Change experts will tell you to "get clear on your vision" and "communicate the plan." But what happens when you can't predict what next month will bring, let alone next quarter? This isn't a leadership failure. For most of us, it's the new reality. And it requires a completely different approach to how we navigate uncertainty together. Why Traditional Approaches Fall Short
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.
I once played squash with a wealthy investor at a private club in Singapore. Even though it was a friendly game, I still didn't want it to be a total wipeout. I'm not great at squash, and I knew my opponent was a regular player. But he was in his 60s, and I was in my 30s, so I figured how hard could it be? Surely, I could outrun and outwork him.
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.
"Many of us in cyber, we put our hearts into our job. There's a lot of passion involved." He had found it progressively harder to sleep, and to go into the office. Tony, who did not want his real name used, recalls the Wannacry ransomware attack in 2017. "It was a Friday and something came up on BBC News." The security team got on a call that evening and the decision was taken to remove every single device from the network.
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.
Imagine this scenario: Nicola is an athlete who wants to go to the Olympics in 2028. She couldn't be more motivated and is optimizing her whole life around it. In all aspects of training, sleep, diet, and mindset, she's aiming to make every marginal improvement she can. But already, three years out, she's beginning to unravel. When she doesn't set a personal best each race, underperforming her expectations results in crushing depression, anxiety, and second-guessing her every move.
There were times during my childhood when I remember being exhausted by the antics of my energetic, spontaneous younger sister and sensitive younger brother. With three kids, there was also almost always a two-against-one situation. I was either paired up with a kid who would do my bidding, or I was the enemy of the younger two, when my demands got to be too much.
I was standing there, frozen in front of the shelves, phone in hand, scrolling through food lists that led to recipes that sucked me into the latest health trends. Ten minutes earlier, I'd come in for a bottle of almond milk. Now I was knee-deep in articles about the "five fruits to reverse aging" and a thread debating which pasture-raised vs organic eggs. My cart sat empty, my body stood still, but my thumb kept moving.
"If you're not good to someone, you will not only ruin their day, but guess what: You're going to feel really bad about yourself. So nix that behavior. "And I've taught them that if you clean up after yourself, you're going to have more calmness in your space," she added. "Your head is as messy as your room is. Someone said that to me, and it changed my life forever."
Most of my adult life has revolved around music: clubs, bars, festivals, house parties anywhere I could dance to loud music. I loved how energising and cathartic it was to get immersed in it, to lose myself a little and move my body expressively without judgment. I'd get so absorbed that I would lose track of time; once, at Burning Man, I was awake for 36 hours exploring the festival, meeting new people and partying.
While 2023 research from Visier demonstrated that 83% of workers admit to " productivity theater"-performing busy work that creates the appearance of output without meaningful results-that same year, the World Economic Forum declared creativity to be the second most critical skill for our workforce by 2027. The collision of these realities signals a fundamental shift that smart organizations can no longer ignore.
It's back-to-school season! September has always felt like a fresh start to me because, as I like to joke, I was a student all the way up to the 24th grade. (Kids usually widen their eyes in horror when I say that.) I loved back-to-school shopping, carefully picking my binders and notebooks, making sure my pencils were sharpened and ready.
If you're Gen Z, you probably grew up on algorithms that whisper "monetize it" the moment anything feels fun. The importance of personal brands is constantly drilled into you, along with a side of LinkedIn wins, Etsy grinds, and side hustle culture. If you're good at something, you're told to sell it (or at least make it go viral). Google queries for "how to monetize content shot up 305% in the past month, while "how to build a personal brand " is up 67% year-on-year.
"Last year when I went on medical leave. I was really confused and exhausted," she said. "It got to the point where the anxiety of running such a big account and having to be always on was so on my shoulders. I would get three hours of sleep at night. I would be incessantly trying to figure out, how do I be creative in all the best ways? How do I do this on my own?"
Many high-achieving women are living with burnout without even realising it. On the outside, they appear calm, capable, and in control. They're delivering results, meeting deadlines, and holding space for their colleagues and teams. They are often the people others turn to for answers and support. Yet on the inside, the story can be very different. These women are running on empty. They are exhausted, disconnected from themselves, and quietly burning out.
