Rethinking workplace energy: Why our assumptions can lead to burnout

During the pandemic, millions of people shifted to remote work almost overnight. Video meetings, digital tools, the disappearance of informal exchanges, blurred boundaries between professional and personal life; everything changed abruptly.

Beyond the well-known challenges, a surprising question emerged in our study of this abrupt transition: why did some things we expected to be stressful turn out to be energizing, while other things, assumed to be motivating, proved exhausting? Our research explains why: it’s because of something called legacy imprints.

Even before experiencing a new work situation, we carry expectations. We naturally assume we know what will be tiring, what will be motivating, what will help us and what will not. These expectations do not emerge in a vacuum. They are shaped by past experiences, particularly in traditional, in-person work environments. We have learned, for example, that social interactions at the office are stimulating; that learning a new tool is often demanding; that mixing work and personal life can be risky; or that meetings help move work forward. These mental reference points act as a filter. They are our legacy imprints — habitual ways of categorizing work situations as either demands that will require effort or resources that will motivate us and help us deal with demands — but what happens when our work context changes abruptly?

With the workforce going virtual overnight during the Covid-19 pandemic, many organizations attempted to recreate office conviviality remotely, for instance with virtual coffees, online happy hours, team seminars on Zoom and an abundance of meetings. On paper, these initiatives were meant to sustain cohesion and morale. In other words, they were designed as resources.

However, participants in our research described a different experience: artificial interactions, stilted conversations and increased fatigue. What was initially thought to be energizing, became burdensome over time. The same applied to meetings.

At first, multiplying video conferences felt important to maintain connection but soon, employees spoke of endless meetings, screen-saturated days, “Zoom fatigue” and exhaustion.

Our study shows that the gap between expectation (“this will help me”) and lived experience (“this is draining me”) initially creates confusion but gradually, perceptions shift and these social interactions are no longer experienced as resources, but as demands or constraints.

Conversely, some elements initially perceived as problematic turned out to be beneficial. For example, the intensive learning of digital tools, first considered to be heavy and stressful, was, over time, seen as a source of efficiency. These tools helped structure work more effectively, reduce interruptions and improve coordination. Similarly, proximity to family, often feared as a source of distraction, became, for some, a source of balance and emotional support. What had been mentally categorized as a demand could, through experience, become categorized as a resource.

The turning point in both recategorizations is repeated or salient mismatch between what workers expect to feel (based on their legacy imprint) and what they actually experience. If we expect a new tool to stress us but instead we find ourselves calmer and more effective, something no longer fits our interpretive framework and we begin to question our previous categories. This is the moment when the legacy imprint is challenged. By contrast, when experience confirms expectations, for instance, when work overload remains exhausting, the original classification persists, reinforcing the legacy imprint.

This dynamic is not limited to the pandemic or to remote work. Work continues to evolve rapidly through, for example, the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) tools, frequent reorganizations, or economic and climate uncertainty, among others. Each rapid transition can trigger the same mechanism: we initially interpret novelty using mental schemata inherited from the past and then experience either contradicts or confirms those expectations. Understanding this mechanism is essential for helping workers adapt to change in VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) environments.

What does this mean for employees and managers? To start with, it means acknowledging that our first impressions are not always reliable. When facing professional change, it can be useful to ask a simple question: Am I actually experiencing this situation as I expected to? Identifying a mismatch can open the door to constructive reassessment. What seemed like a constraint may become a lever and vice versa.

Second, we should not assume that what worked yesterday will work tomorrow. An in-person team seminar may be stimulating, while its virtual replica may be exhausting. Conversely, a tool perceived as complex may turn out to be a source of efficiency. Managers benefit from creating spaces where teams can openly discuss what genuinely helps them and what truly drains them, rather than unquestionably reproducing past practices.

We often speak about the transformation of work in technological or organizational terms. Our findings suggest that a multitude of quieter transformations are underway that concerns our mental categories. Demands and resources are often treated as fixed characteristics of work. However, our analysis shows that they depend on context and on how we interpret our experience. In a professional world marked by uncertainty and rapid transitions, learning to identify and question our legacy imprints may become a critical skill for current and future workers.

Sometimes, it is not how work changes that matters the most, but how we perceive and make sense of that change.