The Korea Times
We tend to think about burnout as the result of doing too much. But lately, it seems that even doing less doesn’t seem to fix it. There is a particular kind of exhaustion that seems to linger in our lives. It doesn’t lift with sleep or a lighter schedule, or even with time set aside to rest. You can step away from work, cancel plans, stay in for the evening and still feel as though something in your mind hasn’t quite powered down. It’s a quiet, persistent fatigue — and it’s becoming increasingly common. This sense of lingering exhaustion is not just anecdotal. A 2024 report on youth quality of life in Korea found that nearly one in three young people (32.2 percent) has experienced burnout. Notably, the leading cause was not overwork, but uncertainty about the future — an underlying mental strain that does not disappear by simply doing less. For a long time, we’ve framed tiredness as a problem of overload: too many responsibilities, too many expectations, too much pressure to perform. The solution seemed obvious — reduce the load, create balance, rest more. But what if t
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