Burnout - When does work start feeling pointless? | DW Documentary

this literally starts in college too it sucks

Went through burnout big time as a pool construction manager of 3 years. The job had me so stressed that it cost me friendships and relationships, caused me to break out in hives all over my body and pushed me into seeing actual mental help.
I ended up getting laid off and I feel better than I have in years.
THE MONEY IS NOT WORTH IT.

Thank you. May this documentary go out and accomplish all of which you have set out for it to accomplish for the greatest good of the people.

I think one of the way to avoid burnout is living for the present. Instead of working too much, trying to achieve a goal in the future, e.g. buying a house, a car,... and only see the work you do everyday only as a financial means to achieve that distant goal, you can get burnout because of the stress you get daily vs the goal that you can only achieve in several years.
We can try to find meaning in our everyday work, look for things we can learn and what can be done better. Then we will find more joy in our work, the job now becomes the source of happiness, we won't view the job as an obstacle to that distant goal.
When we love our job, we will do it better an may get chances for promotions with higher pay, so killing 2 birds with 1 stone.

It’s not just the created jobs it’s also the corporate/ business owner greed. The volume of patients or clients or customers that need servicing bc the company wants more and more profit doesn’t allow for less work hours. Unfortunately the only way out is to learn to live so minimally that you don’t need to earn so much to be happy.

I’m 40 and already feeling burnt out. Been working in healthcare for 10 years, but working in anything for 22 years.

I’m exhausted. I’m only waiting 5 more years for my youngest to go off to college and i may either sell or rent out my house and just live on the road as a nomad doing temp jobs for money as needed but I want freedom.

I can’t do this anymore.

It’s the same thing over and over again everyday.

Wow, what a documentary! Thanks for sharing. Seeing these young children in the offices made me sad. As a teacher, I am aware of the systems that are in place, and I'm grateful to have chosen for the Montessori educational route. Education still has a long way to go, though. The work space has a longer way to go to unlearn.

Oh God.... I felt this so hard.

Beautifull work right there!!

And remembering medieval serfs only worked 180 days of out 365 and slaves in the classis ages in general worked 6 hours a day …

I'm sure plenty of others can relate to this. When I think back through the past 18+ years I've been in the programming and IT space, the times where I felt the most truly free, were the times I was laid off and suddenly no longer had to do anything involving that job. I was part of a small group layoff and was out of work for 3 months. While it was indeed stressful because I had to go back into the hiring and interview pool, there was still a weight lifted from due to no longer being burdened with the bullshit that previous role laid on me.

We have no autonomy, no time and experience doesnt count anymore. Best to take a simple job lead a simple life. Work should remain in/at the workplace. And 24/7 is bad for your health. Dont work more than aprox 4 days a week. So you can rest, socialize, sport, or study, learn. Dont buy, or order things you dont need. Think what the impact of your behavior is. Dont get fooled by the illusion of growth is good, nor the green washing lie of the "energy transition". The world can sustain a population of aprox 500 million - 1 billion. Which was the case so around 1850. When species started to get extinct. Electrify everything means metals get depleted and mining ruins the environment. We need to consume way less of: Everything

The other problem is lack of resources. Alot of people dont have the means to just quit their job and are absolutely stuck. With the job market as garbage as it is now even more people are trapped.

When your dream job is not actually your dream 😅

I sometimes feel engaged but interacting with the disengaged and saboteurs as necessary subtracts from the feeling. I often switch off too and takes a while to become engaged again.

and in my opinion this all comes from people doing something they really don't want or like doing. i've entered IT to get a good pay. but i have never like that job. it's boring for me. that's why once again i try find something that i like at the age of 40. and yes i am afraid but hell no. i am not going back to IT. it's boring no matter how much you pay me.

I lasted 10 months at a very well known investment firm. It was my first big boy job outside of working in the kitchens of restaurants. I was 22 when I started after spending months looking for a decent job and finally landed a position with the firm. Very shortly summarized, I had to work unpaid overtime for 5 months, and studying to become a financial advisor. I became so burnt out from work and was going through a very dark time with my fiancé, and piled a lot of drinking on top of that. My position also involved talking to people on the phone everyday, and pretending to have a professional, happy attitude became almost impossible because of how much I started to hate everything about my job. I quit when I failed my major job related exams to become a financial advisor, and I was literally breaking down/crying at the fact I had to continue being on the phones talking to angry assholes about their money. I really don’t think I’d be here today if I continued working there.

Work From Home Forever! Never forget!

One year until retirement, working in IT for 25+ years. I hope I can make it through this last year.

Its never going to change..lets call corporations what they essentially are... A mechanized Monarchy.

American dream is ☠️

Wow, how many people do that same worthless job of trying to understand emotions? There must be tens of millions, meanwhile more people are going crazy by not controlling their emotions than ever.

Doesn't DW have any newer stock footage, like maybe less than 20-30 years old?😂😂😂

No one mentioned the fact that it takes two incomes to make less money than one income used to do. The string-pullers realized that if they break up the family, you get twice as many workers for the same price.

Such important stories of humans, but it's told in boring long documentaries which doesn't interest who really need to see. I'm not one of those who lives this life, but lived many moons ago.

the intro music boosts my stresslevel

I would literally go to prison for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week if I had a choice, instead of going to my current office.

The second u enter the building

Presumably the description uses the German meaning of the word humorous? This was actually quite depressing :D

Open plan offices are a product of hell…. Just cost cutting, everyone knows that they are a pain to work in and no wonder that people are preferring work from home.

My boss recently said he didn't want to rise any higher in the company because at a certain point your only remaining contribution is to tell other people to work faster

I keep telling myself that i just need a few years at this job and then I can be free(er). We'll see. Currently i don't think i actually have it in me. Monday morning is the worst day of the week. And my job isn't even that bad, it's just that i couldn't care less about what we do but it pays well... Tradeoffs i guess

Well, we could all be hunter gatherers and live in mud huts. I am sure that lifestyle had its own stresses including violent death and dismemberment at any moment. Race you to the water hole!

a lot of this is biased lol.... Like firing people improves stock prices, but doesn't "actually do anything". A CEO fires people to cut budgets and re-organize... If they terminate people and the company losses money - then the CEO will gets canned. Obviously if the company was making money they wouldn't be letting people go. This is just a stupid thought process.

this is so US centric. EU do speak up, it's just cultural. Change happen when people grow some balls and speak up.

I can so relate to this. The pointless meetings where people say incomprehensable things and other people pretend they are listening. The need for managerial 'output' and 'things to happen', no matter what they are. Almost nobody I know has a real job anymore. It's all bullshit jobs. And it's all about the shareholders and stakeholders of a company, not about the people in it or the customers.

Example: one of our developers wrote a very simple application in a low-code platform. Now, it wil be BIO-audited. More then 12 people will be involved with the audit and it will take 2 full days. 150+ questions have to be answered. Many external consultants with large paychecks. It's just madness.

The stress of all this madness is affecting me too. Akin to the woman in the video, I sometimes go to sleep and hope I won't wake up in the morning. Or get some kind of disease so I don't have to go to work anymore.

We need to wake up.

I love “working”, actual work, doing something productive. Sitting around for X amount hours waiting for work simply because you have to be there is just a jail sentence to me. 20-30 years left in my sentence if I keep good behaviour!

Jobs are soul sucking. I need my time back and work on my own terms doing what I love. That's my goal.

🌹I'm 55 years and I retired at 51. I was able to do this because I understand four pricinciples of financial planning success think long term with goals and investing, spend less than you earn maintain liquidity (an emergency savings) minimize the use of debt

Just one point about ergonomic furniture. It doesn't matter how curved or contoured or cushy a seat is. The body hates holding a single position for too long. Sitting and standing motionless for long periods are both terrible.

We need to work more because housing costs more, having kids costs more etc

Humans feeling miserable with ourselves often translates to feeling miserable about every other aspect of our lives, including work. The answer comes from within. I am responsible for myself and my life.

Asia.

Corporations know this ... Do they care? No

The people sitting around the table look like zombies. And they keep saying like like like like😢

After working corporate for 8 years I cant tell you how many people who are hired due to nepotism and or not qualified in that position whatsoever...

The productivity/wage difference is not because people became more efficient it's because automation made jobs more efficient. People are the least effective cog in the machine.

The biggest problem is the stock market and the problem is not that it exists it's that by law companies MUST increase the stock value year by year to serve the investors or face consequences, from being thrown out of the seat at best to penalties enforced by law. This creates problems with reducing expenditure, making one person work the job of three, outsourcing labour, shrinkflation, etc. Because there's just that much profit you can create year by year withour a major innovation, and if you can't optimize the profit from the consumer side you have to cut costs from the worker side.

The 5 causes of burnout by Ken Coleman:
- No passion for your work
- Toxic workplace
- Boredom
- Feeling overwhelmed
- Feeling under appreciated