How to Find Joy at Work Again

Why burnout is everywhere, and how to reclaim meaning, energy and satisfaction.

For years, the promise of work was simple: find what you love, do it well and happiness will follow. But for many people today, that promise has fallen flat. According to Gallup, nearly 60% of U.S. employees report feeling emotionally detached, while more than 1 in 5 say they feel miserable in their jobs. But career burnout isn’t simply about working too hard or choosing the “wrong” career. It’s often the result of mounting pressure, blurred boundaries and the exhausting expectation that work should be fulfilling, fun and meaningful at all times.

“People put a lot of undue stress on themselves of like, ‘This is how I’m supposed to behave when I walk in the door,’” says Timm Chiusano, the self-proclaimed “Mr Rogers of Corporate America.” The message he offers to his nearly 1 million followers is different: people do their best work by being the best version of themselves — not who they think they should be relative to their career.

Where Burnout Stems From

Therapists working with professionals across industries aren’t seeing a dramatic collapse with burnout but rather a slow creep of detachment, irritation and numbness that’s hard to trace back to a single cause. “It’s usually a mixture of internal and external overload,” says Tiffany Dennis, an Atlanta therapist who works with entrepreneurs and professionals navigating anxiety, ADHD and perfectionism. “It’s never really just one thing.”

Emotional strain, financial pressure, relational stress and work demands tend to stack, especially when people are also holding themselves to unrealistic standards about productivity or happiness.
“When there’s nothing filling people up outside of work—creatively, socially or emotionally—burnout hits a lot harder,” Dennis says. “That’s when people start to lose joy at work.”

Chiusano sees the same phenomenon play out inside organizations, where employees often internalize stress as a personal failure rather than a systemic issue.

“We rush to judgment of ourselves and of other people,” Chiusano says. “But can we ever really say we would have done better in that moment, given the rest of that person’s life up to that point? There’s not enough emphasis on the potential. Not just in what you can do for yourself, but in what we can do for each other in the corporate space.”

Owning the Dynamic with The “Sitcom Mindset”

If you are looking to quell your own sense of workplace burnout, Chiusano suggests success could lie in a little reframing. Next time you feel stress, anger or tension boiling up, step back and look at the situation like a sitcom. “In a sitcom, you’re inherently giving the benefit of the doubt as an observer,” Chiusano says. “Yes, there’s that one character where you’re like, ‘Oh, that person is so annoying,’” he says. “But you still feel a certain way. And it’s not the show without that person.”

Instead of drawing hard emotional lines—this is who I am, this is who they are, take it or leave it—the sitcom mindset invites flexibility and awareness. “People think, ‘These are my boundaries. This is how I work. This is who I am,’” Chiusano says. “And that just creates friction. I think it becomes isolating. I think people end up being unhappy and they just don’t give themselves a chance to flourish.”

The sitcom mindset isn’t about minimizing real challenges or excusing poor behavior. It’s about perspective. Instead of absorbing every awkward meeting, tense email or frustrating interaction as a reflection of your worth or performance, you become an observer of the dynamic. And that shift from internalizing to observing gives people more control than they often realize. “When you do that, you then own the dynamic,” he says. “And that is one of the biggest hacks on the planet relative to being in the corporate space.”

Why More Productivity Hacks Aren’t the Answer

“When your brain is overwhelmed, it doesn’t really respond well to big-picture thinking,” Dennis says. “That’s why people freeze when they look at a massive to-do list.”

Her advice is deceptively simple: start with the smallest possible step: one email, one sentence, 10 focused minutes, and build momentum from there.

Chiusano echoes the need to move away from rigid frameworks. “We’re getting so far away from our ability to just say, ‘Hey, this was super confusing, can you help me out?’” he says. Both emphasize that productivity isn’t about following trends, it’s about working in ways that actually align with how your brain functions. “If something doesn’t work for you, that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong,” Dennis says. “It means it’s not the right tool for your brain.”

Curiosity as a Path Back to Meaning

Rather than pushing people to optimize themselves, Chiusano believes curiosity is one of the most overlooked ways to reconnect with work. “Be naturally curious,” he says. “Follow that curiosity.”

That doesn’t mean being the loudest voice in the room or asking perfectly polished questions. “If you don’t want to raise your hand in the meeting, fine,” he says. “Write it
down and then go find out what that was.” That simple habit, he explains, helps people build confidence not by knowing everything, but by becoming comfortable with what they don’t.

“The people who are most successful have high levels of self-awareness,” Chiusano says. “They’re very good at being super calm in every kind of meeting.” That calmness comes from a comfort level rooted in understanding what you do and do not know, and staying curious anyway. Rather than trying to perform competence, curiosity allows people to grow into it.

Reframing the Job You Have

When joy feels completely out of reach, Chiusano encourages people to zoom out and reframe what they do. “You get to choose how you see it,” he says. “There’s literally not a job out there you can’t reframe if you want to.” That act of reframing restores agency, especially for people who can’t or don’t want to change jobs right now.

Dennis offers a parallel reminder: “You don’t really have to love your job to have a good life. But you do need to feel like you exist as a person outside of it.” Joy, in that sense, isn’t about passion or excitement. It’s about peace. “Sometimes joy is quiet,” Dennis says. “Sometimes it’s just the absence of dread.”

Get Addicted to Appreciation

When work feels repetitive or draining, Timm Chiusano suggests shifting attention not by forcing gratitude, but by practicing appreciation.

Step 1: Pick something ordinary. Choose anything in your immediate environment, your coffee mug, a potted plant, even a lightbulb.

Step 2: Ask a few curious questions. Where did this come from? Who’s involved? What problem is this trying to solve? What had to happen for this to end up here?

Step 3: Notice the depth. That one object or task is part of a much bigger system, thousands of people, processes, logistics and decisions quietly working together to make it happen.

Step 4: Let it create distance. Appreciation creates emotional distance. It helps you stop taking
every moment so personally and reminds you that you’re part of something larger.

Try this for a few minutes when work feels draining. You may not change your job, but you might change how it feels.

Resources
Timm Chiusano, timm.work

Tiffany Dennis, theatlantatherapist.com

American Psychological Association, apa.org