Byung-Chul Han argues that burnout is a pathology of a society that focuses on achievement and activity.
Further, burnout follows from this sort of society that has moved away from a disciplinary society in which the primary motivator was external punishment or prohibition to an achievement based society in which we feel as though we have limitless possibility.
We can do. That is the attitude many in the West share. And because we can do, we motivate ourselves by this sense of freedom to continue and repeatedly make and create.
We have no end point. We reinvent ourselves. We work harder under the imperative or compulsion to do more. This sense of freedom means that we are not forced into such activity, but we feel enabled or freed up to act as we wish.
However, society also has to reckon with its massive mental health pandemic.