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Listen "When Enough Is Enough – The Deeper Thinking Podcast"
Episode Synopsis
When Enough Is Enough – The Deeper Thinking Podcast
The Deeper Thinking Podcast
A meditation on burnout, worth, and the quiet rebellion of stopping.
What if burnout isn’t a failure of energy, but a clarity of vision? In this episode, we trace the contours of exhaustion—not as collapse, but as quiet refusal. Drawing from the work of Byung-Chul Han, Lauren Berlant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Virginia Woolf, we explore how the ethic of constant optimisation fractures our sense of time, identity, and rest. This is an episode for anyone who has confused stillness with failure—and is beginning to suspect otherwise.
Instead of solutions, we offer attention. A new rhythm of presence. A permission to belong in your life without performing it. Through the philosophical lens of phenomenology, the emotional textures of burnout are re-read as signals of misalignment—not of ambition, but of inherited narratives about value, time, and selfhood.
Reflections
Here are some reflections that surfaced along the way:
Exhaustion isn’t weakness. Sometimes it’s the body's dissent.
You are not behind. You are bound to a rhythm that was never yours.
Stillness is not failure. It is refusal to be rendered.
Attention, not effort, is the ground of meaning.
Burnout is not just depletion—it’s the misrecognition of self as function.
Rest is not a reward. It is a right.
Why Listen?
Explore the quiet ontology of burnout without pathologising it
Reflect on phenomenological time and the violence of optimisation culture
Reclaim presence through stillness, not productivity
Reframe rest as an epistemic and ethical act
Listen On:
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Support This Work
If you’d like to support the ongoing work, you can visit buymeacoffee.com/thedeeperthinkingpodcast or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you.
Bibliography
Han, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society. Stanford University Press, 2015.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press, 2011.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge, 2012.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Hogarth Press, 1929.
Bibliography Relevance
Byung-Chul Han: Frames burnout as a pathology of hyperachievement and the disappearance of “the other.”
Lauren Berlant: Offers a lens into the emotional infrastructures that bind us to unsustainable forms of life.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Provides the phenomenological grounding for embodied presence and lived time.
Virginia Woolf: Captures the quiet ethics of autonomy, rest, and the politics of refusal through spatial metaphor.
To stop isn’t to disappear. It’s to reappear on your own terms.
#Burnout #ByungChulHan #LaurenBerlant #Phenomenology #MerleauPonty #VirginiaWoolf #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast #RestIsRadical #AttentionOverEffort #QuietRebellion #EthicsOfEnough
The Deeper Thinking Podcast
A meditation on burnout, worth, and the quiet rebellion of stopping.
What if burnout isn’t a failure of energy, but a clarity of vision? In this episode, we trace the contours of exhaustion—not as collapse, but as quiet refusal. Drawing from the work of Byung-Chul Han, Lauren Berlant, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Virginia Woolf, we explore how the ethic of constant optimisation fractures our sense of time, identity, and rest. This is an episode for anyone who has confused stillness with failure—and is beginning to suspect otherwise.
Instead of solutions, we offer attention. A new rhythm of presence. A permission to belong in your life without performing it. Through the philosophical lens of phenomenology, the emotional textures of burnout are re-read as signals of misalignment—not of ambition, but of inherited narratives about value, time, and selfhood.
Reflections
Here are some reflections that surfaced along the way:
Exhaustion isn’t weakness. Sometimes it’s the body's dissent.
You are not behind. You are bound to a rhythm that was never yours.
Stillness is not failure. It is refusal to be rendered.
Attention, not effort, is the ground of meaning.
Burnout is not just depletion—it’s the misrecognition of self as function.
Rest is not a reward. It is a right.
Why Listen?
Explore the quiet ontology of burnout without pathologising it
Reflect on phenomenological time and the violence of optimisation culture
Reclaim presence through stillness, not productivity
Reframe rest as an epistemic and ethical act
Listen On:
YouTube
Spotify
Apple Podcasts
Support This Work
If you’d like to support the ongoing work, you can visit buymeacoffee.com/thedeeperthinkingpodcast or leave a review on Apple Podcasts. Thank you.
Bibliography
Han, Byung-Chul. The Burnout Society. Stanford University Press, 2015.
Berlant, Lauren. Cruel Optimism. Duke University Press, 2011.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Routledge, 2012.
Woolf, Virginia. A Room of One’s Own. Hogarth Press, 1929.
Bibliography Relevance
Byung-Chul Han: Frames burnout as a pathology of hyperachievement and the disappearance of “the other.”
Lauren Berlant: Offers a lens into the emotional infrastructures that bind us to unsustainable forms of life.
Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Provides the phenomenological grounding for embodied presence and lived time.
Virginia Woolf: Captures the quiet ethics of autonomy, rest, and the politics of refusal through spatial metaphor.
To stop isn’t to disappear. It’s to reappear on your own terms.
#Burnout #ByungChulHan #LaurenBerlant #Phenomenology #MerleauPonty #VirginiaWoolf #TheDeeperThinkingPodcast #RestIsRadical #AttentionOverEffort #QuietRebellion #EthicsOfEnough
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