CWIB Book Review: “The End of Burnout”
“Work is of fundamental importance to the fulfillment of the human being and to the development of society. Thus, it must always be organized and carried out with full respect for human dignity and must always serve the common good. At the same time, it is indispensable that people not allow themselves to be enslaved by work or to idolize it, claiming to find in it the ultimate and definitive meaning of life” (Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI).
After reading a piece he wrote for The Guardian earlier this year, I was eager to read Jonathan Malesic’s new book “The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives.” Malesic is a former theology professor for the Catholic King’s College, so I was also hoping that he would bring a much-needed Catholic perspective to this important topic.
If you’re hoping for some practical tips on how you can prevent or overcome burnout, this book doesn’t really have many answers. Malesic’s aim with the book seems to be diagnostics and cultural overhaul. He doesn’t think it should be up to the burned out individual to alleviate his or her burnout. Rather, it’s up to the culture to prevent it from happening in the first place.
While I agree that change needs to happen on a large scale, I do think individuals can take steps to build their own resilience. Some (like Malesic) are also fortunate enough to be able to change their employment situation for the better. His story, and some of the stories he tells in the latter portion of the book, may provide some inspiration to burned out professionals. However, the primary target audience of this book are organizational leaders and policymakers who can make broader changes.
The Diagnosis: Idolizing Work
The cause of the problem is that Western culture (Malesic mainly focuses on American culture) has made work and productivity an idol. I know I’ve fallen prey to this temptation in the past, and I’m guessing you have, too. We seek fulfillment in our work rather than in God, and we believe that work gives us dignity, rather than our identity as a child of God. While work can add meaning to our life, and while many of us can consider our work a vocation, it should not be the only place where we find meaning, and it should not be our primary vocation.
If we were to have a personal mission statement, it wouldn’t be the mission statement of our business or the organization we work for, no matter how much we believe in that mission. It would be “to seek [God], to know him, to love him with all [our] strength” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 1). Our work may be one way that we accomplish that mission, but it’s only one. We may use our work to pay the bills or support our family, or we may use it as a way to share our gifts with the world. Either way, it must be subordinate to our primary vocation of loving God (and, for those of us called to marriage, our vocation of loving our spouse and, if we have them, children, too).
Malesic argues that searching for fulfillment at work leads to burnout, because work inevitably falls short of that lofty goal: “The ideal that motivates Americans to work to the point of exhaustion today,” he writes, “is the promise that if you work hard, you will live a good life: not just a life of material comfort, but a life of social dignity, moral character, and spiritual purpose.”
The truth is that even if we cannot derive all of our social dignity, moral character, and spiritual purpose from our work (even if we work in ministry). Our dignity must come from the fact that we are created in God’s image. Our moral character must come from prayerful development of virtue. And, our spiritual purpose must come from our vocation.
The Protestant Work Ethic and the Catholic Response
Malesic places much of the blame of the current state of work culture on the Protestant work ethic, which stems from the Calvinist idea of predestination and the focus of “God’s elect” on performing good works to prove that they are destined for heaven. While our society is nominally a secular one now, this idea still permeates a culture in which we hustle because we are desperate to show our worth.
Malesic discusses several alternative philosophies, including Catholicism. He cites Pope St. John Paul II’s encyclical “Laborem Exercens,” writing that John Paul “affirmed that work only has dignity because human beings do.” He also cites Pope Leo XIII’s “Rerum Novarum,” where “Leo’s point is that the dignity of the person—not the dignity of work—is the highest principle when it comes to labor, and bosses owe it to their employees to provide conditions commensurate to that dignity.”
While “The End of Burnout” does a great job of diagnosing the burnout epidemic and its causes, I believe it falls short in thoroughly providing a realistic cure. Doing so is beyond the scope of the book, but I was also disappointed that a former Catholic theology professor described the Catholic response to this problem as one of many possible responses. On the other hand, this book was clearly written for a secular audience, so he may not have thought writing a purely Catholic book would have been helpful. I should also note that there are a couple of areas in the book in which contemporary ideas about gender and feminism come up that are not aligned with Church teaching. With those caveats, however, I can recommend “The End of Burnout” as an informative read for anyone who is interested in the historical and philosophical roots of modern burnout and ideas of what a cultural upheaval to combat burnout might look like.
Taryn Oesch DeLong is a Catholic wife and mother in North Carolina who encourages women to live out their feminine genius as co-president of Catholic Women in Business, a FEMM fertility awareness instructor, and a contributor to publications for Catholic women. She enjoys curling up with a cup of Earl Grey and a good novel, playing the piano, and taking walks in the sunshine with her family. Connect with her on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn, or read her blog, Everyday Roses.