Working over 80 hours a week. Unpaid. That was the call made by Elon Musk during his time as head of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, appealing to “revolutionaries with very high IQs” to take charge of cost-cutting. Musk himself has claimed that he and his employees work 120 hours per week. Given that a week has 168 hours, these extreme work schedules would leave only 6.8 hours per day (weekends included) to sleep, eat, grocery shop, pick up the kids, spend time with a partner, go out with friends, exercise, do laundry, tidy the house, pay bills, and return to the office—since the world’s richest man believes that remote work is “bullshit.”

Beyond the anecdote, the more troubling fact is that Musk is not the only tycoon advocating for such measures to “shake the system.” At the end of 2023, Australian billionaire Tim Gurner declared that the unemployment rate should increase by 40% to 50% to “inflict pain on the economy” and “remind people that they work for their employers and not the other way around.” These statements came in the wake of a phenomenon that began after the Covid-19 pandemic and continued in the following years, known as the Great Resignation, when millions of workers quit their jobs en masse, questioning the current way of living and working.

An Engine Overheating
Our era has been labeled in many ways: the digital age, the attention age, the post-truth era; the liquid society, the spectacle society, the burnout society. But if one term could sum it up, “performance society” would probably fit best. Today, people talk about improving economic performance, academic performance, mental performance, athletic performance, even sexual performance. The mantra is to do more with less. Do an enormous amount with the minimum. Optimize. Squeeze time, brain, resources. Exaggeration becomes the norm.

Hyper-hyper human beings—hyper-connected, hyper-informed, hyper-performing, and hyper-optimized (or desperate to be)—run relentlessly like “autistic performance machines,” to use Byung-Chul Han's words.

For this Korean philosopher, contemporary society has shifted from a disciplinary society (where pressure comes from outside) to a performance society (where pressure comes from within). The animal laborans no longer needs a whip: as an entrepreneur of himself, he self-exploits.
The homo agitatus, as Jorge Freire describes, devotes himself to agitation and hyperactivity: he must “always perform, never surrender.” He pushes himself to physical and mental limits until he burns out. By constantly “recharging his batteries,” the mechanism collapses. That’s where the term burnout comes from: exhaustion caused by excess potential; it’s forbidden not to be able. Come on, you can do it, and if you can’t, it’s because you don’t want to. Just do it.

This “you can’t not be able” attitude has led to bootstrapping: the belief that everyone must improve themselves and their conditions through sheer discipline, without any external help. Thus, a culture of overexertion has developed, not only pressuring individuals to constantly outdo themselves but also attributing poverty to a lack of effort.

This has been fertile ground for the rise of so-called productivity bros, described by Jenny Odell as “people who make videos for people who make videos of themselves about strict morning routines, personal management tips, and magical time optimization formulas. Influencers get rich upholding “the idea that a person can be both the one who liberates and the one who dominates themselves.” Hence, there is a rhetoric of self-control and self-surveillance, pushing individuals to constantly monitor their own performance using spreadsheets, apps filled with checklists, optimization to-do lists, or self-grading. Because there are always more successes to achieve, more minutes to optimize, a leaner body to sculpt, and, generally, more new things to acquire.

Of course, achieving personal goals requires effort. However, hustle culture ensures that the gap between what one is and what one could be never closes. That gap must remain unbridgeable.

The Boast of Busyness
Insomnia, sleep disorders, neurasthenia, chronic illnesses, mental health problems: the world sleeps less and less, and worse. Apparently 84 employees out of 100 report feeling work-related stress. Anxiety and depression have spread across all age groups, with mental illness rates reaching 30% to 40% of the population in some countries. Chronic stress attacks all systems: it raises blood pressure, weakens the immune system, increases stroke risk, impairs attention, and contributes to premature aging.

Although we know it's harmful, in the performance society, not being stressed is almost abnormal. Stress becomes generalized, normalized, even socially rewarded. Hence, the “busy life syndrome”: every second filled with tasks and pending chores. Inability to face the blank spaces in one's schedule—or emptiness, in general—turns the scarcity of time into an object of admiration. Sociologist Michelle Shir-Wise calls it the “boast of busyness”: look how busy I am, look how capable I am. Stress as a medal, burnout as a trophy.

In English, “performance society” directly links success to doing. As if self-demand weren’t enough, social psychologist Janice Kelly’s experiments have shown that members of a society exert peer pressure on each other, creating a sort of “drag effect.” Social media platforms amplify this dynamic: performance becomes a show for an external audience. The outside world becomes a stage for content creation for the virtual world.

David Stark, sociology professor at Columbia, points out that what defines our society is not performance per se, but the fact that more and more areas of life are experienced in terms of performance metrics. “While some perform, others keep score.” Coaches and statisticians measure athletes’ performance. Companies monitor employee performance, stock markets track corporate performance, and indices tell us which nations are freer, more democratic, or corrupt.

Even “free time” has been filled with tasks and rankings: staying home for vacation doesn’t count as a real vacation anymore—you need to travel more, read more books, watch more series, visit more places, post more stories, live more and better (and above all, show it). This is known as the “experience economy,” where conspicuous consumption is no longer about owning exclusive products but flaunting luxurious experiences.

Marketing has thoroughly exploited the power of “social media envy.” A 2017 study revealed that two out of five American millennials chose their travel destinations based on how Instagrammable they were. The irony is that these same dynamics have taken over activities that were supposed to promote the opposite: self-care, silence, and disconnection have also become luxury products. Even reading has turned into a performative space, with social media posts and Goodreads challenges pushing us to showcase who reads the most books, who stays updated on the latest releases. Rankings and ratings. Top 5, top 10. Competition and comparison.

Easing Off the Accelerator
“Active men roll like stones, driven by the stupidity of mechanics,” said Nietzsche. When hyperactivity is the norm, leisure and rest are merely brief pauses to recover and return to work. But as Freire points out, the counterbalance to agitation is not rest, but apathy: we exaggerate our gestures to hide our impotence.

Philosopher María Novo suggests that we are fleeing from our very condition of being limited beings: greatness, distance, and speed are attempts to overcome nature’s barriers—and our own. A collective headlong rush.

Historian Lewis Mumford noted that it was not the steam engine but the clock that was the defining machine of the modern industrial era. Today, clocks are omnipresent: on buses, in pharmacies, on billboards, on phones, on wrists—counting even heartbeats. The timer and stopwatch are the ultimate tools of performance measurement.

We are witnessing what writer Robert Colville calls the Great Acceleration. But this goes beyond technological progress and workplace pressures. The scientific community has been warning for years about the environmental impact of current production and consumption models. This, according to Odell, has led to a “spiritual and nihilistic nausea” at “the thought of racing against the clock toward the end of time.”

Faced with the imminent climate crisis, scientists, economists, politicians, and thinkers have debated how to establish a model that genuinely respects planetary (and individual) limits. While some advocate for degrowth—the theory that reducing economic growth is necessary for humanity’s survival—others, relying on the Draghi Report, warn about the repercussions of GDP shrinkage on maintaining the welfare state. But what if this isn’t a zero-sum game?

Economist Toni Roldán argues that more productive societies do not have worse anxiety problems: in Denmark, people work fewer hours and enjoy a better work-life balance. “We need to be more productive to live better,” he says. Philosopher Carlos Javier González Serrano believes the dilemma between hyper-productivity and sacrificing the welfare state is false and self-serving. The key, he says, is to build an economy that doesn’t devour the individuals who sustain it.

Ultimately, burned-out employees are of no use to companies—or to governments. According to a Gallup report, “low employee engagement costs the global economy $8.9 trillion, or 9% of global GDP.” Yet González raises a critical question: “Why do they only frame the welfare state in economic terms? What if well-being was about fostering a more frugal society that doesn’t constantly stimulate consumer desire?”

Because, though essential, well-being and development go far beyond purchasing power. Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen warned that economic growth should never be an end in itself: development must focus on improving lives. Psychiatrist Carlos Cenalmor emphasizes that a healthy and happy person is always more productive than one who isn’t. Both the UN’s World Happiness Report and the European Working Conditions Survey have shown that one of the factors most influencing quality of life and happiness is having time to cultivate relationships—with family, friends, or community.

Burnout isn’t just about lacking time; it’s also about lacking purpose.

Aurea Mediocritas
Hence, more and more public policy proposals are emerging to guarantee the “right to time.” The successful implementation of a four-day workweek in countries like Germany, Iceland, and Portugal has proven that balancing work and personal life doesn’t harm business productivity—quite the opposite.

Perhaps this is where Aristotle’s “golden mean” lies: understanding that easing off the accelerator isn’t the same as hitting the brakes. Recently, slowness has gained traction as a way to reconnect with the environment and natural rhythms. To live with less scattered attention and a calmer focus.

Writer Oliver Burkeman puts it simply: maybe not all tasks are essential for survival; maybe earning more money, achieving more goals, or fulfilling one’s potential in every sphere isn’t a universal obligation. Odell recommends experimenting with what might seem like mediocrity in some areas of life and asking oneself: who considers this mediocre, and why?

Because burnout isn’t only about time shortage—it’s also about life’s meaning. The real question may be what it truly means to “live your best life.” Especially since there’s likely no single answer, neither for everyone nor at every stage of life.

Immediacy and haste flatten context and erase nuance. Slowing down creates space to question, regain agency, and break free from numbness. Because movement is one thing, inertia is another. Movement requires intention, pauses, and meaning. It’s possible to keep moving while periodically reassessing and correcting course. Perhaps it’s all about modulating the tempo or pacing oneself.

See, La sociedad del rendimiento: ¿rendir o rendirse?

Illustration: Óscar Gutiérrez