Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

I, like many people nowadays, have been feeling super burnt-out by like everything. So when I stumbled on Anne Helen Petersen's Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, I was hoping it would be helpful, shedding light on why I feel this way.

Well, the short answer is that life sucks for everyone (particularly in the United States, which is where Petersen lives and is writing about). I thought this book was really good at showing how things have changed over time for everyone (not just millennials): companies have reduced good salaried jobs in favour of hiring more temp workers (aka freelancers), everyone is expected to work more and more hours (and that corresponds to less and less leisure time), people are afraid they will socially move downwards (out of the middle class), and, thanks to social media, people are now performing their lives rather than actually living them. But I thought the book was less good at showing how any of this was specific to millennials. Sure, many millennials were trying to start work during the 2008 recession, making it very difficult to make money, especially when many of them were struggling with student debt. And some millennials (younger ones in particular - this was not at all my experience) were raised in heavily scheduled ways, where everything they did was organized and often in hopes of being a good point for a college application. But these are things that are transcending any one generation. Millennials are parenting their own children in the same way. People of other generations had difficulties finding jobs in the recession. College tuition is even more expensive now than it was when millennials were attending, so younger generations will have even bigger debts. So, while I found this to be a largely informative read regarding the history of jobs in America over the last forty or fifty years, that was all it really was. The book also offers little in the way of solutions (the final chapter admits as much), which is rather unfortunate; it might have served as a rallying cry had there been more than just historical fact.

While, in some ways, I didn't really relate to the things Petersen was specifically mentioning, being an older millennial from Canada, I will admit that there were some areas of the book that really made me stop and consider my own life. One that particularly stood out to me was how everyone seems to feel pressure to monetize their hobbies (which was also kind of top of mind for me after watching Ryan George's video on the same topic just a few days before reading the chapter) instead of just enjoying them. That really made me stop and think.

So if you're looking for an interesting primer on how the working world has changed over the last few decades (particularly in corporate America), while a bit depressing, Can't Even is worth the read. 

Though I will admit, I was annoyed at the grammatical errors in the book - there were a number of places where there were extra words, making sentences a little nonsensical on first read.