A growing obsession with squeezing productivity out of every minute of the day is pushing people toward chronic stress, burnout and other mental disorders, according to work psychologist Lucas Freire, author of the book Exhausted.
In an interview with CNN Brasil, Freire said contemporary society has turned the logic of relentless effort into something subtle and woven into everyday life. He said people are increasingly caught on what he described as a continuous treadmill of productivity that empties out lived experience, calling it a defining cultural feature of the current era in which anything without an apparent productive function gets rejected.
Freire drew a distinction between effort and exhaustion. Effort on its own can be energizing, he said, but excessive effort and overload continuously drain people's time and leisure.
The 'metrification' of life
Freire identified what he calls the "metrification of life" as one of the main drivers of burnout. The phenomenon involves applying targets, numbers and indicators not just to work but to moments that are supposed to be about rest and relaxation.
He said that even during activities meant to be simple and fun, the brain keeps working under pressure. As examples, he pointed to the compulsion to photograph every meal, or the need to wear a watch to track performance while doing sports such as running.
According to Freire, these indicators gradually strip away genuine experience, a phenomenon he described as a form of "neurological captivity."
Chronic stress and mental disorders
When this heightened state of alert becomes constant, it undermines the body's physiological ability to recover, Freire said. Stress, which is normally a natural and necessary response, turns into a chronic problem.
Freire said stress is a natural and necessary reaction and that life without it is not possible, but that an overload of stress opens the door to anxiety disorders, including phobias, depression and generalized anxiety.
He said the constant pressure of productivity-driven routines also produces what he calls "stresslaxing," the inability to relax without a spike of anxiety brought on by guilt over not doing something "useful."
Freire added that physical symptoms linked to bodily inflammation, such as gastrointestinal problems and hair loss, or alopecia, have also become common.
Reviving play and old habits
Freire said society is experiencing what he called a "ludic atrophy," or an erosion of the capacity for unstructured play. He said play has a crucial role in human development, in decompression, in regeneration, in building resilience and in the capacity for emotional processing.
He argued for reintroducing into adult routines the concept he refers to using the English verb "play," which he said covers actions such as playing games, having fun, performing music or acting.
Freire said that playing, exploring art and practising sport actively and without metrics creates space where stress can take on a different meaning, free from the demand for financial return, high performance or results.
He said many people today repeat the advice to "work at what you love," but that he strongly disagrees with it, arguing that given the way people currently live, loving that work will not last long. Instead, he said people need to become amateurs again, freeing themselves from the pressure to necessarily be good at things, and should feel free to do something they might be bad at, since that is simply part of life.
