Emma Gannon on setting digital limits
The writer and podcaster explores the link between social media and burnout.
Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.
I need everyone to know that I did see that Emma Gannon also calls her Sunday link roundups “Sunday Scrolls,” and sat in embarrassment for about 10 minutes. —Kate
From where I’m sitting, Emma Gannon is the definition of doing it all. She’s the author of six successful books, including her recent fiction debut, Olive. She hosted the podcast Ctrl Alt Delete, which welcomed guests like Greta Gerwig, Lena Dunham, and Ava DuVernay. She also runs a successful Substack, The Hyphen by Emma Gannon, where she shares writing tips and article recommendations with over 23,000 [2024 EDIT: almost 50,000!] subscribers. And yet, when I first reached out to her last month, I received an auto reply letting me know she was offline for all of June.
Turns out that Gannon tries to take a month off twice a year. She also doesn’t work on Fridays. And when she does work, she keeps a schedule crafted to avoid burnout. After growing up online and writing about it in her first book (also called Ctrl Alt Delete), she’s built a platform on the idea of navigating life in the digital age. But Gannon’s area of expertise is broad. Her books have explored everything from balancing creativity with productivity to combating self-doubt to grappling with motherhood and the decision to remain child-free.
I admire Gannon for the way she’s steadily built her platform, weaving together her many hats into one, uh, big superhat that allows her to create on her own terms: As a voice for Millennial women who have grown up, burnt out, and are facing a new chapter of life.
In this interview for paid subscribers, Gannon and I discuss the differences between our online upbringings and the ones teens are going through now, how social media contributes to toxic hustle culture, and the future of work in a digital world.
Your first book, published in 2015, was about growing up online. Seven years later, the US Surgeon General released a damning report about the effects of teen social media use. I'm curious if any of the things being talked about as symptoms of adolescent social media use—increased depression, isolation, anxiety—resonate with you at all? Or are they a product of a different digital time?
Totally resonates. Universally teenagers of all generations go through similar things regardless of their generation: body image stuff, dating, identity crises, friendship and mental health — we always have more in common than we think. But now, it’s all sped up and even more overwhelming for today’s teens. We are simply not supposed to know what hundreds (or thousands) of other people are doing at any given time, especially when your brain is still developing. (According to recent findings, the human brain does not reach full maturity until at least the mid-20s.) It’s hard to know what “boundaries” are when you’re that young and still figuring yourself out. When I was young we’d put on a horror film and hide behind the sofa watching it through our fingers — nowadays kids are sending each other horrific stuff multiple times throughout the day and getting desensitized to it — that does worry me.
My first book Ctrl Alt Delete was about growing up online, but it was a different time in the noughties. We were introduced to it gradually: the early internet days brought some genuine moments of connection (naively writing to a friend on their Facebook Wall; sharing MySpace bands, writing something on a very simple blog. We weren’t overloaded yet, it was a pretty leisurely activity.) This was before the social media platforms started seeing everything as a monetization or personal brand strategy — there were hardly any ads, data collection, video — we were able to enjoy it. That’s why I wrote that book; because I knew it was a brief moment in time and it was all going to change. Cut to now; we aren’t yet aware of how much the evolution of the internet has harmed our young people. Researchers have also found a loose link between teens who often used social media and ADHD symptoms. I don’t think it’s necessarily just social media though — it’s the cultural messaging at large (be thin! Be rich! Be popular! Be busy! Be famous! Be perfect! Go on Love Island!) and that is exacerbated via social media. Teaching our youngsters self-worth and awareness will help more broadly, and that includes how they view social media, and view themselves.
Since then, your work focuses more on career and burnout. “Burnout” is a very zeitgeisty word. What does it actually look like?
My personal red flags for burnout are: exhaustion, cynicism and apathy. If you are feeling really really “meh” about something you’ve always loved — you are on the road to burnout. I’ve always commentated on work/careers from a Millennial point of view (and more broadly) so it would be impossible to not talk about the burnout epidemic amongst workers. I agree, burnout has become a buzzword, and therefore it quickly loses its meaning. I recently wrote about “existential burnout” which isn’t just “I’m tired from over-working” — it’s something much bigger and deeper, affecting a huge proportion of society because so many factors just simply aren’t working. We are going through massive change post-pandemic, and many people aren’t able to work and “produce” in the same way. We’re also on the brink of a massive AI movement so I am interested in the conversation between humans and machines. Could we live in a world one day where human beings aren’t being squeezed to their limits in this capitalist pyramid scheme we all currently live in?
A lot of my ambition is motivated by the fact that any career achievements bolster the life I can portray online. What role do you feel social media plays in these conversations around success and burnout?
That’s very interesting, and honest of you to say. I wrote a book called The Success Myth for this reason. On paper, 2018 was my most “successful” year yet and my Instagram feed looked amazing. Flights, Ted Talks, hotel rooms — and yet, it was a miserable year where I felt totally lost inside. We are human; we crave status, we are social animals, we love a little dopamine boost of “likes,” but I’m more interested now in the conversation around what “success” truly feels like on a personal level when you are portraying a life that feels good rather than looks good visually. Figuring this out has changed my life.
A huge side effect of the pandemic was work moving online, which makes it hard to distinguish any kind of boundary between work and play. It's easy to stay plugged in at all times, and sometimes it’s even expected of people. How do you combat this?
In my twenties, I actually enjoyed the idea of merging my home and work life. “Sending emails by the pool!” was the Girlboss mantra. I got sucked into the “dream” of 24/7 hustle culture. I wrote a book called Disconnected about how I finally cut ties with this way of living — how to learn how to disconnect from the constant treadmill and look up. Because so many of us work from home, we no longer have physical boundaries (the commute, separate office building, the walking distance) so we have to create psychological boundaries. I.e how do we disconnect and feel free in the small pockets of the day? How do we have a better lunch break? How do we unplug for a daily walk? How do we have an identity outside of our achievements? The book is full of pretty basic tips but I found myself needing a reminder of the most basic of things.
One thing that struck me while putting together these thoughts is how your career is almost divided into—to pull a word from Taylor Swift—“eras.” You manage to go deep on topics like social media, productivity, burnout, and the choice to be child-free. Are you conscious of these “chapters” of your career, and how do you determine what it is you focus on from project to project?
I love that. And who doesn’t love Taylor Swift! Maybe it sounds a bit woo-woo, but my ideas come to me and find me — I get ideas on walks, planes, after a nap! I don’t plan things out necessarily. Sometimes ideas come into my consciousness almost fully formed and it can just “feel right.” It’s a hard thing to quantify or explain sometimes, but I feel my most creative when I am taking care of myself.
You started your newsletter because, like many of us, you wanted to reclaim a joyful space on social media. Have you found that to be successful?
YES! I am a big fan of Substack, and I hope it keeps this good vibe going. I really like Hamish Mackenzie (one of the co-founders) and many people who work there (e.g. Farrah Storr, Christina Loff, Hannah Ray). The culture of a company really matters. I used to go into London’s Twitter HQ a lot back in the day, it used to be such a joyful atmosphere, and unfortunately now it feels pretty toxic for obvious reasons. Anyway — it is joyful here in newsletter world! I’ve always loved sending a digital version of a letter, it feels more intimate than a social post. I love how email has stayed pretty steady through the internet years. I love how there is more room to play, longer word count, a comment section, it’s truly blissful. (And I get paid for it.)
Now, you are an author, podcaster, newsletter writer, and I’m sure many more things that I haven't even stumbled across yet. Would you say one of these is your “primary” gig, and how do you balance them? Do you ever have to take your own advice?
I do love having fingers in pies. I guess my primary job title would be “writer”. But as many writers in the 21st century I have to have multiple income streams. I would love to be a character in a Jane Austen novel, going for long walks and then sitting down with a quill and ink pot by a roaring fire, but alas, it’s not the reality.
I balance everything by breaking up my days into three parts. I need a three-hour chunk to get some deep work done (Oliver Burkerman’s 3-4 hour rule). So I work out the priorities of the day and split out my to-do list into morning/early afternoon/late afternoon (8-10am, 11am-1pm, 2-4pm.) I don’t work past 4pm, and I don’t work Fridays, so I have plenty of time for leisure time and being inspired by other things.
I do take my own advice, yes! I write down lots of pep talks and quotes in my journals and I re-read them often. When we write by hand we can connect to that wiser version of ourselves.
It feels like we’re in a precarious moment for so many of the things you write about. Everything fun about social media is being ruined by capitalism, and work as we know it is being redefined by back-to-office negotiations and, at least in the U.S., an increase in unionization and strikes. How do you see the future of these things changing?
It’s a pretty gnarly time to be alive right now, but the eternal optimist in me sees that things are changing fundamentally (hopefully) for the better. More generally I see people “waking up.” There is a continuous rise in online activism, union strikes working, an ongoing wealth of free information (Ted Talks to podcasts) and amazing organizations helping people pivot into new careers. In general, post-pandemic, we aren’t going back to sleep. Whether that’s exploring a connection to nature, planet cycles, self-compassion, spirituality, trying different therapies and trying new things, we have a lot at our fingertips to make change. If we collectively begin to realize we don’t need so much material “stuff,” that we don’t need to be constantly advertising our lives, that we are all connected (and need each other), maybe something bigger could shift. And yes, that may mean some sacrifices to our current hyper-convenient culture.
Where do you tend to spend most of your time online?
Good question! Substack and email, mainly. Plus Google, Wikipedia or Reddit threads sometimes when I’m researching niche things to do with a novel I’m writing. Apart from that, I don’t really spend a lot of time scrolling or searching anymore. I’m not on Twitter much, I unfollowed everything on Instagram and am not on Threads. Oh, and The New York Times and The Cut.
Do you have a preference between writing fiction and nonfiction? Can we expect more fiction?
Am I allowed to say both? I love non-fiction because you get paid upfront and it’s quicker to write as you are mainly writing what you already know (and researching things along the way). But I love writing fiction too, it’s so freeing to write without needing Internet access (apart from the Reddit thread rabbit-holes as I mentioned above) because you’re making it all up. I can be more honest in my fiction because there are layers between me and it.
Finally, you've taken the month of June to have some “laptop-free” time. What does that look like for you? What's your favorite way to “touch grass”?
I have always designed my working life so that I am not always tied down and can take time off in chunks. It’s uncomfortable sometimes thinking people might “forget” you if you log off for a month, but that’s what the Internet has done to us — tricked us into thinking we can’t disappear for a little while. Usually, I take a summer month off (June or August) and then December off to spend time with family. I find there’s always a month in the summer and around Christmas that everyone is away anyway. Love the phrase “touch grass”: I am very into cold water swimming these days. I also love to read Julia Cameron books, write for pleasure, visit friends, borrow a friend’s dog, sit in my garden, go for long walks with my husband, explore a new small city, drink mocktails, find vintage stores / secondhand bookshops. Whenever I go anywhere, I Google “Lido” [pool] or “independent bookshop” and take it from there! In the words of Cheryl Strayed “you don’t have a career, you have a life.”
Thank you for having me. a joy! <3