Can't Even - bookwyrm.cincodenada.com

hardcover, 304 pages

Published Sept. 22, 2020 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

ISBN:: 978-0-358-31507-0

(1 review)

An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials—the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change

Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.

While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant …

An incendiary examination of burnout in millennials—the cultural shifts that got us here, the pressures that sustain it, and the need for drastic change

Do you feel like your life is an endless to-do list? Do you find yourself mindlessly scrolling through Instagram because you’re too exhausted to pick up a book? Are you mired in debt, or feel like you work all the time, or feel pressure to take whatever gives you joy and turn it into a monetizable hustle? Welcome to burnout culture.

While burnout may seem like the default setting for the modern era, in Can’t Even, BuzzFeed culture writer and former academic Anne Helen Petersen argues that burnout is a definitional condition for the millennial generation, born out of distrust in the institutions that have failed us, the unrealistic expectations of the modern workplace, and a sharp uptick in anxiety and hopelessness exacerbated by the constant pressure to “perform” our lives online. The genesis for the book is Petersen’s viral BuzzFeed article on the topic, which has amassed over eight million reads since its publication in January 2019.

Can’t Even goes beyond the original article, as Petersen examines how millennials have arrived at this point of burnout (think: unchecked capitalism and changing labor laws) and examines the phenomenon through a variety of lenses—including how burnout affects the way we work, parent, and socialize—describing its resonance in alarming familiarity. Utilizing a combination of sociohistorical framework, original interviews, and detailed analysis, Can’t Even offers a galvanizing, intimate, and ultimately redemptive look at the lives of this much-maligned generation, and will be required reading for both millennials and the parents and employers trying to understand them.

4 editions

Tsundoku reviewed Can't Even by Anne Helen Petersen

Give to Boomers everywhere

4 stars

It's a fine book based off a fine article, but you have to keep in mind:

If you come into the book expecting self-help solutions, you will be inevitably disappointed. This is NOT a self-help book.

This is a book about a societal problem and the many shapes it takes. The whole point of it is you yourself can only do so much to help yourself, it's how we run things that needs to be fixed.

The book may be better for Boomers or Gen X, instead of Millennials, because it could help them understand why things suck so much for Millennials and Zoomers. It explains why the solutions we were taught by our parents do not work anymore.

I appreciate the author trying to approach this from multiple non-white perspectives.

I found the afterword comparing the US to Japan very interesting (because being a bit of a weeb I …

It's a fine book based off a fine article, but you have to keep in mind:

If you come into the book expecting self-help solutions, you will be inevitably disappointed. This is NOT a self-help book.

This is a book about a societal problem and the many shapes it takes. The whole point of it is you yourself can only do so much to help yourself, it's how we run things that needs to be fixed.

The book may be better for Boomers or Gen X, instead of Millennials, because it could help them understand why things suck so much for Millennials and Zoomers. It explains why the solutions we were taught by our parents do not work anymore.

I appreciate the author trying to approach this from multiple non-white perspectives.

I found the afterword comparing the US to Japan very interesting (because being a bit of a weeb I kept thinking of Japan's way of approaching things, though I am not weeb enough to white-knight Japan). I would love to see other authors approach this issue from a non-American perspective. I don't know if the American Dream is uniquely American, but I feel like the death of it is part of why it sucks so much to be a Millennial.