Understanding Burnout: Causes, Symptoms, and How to Recover

Jonathan Malesic knows burnout firsthand. He was working his dream job, teaching at a small Catholic college in Pennsylvania. He was publishing papers, working toward tenure — doing all the things on the professor checklist. He was happy; until one day, he wasn’t.

“I was constantly exhausted. I dreaded going to work,” Malesic told Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast.

A combination of unenthusiastic students, a budget crisis, and seeing colleagues let go had him on edge and feeling “sort of useless.” He didn’t recognize himself. Eventually, he realized something had to give. He left academia, but remained curious about what derailed his career.

It turns out, the answer was burnout.

He discovered the work of psychology professor Christina Maslach, who literally wrote the book on burnout. “There are three dimensions to burnout,” Malesic explained.

• Exhaustion: A chronic, unrelenting fatigue that does not improve with rest.
• Cynicism or depersonalization: Treating people as objects, often manifesting as anger, gossip, or frustration.
• Ineffectiveness: A belief that one’s work is not accomplishing anything meaningful.

Malesic took the Maslach Burnout Inventory, the standard test that measures burnout, and he found he was in the 98th percentile for exhaustion.

“In American society, we value work so highly,” he said. “We put so much of our identity and self-worth into work.”

Eventually, he wrote a book called The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives.

Danielle Roberts had a similar experience. After a pandemic layoff, she started to seek out balance. She found it, and now, as a career coach, she helps other people find it too. Or as she likes to say: as an anti-career coach.

“I think we are at a point where dream jobs don’t exist,” she told Explain It to Me. “We have to start questioning the systems and the structures that are causing burnout in the first place, rather than making it a personal problem or a professional weakness.”

So how do you do that? And what are the different ways burnout has manifested itself through the decades?

Roberts breaks it down for the latest episode of Explain It to Me.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to [email protected] or call 1-800-618-8545.