Nir Eyal says burnout isn't about the work itself but the environment. High expectations with low control breed anxiety and depression. High expectations with high control, like entrepreneurship, lets people thrive. A bad manager at BCG showed him the difference.
What kind of jobs are associated with mental illness? Most people would say, like, oh, a sad job, right? Like being a mortician, a veterinarian that has to put puppy dogs to sleep. Turns out, no, it has nothing to do with what you do. It has to do with the environment you do it in. We know that jobs that have high expectations coupled with low control, those are the kind of jobs that literally cause anxiety and depression disorders. Entrepreneurship jobs, that's where people flourish. Because when someone has high expectations and high control, that's what we call thriving. But it's a situation when we have high stations and low control, right? Like when I was working for my crappy boss at bcg, he'd want stuff all the time and I just couldn't deliver it in time, right? It was a constant treadmill of more, more, more, more, more. And no matter how much I did, he was never satisfied. And so it was depressing.
Your Beliefs Are Sabotaging You (Here's Why) - Beyond Belief for Athletes with Nir Eyal
