The Loss of Stop Conditions in Modern Life

Modern burnout is often framed as a personal capacity problem, but it can also be understood as a structural one. Many contemporary systems are optimized to continue rather than conclude. Infinite feeds, open-ended work, delayed decisions, and institutions that rarely say no. Human cognition evolved expecting stop conditions. Indicators that a process is finished and attention can disengage.

When those cues disappear, unresolved cognitive loops accumulate faster than the nervous system can discharge them. The result isn’t acute stress so much as diffuse, persistent load. This short note frames that condition in terms of constraint collapse and feedback inversion, and outlines why adding more tools rarely helps while reducing open variables often does.