Back in the mists of 2019, before anyofus had heard of GOVID or given much thought to the handling of pangolins in Chinese wet markets, the World Health Organization (WHO) published the 11th edition of its International Classification Of Diseases. Among the additions: a new definition for the term ‘burnout’.
Burnout is a syndrome resulting from “chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed”. The document carefully defines it as an occupational phenomenon – so it's not caused by human frailty but by inhuman expectations. And it's characterised by three dimensions: “energy depletion or exhaustion”; “increased mental distance from one's job”, which manifests as negativity or cynicism; and “a sense of ineffectiveness and lack of accomplishment”. Put simply, burnout is when you come up against the physical and mathematical limits of what The Apprentice contestants call “giving it 110 per cent”.
It was a timely addition. Looking at a few headlines in 2022, it seems that two-thirds of small business owners are burned out; 70 per cent of lawyers are risking burnout; one in two teachers reported having suffered feelings of burnout; and health workers are especially burned out, as they have to deal with the effects of everyone else being burned out while burned out. (“I think everyone is worried that the system is beginning to break,” Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said in May.) Service worker burnout is worse than ever accordingto informed sources; and the situation for truck drivers is no better. “It's not a normal life for a human,” one told reporters. “It's like a prison; it's not a job. You do it like a zombie.” While the situation is
