What We’re Reading: To tell the truth, Chris Borrelli says, these self-help books about work and burnout are stressing me out.
Now that you know what you must do, you must act.“The End of Burnout” is the more invigorating of these books, a re-imagining of how we think of the fabled “dignity of work” and Plato’s “noble li,” of head-down, no-complaining labor as a primary “source of dignity, character and purpose.” Among its finest moments is a reading of “Walden” that plays down solitude to consider, in a sense, Thoreau’s quiet case for staying sane and gainfully employed.
Jonathan Malesic’s “The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives” and Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Peterson’s “Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working From Home” . Written with the lively, lived-in confidence of a good journalist, it’s surprisingly fun, and a smart compliment to “Out of Office,” which itself reads like a necessary, of-the moment dispatch from our overworked brains, still processing the past couple of years, struggling to make sense of an office away from the office, wondering if you’re the only one who feels nuts. You’re not. Have you seen the latest jobs report? More of us have chosen not to return to business as usual.