Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond Productivity Culture

by Jenny Odell

And yet Linda’s burnout has to be about something more than work and straightforward economic security, because even those who should be more than comfortable seem curiously apt to wear themselves down. In The Burnout Society, Byung-Chul Han suggests something even more general: that “the drive to maximize production inhabits the social unconscious,” producing what he calls “the achievement-subject.” Rather than be disciplined by something or someone external to them, achievement-subjects are “entrepreneurs of themselves,” DIY bosses propelled from within. Although it answers to no one (else), an achievement-subject nonetheless “wears down in a rat race it runs against itself”: “The disappearance of domination does not entail freedom. Instead, it makes freedom and constraint coincide. Thus, the achievement-subject gives itself over to compulsive freedom—that is, to the free constraint of maximizing achievement. Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation.” As any tech campus with free food, branded backpacks, and a climbing wall can attest, a society of achievement-subjects is great news for the bottom line. Vanderkam is right about obsession, it turns out. Han observes that “the positivity of Can is much more efficient than the negativity of Should” and that “the achievement-subject is faster and more productive than the obedience-subject.” This same limitlessness is what leads the achievement-subject toward burnout. Trained to set her sights on infinity, ...

Not all tasks are essential to survival, Burkeman writes, and it isn’t universally “compulsory to earn more money, achieve more goals, realize our potential on every dimension, or fit more in.” The hustle means different things to different people. But if you are truly an achievement-subject who is only wearing yourself down, then I suggest an adjustment of discretion: experimenting with what looks like mediocrity in some parts of your life. Then you might have a moment to wonder why and to whom it seems mediocre.