Burnout Highway

We’re all on the burnout highway. How did we get here, and where’s the exit ramp?

You likely know the feeling: chronic workplace stress, an impression of lost agency, depletion, or a nagging sense of ineffectiveness percolating through every aspect of your life. That’s burnout.

Our educations, corporate structures, and economic incentives push us to prioritize financially lucrative careers. We aren’t taught to seek careers that feel emotionally sustainable. The result? As author Anmol Diddan knows too well, we end up trapped in a never-ending cycle: exhaustion, self-blame, trying to look at the bright side, and then back to exhaustion again. Diddan, a former behavioral researcher at Google who moved across three continents over a decade, set out to understand why he and so many of his colleagues around the world were on the burnout highway seemingly with no way off.

Burnout Highway explores burnout as a collective challenge, debunking the simplistic idea that it stems only from our personal experiences at work. Leaning on his global perspective and background in economics, Diddan demystifies this deeply individual, yet increasingly collective, suffering by exploring the larger context—the systems within which we make decisions, the milestones we were taught to desire, and the feelings of fulfillment we thought they would provide.

Diddan compassionately empowers you with practical tactics and “rest stops,” including how to change your attitude toward work, reexamine your relationship with money or perceived needs, and reconnect with others and with nature. Burnout Highway is an invitation to take a chance on yourself by building an awareness of the why behind your burnout and pivoting how you think about your unique journey. Burnout Highway helps you prioritize work you connect with, that is aligned with your values and, most importantly, that caters to your emotional needs, within or outside of traditional corporate structures. This is how we end the cycle of burnout.