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“I’m not sure how much of this daily grind I can take,” she said. “It’s too exhausting to try and get anything done because everything keeps piling up and then I barely have the energy to function.”
These words were spoken to me years ago by a former coworker. I remember listening quietly as we took a leisurely stroll from the office one morning to grab coffee, which, in and of itself, I considered a small luxury, but thought it best not to point that out.
Listening to her professional woes, I tried my best to be sympathetic, but inwardly I felt like the whole scenario was a bit overblown for someone roughly my age with job responsibilities roughly like mine. This would have landed differently on my ears had it been spoken by someone 20 or 30 years into a stressful career, rather than 4 or 5. My inner thoughts whispered, “Buck up!” while the words I spoke in response tried to be as understanding as possible.
I’ve been reminded of this moment many times by different people over the years who have expressed similar sentiments about their professional lives. Facing complete overload and frustration, they speak of fumbling to complete not only work but the basic tasks of living like paying bills and running errands. Admittedly, I’ve found myself thinking these thoughts too lately, having added full-time student status to my full-time employee workload. When I’m pressed for time and my to-do list has bled over to several pages, I’ll start to repeat the phrase, “it all gets done somehow,” a silent prayer of sorts to convince myself of something that, in the moment, doesn’t seem possible.
What I’m describing is one kind of experience that researchers, social scientists, pundits and writers have termed “Millennial Burnout.” I often forget that I fit in this category because my birthday puts me right on its cusp, straddling the end of Generation X. This month, I read an article by Buzzfeed reporter Anne Helen Petersen that describes the official category as those “born between 1981 and 1996.” Her article, “How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation,” triggered my interest in writing this blog. The lengthy article describes the complex web of socio-economic and psychological causes of this feeling. In one of the article's most distilled paragraphs, Petersen writes:
“To describe millennial burnout accurately is to acknowledge the multiplicity of our lived reality—that we’re not just high school graduates, or parents, or knowledge workers, but all of the above—while recognizing our status quo. We’re deeply in debt, working more hours and more jobs for less pay and less security, struggling to achieve the same standards of living as our parents, operating in psychological and physical precariousness, all while being told that if we just work harder, meritocracy will prevail, and we’ll begin thriving. The carrot dangling in front of us is the dream that the to-do list will end, or at least become far more manageable.”
At the end of her article, she finds a sobering kind of solace about the challenges of burnout. “It’s not a problem I can solve," she writes, "but it’s a reality I can acknowledge, a paradigm through which I can understand my actions.”
Over the past few weeks, I’ve mulled over the article's concluding thoughts. Understanding is valuable, but I find it a lot more valuable when it leads to solutions. When work or the business of living feels overwhelming, what practical tools and skills can I use? What examples have I seen in others facing these challenges too?
Recently I was listening to a podcast called Working Sunday that centers on the lives of professionals in creative fields (think: artists, designers, and indie entrepreneurs, etc.) One of the interviewees on an episode called “Be The Tortoise” was Eric Nakamura, a photographer, publisher, gallery owner and entrepreneur who is a bit of a legend in L.A. as the owner of the Giant Robot store and the associated GR2 Art Gallery in West LA’s Sawtelle Japantown neighborhood. I am the proud owner of several pieces of art bought from GR2 gallery and countless incredible Asian-inspired figurines, T-shirts and amazing books and knickknacks. But I didn’t know Nakamura’s professional backstory until I listened to this interview.
In short, Nakamura built a widespread national brand—a magazine, stores, and art galleries all over the country, even a restaurant— and it started to fall apart following the 2008 recession. He was bleeding money, juggling too many businesses and trying to keep everything afloat just the way it was before, when he had a revelation. In the interview, I was struck when he said, “This is like a Rubik's cube, [I] got to fix this one step at a time." This was a very relatable moment for me, that feeling of a being stuck in hamster-wheel and progress is not getting any closer, knowing something has to shift. What did Nakamura do?
He changed directions, downsized, found the most important elements of his work to prioritize, and focused on those areas with more passion and less panic. He reached out to others in his field and started collaborating with like-minded professionals on projects so that he didn't feel as if he was shouldering everything alone. Ten years later, he has two thriving storefronts and he’s even restarting the print magazine he closed years ago, but as an online journal instead. Eric Nakamura's story does not look like my life at all, but it does symbolize three things I've applied to my life when it comes to managing my career, creative and personal life.
1.) My goals don’t always look the way I originally wanted them to look.
My brain can’t account for the many ups and downs of life, the unknown events, the various factors that will come into play to make my circumstances easier or harder. My goals are still achievable at their core, if I can allow the goals to evolve and if I can keep working towards them at whatever pace I can manage, normally a pace this is much slower than what I originally hoped. What I see now when I look at Eric Nakamura's career choices is someone who made hard but necessary decisions to re-imagine his goals and remake them so that they could stay alive. And though his businesses look different, and are fewer in number, they are flourishing in a different way.
2.) What is happening in my life at any given moment does not define the past or the future.
There will be times when I feel comfortable with my schedule, my to-do list, my level of stress and there will be times when I feel anxious and unable to keep up with what life has doled out. In that way, having the wherewithal to be tortoise-like in my mindset, gentle and patient, dedicated and steadfast, keeps me away from the hare-like mania of hyper-achievement that leads to burnout.
3.) Ask for help and seek assistance and collaboration before complaining.
This one has been the hardest. Complaining happens. It's part of life. Rarely, however, has complaining led to a problem or hardship getting resolved or improved. Through the haze of stress and fatigue, I've found it's worth the effort to find others who have the skills, knowledge or passion to lend a hand or an ear in a practical way if I want to make a situation change for the better. It might be cathartic to blow off steam with a sob story, but not having one to tell in the first place, because you've found the right people to help you during a busy time or with a tough project, is far more rewarding for me.
Now when I look at the various paintings and toys that dot my home from Eric Nakamura's Giant Robot and GR2 Gallery, I think of his professional journey too, that it is complex and hard-earned, and full of the disappointments and struggles that make success all the sweeter.
