The Exhaustion Index 🔥 May 26, 2025 (Edition #15)
A weekly report on burnout, overwork, and the quiet rebellion against productivity culture.
Welcome to The Exhaustion Index 🔥
If BURNT unpacks the roots of burnout, The Exhaustion Index tracks it in real time—because exhaustion isn’t just personal, it’s global. Each week, I break down the biggest conversations on work, rest, and productivity, so you don’t have to doomscroll your way to enlightenment.
Think of this as BURNT’s news section—minus the wellness clichés, plus some sharp, necessary critiques. Let’s get into it.
This week, we’re talking about:
📖 Burnout and your romantic relationship…yes really.
🎧 Why you can succeed on paper and still feel completely numb inside
📊 The real reason all AI logos look like buttholes (yes, really—and it makes sense)
🚩 Why multitasking and project-splitting are just sanctioned sabotage
💬 A reminder that your storm isn’t only yours
🎨 A 12-foot bronze Black woman in Times Square—and the racist outrage that proves how powerful black presence really is
Let’s get into it.
📆 Week of May 26, 2025
1️⃣ Must-Read: The Article You Need This Week
📖 “A Psychologist Explains The Phenomenon Of ‘Couple’s Burnout” – Forbes
Yes, couple burnout is a real thing. And yes, Forbes wrote about it. Turns out, you can be emotionally exhausted not just from your job, but from your relationship, too.
Forbes highlights this 10-question quiz from TherapyTips, a quiz rooted in actual psychology research (and it’s more insightful than you'd expect).
We talk a lot about burnout in the office. But what about at home, in your marriage, your situationship? Love doesn’t cancel out depletion. It can cause it.
Take the quiz. Then maybe take a walk.
2️⃣ Listen to This: A Podcast That Gets It
🎧 “High Functioning: The Hidden Depression That May Be Stealing Your Joy” — The Rich Roll Podcast w/ Dr. Judith Joseph
Dr. Judith Joseph—a Harvard-trained psychiatrist and expert on high-functioning depression—breaks down a truth that so many of us live but rarely name: success doesn’t always come with joy.
She explores how you can be high-achieving, seemingly thriving, and still feel emotionally flat. The email gets sent. The boxes get checked. But internally? You’re disconnected, numb, and running on fumes. That’s not laziness. That’s anhedonia—and Dr. Joseph has language and tools for getting your joy back.
She introduces her “5 V’s” framework for healing, reconnecting, and re-prioritizing what actually matters. This isn’t surface-level self-help—it’s deep, warm, compassionate science.
If you’ve ever felt like you should feel good but don’t? Listen to this.
3️⃣ Insight of the Week: Did You Know?
📊 Most AI company logos look like buttholes—and that’s not a coincidence.
(Radek Sienkiewicz, Velvet Shark)
Circular shapes. Central void. Radiating elements. Soft organic curves. Sound familiar? That’s because you’ve seen it before—Circular Design = Safe & Infinite.
This isn’t just a roast. There’s real design psychology at work here. Circles represent wholeness, completion, and infinity—all themes AI companies want you to associate with their tech. The human brain naturally sees familiar patterns in abstract shapes (like the "face" on Mars). This is called pareidolia.
In this hilarious and uncomfortably accurate piece, by Radek Sienkiewicz, that I discovered on Staring At The Ceiling, Sienkiewicz breaks down why AI branding all leans toward the same design formula: make the terrifying feel approachable. AI companies desperately want to project comfort while quietly automating us out of relevance.
It’s not just funny. It’s revealing.
4️⃣ Productivity Myth to Unlearn
🚩 “Multitasking and splitting projects makes work go faster.”
Nope. It makes your brain slower. Your team, too.
Research from the University of California Irvine shows it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to refocus after a single interruption. That means every “quick pivot” is a full-on productivity tax. And when you split someone across three, four, five projects? You’re not accelerating output—you’re scheduling burnout.
Multitasking with work isn’t efficiency. It’s cognitive overload dressed up as hustle. If you want things to move faster, stop expecting people to do everything at once. Focus is a resource. Treat it like one.
5️⃣ Quote of the Week: Something to Sit With
💬 “Rain does not fall on one roof alone.”
— African proverb
Whatever you’re carrying—you’re not the only one. Hard seasons are collective, even when they feel personal. Burnout, grief, stress, uncertainty... it’s not just you.
Sharing, although scary, is an act of vulnerability that can lead to feeling less alone when the rain feels like it’s pouring on your house alone.
Courage, Dear Heart as Mr. Lewis said so well.
6️⃣ Something Beautiful Just Because
🎨 Thomas J Price’s “Grounded in the Stars” – Times Square, 2025
Thomas J Price’s new sculpture is stunning. A 12-foot bronze of a young Black woman—unbothered, grounded, real—now stands in the middle of Times Square. She’s not a historical figure. She’s not a tragic symbol. She’s not “important” by white supremacist standards. She just is. And it’s breathtaking.
Price is a genius. His work dignifies the everyday. He sculpts Blackness with care, with precision, with softness and weight. He doesn’t exaggerate. He doesn’t pander. He renders the ordinary extraordinary.
Which is why the backlash says so much. The sculpture went viral not because of controversy—but because of racism. The same people who walk past cartoonish corporate mascots and neon ads in Times Square every day are suddenly “offended” by a statue of a Black woman in a T-shirt.
Let’s be clear: the sculpture isn’t the problem. Black presence in public space is. This work is beautiful, intentional, and deeply human. And the outrage? That’s proof we still have a long way to go.
Price’s sculpture doesn’t just take up space—it redefines who’s allowed to be seen.
Thank you Thomas J Price.
