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Can't Even

How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

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Can't Even

By: Anne Helen Petersen
Narrated by: Anne Helen Peterson
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

An incendiary personal and cultural investigation of burnout.

Are you tired, stressed and trying your best but somehow still not doing enough? Has the bottom half of your to-do list been locked in place for months? Is everything becoming work as your job seeps into your evenings, you monetise your hobbies and perform your leisure time on social media?

This is burnout - what increasingly seems like the defining feature of our lives. We are exhausted. But burnout is not a personal failing. It is a creeping part of modern culture, shaped by deep-rooted political, historical and economic forces, and it is affecting how we work, parent, socialise and inhabit the world.

Anne Helen Petersen identifies burnout with moving clarity - what it feels like and how it manifests across communities. Through her own experience, original interviews and detailed analysis, she traces the institutional and generational causes of burnout. And, in doing so, she helps us to let go of our guilt and imagine a possible future.

Reassuring, insightful and galvanising, Can't Even is essential listening for all of us.

©2021 Anne Helen Peterson (P)2021 Penguin Audio Labour & Industrial Relations Politics & Government Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Social Psychology & Interactions

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All stars
Most relevant  
Literally the best book I've read/listened to all year. So much of the content resonated and I found myself repeatedly nodding along, shaking my head in disbelief and smiling all at the same time. Bravo. 👏🏻

An absolute must read

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It was never a book I would of chosen by myself but I belong to an online book group and this was their choice. strangely, I don't have time to read, so I decided to purchase through audible. Apt! I thought this book would be a bit whiney, but actually it's really opened my eyes to my own life and I am really thankful that I listened to it. Solid research, great synergies, very relatable and actually not excusing at all. I'm left with knowledge and some hard thinking to do.

Really enjoyed this book very thought provoking

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Great book - although slightly depressing! I’m an ‘old’ millennial and, even though the book was focussed on the US, the author could have been describing my life. Helps to hold a fresh lens up to it. Maybe I’ll give myself a break more now…

Very revealing

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This perfectly describes what it is to be millennial. The author’s own experience is interwoven with personal testimony from many others who come from a wide cross section of backgrounds. It looks at how the social, economic and technological trends of the last few decades have combined to create a system that exhausts and alienates young people. Most importantly it tells us that it doesn’t have to be this way.

As a baby boomer I recognise this misery at play in the lives of my own millennial children. The US has built a particularly toxic version of the system but our UK variant ain’t much better. And now our younger generations have COVID to deal with too! We have some choices to make. Thanks for painting the picture so clearly, engagingly for me.

Brilliant, insightful and wonderfully angry

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Some great insights yet to the authors own admission, the narrative falls short of the nuances of intersectionality, leaning heavily to US and white, middle-class female perspectives.

Worth a listen/read

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I liked the analysis, depressing as it was. The narration is clear and pleasant to listen to. I don’t think this book alone is enough to get a rounded picture, but the feeling comes across like waves of frustration being released. If you want to explore younger generations and get a feeling for why millennials (and so on) are as they are, then this may be a good primer before moving on to more detailed or research-heavy reading.

America-centric but some good points

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I enjoyed listening to this Audible. I was born in 1991 and I can say many of the things the author has said is very true regarding my generation. I think every generation went through burnout and always will. it a good listen learnt few facts.

millenniums burnout

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the author builds the core message around the thought that today's problems (mostly of the millennial generation) are inherently structural (societal, capitalist, patriarchal). I didn't find this thought supported by a multi faceted, thorough analysis, but a rather one sided one (~ everything's changed for the worse). Then the book also fails to address or just to attempt to address the core of the numerous structural problems it raises: responsibility. It pretends we're all just reactively suffering from the inherently bad systems, and with all our actions we just blindly reinforcing them. It is really just scratching the surface of the question of an individual's responsibility on the society. Ultimately it leaves the reader with a bad feeling that really "everything's wrong with what I'm doing, either harming myself or if not myself than necessarily someone else"? Having said all this, I do think there are a lot of valuable thoughts and ideas represented in the book, and I do see the author's potential to make this work complete, because it feels severely unfinished.

somewhat disappointing

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Brought up so many relatable issues for the millennial generation. Even though it was heavily based on USA stats, it still brought up many points and explanations on how our generation is just generally screwed

Brilliant

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I listened to this book after reading other reviews and thought I'd give it a go. It is certainly thought provoking and I found it insightful. As a UK person, I found I tuned out to a lot of the political discussion which meant I thined out to quite a lot. There were a few gems of insight that was worth persevering for. Ultimately I do think it would have been better suited as an article, as was I believe it's original intention. Though, I'm pleased for her that she wrote a book. The term, "most research is me search" felt true of the author here, I felt like I was accompanying her on a journey of self discovery that was very much ongoing by the end. such is life. Worth the read, it certainly got me thinking.

Thought provoking, perhaps not right for a UK audience

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