IIf the words “force equals mass times acceleration” are a little jarring, I apologize. Newton second law of motion will be familiar to anyone who has ever studied physics. For some who have struggled with this course, it may bring back painful memories. But to me, an awkward teenager, it was strangely comforting—proof of an orderly, structured universe, where cause always leads to a predictable effect. I carried this belief into university where I studied physics and even into my career. If I just worked hard enough, success would be mine.
But nine months into my first job, I was laid off. It turns out that life does not always obey Newton's laws.
Losing a job is difficult for anyone. But for me it was devastating. I worked so hard, but somehow I still failed. It felt like a violation of everything I knew about how the world worked. And on top of that, I was completely burnt out after months of obsessive work.
My employer was not a company run by sadists who liked to play with the hopes of naive young graduates. This dismissal had a broader context. And once I got over the shock and numbness, I could start to see it. It was the summer of 2001, and all was not well in the world. Dotcom the bubble bursts caused financial turmoil around the world, forcing my company, a management consultancy, to cut jobs.
And the crisis itself was not even unique. Similar things happened during Subprime mortgage 2008 crash. In 2011, the eurozone crisis occurred. In 2013, the rupee collapsed. In 2015, there was turbulence in the Chinese stock market.
No one saw any of these crises coming—or at least not exactly. And in almost every case, they were not caused by some huge, dramatic event, but by small, seemingly harmless failures that grew into something much bigger.
And here again the ideas of physics come to the rescue. Although Newton's Second Law of Motion has proven to be an imperfect way for me to analyze the world, there are other ideas in my research that have helped me understand these crises and our place in them. All of the above events are examples of chaotic systems that can theoretically be explained by cause-and-effect relationships, but in practice they are so sensitive to conditions that the slightest changes can lead to radically different results.
Take “three body problem“, made famous by Liu Cixin's novel and the recent Netflix adaptation. If you have two planets orbiting each other, you can predict their paths forever. But add third planet, and suddenly the forces interacting between the three bodies become so complex that mathematics explodes with unpredictability. The system is still governed by clear laws, but an infinitesimal shift can throw the entire system out of balance.
This idea doesn't just apply to big things like the financial system or astrophysics; we can see such complexity and unpredictability in our own lives. For many, the answer is control: we optimize our schedules, work harder, operate at full capacity. I know I certainly did. I believed that the way to succeed was to work as hard as possible. But physics teaches us that for systems subject to chaotic forces, it actually makes us more fragile, not less.
Imagine an electrical grid. Most of the time it hums without problems. But during an unexpected surge—for example, when millions of air conditioners turn on simultaneously during a heat wave—the system can overload and shut down. To prevent this, engineers design networks with system slack: they are able to absorb unexpected power surges. A network operating at 80% capacity will withstand a sudden surge in demand; one at 100% causes a power outage.
As a young graduate, I lived without any opportunities, at the limit of my capabilities. And maybe that's why losing my job hurt so much. But the truth is that most of us do the same thing. We convince ourselves that if we try harder, everything will be fine. But the more we operate at our limits, the more vulnerable we become.
A recent report Research from Mental Health UK found that 91% of UK adults have experienced high or extreme stress in the past year, with young people feeling it most acutely. At the same time, almost half of young workers regularly work overtime without pay. Of all UK office workers, 84% feel pressure regularly work overtime, and 65% have to work weekends to get their work done. We are a nation whose power grids are operating at 100% capacity, and we are wondering why we are burning out.
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And from my personal experience of burnout, I was reminded of another idea from physics. You can heat the water gradually, and nothing will change – until you reach a critical threshold, the boiling point. And suddenly the entire system transforms – undergoing a so-called phase transition – from liquid to gas. People can withstand the strain of working at full capacity for a while and still look fine. But stress does not accumulate linearly. It develops to a critical point, and then the system turns over. This is why burnout often feels sudden, even if the pressure has been building for months or years.
Over the years, I have learned techniques to increase my personal potential. I try to always leave enough time for unforeseen circumstances. And I realized that recovery is not a luxury, it is necessary.
But we've built an economy that glorifies overwork and views burnout as a personal failure rather than a design flaw. Recent Keep Britain Working review has revealed an alarming rise in the number of people leaving their jobs due to mental illness. Could it be that the very overwhelming nature of work – the expectation of operating at 100% capacity with zero peak loads – is the reason why people cannot work at all?
Until we recognize that sustainability requires inefficiency—that robust systems must have slack—we are simply optimizing our way to failure. Newton's second law still applies today. I just wish someone had told me that it's not just about how much force you apply, but when to release.
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Zahan Bharmal – author The Art of Physics and senior director at Google, writing on a personal basis
