The corner of the monitor is doing that thing again. That little pulse, a barely perceptible blur that happens when you’ve stared at it for too long. My jaw is a single, solid piece of granite. I can feel the tension behind my eyeballs, a dull pressure that has been my constant companion for 47 days straight. He’s still talking. His mouth is moving, and the words are forming, but they sound like they’re coming from the end of a long hallway. He’s smiling. It’s a practiced, sympathetic smile that doesn’t reach his eyes.

I had just told him I was drowning. I had just explained, with spreadsheets and project timelines, that the workload for one person was actually the documented workload for three people from last year’s budget. I had shown him the logs of my 67-hour weeks. I had used the word ‘burnout.’ And he replied with ‘growth opportunity.’ It was a perfectly delivered curveball of corporate wellness jargon, and for a second, I honestly thought the floor was going to swallow me whole. The conversation I had rehearsed in the shower, the one where I was calm and assertive, evaporated. All that was left was the hum of the server room next door and the granite in my jaw.

Let’s be clear. The idea of a growth mindset, as originally researched by Carol Dweck, is not the problem. The concept is elegant: believing your abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Who can argue with that? It’s powerful. It’s true. I believe in it. I also believe that a screwdriver is a useful tool, but that doesn’t mean you should use it to perform open-heart surgery. The corporate world has taken this nuanced psychological concept, stripped it for parts, and rebuilt it into a weapon of mass gaslighting.

The Weaponization of a Good Idea

It has become the perfect tool for shifting accountability. It reframes systemic failure as individual weakness. Is the company understaffed and hemorrhaging talent? No, you just need to embrace the challenge of doing more with less. Are the deadlines completely untethered from the physics of time and space? You just need to improve your time management skills. Is the culture toxic, rewarding frantic visibility over actual progress? This is a great chance to develop your emotional fortitude. The system isn’t broken, you are. Your attitude is the problem. Just grow a little more.

I hate that I fell for it for so long. And worse, I hate that I’ve used it on other people. I once managed a junior designer, a brilliant kid fresh out of university. I assigned him a project with an impossible deadline, a consequence of my own poor planning and failure to push back on a client’s absurd request. After two weeks of him working until midnight, he came to me, looking pale and defeated, and admitted he was struggling. I remember, with a shame that still feels hot, putting on my best ‘wise mentor’ face and telling him that this was the kind of pressure that forges great designers. I used the word ‘opportunity.’ I told him to embrace it. What I was really saying was, ‘Please endure the consequences of my mistake so I don’t have to have an uncomfortable conversation with my own boss.’ I was asking him to have a ‘growth mindset’ about my failure of leadership.

We seem to have created a world where the only acceptable response to being set on fire is to be praised for the beautiful light you are giving off. And we start this conditioning so young. We’re so obsessed with grit and resilience that we risk pathologizing a child’s completely normal response to a difficult situation. Instead of asking if the classroom is too loud, if the social dynamics are unfair, or if the academic pressure is developmentally inappropriate, we ask a seven-year-old to reframe their anxiety as a challenge. It’s madness. We wouldn’t force a toddler into an outfit that’s two sizes too small and tell them to ‘grow into it’ by being more flexible. We instinctively understand that for real, healthy development to happen, the environment needs to be supportive and accommodating, right down to the basics like well-made Infant clothing nz. We know that children thrive not when they are forced to endure, but when they are given the space and safety to explore. So why do we abandon this fundamental logic the moment someone clocks in for a job?

The Wisdom of Hiroshi and the Clock

This whole line of thinking reminds me of my grandfather’s friend, Hiroshi S.-J. He’s a restorer of antique grandfather clocks. His workshop doesn’t smell of synthetic air freshener and corporate despair; it smells of lemon oil, old brass, and wood that has lived for centuries. He is 77 years old and has the most patient hands I have ever seen. I once watched him work on a clock from 1847. The pendulum refused to swing consistently. It would go for a few minutes, then stutter to a halt. A corporate manager would have told the clock to develop a ‘swing mindset.’ They would have held a seminar on the ‘7 Habits of Highly Effective Pendulums.’

Hiroshi did not. He just watched it. For hours. He listened. He gently touched the escapement wheel, feeling for a burr so small my eye couldn’t see it. He measured the humidity in the room, noting how the ancient wood of the clock’s case had swollen by a fraction of a millimeter, creating imperceptible friction. He didn’t try to change the clock’s fundamental nature. He didn’t demand it overcome its circumstances through sheer willpower. He studied the system. He understood its limitations, its history, its material reality. After two days of observation, he took a tiny file, removed a sliver of metal from the verge pallet no bigger than an eyelash, and added a drop of specialized oil. Then he adjusted the climate control in the workshop by 7 percent.

He fixed the environment, not the pendulum’s attitude.

And then, the clock began to tick. A deep, resonant, and steady beat that filled the entire room. It wasn’t trying. It was just… working. It was functioning as it was designed to, because it was in an environment that allowed it to do so. Hiroshi says that every clock wants to tell the time. Your job as the caretaker isn’t to yell at it for failing, but to find and remove the blockages preventing it from doing its job. Remove the friction. Respect the materials. Create the right conditions.

A Partnership Mindset

This is the opposite of the weaponized growth mindset. It’s a partnership mindset. A systems-thinking mindset. It acknowledges that people, like clocks, are not infinitely malleable resources. We are complex systems that require specific conditions to function well. A person suffering from burnout doesn’t need a lecture on resilience. They need the friction removed. They need a lighter workload, clearer expectations, more resources, a manager who protects them from impossible demands. They need their environment to be restored, not their mindset to be reprimanded.

I will admit, it’s far easier for a company to buy a thousand copies of a pop-psychology book and host a lunch-and-learn than it is to do the hard work of building a sustainable, humane, and properly-staffed workplace. It’s cheaper to push the responsibility for systemic stress onto the individual. But it’s a costly illusion. You lose your best people. They don’t announce it, they just get quiet. They stop innovating. They stop caring. The 237 emails they receive in a day become a gray wall of noise. And then, one day, they’re gone. And the company, bewildered, will probably hold a meeting to discuss how to hire people with a stronger growth mindset.