Arjun slumped into his chair after another 14-hour workday. Deadlines loomed, Slack pinged nonstop, and he felt pulled in ten directions at once. He wasn’t failing, but he wasn’t whole either. He sensed that he was playing only one role while neglecting the others that made him fully human. In his mind, he replayed the recent team meeting—his suggestion for a sustainable feature dismissed as “too idealistic,” leaving him questioning if his creative input even mattered amid the constant firefighting.

His mentor, Professor Rao, listened patiently. “You’re not broken, Arjun,” he said. “You’re imbalanced. Every person is made of four forces. Ignore them, and burnout is inevitable.”

Rao leaned forward.

• The Visionary — those who set direction and seek truth (e.g., Product Managers in tech).

• The Protector — those who defend, manage, and keep systems stable (e.g., Management Leaders).

• The Producer — those who build, code, and make ideas real (e.g., Technical Leads).

• The Supporter — those who nurture, collaborate, and sustain (e.g., Developers).

“Think of them as archetypes,” Rao continued. “Not titles, not rigid jobs. When you let one dominate and silence the others, exhaustion follows. It’s like running a team with only managers and no creators—or only coders and no leaders.”

Arjun blinked. He realized he had been living almost entirely as a Protector—constantly firefighting, guarding projects, defending deadlines. Little room was left for vision, creativity, or care.

Psychologists call this identity conflict—when one role within us consumes the others (Frontiers in Psychology, 2022). Organizational theorists call it structural misfit—when the roles we play at work mismatch the deeper roles that sustain us (Organization Studies, 2013). Either way, the result is the same: imbalance breeds burnout.

Arjun asked, “But where does this framework even come from? Don’t give me age old stories and say it’s ancient..”

Rao smiled. “It is. Centuries ago, Indian thinkers described exactly this. Unfortunately, colonial retellings, compounded by later political and social narratives, froze the idea into a rigid caste structure. But in its original design, it was never about hierarchy—it was about balance. A system of archetypes called varna described the interplay of these four roles as fluid, intentional, and open. The tragedy is that for over a century it has been misinterpreted as a tool of oppression rather than what it really was: a design for harmony.”

Arjun sat back. For the first time in months, he felt relief. Burnout wasn’t a personal failing—it was a signal. A reminder that he was privileging one archetype while starving the others.

For organizations today, the lesson is clear. When teams honor all four forces—vision, protection, creation, and support—they not only prevent burnout but also create environments where people thrive. And when they fail to, even the best strategy collapses under imbalance.

For Arjun, debugging code and debugging himself suddenly felt oddly parallel. For the rest of us, the message is timeless: health at work is less about doing more, and more about becoming whole.