Reaching Balance

In the new year, I'd love for everyone I care about to care about what they do for a living but not at the cost of caring for themselves. I happen to know a disproportionate share of workaholics and over-achievers and am glad to say I am neither. That allows me to observe these folks from afar and nudge them sometimes. It turns out that Gen Z and I are on the same page on this. We are aligned that skipping breakfast and scarfing down a bag of Goldfish crackers for lunch is not the way to live or work.

In today’s changing workplace, Generation Z is challenging the obsession with urgency that once defined corporate culture. As Rainesford Stauffer reports in The Washington Post, many young workers who entered the job market amid the pandemic’s uncertainty are now rejecting constant crisis mode—the Slack pings after hours, the sudden projects framed as emergencies. For some, the stress has become physical: one young writer developed a rash during her first corporate job before realizing she didn’t want to live in “fight-or-flight” mode for ordinary tasks.

The shift reflects both generational priorities and economic disillusionment. Earlier workers were taught that loyalty and long hours led to advancement; Gen Z sees employers cutting staff, raising workloads, and rarely rewarding overextension. Career coach Phoebe Gavin says younger workers are pushing back against expectations that serve companies more than people. Their new motto, “It’s PR, not the ER”, captures a refusal to treat routine office work as life‑or‑death drama.

The pandemic further accelerated this change. As life’s fragility became impossible to ignore, many workers reevaluated what truly counts as urgent. Professionals like Erica Marrison describe redefining emergencies not in corporate terms but human ones—family, health, and purpose—while others, such as marketer Chanyce LeDay, have learned to communicate openly with managers about priorities instead of automatically saying yes. By advocating for clear workloads, they’re reframing productivity as precision, not panic.

Of course, not everyone has the same freedom to resist the “false emergency” mentality. Structural inequities mean lower‑wage employees, workers of color, or those without flexibility still risk backlash if they assert boundaries. Advocates like Nia West‑Bey note that true change requires broader cultural recognition that worth isn’t tied to burnout and that constant busyness can undermine, not prove, performance.

For Gen Z, the movement is less rebellion than realism: a recalibration of what work should cost. As one worker’s mother bluntly reminded her, “If you die, they’ll just post your job and say you were nice.” The new mantra, then, isn’t about doing less, it’s about doing enough, doing it well, and refusing to confuse urgency with importance.

I shared a very similar wisdom with a former co-worker who was that close to burnout but did not seem to notice. As a friend, I felt some straight-talk might shake her out of it. I remember telling her that if she dropped dead, they would backfill in in two weeks, her family would mourn her forever and yet she hardly stayed in touch with them because work was so consuming. I don't know if anything changed for her but I hope others will tell her the same thing in their own ways and there will some outcome from our collective efforts.