’t necessarily ensure stability in terms of income, adding fuel to the fire.
A Glance at Everyday Triggers
- Skewed Understanding of Idealism: As a young, determined generation that wants to overcome every obstacle, youngsters set high expectations for themselves as well as the world. Being hard on oneself owing to comparison with peers, seeing everything as black and white, and being impatient when efforts don’t lead to immediate results wouldn’t take anyone anywhere. Above all this, they also want to be a part of something larger than life, but as brave as it sounds, it divides one’s energies and doesn’t give one a chance to focus on pausing and taking some time off for oneself.
- Struggling to Ask for Help: The urge to be independent and self-reliant and prove oneself, the fear of judgment, and constant pressure to appear stronger than oneself make it difficult for Gen Z to be vulnerable. This is an unpopular opinion, but conditioning has nothing to do with it. An overall new perspective is needed to understand the importance of moral support and strong relationships. After all, no one has to go through everything alone.
- “FOMO”- The Monster: Social media consumption and comparison of one’s life with that of others can lead to a fear of missing out, which can cause even greater issues like an inferiority complex. So, it is important to prioritize self-growth at a pace that suits one best instead of trying to do things more quickly just because someone else is doing so.
Is it Burnout or Something Else?
For this, one needs to identify how one can make one's job more meaningful for oneself. Here, change should be the constant to break monotony. This needs a perfect synergy between employers and employees to eliminate the root causes of low productivity.
The Cannonball of Causes and Effects
Fuzzing out respectable boundaries of time and space at the workplace drains out the ambitions of the youngsters. Due to this, they succumb to “quiet quitting”, where they fulfill the bare minimum tasks and do not try to go above and beyond for their company.
There is a Way Out
Overcoming Burnout
Ultimately, it's always darkest before dawn. Even though toxic work cultures cannot be transformed overnight, there are small steps that can salvage one from burnout:
- Prioritize Yourself: In short, get a life. Don’t push yourself to a point where you are exhausting yourself and hitting the saturation point as it will affect you both mentally and physically. For this, practice grounding techniques like breathing exercises, muscle relaxation, etc. so that your mind doesn’t get worked up. Eat well, stay hydrated, and then go get that bread!
- Take Regular Breaks: It is okay to set goals for yourself. But it is equally important to take regular breaks. This plays a crucial role in providing much-needed refreshment and helps one to return to one’s responsibilities with a more relaxed and efficient mindset.