As a GP in Germany, I struggle with the claim that “people don’t want to work.” In daily practice, I see the opposite: many patients push themselves to keep working, even when they should rest. They worry about burdening colleagues, unfinished tasks, or upcoming deadlines.

If we want to understand rising sick leave, we need to look at real factors: increasing workload, constant pressure, lack of recovery time, social isolation, and overall exhaustion. Reducing this to a question of “motivation” ignores both evidence and lived experience.

In my experience, people who genuinely try to avoid work are a tiny minority. Framing the issue this way feels similar to old narratives about unemployment—oversimplified, misleading, and disconnected from reality.

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