Can't Even is a comprehensive follow up to Peterson's 2019 Buzzfeed article: How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation. In this book's deep dive, Peterson posits that decades of economical and social developments have created the current environment in which millennials feel pressured to complete the impossible task of being and doing all things, without the structural systems to support their efforts,

Peterson makes excellent arguments and presents a fascinating historical framework, but the execution is heavy-handed. I was left feeling like each chapter was a list of evidence, where I wanted to find compelling storytelling. That said, Peterson's background as an academic likely lends itself to this sort of writing presentation. While the book as a whole left me wanting something more personal, I was validated by a number of compelling one liners, like "the causes are systemic, which is why the problems have to be holistic". As a millennial, I walked away from this book without tangible solutions to alleviate my burnout, but with much validation for the exhausting position in which I find myself.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

This book is a massive expansion upon Anne Helen Peterson's 2019 Buzzfeed article titled "How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation". The article was so well thought out that I was thrilled to see that Peterson was expanding it into an entire book. In Can't Even, she lays out an argument that takes one from the environment and economy that baby boomers grew up experiencing and shows how that contributed to the upbringing and lessons passed down to Millennials as they were growing up. Peterson does not necessarily lay blame at the feet of the Boomer generation, as she makes it clear that they were doing the best they could with the information they had at the time, but the thesis she lays out is still fascinating. Peterson shows how the 2008 recession and the current culture of constant overwork are contributing to Millennials' declining mental heath and financial stability. A must read if you're interested in reading about economics and work life.

"Millennials live with the reality that we're going to work forever, die before we pay off our student loans, potentially bankrupt our children with our care, or get wiped out in a global apocalypse.

In short, this is an examination of why millennials are considered the burnout generation.

I wanted to like this more than I did. In fact, I kept putting off reading it because I wanted to be able to devote all of my attention to it. Realistically, I never could because it is just so dark and depressing. Don't get me wrong, there was a lot of interesting history and very valuable background. It just didn't wow me in the way I expected. I wasn't shouting "YES! Exactly!" throughout as I thought I would. I did shout, but sometimes it sounded more like "Oh, give me a break."

To summarize, I do understand a great deal more about why my generation is the way it is (and perceived the way it is), but I also recognize that we aren't the only generation with these issues. That said, I wholeheartedly agree with the following sentiment: "Boomers are increasingly positioned as hypocritical, unempathetic, completely unaware of just how easy they had it."

Is it a worthwhile read? Absolutely. Should you wait until it doesn't feel like the world is crumbling down around you because it is also depressing af? Absolutely.

Maybe the timing wasn’t right. I trudged through this book, but never got excited about it. Petersen does make valid points about legitimate reasons that millennials feel burnout. Their generation does face different uphill obstacles that my generation, the boomers, didn’t have on the job, in parenting, with technology, etc.

She paints a dark picture:

“We’re a pile of ashes smoldering, a bad memory of our best selves. Underestimate us at your peril: We have so little left to lose.”

"We blame ourselves. Deep down, millennials know the primary exacerbator of burnout isn’t really email, or Instagram, or a constant stream of news alerts. It’s the continuous failure to reach the impossible expectations we’ve set for ourselves."

"I find myself returning to one of the best pieces of advice I’ve received about how to actually reduce burnout: Think not just about how to reduce your own, but how your own actions are sparking and fanning burnout in others."

In the end, this book felt too long and too dark for me.

Thanks to Net Galley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for the review copy of this book.

I just finished this book and... I might need time to get over it. But I'll try to talk about it.

In Can't Even, Anne Helen Petersen wants to explain why millenials are so burnout, why they are misunderstood, why they are so anxious and so stuck in a life they don't like. She starts with their parents, the boomers and their education - received and given - to get to millenials.

It was both super interesting, super instructive and deeply frightening and depressing to read. It's not hard to feel close to some - or even most! - of the accounts of the people the author interviewed for her book. I was like: "Yeah, I recognise myself there... oh, and there... but... I'm not like this, really, right?"

All this pressure on workers and parents. How terrifying! All this fatigue and scrolling on social medias. How depressing!
But how true. And how sad. No time for leisure and so a semblance of leisure. Always competing and always feeling like we're not enough.

The only "redeeming" point of this book is that the author is not there to give us solutions - she doesn't have any, which is normal -, she's there to help us open our eyes and realise we are not the ones to blame for this situation. We are not the ones responsible for how we actually feel. We can try to do more, it won't change anything because it is not the solution. We are not the ones who're broken, it's the system which is broken, grinding us in the process.
It felt good to read this, that we're not responsible. Because, sometimes, it feels like we're running to get nowhere and we feel like we are the ones to blame because we didn't run fast enough or in the right direction. I felt relieved reading this book sometimes, even if I was also deeply sad. What a mess. What a waste. Reading it, it felt like an entire generation fed to the dogs of capitalism.

There is one thing that I have to add: I live in France and the situation described is the one of the United States. As I was reading, I was thinking: "Thank goodness, I'm not an American". It was also very interesting for someone not living in the US to discover the country this way. Exit the American Dream, exit the self-made man, hi depression, anxiety, stress all the time and impostor syndrome. For the first time in a long time, I was glad to be French. The school system in the US seems to be a nightmare; from a foreigner's point of view, all I knew was the prestige of the Ivy Leagues! I dreamt of them, regretting not being able to go there. I don't anymore. This book made me realise I still had an idealised image of the US.

I think I needed this book: to know, to understand, and maybe to stop being mad at people talking about millenials in ... we'll say irritating ways. It was important to start with this part about our parents and boomers in general: it contextualises our own social experience and helps us understand their situation and ours.

So, a great read, though quite sad. I still think it's important to know where we are and why.

See Goodreads link...................................................................................................…..........,.,

Tl;dr: Can't Even is a breath of fresh air you must read if you or a loved one is experiencing burnout and these days, who isn't?

I expect that Can't Even will get a fair amount of criticism for being about Millennial burnout but that criticism is both unwarranted and unfair because the book is applicable to and for anyone who's experiencing burnout, which as I mentioned above, is applicable to all of us, especially these days.

Anne Helen Petersen is a writer I've been following for a while, and I even subscribe to her newsletter, so I want to make it clear from the get-go that I am a fan of her and her writing. However, that doesn't mean I don't see that she can be prone to making statements about Millennials that I feel don't the address the entitlement that a lot of Millennials especially in the early 2000s felt. Having managed Millennials in the early 2000s, I found that many of them simply believed that getting a job meant that they should have the best salary and the best working conditions, which isn't an unreasonable expectation but at the time --and continuing to the present- is an unreasonable expectation. But one thing I realized then and have continued to think till now is that those expectations actually aren't unreasonable. They just aren't possible given the way our society treats workers.

Having said that, I think Petersen is very aware of her generation's foibles and Can't Even is an incredibly important read and addresses a topic that we all need addressed.

Burnout is endemic in American society. We are told that if we work hard enough we can achieve anything, but that is a lie. Working constantly non-stop only makes you exhausted and leaves you feeling lost, and with the addition of social media and its continual promotion of having the ideal life, even if that life is curated, only makes us feel worse about our own lives.

She does not provide tips for how to manage burnout which I greatly appreciated. Instead she promotes the idea that what America needs more than anything, is change.

This change has to be systemic. We need better healthcare, better options for daycare, better options for parents, and we need to address the inequalities that working women face. So many women who have children are forced to decide between being a mom and being a worker and there seems to be no middle ground for both. Instead those who do have children find themselves in a position where they try to do it all and end up feeling like they can never do enough.

The only way that American society can change is through change. Unfortunately, given the times we live in, what we have is an increasingly divided nation, with one side believing that we can somehow magically revert back to a time when everything and everyone had a career that would provide stability and security as well as a decent retirement. This is, as I mentioned above magical thinking. We cannot will ourselves into place that is better. We simply can't.

We must advocate for change and we must advocate for it strongly. We must demand better conditions for every working person in the United States. I highly suggest reading this along with On the Clock, a book I have recommended many times before strongly recommend again for its look into the devastating impact that gig work and low-paid wage work has not just on the workers, but on all of society.

Can't Even is more than just a recitation of why we are so burned out. It's a look at how we are so burned out and what must be done to stop it. it is an absolute must read and is very highly recommended.

The very first chapter of Anne Helen Peterson’s new book, Can’t Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation references “Old Economy Steve,” a reddit-born meme of the early 2010s that satirizes [can you call it satire when there’s no exaggeration?] Baby Boomers’ economic privilege. It mocks condescending financial advice based on an economy that no longer exists. The meme’s underlying point has become conventional wisdom among younger generations: Boomers, blissfully unaware of how easy they had it, are leaving their children and grandchildren to pick up the check.

Peterson’s much-shared 2019 Buzzfeed article put a spotlight on the ways work has changed since the post-war boom. For millennials in search of the elusive “cool” and “fulfilling” job, the line between on and off the clock has blurred. A work ethic of “hustle now, reap the rewards later” has lead to the rise of the side-hustle with no reward in sight.

The article helped put the language of “burnout” into the mainstream, giving millions of millennials a word to describe their unexpected exhaustion and paralysis.

At its core, though, the article was simply a rehash of those Boomer memes. Millennials have understood the ways the economy has screwed them for a long time; the article just puts their complaints into academic language.

Can’t Even does the same. This time, Peterson’s arguments about burnout are backed up with significant research and numerous interviews. Despite the length, however, the book adds little to the conversation.

Can’t Even is not a book about mental health.
Peterson’s description of the exhaustion and stress of burnout begs comparison to rising rates of depression and anxiety among young people. But the book never alludes to a wider discussion of mental health, despite describing burnout as what most would consider a mental health crisis.

Peterson lumps interviewee’s mental illnesses together with their workplace frustrations and relationship problems. She doesn’t distinguish between professional burnout and clinical depression, chalking all symptoms up to “the system” without allowing for other factors.

Can’t Even isn’t even about most Millennials.
More importantly, the book fails to sufficiently grapple with a persistent issue of generational study: the tendency to typify a given generation after the experience of its white and well-off members.

Peterson points out this issue early on. The term “millennial” is often invoked, she said, when identifying behaviors of the city-dwelling, middle-class, white cohort, that “kills” luxury industries and “delays” marriage and family. This, of course, doesn’t reflect reality.

Peterson promises to take a different approach. “Decentering the white middle-class millennial experience as the millennial experience is an ongoing and essential aspect of this project.”

Unfortunately, Peterson doesn’t make any moves towards decentering this experience. It is, after all, her experience, and the book is inspired by her own life. Can’t Even is organized around stories from Peterson’s [white, city-dwelling, post-graduate degreed, middle-class, childless] millennial life as a springboard for research. She literally centers her own experience.

There’s nothing wrong with writing about personal experience, but that will never allow Peterson to buck the white focus of millennial study. Frankly, she doesn’t even seem to try. There are some anecdotes supplied by millennials of color, but no meaningful intersectionality. Often, after laying out an aspect of life that’s become difficult for (presumed white) millennials, Peterson will tack on a halfhearted “of course, it’s worse for people of color” before moving on. Forget decentering— the book just barely remembers to acknowledge the existence of millennials who aren’t white, able-bodied, and relatively privileged. In fact, the book often struggles to see beyond the specific experiences of millennials with careers similar to Peterson’s. This narrow view was understandable in the original Buzzfeed article, but embarrassing in a full-length book.

Can’t Even is consistent about one thing it isn’t: a self-help book.
One of Peterson’s most interesting insight is that the barrage of personal improvement advice aimed at millennial is a symptom of the culture that leads to burnout in the first place. For the burnt-out, self-care is just another thing to fail at. Personal changes aren’t going to affect systemic issues.

This insight leaves things feeling rather hopeless, and does make me wonder about the point of this book. Peterson doesn’t seem to think that, armed with this knowledge, millennials might begin to make different choices in the majority of their life that remains, or that there’s any way she could address the causes of her own burnout. What was all this for?

Can’t Even is supposed to be about burnout among millennials. But it’s not about mental health. It’s not precisely about just millennials, and certainly not about most millennials. It’s not about possible solutions or ways forward. If millennials want to overcome their stereotype as directionless complainers, this book is a strange place to start.

While none of this was off base, it wasn't anything especially groundbreaking. Much of this was, as someone who IS a millenial, fairly obvious. I suppose I was also looking for something a bit more along the lines of the cultural experience or mindset of millenials and how we can adapt or adjust to a changing world. This felt a bit like. textbook, somewhat dry, and was just all around not entirely what I was hoping for personally.

Can’t Even takes on the millennial generation and how they are going through burnout in the workplace. Personally, I was born just prior to the Millennial Generation, and this is a topic I have had trouble understanding. I definitely did not have “helicopter” parents, but saw my cousins who grew up with that mentality. This book covers some themes and why Millennials are the way they are.

After reading this, I have to say I have a better understanding of what the generation means. In school, they worked hard to get perfect grades, pump up their resume with extra-curricular activities. They went into the work place making less money than their parents did in equivalent times. Many have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. They are working so hard with the mentality to be perfect and they are burning out.

Petersen wrote a candid book, that delves into the minds of millennials, which she herself is. She has brought a broad range of people to the conversation, to share their experiences. She also caps this book from the perspective of the parents.

I am glad I had the opportunity to read this. I probably wouldn’t have read this if it had not been recommended to me. I have always shied away from millennial literature, but now that I have a better understanding, I feel like I might be willing to take a chance. I have learned they are a super hard working generation, but at times are super unhappy because of how they were raised. It will definitely make me more accepting of things I cannot change.

Thank you NetGalley and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for an Advanced Reader’s Copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

As an "Old Millennial", this book perfectly captures my teenage years and working experience. I have a better understanding of what "burn out" really means and why we are all so incredibly tired all.the.time. I also understand my parents better and can appreciate the actions that they felt were necessary to help me succeed in what they thought my adult world would be.

How fitting to have finished this book after an absurdly long work day 🥴⁣
⁣
If you used the internet during January 2019, you probably came across the millennial burnout article by Anne Helen Petersen for BuzzFeed. That article, which detailed why your exhaustion is so much more than that, was built upon and complicated in CAN’T EVEN. ⁣
⁣
I loved how this book really dug into the history of labor laws and how exactly the nature and expectations of work have changed over the past century. As a public school teacher, I absolutely see burnout plague some of my colleagues. Today’s long hours were for me a rarity thanks to explicit boundaries I’ve made myself adhere to. But as Petersen clearly argues: it’s not about your personal boundaries, or your “life hacks”, it’s about the system wanting to extract as much from you as it can. ⁣
⁣
I occasionally wanted a wider diversity of anecdotes, but overall, I learned a lot and could write my own chapter about how many overlaps there I see between parenting and educator burnout.
⁣
Thank you to NetGalley and HMH Books for the eARC. Find CAN’T EVEN online or at a bookstore near you when it goes on sale tomorrow! ⁣

Anne Helen Petersen's Can't Even is a compulsively readable exploration into the burnout culture that Millennials are all too familiar with. As a Millennial myself, I have never felt more seen than when reading this book. Petersen's exhaustive research paired with her personal perspective makes for a book that makes the Millennial reader want to shout "YES, finally someone understands!" from the rooftops, and provides for older generations, Baby Boomers in particular, insight into this generation's particular struggles while also offering compassionate analysis of how they as parents have contributed to them. Every demographic will benefit from reading this book. It will spark conversations and encourage understanding. I learned so much and enjoyed myself while doing so.

Published in the midst of a pandemic, Anne Helen Petersen's sprawling synthesis of the ways modern American work culture is stacked against millennials feels divorced from reality. Given the economic disruption caused by COVID-19, it's hard not to come away from Can't Even thinking that Petersen's observations are already irrelevant.

But there's something to be said for social science books that remind you that you aren't crazy. And while not particularly revelatory, and often overreaching and scattered, Can't Even is full of anecdotes to remind you that, "Oh, right. It's not my fault that I can't buy a house." Or, "Gee, I guess my wages did stagnate during that Great Recession." Or even just, "You know, maybe I don't need to monetize my hobbies as much as the Internet is always yelling at me to."

So, yeah, there are people out there who will tell you Petersen's book is whiny, out of date, or just tonally off-putting. (I lean towards the latter. It's written like a combination of a student research paper and an internet hot take.) And that might all be true, but it doesn't mean she's wrong. For a lot of us, we've been doing everything we were told we had to do in order to succeed, and it's beyond time we began questioning that narrative.

I was excited to receive this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. I was hoping it would provide me with additional insights into Millennials because I feel like people are quick to assign that generation blame.

I don't know that I gained much in new insights but I did feel like much of what was in the book pointed out what I already suspected - the things that impact Millennials are not really only impacting them and their behavior is more related to their current life stage than anything else as most people are guilty of being more self-absorbed and feeling invincible when young.

I do think there was some interesting insight into the prevalence of gig work and how that impacts Millennials since they are starting out careers that way vs transitioning into that.

Overall, it was a decent book. Worth the read if this topic interests you but I wouldn't go out of my way to read it.

This was an interesting analysis to read through and I agree that Petersen was able to shine a light on some of the generational and societal issues.
However you can't go around blaming others. Nobody forces you to buy all the things you don't need, nobody forces you to spend thousands of dollars for a degree that might not even guarantee you a job and nobody forces you to live from paycheck to paycheck.
Each generation comes with their own unique problems and opportunities and I also believe that there'll always be a bit of misunderstanding and miscommunication between generations.
I would have loved to see some more solutions or ideas on how to change things.

"There's no burnout Olympics. The most generous thing we can do for others is to attempt to not just see, but really and truly understand, the parameters of someone else's experience. In short, acknowledging someone else's burnout does not diminish your own."

I personally would classify my 'generation' as the awkward gap between millenials and gen z; I was born in 1998. Regardless, much of this book felt applicable and representative of my own experiences. Countless times throughout high school and college, I have had to ask myself... who am I without work? Do I even have a 'hobby'? Any 'free' time that I had was spent feeling guilty about not studying for that upcoming exam or not looking for another part time job or not attending that club meeting that was supposed to add another line to my resume. Even after having worked only 3 months in a corporate job, I am starting to feel the pressure to be constantly available. It feels like the only way to move up or even stay where I am is to allow my work to seep into every part of my life. I need to make the difficult decision to start putting up these boundaries that force work to be a portion of my life rather than allowing life to be a portion of my work.

Overall, this book crucial to understanding the current state of our 'profit over anything' capitalistic society. It is clearly organized and the writing is accessible to everyone. Anne Helen Petersen includes countless references to additional sources as well such as How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell which I read earlier this year.

CAN'T EVEN: HOW MILLENNIALS BECAME THE BURNOUT GENERATION builds on Anne Helen Petersen's brilliant 2019 BuzzFeed article, "How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation." Burnout culture, characterized by being in debt, turning hobbies into side-businesses to make ends meet, checking your phone a billion times because you have only a couple functional brain cells left - in short, mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion brought on by prolonged stress - is the topic of focus in this overview of how millennials have become dehumanized zombies on autopilot. Through research, detailed analysis, and firsthand interviews, Petersen describes how unrealistic expectations, unruly capitalism, and a rise in cases of work anxiety plague an entire generation.

I felt seen and understood as a millennial when I read Petersen's BuzzFeed article and subsequently this book. As a millennial, this book describes what I know about my generation from personal experience: we're exhausted, we need to unlearn most of what we were told growing up, we're addicted to our phones, we'll never have enough money or feel secure in our jobs. The book perfectly sums up the "millennial condition" and I want to hand a copy of this book to everyone who thinks our generation is filled with lazy, self-obsessed, entitled people who expect everything for nothing. I found this well-researched and filled with articles I'd like to read; though, the likelihood of me doing so is dependent on how much brain power I have left at the end of the day (spoiler: not much. #burnout). Topics in the book like how our parents parented us as well as work woes and their contribution to burnout are among the most interesting and relevant to me right now.

Petersen wraps up her book by explaining that her intention behind both the article and book isn't to tell anyone what to do, but rather to provide a way to see ourselves and the world around us with a bit of clarity. She does that well, and if you liked her BuzzFeed article, you'll like this book. I can only hope it inspires compassion and understanding between generations.

Thanks to HMH and NetGalley for the advance copy of this title.

I did not expect to devour this in a day, but it shouldn't be surprising to me - I'm a big fan of Anne Helen Petersen's writing, following her from her Scandals of Classic Hollywood days at The Hairpin through to her work both at Buzzfeed and at her own newsletter (which is worth a subscription for the weekly "just trust me" links alone).

I loved Petersen's original piece on burnout for Buzzfeed, and I love how this book expands on what was talked about there to go into detail on all the myriad ways burnout culture has particularly affected millennials. This draws a line from Boomers (who have been affected by their own particular brand of burnout) to culture today, and hits all the ways we're encouraged to stretch ourselves thin - office culture (and out-of-office, always on call, just a Slack away culture), "side hustles" rather than hobbies, the pressure of social media "branding" and curating our own lives etc. I also love how the note at the beginning of the book talks about our current cultural moment - it would have been easy for AHP to do one more revision to make everything about how COVID's exacerbated things further, but I love the decision to leave a note about that at the top of the book, making the reader use that as a lens to see how the pandemic is making the way these things are broken even clearer. I want to get copies of this book in the hands of my sister, my parents, my co-workers, and everyone else to see why we all feel so tired from our lives, and how we can come together to fix what's broken - there's not an "answer" in this book, but a call to action.

RIYL: Malcolm Harris' _Kids These Days_, Jia Tolentino's _Trick Mirror_

I loved the concept of the book and I always enjoy Peterson's style but I felt like the book was a bit rushed feeling. After her article went viral, I'm sure she felt like she had to capitalize on that and good for her but the book ended up feeling a little unpolished. I would have liked some more tie-ins to politics. She seemed to shy away from being too political but I think the book suffered for it. Her views were pretty clear but she didn't flesh them out possibly in an attempt seem impartial that fell flat. Just tell us what you think, Peterson!