Burnout is a cry for meaningfulness. Put another way, it is the result of a lack of meaningfulness. This is culturally apparent. In an ever more complex society and a search for rationalization, what is deeply meaningful tends to get less attention. It takes specific effort to reach this. People don't have time or energy to make this effort. There is always so much to do that apparently cannot wait. 'So much to do' is the choice of individuals, but of course, they are under social pressure. Everybody flows along in that same river, pushing each other between the river banks and towards a promised land that may never be reached. Meanwhile, there is no attention to the surrounding landscape, no occasion to contemplate its beauty, no replenishment of human energy. Everything goes towards streaming as hard as possible.
Where does this cultural tendency come from? Complicated question. There is a self-enhancing factor at play. People look for meaning inside their continuous rush. Only, this way, they get further dissociated from it. So they try harder and harder with the paradoxical effect of getting even further away from where they could find it. It looks like a trap. It may also have started as a trap. With better means to conceptualize one's environment - and even oneself - the immediate advantages are clear, but meanwhile, disadvantages at longer term are less clear, especially if they are more obscure from the start. A diminishment of meaningfulness is such a disadvantage. Its obscurity is the direct result of our 'basic cognitive illusion' we don't see the seeing within ourselves. Our own source in our mind/brain is invisible. Thus, we have the illusion that it is either nonexistent or something magical. In both cases, we look right beyond who we are. But meaning comes from there. In combination with so much to do, we lose our own meaningfulness.
Meaning is what motivates us. There is no motivation without meaning. So, there is no renewal of energy to accomplish things, at least not the things in which one has put energy before. With energy depletion comes burnout, a feeling of exhaustion (1). A lack of meaning also brings a lack of a feeling of fulfillment (2) and a feeling of alienation (3) from who one profoundly really is. In this enumeration of a triad, one can see the characteristics of burnout as meaning related. If people do not find their meaning, they do not find their energy. In the end, there is no point in going on. One can only search for a renewed source of meaningfulness. This is to be searched within. Burnout provides the mental and even physical environment to do so. Nevertheless, if one keeps fighting for so much to do, real meaning will be kept outside. In principle, this may go on forever.
Insight may help in getting beyond. Of course, action in the right direction should be taken upon this insight. Action can be taken at the individual and cultural level. At this moment, the basic cognitive illusion is preventing this at large scale. In the end, culture itself also gets hindered by many people on their path to burnout. We then live in a burnout society until we learn to know who we truly are.
