Let me place here my 2cents ideas (I do hope it’s more valuable for you than that)
I guess if back-health issues was main problem last century, burnout is the new problem this century (even if it’s not yet finished and I realize soon it could be, with the AI and machines, a “bore-out” issues ("what I’m useful for now, as machines replaced me).
The main problem is simple, from school (even as a baby/child), we are not prepared to face any situation that could lead in burnout. I don’t know how’s school new system, but with all the “homework” and the “put all this in your head and try to see if it percolates”, the emphasis is more on the quantity (learn all, master all, be a machine!) than the quality ("I don’t like 70% of the topics, I love litterature > ok, then just learn the basics of all and dive deep in litterature)
It is also in our society DNA (which is definitely NOT in our human DNA) the fact to “work hard”, to “do something valuable” if you want to exist socially (work, consume, pay, stay on the road - or commute/work/sleep) and do things just because you have to pay your bills, avoid anything that make you passionate and that is “useless” to the society
As someone said, it’s not a good sign of health to be adapted to a sick society. I was on burnout last year. Why? Because I allowed it. I say yes, yes, yes to all and I DON’T listen to myself, to my body, my source, … If I well calculate, from 2016 to 2017, I lost more than two thousand hours (let say + 40% with transport commute, mind out-work thinking…) just because I complied to a job I don’t like
So now I guess it’s hard for me to fit again into society, at least for any salary job.
Burn out doesn’t come in one shot! It is drops on a glass, and it takes weeks, sometimes months, but the glass is full after a while and if your soul can handle, your body, your inner source Genius will tell you sooner or later “I can’t handle anymore”. I got the chance to listen to it, to go to the doctor, that saw my (shaking depleted) condition and accepted to place me in sickleave time for 2 weeks… Happily (YESSS… happily), 6 weeks after it was my 1-year contract end and they didn’t decide to renew it. Because of that. Because I was depleted one day on the morning, 13 months ago, and because I quit at 3pm and decided to listen to my body
For me it’s really important, when your plate is full and you can’t handle anymore, to say NO
It’s so easy to get manipulated, to be poisoned by enterprise culture, sorry for the comparison because it may be false, but as generals and soldiers, pharaoh and pyramid-workers, we can compare with managers and employees.
Happily there are some Mg that are not so bossy, and some even decide to change the rules (cf in Germany, some Mg decided to let the whole team decide - agile mode). But mainly we have to change a LOOOOT of things in our society. First the crap “country-GDP” competition. It costs and destroy a lot, human-side, nature-side. Also the enterprise DNA (an enterprise is made for one goal, to make profit. So to increase the sell and to reduce the charge. So if a manager could increase company profit in doing a pool of tasks for less employees, he will do it (no matter after what happens, burnouts, sickness, turnovers…)
And also our customer action. Do we want quality over price? Do we accept to use gross products and take time, or to place our industrial food on microwave and to pay the price of unhealthy?
Do we want to consume fairtrade, human-made, love-made, for its right price, or do we want to entertain industry and poverty?