Not long ago, I sat at my desk staring at the little red dots scattered across my screen - notifications, unread messages, unfinished tasks, a dozen digital nudges demanding attention. I felt that familiar tightening in my chest, the quiet whisper: You're behind again. Behind who? Behind what? I hadn't stopped working; in fact, I'd been working most of the weekend. Yet somehow my computer, my email, and the constellation of apps around me had already sprinted several steps ahead.
I started there in November 2006, when there were only around 10,000 employees, and became an executive - the director of American media relations - in 2022. Google's amazing; I bleed Google colors. I loved the impact I was having, the future of opportunities I saw for myself, and the feedback I was getting as a leader. I'm also the breadwinner for my family.
But you know what memory I don't have? My mother eating. She cooked. She served. She made sure everyone had seconds and thirds. She cleaned. She packed plates for folks to take home to their loved ones. She stood in that kitchen for hours (sometimes, days), making magic happen for anyone that she could. But I cannot recall a single moment when she sat down with a full plate of her own, enjoying the meal she had poured herself into.
A survey by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) of more than 20,000 nursing staff found that 66% had worked when they should have been on sick leave, up from 49% in 2017. Just under two-thirds (65%) of respondents cited stress to be the biggest cause of illness, up from 50% in 2017. Seven out of 10 said they had worked in excess of their contracted hours at least once a week, with about half (52%) doing so unpaid.
My father's voice still rings in my mind: "Don't do a half-ass job." He meant to teach discipline and integrity, and I took it to heart. But somewhere along the way, that lesson evolved into a rule: If I wasn't giving everything, I wasn't enough. If I slowed down, I feared slipping. And so I kept accelerating, one foot pressed firmly on the gas, unsure how to ease off.
I spent several years of my career in the uncomfortable role of middle manager. On one side, I had executives asking me why my team couldn't "do more," and on the other side, my employees told me they were stretched too thin. It was an endless tug-of-war. I was both the enforcer of company expectations and the advocate for my team's needs. At times, my role felt at complete odds with itself. Executives push for efficiency and growth, while employees look for empathy and stability.
Daniel didn't look like a man falling apart. Pressed shirt. Polished watch. Phone buzzing every few minutes. Yet his hand trembled slightly as he reached for his coffee. "They said it was panic," he said, half whispering. "But it felt like dying." He had just left the ER after his second "heart attack that wasn't." On paper, he was the definition of success: a founder, husband, father. But inside, his mind was spinning at 200 miles per hour.
I was volunteering in raptor rescue, monitoring eagle nests as the busy season ramped up, juggling consulting work, supporting adoption placements, writing, creating. I was showing up fully in every space except the one I lived in: my body. And yet I refused to let go. I told myself it was just a busy season. That if I could push through, things would calm down. That my exhaustion was noble, temporary, necessary.
Everywhere I turn - podcasts, research calls, dinner conversations - people are talking about "toxic workplaces." The phrase has become ubiquitous; almost unavoidable. So I did what most researchers do when they're curious (or procrastinating): I Googled it. That led me to a chart showing the term's meteoric rise beginning in the early 2010s. The curve shoots upward like a fever.
She was embarking on a journey to do it all: a working mom, supporting her family with a career she loved. As track repairs tripled her commute time, things suddenly felt like they were falling apart. Instead of getting home in time to put her baby son to bed, Low found herself sobbing while breast pumping in an Amtrak bathroom.
I'm weird. I can be more open in some ways with audiences than I can in interpersonal relationships. Look, I've lived and learned over time. I've been a toxic person in my life. I'm not great at relationships. I used to do a joke where I think I'm about 85 percent woke and the other 15 percent I keep to myself.
Regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority's (Apra's) CPS 230 standard have led organisations to become "really obsessed" with the 72-hour notification window following a data breach, according to Shannon Murphy, global security and risk strategist at Trend Micro.
In 2020, my feelings about my job as an auditor started to shift. The COVID-19 pandemic had me suddenly working from home, on nonstop Teams calls, and glued to my computer all day. Work felt more stressful than ever, and at the same time, my sense of purpose was gone. I was experiencing chronic migraines and extreme mood swings, and my hair was falling out in clumps. I knew I needed to make a change.
My first strike was January 28th, 2013, at 6:49 in the morning. It ended up being a cave in the middle of nowhere, and there was a handful of people there that they wanted us to take out.
One survey of business leaders in the U.S. found that 2 out of 3 say that after cutting DEI, their company suffered customer boycotts (as did Target) and diminished employee morale. The Catalyst/Meltzer 2025 survey reports that U.S. employees are displeased with the DEI retreat by companies, and more than 2 out of 5 say they'd quit if their employer stopped supporting DEI. In fact, 1 in 3 leaders who rolled back DEI policies reported later reinstating them.
A decade ago, fresh out of business school, I joined a tech company in my first business development role in Singapore. Within the first quarter, I had closed two quarters' worth of sales targets. But the environment was abusive. The CEO yelled regularly. Personal and sexist remarks were common, on body, appearance, even what women ate or wore. It was triggering. Having lived through a previous abusive situation, I found myself in constant flight-or-freeze mode.
In 2020, Lisa was earning roughly $110,000 a year in a remote, corporate manufacturing role when she received an offer for a hybrid job that paid about $150,000. After talking it over with her husband, she landed on an unconventional solution: Take the new job - and keep the old one, too. For 18 months, Lisa secretly worked two full-time roles, earning roughly $250,000 in 2021 and averaging 40 to 50 hours a week across both jobs.
Some of us want to raise kids who never know a moment of discomfort; some of us are focused on raising kids who achieve all their dreams, no matter how much it costs. Some of us just want to be present and engaged, filling our kids with core memories, and some of us just want to go to bed every night knowing we did our best to keep our kids healthy, happy, and safe that day.
Burnout has been on my mind a lot lately, and that's saying a lot since my burnout brain has trouble focusing these days. Between working from home while raising two young kids and traveling back and forth across the country to spend time with a sick loved one, I've felt stretched in more directions than I thought possible. I know many of you can relate to the constant push to keep going even when your body and mind are begging for rest.
I've spent the last year working a full-time corporate job in Human Resources for a Fortune 500 company while caring for my one year old son simultaneously. No sitter, no help. We can't afford daycare, and this is the only way it's been possible for me to remain the primary breadwinner because my husband works outside the house and we don't have family nearby.
Fifty percent of people across industries are burned out, uninterested (engagement levels are very low at 34 percent, according to Gallup), overwhelmed, and down. Something feels like it's missing. Something is not quite right. But we can't quite put our finger on what it is. We're stuck. We feel small, overwhelmed, and lost. Especially in this news cycle-this constant barrage of information, entertainment, media, and stress.
We live in a culture that celebrates speed. We respond to emails at all hours of the day, have packed schedules, and feel pressure to be constantly productive. This drive to keep going is fueled by expectations-our own and others'. Yet when we push beyond our limits, we risk not only exhaustion but also the loss of vital resources like physical and mental health, our capacity for emotional regulation, and strong relationships.
Back then, I was a marketing representative for an asset management firm in Penang, Malaysia. It was a steady job, and I had supportive managers who allowed me to take ownership of my work. It was a client-facing role, and over time, I realized it wasn't the best fit for my personality, even though I learned and grew a lot from the job. After the pandemic, I started feeling burned out. Deep down, I always knew a 9-to-5 wasn't meant to be my long-term path.
I believe there are two versions of purpose. Big P Purpose is audacious and goal-oriented. It has an all-or-nothing focus and often leaves us chasing huge, distant outcomes. The end result, more often than not, is anxiety. Little p purpose, on the other hand, is about process rather than goals. It's abundance-oriented. You find things that light you up and simply do them. Failure becomes almost impossible, because the reward is in the doing.
Quiet Cracking: Silent Burnout in the Office Unlike " the great detachment", quiet cracking occurs when individuals continue to perform while silently burning out. They attend meetings, meet deadlines, and carry on, but under the surface, stress and exhaustion are eroding their well-being. The numbers tell the story: 90% of workers say their stress is the same or worse than last year. 47% worry about job stability. The average daily commute is now 62 minutes.
"I just used to completely sacrifice myself for whatever the thing was I was trying to achieve," Watson said on an Episode of "On Purpose" by Jay Shetty yesterday. "Making films, the hours on them are so demanding, that to have your own life alongside that, to have that balance is almost impossible," the star with an estimated $85 million net worth added.
