For Gen Z and young millennials, the idea of being overworked is no longer confined to high-flying executives or med students. It’s everywhere — in students juggling four part-time jobs, creators managing multiple platforms, interns moonlighting as freelancers, all under a vague but potent cultural script: do more, always. It’s the gospel of the hustle — where rest is laziness, and effort is virtue.

This isn’t simply economic pressure, though that’s part of it. It’s moral pressure. You’re expected not just to work, but to be passionate, purposeful, productive. Work has become identity — and identity has become a task. Even leisure is laced with improvement: reading must be intellectual, yoga must be mindful, hobbies must scale. Nothing is just for fun. Everything is optimisation.

As a result, burnout no longer looks like a breakdown. It looks like functioning with a low battery all the time. You still go to meetings. You still post on socials. But there’s a numbness beneath the surface — a sense that life is being lived on autopilot, that you’re always catching up, never arriving.

Technology amplifies this. Productivity apps promise control, but often become tyrants of their own. The digital calendar fills itself. Health trackers push ever-finer goals. Slack whispers after hours. Even sleep becomes a metric to manage. The line between personal and professional dissolves, and with it, the space to simply be.

There’s a particular cruelty in how burnout has been aestheticised. On Instagram, we see “burnout chic”: messy desks, late-night coffee, stories about pushing through. Fatigue becomes a badge of honour. To be tired is to be trying. But this is unsustainable. And beneath the curated struggle lies real psychological damage — anxiety, depersonalisation, depressive fog.

The antidote isn’t another app or better scheduling. It’s harder than that. It requires a cultural reframe: that rest is not indulgence, but intelligence. That joy need not be justified by productivity. That a life well lived includes boredom, play, and unmeasured time.

Burnout isn’t just a personal failing. It’s a societal design flaw. And until we stop rewarding self-erasure with likes, promotions, and moral approval, the exhaustion will continue. But perhaps, in choosing to slow down — radically, deliberately — this generation might begin to write a new story. One where being human is more than being efficient.