Every October, World Mental Health Day asks us to pause and check in. But for those of us in marketing, “pause” has become a luxury few can afford.

In fact, advertising consistently ranks among the top five industries for burnout. According to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning Report, more than half of marketing professionals report feeling “overwhelmed” and “exhausted,” and 48% report “a lack of enjoyment in work that used to engage” them.  

That’s not a coincidence. It’s a design flaw.

The Attention Economy Isn’t Human-Friendly

In an industry that monetizes attention, constant stimulation isn’t just encouraged, it’s required. We optimize for time-on-site, impressions, and engagement, often forgetting that behind every click and comment is a beleaguered nervous system.

We acknowledge audience fatigue, but rarely address our own. We dissect metrics down to the millisecond but ignore what they’re doing to our minds. Every alert, every dashboard refresh, every “how did this perform?” fuels a cycle of hyper-vigilance: the same biological stress response that drives anxiety, insomnia, and burnout.

The result? Teams that are digitally connected and emotionally numb. Campaigns that move fast but feel hollow. Brands that capture attention but hemorrhage trust.

The Attention Economy Toll

The human brain wasn’t designed to metabolize this much signal. We scroll, react, and refresh. We live inside feedback loops engineered for outrage and novelty. The algorithm rewards intensity, not intimacy, and our nervous systems are paying the price.

This isn’t just a cultural concern; it’s an occupational hazard. Marketers live at the center of this velocity, feeding and fighting the very machine that fragments them. The same mechanisms that drive clicks and conversions also drive fatigue and emotional flattening.

We could call this the presence paradox: the illusion that being constantly connected equals being consciously engaged. But the opposite is true. The more attention becomes automated, the less attuned we become. 

The more we chase visibility, the less we see.

The Metrics That Make Us Sick

Let’s be honest: CPMs, CPVs, and CTRs were never built to measure what matters most. They track visibility, not vitality. They tell us who saw something, not who felt something.

• CPM (Cost Per Thousand): Measures how many times an ad appears — not whether it mattered.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): Captures reaction, not reflection.
• CPV (Cost Per View): Quantifies eyes on screen, not hearts in motion.
• ROI (Return on Investment): Tallies returns, not repair — to culture, creativity, or the humans behind the dashboard.

When we chase only quantifiable outcomes, we flatten the emotional complexity of human behavior into data points that can’t capture belonging, resonance, or relief.

The cost is creative erosion. The consequence is cultural fatigue.

The Shift: From Metrics to Meaning

At Myosin, we’re designing a different model: one that honors well-being as a growth strategy, not an afterthought.

Our Emotional Codification Score (EmScore) measures not just what content does, but how it feels. It connects emotional response to real-world behavior and values resonance over reach, quality over quantity.

It’s not about ignoring data. It’s about decoding it differently. Because we believe the future of marketing is full of presence, empathy, and intention. 

How to Build Healthier Attention Systems

You can’t optimize your way out of burnout, but you can re-engineer how you relate to attention.

1. Redefine productivity.

Creative recovery is a metric. So is mental spaciousness. Build downtime into timelines — it’s not inefficiency; it’s incubation.

2. Measure resonance, not reaction.

Traditional metrics track behavior; EmScore reveals belief. By integrating our EmScore analysis into campaign performance, we help brands see which stories truly move people, and scale the content that converts both hearts and actions.

3.Engineer cadence for resonance (without losing velocity).

Volume still wins the auction, but velocity doesn’t have to shred your team or your audience. Design a tiered cadence system:

• Tier 1 – Performance Feeds (Meta/TikTok): High-velocity hooks, daily. Measure CTR/CPA first; EmScore gates scale.
• Tier 2 – Consideration (YouTube/CTV/Email): Weekly narrative pillars. Optimize for watch-time and assisted conversions.
• Tier 3 – Authority (Blog/LinkedIn/PR): Monthly deep dives and POVs. Optimize for time-on-page and demo requests.

Start from a single emotional truth that anchors your campaign — the message or feeling every asset should reinforce. Atomize it into 6 hooks, 3 mid-forms, 1 long-form, and 1 email, then run 2-week resonance sprints. Guardrails: frequency caps, creator rotations, comment health checks. Velocity, without violence.

4. Normalize boundaries.

Make “offline” a cultural norm. Protect creative energy the same way you protect brand equity.

5. Recognize stillness as strategy.

Quiet periods aren’t lapses in productivity, they’re where long-term growth regenerates.

Try it this month: Partner with Myosin to pilot EmScore on your next campaign. We’ll tag creative territories, run emotional resonance scoring, and deliver a full readout of what stories truly performed – beyond the click.

Conscious Growth Respects Human Well-Being

What’s better than another awareness post about burnout? Building a system that doesn’t cause or contribute to it. 

Because the brands that will define this next era aren’t just the ones that capture attention — they’re the ones that care for it.

How are you building healthier attention systems?