Originally published by Flow Space.

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The data is clear: Burnout is a women’s issue. And a big one. 

New research from Future Forum that surveyed workers in six countries found that workplace stress is at an all-time high — and that 46 percent of women are burned out. Gallup’s poll numbers show that the gender gap in burnout levels since 2019 has spiked by more than 100 percent. Yet most of us feel pressure not to pause to take care of ourselves, but to keep doing more and more.

The fact that a woman’s work is never done is not news, especially to those of us who remember the world before we talked about “work-life blend.”  Now, in a world where information and commodities are easier than ever to come by, we’re overstimulated and exhausted. In a society structured around Zoom calls, Facetime, TikToks, DMs, and the intricacies of a billion apps, many of us are expected to always be “on,” and we’re longing for a moment to power off and rest. 

The impacts of chronic stress can go far beyond your work life: It can lead to depression and anxiety, digestive problems, and headaches, according to the American Psychological Association. Being stressed all the time can also raise your blood pressure, interfere with your sleep, and cause you to have trouble concentrating. Self-care can only take us so far when we’re recovering from burnout; the real solution involves figuring out a more sustainable way to live our lives.

If you opened this article because you’re tired — physically, emotionally, or mentally — the good news is that it isn’t too late to scrap the rest of your resolutions for the year and trade them in for two words: slowing down. 

These 10 books ranging from memoirs, to political manifestos, to philosophical musings will help you let go of the expectation to do it all and embrace the possibility that there’s more to life than productivity hacks, trending topics, and whatever it is that just made your phone ping. 

#1: Work Won’t Love You Back

Sarah Jaffe has long explored issues of labor in her work as an independent journalist, and in this nonfiction reported book, the cohost of the podcast “Belabored” and columnist for New Labor Forum pulls back the veil on the myth of a “dream job.” If you’re convinced that “doing what you love” might be the cure for your burnout, these pages will have you thinking twice. Through conversations with workers ranging in status from an unpaid intern to a professional athlete, Jaffe exposes how the ideal of a career that becomes a “labor of love” has tricked many of us into exploitation and overworking — and her goal is to free us from its binds so that we can work less, earn more, and get back to doing what really matters to us in our lives.

#2: Do Nothing

Award-winning journalist and public radio personality Celeste Headlee weaves together history, neuroscience, social science, and paleontology in this book, taking on our cultural beliefs about time, work, and ambition — and she does it all in a conversational tone that will keep you turning the page. Headlee’s mission with Do Nothing is to change how we think about happiness, encouraging us to break the modern habits that are keeping us lonely, anxious, overworked, and exhausted. 

#3: Life in Five Senses

A visit to the eye doctor got author Gretchen Rubin out of her head — and into her senses. In Life in Five Senses, Rubin begins a journey of exploration into how to best tune into the physical world right in front of her, becoming more present and engaged. Weaving in science and philosophy with her own experiences, she offers a rubric for doing the same, and reinvigorating the everyday for every one of us by tapping into the simple pleasures we’ve been taking for granted.

#4: A Year of Living Simply

We may not all have the same access to a stripped-down, simple approach to life as BBC personality Kate Humble, but luckily A Year of Living Simply isn’t grounded in just one woman’s approach to living with ease. Humble spoke to various people who changed the ways they were living their lives in pursuit of long-lasting happiness, often by going against the grain in a world where we are falsely made to believe that having things is the fastest route there. Humble probes the question of why so many of us are unhappy in a consumerist world, and sets out to find alternatives that might point us in a better direction. Along the way, she offers inspiration and insight in this cozy and uplifting read.

#5: Radically Content

In this memoir infused with practical tools, blogger Jamie Varon outlines strategies for resisting messages that encourage us to think we need to do more and be more — and shows readers, instead, how to practice the now-radical art of contentment in a world where our dissatisfaction is part of someone else’s profit margin. In her new framework for living, Varon offers insight into how to cultivate self-trust, redefine success on your own terms, rewrite your story, and create habits that serve you.

#6: Wintering

When Katherine May’s life turned upside-down, she learned firsthand how transformative rest and retreat could be. Instead of running from the realities of life during a series of medical issues in her family, she sought nourishment and encouragement in the notion of a cyclical life — one in which a challenging season would be followed by one with more ease. In this memoir of that time in her life, May models how we can embrace “wintering” in our own fallow times to usher in what will come after, and to keep our composure until it arrives.

#7: How to Do Nothing

How to Do Nothing is not a workbook or a guidebook. There are no step-by-step instructions to detangling yourself from the attention economy, the phrase artist Jenny Odell uses throughout this book to encompass the addictive ways in which technology is buying, selling, and stealing our attention. Instead, there are moments seated on a bench in a public park looking at the flora. There is the story of a redwood tree. There are moments of actual life, natural life, unfolding in gloriously due time. Within it all are philosophical explorations of what we lose when we stop paying attention to all that is surrounding us, and how setting our sights on what is right in front of us just may be an act of resistance.

#8: Rest Is Resistance

If you’ve never felt called out by The Nap Bishop, have you even been burned out? Artist, writer, theologian and organizer Tricia Hersey doesn’t hold back on social media and in her work with The Nap Ministry, the organization she founded to redefine rest as resistance and a form of reparations. In Rest Is Resistance, Hersey puts her 20 years of experience doing that work onto the page — showing us how rest and daydreaming can provide not only healing, but justice. She urges readers to stop measuring success through productivity and resist the urge to think of our bodies, when they are at work, as machines. By connecting modern notions of work to the brutal legacy of slavery, she illuminates a better way forward for all of us outside of Grind Culture.

#9: I Didn’t Do the Thing Today

If you didn’t do the thing today, Madeleine Dore has a permission slip for you. She tried to find the secret to productivity for five years, but instead, she realized that it had ugly roots in unhealthy comparison, impossible aspirations, and unrealistic notions of what our lives should look like. In this book, she offers an antidote: embracing the messy, imperfect, absolutely brilliant reality of our unpredictable lives, and abandoning the expectations that our to-do lists will ever be completely checked off.

#10: Saving Time

Worried you don’t have enough time to do nothing, to ‘winter,’ to explore the world around you, to slow down, to live simply? Jenny Odell’s newest title, Saving Time, is where you should begin your journey away from the grind. By examining the design of our clock itself, Odell reveals how our time has been defined for us, and she offers alternative understandings of the time we have that has the potential to rearrange our lives.