7 Books to Help You Battle Burnout

In my twenties, I was convinced I had a dream job. For five years I worked as a social media manager for a media non-profit that sent me around the world to cover its conferences online. The keg in the office kitchen became the center of my social life, and I regularly worked late as my team tracked PR crises and moderated Facebook comments. I was invested in the organization’s mission, and I truly believed we were changing the world. But the role came with costs: because social media never sleeps, I was always online, even when technically off the clock. The lack of boundaries and my emotional investment in my work meant that over time, stress ravaged my mental and physical health. Despite an emergency room visit, frequent panic attacks, and migraines from constantly clenching my jaw, I could not see that my job had taken over my life. It was only when I quit that I understood I was overworked and dealing with a dangerous case of burnout.

Burnout is a kind of physical and emotional exhaustion caused by being completely overextended, usually by work or caregiving. It can look like fatigue, hopelessness, a lack of motivation, even cynicism and anger. In my case, burnout overlapped with my depression and anxiety and turned me into a cranky, ashamed mess. I was lucky that I could afford to take time off after quitting, but I learned quickly that curing burnout isn’t as easy as bubble baths and hiking. Burnout isn’t an individual failure, it’s the result of how our economy and our workplaces are structured. We need to call burnout what it is: a workplace hazard and a labor issue.

In my novel But How Are You, Really, executive assistant Charlotte Thorne is forced to face her burnout when she attends a college reunion and her friends pick up on her despair. Layoffs and economic strain have pushed her into a job that sounds impressive but is actually exploitative and humiliating. As she reconnects with other alumni and the woman she once thought she would grow up to be, Charlotte wonders what success means to her—and if the burnout is even remotely worth it. 

Here are seven books that helped me understand burnout, from how to avoid it, to the toxic work cultures that cause it. 

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

Twins Emily and Amelia Nagoski teamed up to write Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, a holistic look at the biological phenomenon of stress and how it lives in women’s bodies. They make the case that unprocessed stress from work and family life compounds on itself and gradually turns into burnout. A key way to prevent burnout is to help your body complete the activated stress response cycle by releasing the adrenaline and cortisol we feel during a difficult workday instead of storing it up. Physical activity like running, dancing, or even tightening your muscles and releasing them can help your body understand that the stressor has passed and it’s safe to let go of all that tension. 

Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World by Cal Newport

In the era of smartphones, it’s nigh impossible to log off. As a result, it’s hard to create boundaries between work time and free time, between our private lives and our public profiles. Rather than encouraging digital detoxes or purging all wifi connectivity, Cal Newport wants us to use technology in ways that better align with our values, our goals and our happiness. In Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World, he argues that digital life has stolen our solitude from us, and we need to take back those quiet moments of reflection where we are alone with our thoughts. Newport’s book is a practical guide that focuses on what is within your power as an individual. Creating space in your day free from stimulation and constant notifications is a powerful preventative step against burnout. 

Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto by Tricia Hersey

Self care rooted in buying little treats and expensive vacations will not save us from burnout, but a true commitment to rest can. In Resistance: A Manifesto, Tricia Hersey urges us to nap, daydream and breathe in order to reclaim our bodies as our own, as opposed to machines that must grind and labor. Her Nap Ministry is rooted in black womanist thought and traces the long history of rest and daydreaming as radical resistance to white supremacy and capitalism. This beautiful book resembles a sermon for the overworked and isolated. “We must lighten our loads,” Hersey writes. “Survival is not the end goal for liberation. We must thrive. We must rest.” It is an open and urgent invitation to reject the idea that our value is tied to our productivity, rather than our humanity. 

An Ordinary Age: Finding Your Way In a World That Expects Exceptional by Rainesford Stauffer

One cause of burnout is the pressure we face to perfect our lives as we grow up, from building extraordinary careers to performing our “best lives” for the approval of others. In An Ordinary Age: Finding Your Way In a World That Expects Exceptional, Rainesford Stauffer unpacks the expectation that we will move away from home, build an extraordinary career, find the perfect romantic partner, and other milestones that have become increasingly unattainable for millennials and Generation Z. Rainesford grants us permission to reconsider the myths we have been fed about success, and to re-define what happiness and “being enough” means for us. It’s possible that a brag-worthy career that toasts us to a crisp isn’t in line with the life that truly brings us joy and connection.

Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation by Anne Helen Petersen

Anne Helen Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed news article “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation” introduced the concept of burnout to millions of readers. Her 2021 nonfiction book Can’t Even picks up the thread of economic precarity and the myth that everything will work out if we just try hard enough. Petersen makes it clear that burnout is the psychological result of overwork. While burnout has always existed, the millennial generation is being crushed by economic forces beyond their control: student debt, low wages and a shift to contract work, soaring housing and childcare costs, and overall downward mobility. A common symptom of burnout is what she jokingly refers to as “errand paralysis,” the dread and exhaustion many folks feel about high-effort, low-gratification tasks that lurk on our to-do lists, like mailing packages and submitting insurance claims. Petersen frames burnout as a societal problem as opposed to an individual crisis. “I can’t fix you when it’s society that’s broken you,” Petersen writes. “Instead, I’ve tried to provide a lens for you to see yourself and the world around you clearly.”

Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone by Sarah Jaffe

Corporate culture urges us to see our companies as a family, and our careers as sources of deep purpose and satisfaction. That pressure to “love” our job is a big contributor to burnout. But that hasn’t always been the case. Sarah Jaffe’s Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion to Our Jobs Keeps Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone reveals that the expectation that we love our work is a relatively new phenomenon rooted in neoliberalism. This elevation of work encourages us to put our companies before ourselves and distracts from our own exploitation. “What is burnout but the feeling experienced when one’s labor of love is anything but,” Jaffe asks. Instead she urges the reader to practice love through solidarity with one another. After all, work cannot love you back because it is not a living human being.

The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work by Simone Stolzoff

Building on the work of Sarah Jaffee, Simone Stolzoff asks what a healthy relationship to employment can look like. In The Good Enough Job: Reclaiming Life from Work Simone Stolzoff traces the narratives that convince us that overwork is the only way to achieve happiness, success, and meaning in life. One pervasive concept is that of the “dream job,” a profession that feels like a personal calling as opposed to labor. This glamorous, even righteous idea of work puts us at risk of disappointment and heartbreak when the dream job doesn’t match our expectations. It can even make it harder to call out systemic issues within the workplace, from low wages to dangerous working conditions. Instead of a dream job, we should pursue the “good enough job.” A good enough job looks different for everyone depending on our needs. It might not offer the same in-office perks as a glamorous job at a tech company, but it won’t offer free dinners to manipulate you into working late either. “The most important thing work has given me—the thing I need it to give to me—is enough money to live,” Stolzoff writes. “A job is an economic contract. It’s an exchange of labor for money. The more clear-eyed we can be about that, the better.”