The Weekly Exhaustion Index 🔥 June 23 2025 (Edition #17)
A weekly report on burnout, overwork, and the quiet rebellion against productivity culture.
Welcome to The Weekly 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.
This week, we’re talking about:
📖 Deloitte’s attempt to fix burnout with… Legos
🎧 Marc Maron calling it quits after 16 years, and why that matters
📊 The U.S. states most burned out, and what it reveals about our national crisis
🚩 Why you can take a sick day for your mental health (yes, even if it’s “just” burnout)
💬 Oh, to be here and now
🎨 A surrealist vintage Tiffany campaign that proves Elsa Peretti was the best
Let’s get into it.
📆 Week of June 23, 2025
1️⃣ Must-Read: The Article You Need This Week
📖 “Deloitte Is Fighting Employee Burnout with Legos” – Fast Company
We’ve officially entered burnout absurdity. Deloitte, one of the largest professional services firms in the world, has decided that the antidote to its grueling 55+ hour workweeks is… Legos. Yes. You read that right. Employees can now spend up to $1,000 a year on “well-being” items like Lego sets, puzzles, and yoga mats. Because nothing says we hear you like plastic bricks to assemble after a 14-hour day and three back-to-back client fire drills.
Giving employees Legos without reducing their workload as form of manipulation…its the denial of a major systems problem. You cannot solve emotional depletion with a Lego Death Star. You cannot outbuild your way through exploitation.
This isn’t “employee care.” It’s a branded distraction. HR “Wellness” theatrics in primary colors.
2️⃣ Listen to This: A Podcast That Gets It
🎧 “WTF With Marc Maron” — The End of an Era
Marc Maron announced he’s ending WTF, the podcast that helped define the genre, due to burnout.
“We’re tired, we’re burnt out, and we are utterly satisfied with the work we’ve done… We’ve done great work.”
After nearly 16 years and more than 1,600 episodes, with guests like Barack Obama, Robin Williams, and Carol Burnett, he and producer Brendan McDonald are calling it. According to Mark there is no drama. They’re are just simply over it. “We’re done.”
It’s such a rare thing in our over-extend-everything culture: someone choosing to stop at enough. In this same episode, featuring John Mulaney, Mark is funny, honest, and fascinating. It’s about creativity, fatigue, evolution, and permission. Permission to walk away from even the thing that “made you.” Especially if you’ve outgrown it.
If you need a reminder that quitting isn’t giving up, it’s actually self love, take a listen.
3️⃣ Insight of the Week: Did You Know?
📊 Louisiana is officially the U.S. state that suffers from burnout the most — Forbes
Here’s what the data says:
Louisianans work more hours than anyone else in the U.S., an average of 36.2 hours a week
They have the lowest positive sentiment toward hustle culture (a flat zero)
And they have one of the highest smoking rates in the country, with 18.3% of residents lighting up in 2022
Burnout isn’t just showing up in productivity stats, it’s showing up in coping mechanisms, cultural disillusionment, and literal smoke signals.
When a state works the most, hates hustle culture the most, and self-medicates at some of the highest rates in the country? That’s not an individual issue. That’s systemic exhaustion with a zip code.
Top 10 Most Burned-Out States (according to Forbes):
Louisiana
Missouri
West Virginia
Georgia
Alabama
Indiana
Mississippi
Kentucky
Tennessee
Arkansas
4️⃣ Productivity Myth to Unlearn
🚩 “You can’t take a sick day for a personal day.” - As asked in this week’s The Ethicist, NYT
Yes. You. Can. Whether its a day day to do whatever. Mental exhaustion, grief, burnout, emotional depletion, the sheer need to not answer to anyone for 24 hours? All valid. Its your time and your employer doesn’t really care about you.
We’ve been so conditioned to only call out sick when we’re visibly leaking or feverish that we’ve completely erased rest as a form of prevention. And let’s be real: if you’re debating whether your burnout counts as “sick enough,” you probably already needed the day yesterday.
A sick day is not a confession. It’s a boundary.
Take the damn day for whatever reason.
5️⃣ Quote of the Week: Something to Sit With
💬 “We crucify ourselves between two thieves: regret for yesterday and fear of tomorrow.” — Fulton Oursler
The past doesn’t need you. The future isn’t ready for you. The present is the only place anything actually shifts. Most of us live suspended between both, replaying what we can’t change and rehearsing what we can’t control. It’s exhausting. And it’s entirely human.
But maybe…lets try to be here…in the now.
6️⃣ Just Because: Something Beautiful, Just Because
🎨 Substack Is My New Pinterest, and Elsa Peretti Just Stole the Show
These vintage Tiffany & Co. ads by Elsa Peretti are pure visual poetry. I stumbled upon them while down a Substack rabbit hole (which has become my new Pinterest), and I haven’t stopped thinking about them since.
They’re sensual, surreal, a little off-kilter, just like Peretti herself. The ads feel like art you’d find in a dream: a fish being delicately lifted out of a goblet, a bone crawling with ants wrapped in sculpted silver. They’re sexy, surrealist, so strange, and totally unafraid of being misunderstood. There’s nothing polished or algorithm-approved about them, which is probably why they feel so timeless.
Ugh divineeee!
