Recovering from Burnout and Depression

To me it seems much more like a societal/systemic problem - one that will not be easy to fix, especially with the increasing inequality and rise of automation. The demand for achievement and lifestyle upheld by society as something worthwhile to strive for (for happiness, fulfilment, recognition etc), just perpetuates the cycle and will be become harder to attain.

What are those to think/do who did not reach what society taught them they should want and have to be happy and fulfilled? These people put the effort in, but get nothing back. They get burnt out and depressed and even though they later talk about it, others cant understand as they don't have perspective and/or don't think it will happen to them. They are too busy burning themselves out chasing the goal.

I don't think there is a solution that doesn't involve a radical shift in society and work/life balance.

Goals like these seem reasonable to people when they surround themselves with "haves", so they are not exposed to the serious problem of the "have-nots" that have to exist for the "haves" to exist. One can be reasonably happy in this state as long as they dodge the cognitive dissonance, or if they just think this is a good model.

This works neither for people who care about the world nor those who are "have-nots". Which is most people. So most people end up unhappy while reading self-books (if they even have enough agency for that) from the "haves" and trying to figure out what's going on. But nothing is going on, the situation is zero-sum, so there will always be someone in a bad state in the current system. The only thing that changes is who.

The gauntlet cannot be completely ignored because it is necessary for basic agency. But in some cases, the agency is already there, and the person can begin defining their own vision, but they still continue chasing the zero-sum goals due to pressure.

Even if you try to develop your own vision things can get strange.

> our limited and unknown budget of time is constantly burning away.

Well, there are 6+ billion people in the world, and, on average, they have a similar budget. Why the sense of urgency? What is it that is so important that only you personally can do it? It would be very strange if the world was filled with these super important goals for each person that were conveniently person-lifetime sized, but it often feels to me like that's the perception. This often ends up back at the zero-sum issue, in the sense of "lots of people can do this, but I need to be the one to do it". It's thinly veiled status-seeking all over again, which is why it fits so well since in a competitive environment, the goal IS person-lifetime sized.

A broad non-status goal wouldn't fit that paradigm. It is likely to be overwhelming and require a lot of people, or, on the other hand, be fairly straightforward and missed because it's not prestigious. But people find themselves in these insurmountable goals and feel like they need to do so much work, that brings other questions. Why them? What is everyone else doing?

On a certain level, I think most people seek vision that fulfills subconscious nags they may have, and that's the primary reason they seek it. Things in the region of "am I doing something with my life" or "am I a good person". There isn't an actual vision higher level than that, so once those nags are satisfied, the person will stop asking. But this is just chasing the gauntlet in another way.

There are downsides to LSD. Illegality is probably the biggest. Here's a self-study showing micro-dosing is pointless (for the person) and possibly has harmful trends: https://www.gwern.net/LSD%20microdosing

crush-n-spread: > I submit that the working person greatly benefits from having a strongly held, over-arching life goal.

I believe having a strong over-arching goal is very helpful for a person (working or otherwise). Helpful in the sense that it can offset certain problems or give the person better tools for working around/through them (i.e., depression, burnout, purposelessness, general decision making).

I don't think this is the same thing as ambition or obsession, although many people do turn that into their drive and I think that's fairly dangerous (the thing one is obsessed about may not work out).

I wouldn't really agree that most people are "fine" in some general sense, nor do most people typically subsist without any kind of life goal (religion is popular).