ArcaMax

Time to take your temperature. When it comes to your job, are you burned up or burned out? These days, being burned up is weak tea. Anyone can grumble about their bad bosses and their worse career prospects. Today, the cool kids have ratcheted up their dissatisfaction to DEFCON 1 total burnout. Really!

According to recent research from hrstacks.com, 82% of workers are at risk of burnout in 2025. You don't have to be a math genius to understand this scary statistic. Having survived seven months of 2025 without your brain exploding in flames, you only have five months left to turn up the heat.

There are many reasons why workers are experiencing such stratospheric rates of burnout. Solutions to the situation are harder to come by. That's why I was excited to receive an email about Ryan Zhang, the founder and CEO of the productivity platform Notta.ai.

"The problem isn't your motivation," Zhang says, "it's mental exhaustion. When you're constantly context-switching between tasks, drowning in information overload and feeling like you're always behind, there's no mental space left for the work that actually energizes you."

If you'd allow me to do a little context-switching here -- I was contextualizing about driving to the donut shop for a glazed longjohn or three -- I will share five of the CEO's ideas for extinguishing burnout. I've added some sizzling hot ideas of my own, ideas that could fan the fires of your burnout. It's bad for you, but I'll feel better and more energized. And really, in the giant scheme of things, what else matters?

No. 1: "Stop trying to be 'always on' and available."

"Your brain needs downtime to think creatively," says Zhang. If you're filling your silly little head with trivial matters, like work, you won't have the time to do the important things, like kissing up to your boss

Setting boundaries is the key. Calculate the amount of time you want to change from "always available" to "not available ever." Seems to me one day a week to be available is more than sufficient. As for answering urgent emails and frantic phone calls, a response within a month should satisfy the people who depend on you. Considering the genius you pack into every response, waiting a month to hear from you is a small price to pay.

No. 2: "Complete one thing fully instead of juggling ten things poorly."

Heaven knows you've turned in assignments that had a few tiny errors. Next time you're assigned an important project, take all the time you need to make the ginormous errors, mistakes and misjudgments required to produce a complete and irredeemable mess. The combination of missing a deadline and also doing absolutely everything wrong will make you stand out from your mildly mediocre workmates.

Do work that's bad enough, often enough and you may never be asked to do anything again.

No. 3: "Recognize when you're stuck in 'busy work' mode."

"Sometimes we fill our days with easy, mindless tasks," Zhang warns. This is not productive, unless you're a manager and easy, mindless tasks are your exact job description.

No. 4: "Plan meetings to show up, rather than survive them."

When in the midst of a boring staff meeting, instead of using the time to think about where you'll go for lunch or what you will buy when you can log back into the RealReal, be fully engaged with whatever nonsense is being discussed. "When you're not running mentally ten different things," Zhang says, "you'll walk out of meetings feeling sharp and renewed, not depleted."

Alternately, you can crumple to the floor and lie there, inert. You'll get out of the meeting and get a lot of sympathy, too, assuming anyone notices.

No. 5: "Tune in to how you feel, not what you got done."

Instead of checking off items on your to-do list, "check in with yourself and wonder, 'Do I feel good about what I got done today?'"

Don't go easy on yourself. Ask, "Have I sabotaged a co-worker today?" "Have I blamed someone else for a mistake I made?" "Have I buttered up my boss and my boss's boss and my boss's boss's boss?"

If the answers are all positive and you still feel trapped in a miserable job with no hope of escaping, ever, congratulations. You're no longer part of the sad 82% who are only burned up; you're in the elite group of 2025's genuine, total burnouts.

Best of all, you still have five months left to enjoy it.

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Bob Goldman was an advertising executive at a Fortune 500 company. He offers a virtual shoulder to cry on at bob@bgplanning.com. To find out more about Bob Goldman and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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