FEELING TRAPPED at work? Join the club. More than half of Gen Xers are facing job burnout, according to a recent Aflac report.

Sociologist Tracy Brower, author of The Secrets to Happiness at Work: How to Choose and Create Purpose and Fulfillment in Your Work, says job burnout has three main characteristics: a sensation of being stuck, a cynical attitude and a fear that you don’t measure up.

There’s no quick fix, but you can take steps to improve the situation. Here’s what mental health pros recommend.

● Beef up boundaries
List the things that most sap your time and energy. Are there tasks you can decline, delegate or delay? “The lower your boundaries are, the higher your burnout is going to be,” says therapist Kelley Bonner, founder of Burn Bright Consulting, an employee wellness firm.

● Identify negatives
Examine less-than-positive thoughts, advises burnout expert Neha Sangwan, M.D., author of Powered by Me: From Burned Out to Fully Charged at Work and in Life. Are you self-critical? Dismissive of help? Recognizing patterns can help you seek solutions.

● Restructure your days
Knowing how your energy and focus ebb and flow can be a “huge factor” in diminishing burnout, Bonner says. Use your sharpest times for work requiring focus or creativity.

● Reframe stress
Often, a stressor is an opportunity to grow, says Marissa Alert, a licensed clinical health psychologist. Can you use it to exercise patience or to practice new skills? —Gwen Moran

MY HUSBAND and I were making our way over a rutted patch on our local hiking trail. We pushed aside branches and emerged onto a lookout point occupied by a man and a woman in their 30s—just barely young enough to be our kids. The woman admired our brightly colored hiking sneakers and pointed to her feet. She wore the same kind! Thus ensued a lively conversation grounded in a mutual love for mountain paths and adequate arch support. Just four healthy, urban adults, communing as equals. Or so I thought. But as we separated, the woman shouted, “You guys are so cute in your sneakers!”

What? When someone significantly younger calls you “cute,” they usually mean “old,” as in I-can’t-believe-you-dragged-your-brittle-bones-up-this-hill old. I’ll admit I’ve used the word myself to describe a man in his 70s flirting in an Italian deli. So I was taken aback to have it applied to me, especially since—just let me repeat—this person was wearing the same kind of sneakers.

As kindly as our fellow hiker meant her comment, that’s what led to my pique. Apparently, we were “cute” because she didn’t expect people in their 50s to be dressed as fashionably as she.

But trudging down the hill, my irritation quickly cleared. I looked into what Elvis Costello calls the “deep dark truthful mirror” and found a more charitable interpretation. While “cute” can sound infantilizing, it also shows an appreciation for qualities like endurance, joy and the grace to wear life lightly. And it’s true: We had not let our various physical aches, nor our age, keep us off the trail or out of the trendy shoe store. If that’s cute, I’m good with it. —Maria Speidel

THE INTERNET is teeming with podcasts—roughly 4.4 million of them, according to Podcast Index. We read reviews, researched best-of lists and explored platforms to find great programs aimed at Gen X. Here are six of our faves: