Melissa* is feeling drained by the pace and demands of her job. Around a year ago, the 28-year-old moved from a small social media agency to a major advertising company — and the shift in workload has been palpable. “The pressure leaves me exhausted week after week, with no respite,” she says. “I wish it could be less stressful, but everything in marketing seems to matter so much.”
Despite the stress, Melissa does like her job and doesn’t want to quit — and so, she tends to ‘give up’ when she’s not at work instead. In recent months, she’s found herself pressing pause on socialising and leaning more and more on her favourite — if stultifying — pastime to cope. “Bed rotting is my only peace,” she says. “Finishing a busy week at work, closing my laptop, and getting straight into bed for an hours-long doomscroll is my sole relief from life overwhelm.” Melissa estimates that she doomscrolls for at least an hour a day during the week, and up to four days on a weekend day.
This might sound familiar to you. Increasingly, it seems as though all of us are in a state of constant overwhelm, simply trying to get through each day. Over the last few years, this feeling has given rise to buzzy internet trends like ‘lazy girl jobs’ (low-stress, well-paid, remote or hybrid white-collar work), ‘micro-retirement’ (taking regular months or year-long career breaks), ‘bed rotting’ (self-explanatory), ‘NPC energy’ (embracing passivity or emotionally flatness), ‘funmaxxing’ (dedicating more time to play), and, in China, the ‘lying flat’ movement (prioritising psychological wellbeing over societal pressures, particularly the country’s ‘996’ system, to overwork and overachieve). All trends that have one key tenet in common: giving up.
Slapping this kind of label on something can, of course, make it feel more real or prevalent than it might actually be — but there is a rising sense that more people are knackered and in retreat. Increasing numbers of young people report feeling chronically stressed and fatigued. When it comes to work, a 2026 report found that a shocking 91% of adults have experienced high or extreme levels of work-related pressure and stress in the last year, with 39% of 18 to 24-year-olds having to take time off because of burnout. As well as juggling unmanageable workloads that leave us too exhausted by the end of the day to enjoy our hobbies or socialise with our friends, our feeling of constant overwhelm is exacerbated by digital fatigue, the bleakness of current events (news avoidance is at a record high, with 46% of people in the UK tuning out), and our own realities, which are shaped by economic precarity, housing insecurity, and an uncertain future.
In short: the false promise we were sold growing up — that hard work = a better quality of life — hasn’t materialised. And so, why not just… give up?
Horizontal recovery
We’ve all had the odd problematic daydream in which we’re in an accident, right? The kind just bad enough to keep you out of work and in bed for a few weeks, but not serious enough for any lasting damage to your body, mind, or career (i.e. the kind that doesn’t exist). Essentially, a bed-bound sabbatical from routines, work, friends, and family. Just you, your bed, and Netflix. Rest, after all, is a good thing, surely?
Apparently, not always. Andy Cope, a wellbeing expert, ‘doctor of happiness’, and author of upcoming The Art of Focus, says there’s a big difference between restorative rest, and retreat from life: “A week of doing very little can be medicine. Six months of seeing nobody, avoiding responsibility, and scrolling until 2AM is not a lifestyle; it’s a warning light.” A good acid test, he suggests, is: “If you feel better afterwards, it was probably rest. If you feel flatter, foggier, and further away from your life, it was probably avoidance.”
Disha*, 34, has been stuck in a lather-rinse-repeat cycle of survival and rest, so she knows this flat, foggy feeling all too well. As a new mother, she’s struggling to juggle work, keep up with family and friends, exercise, prepare and eat healthy meals, and be present in her marriage. Or, as she puts it: everything. “I used to be the over-achiever who thrived on going above and beyond, but now I just do what I feel like I have to,” she says. “My energy battery feels like it’s permanently stuck at 25%, and no matter how much I try to recharge, I just cannot get back to 100%.”
As a result, weekends are largely spent in “horizontal recovery”. The thing is, it’s becoming a negative cycle. “I know people dress [giving up] up as self-care — disconnecting from the grind and recharging — but it doesn’t feel empowering to me.” Disha would prefer to spend her weekends with friends, but, she explains: “I don’t [feel like I can] foster these friendships or truly show up for someone else when I’m so exhausted.”
In many ways, the idea of ‘giving up’ is a natural reaction to the seeming endlessness of our fast-paced, ‘always on’ lives. We’re exhausted by technology and politics; the quality of our lives has been worsened by the increasingly extortionate cost of living; and we’re in the midst of a connection and intimacy crisis. But rather than empowering ourselves to dictate the pace and priorities of our own lives, by opting out, we risk becoming numb to the injustices inflicted upon us, enabling them to continue unchallenged. High stress, low-paid jobs that barely cover our living costs shouldn’t be the norm. Nor should feeling so paralysed by out-of-our-hands societal failures that we voluntarily give up our goals and social lives. Passivity won’t make us happy — as proved by a recent study, which found that young people in China who adopted the ‘lying flat’ lifestyle tend to report lower satisfaction with their lives.
If you cope with stress by opting out of the best things about life, like seeing friends, you risk, as Cope puts it, “quiet disappearance”. He adds: “Too many people are having ‘near life experiences’: fleeting bursts of aliveness and joy, but mostly [feeling] flatlined. If this becomes a culture of permanent disengagement, there’s a risk of people losing the very things that create happiness: purpose, mastery, contribution, community, and hope.”
There is evidence that this kind of disengagement is on the rise. A 2025 survey found a worrying level of indifference among young people in relation to their local communities, careers, and life satisfaction. “This isn’t calm neutrality,” the findings read. “It’s emotional fatigue. For some, this is a form of opting out: withdrawing from systems they don’t believe in.”
Penny*, 27, has recently felt this first-hand. After going through a period of busyness — exercising most days, putting a lot of importance on her career, and seeing friends every night — she found herself in a permanent state of burnout. And so, one day she decided to “stop doing it all”. As a freelancer, she started being choosier with the work she took on; she switched from doing high intensity CrossFit to yoga and pilates; and, crucially, she stopped socialising.
This was good to a point, she says — slowing down made her less tired, improved her health, and taught her a lot about herself — but it ended up going too far. “Whenever I had a plan, I’d be like, ‘I really need a night at home’, even though I’d been at home every other night of the week,” she recalls. “It got to a point where I’d gone from saying, ‘I don’t want to do these things’, to, ‘I can’t do [them]’. I feel like I lost my purpose; it made life a bit meaningless.”
Opting out while opting in
While giving up entirely isn’t always so healthy, Cope suggests that a lot of what we’re seeing is actually people choosing to opt out of the version of success encouraged by systems that are failing them — one that’s become “exhausting, fake, and joyless”. And for some, this can be a positive thing. When done wisely like this — finding a balance between work and life, with both still bringing you joy (or, at least, not stress) — Cope says ‘giving up’ becomes “healthy surrender”, giving you more presence, better boundaries, and more energy for what matters.
Case in point: Nishat, 28, who has a self-described ‘lazy girl job’, has chosen to prioritise her wellbeing and life outside of work over climbing the career ladder. “I can be productive and do my job well, but without the stress that often comes with more demanding roles,” she says. “It allows me to work at a steady pace, enjoy what I do, and still have time to relax and actually live my life. For me, fulfilment comes more from having a role that fits around my life, rather than one that takes over.”
Likewise, for Penny, though she didn’t enjoy lying flat, the experience ended up being exactly what she needed: slowing down gave her time to self-reflect and draw new boundaries for herself. “Now I’m really trying to prioritise things that are meaningful to me,” she says, “even if it breaks the boundaries I’d previously set for myself, whether that’s working on a dream commission over a weekend or saying yes to plans if I’m going to really enjoy them, even if it means I’ll be out every night that week.” Penny references a phrase that recently gained traction on social media: ‘Inconvenience is the cost of community.’ “I think that’s really true.”
Discerning what things in life require your time, are worth being a bit tired for, pushing that little bit harder to achieve, or going out of your way to complete, versus those which drain us, is evidently the key. There are elements from the ‘giving up’ approach that could pave the way for happier, more balanced lives, while simultaneously pushing back against the capitalist systems making our lives increasingly miserable (see: resisting the idea that we should do more for less at work; not feeling guilty for doing nothing in our spare time; and rejecting technology’s chokehold on our lives by prioritising each other and our real-world surroundings). But at the same time, putting effort into the things that bring real meaning to our lives should always be celebrated.
So really, says Cope, instead of framing this behaviour as ‘giving up’, we should view it as “a rebellion against fake thriving”. He says: “I don’t think happiness comes from giving up per se, [but it can] come from giving up intelligently. Give up the hustle, the comparison, the fake urgency, the toxic job, and the endless panic. But not on connection, contribution, growth, movement, meaning, and joy. The trick is to quit the things that drain your life, not the things that give your life shape.”
As for how to do this, Cope advocates for “wise effort”, learning what deserves your energy and what doesn’t. If we all figured this out and put it into action, he believes that it could help society rewrite the rules of success. “We might get healthier work cultures, better boundaries, more humane careers, and less performative busyness.” And, though the move towards it may be packaged up into problematic-sounding trends, it does seem as if we’re taking baby steps towards a future of balance.
*Names have been changed
