There’s no beating around the bush, people’s relationship with work is in crisis. We’re tired of hustle and grind culture and some of us are even feeling physically exhausted from doing the bare minimum at work. As spring has officially sprung, I’m wondering, are we slowly coming out of hibernation or do we need more than a season change to get over 'The Big Tired’?

Complaints about work aren't anything new, but the discourse around them is changing and hard to escape these days. The buzzwords du jour ‘Quiet Quitting’ and ‘The Great Resignation’, are all over news articles and trending on social media. Bleak portrayals of the illusion that is the work/life balance are running themes in our favourite TV shows (I’m talking about Severance and The Bear). And recently in politics, New Zealand’s prime minister Jacinda Ardern stepped down stating she “no longer has enough in the tank to do the work justice. It's that simple."

These conversations about work fatigue centre on the overall role and capacity that work takes up in people's lives, from wanting to have more boundaries through to carving out more time for non-career oriented things. It’s as though we realise that there’s more to us than our jobs and we put work back into its place - as far as we’re privileged enough to be able to. In essence, we’re moving away from achievement narratives, towards self fulfilment narratives.

The Big Tired also interacts with the buzz around the latest AI advancements (DALL-E, Chat GTP and Co.) Whilst there are mixed reactions and a lot of bugs to be fixed, there is enthusiasm for the potential of the technology in helping us realign our relationship with work, taking some of our load off.

Why is this happening now?

We’ve been having a lot of reflections on both our internal worlds and external environments. Internally, we’re in an era of higher self reflection and awareness, which is helping us understand and articulate our internal worlds better. The pandemic made us reflect on who we are as individuals, not employees, we’re taking more accountability for our actions, and setting more boundaries around our personal happiness. Therapy is heavily trending in pop culture. Just take the popularity of Jonah Hill’s Netflix documentary Stutz as an example, and then musicians like Kendrick Lamar and Stormzy speaking about going on journeys inwards on their latest albums.

Externally, an obvious biggie, the world is f*cked and we feel increasingly icky to keep working for companies that don't do anything to change that. Something we recently touched upon in our latest Dirty Words report on Ownership.

So, What do we do now? How do we deal with our work fatigue?