There Is No Cure for Burnout

We’re totally sold on the idea that more money means a better life. More. More. Always more. Always wanting. Always lacking.

Happiness isn’t in more. It’s in everything. You just have to have the time to find it - and time is the crux.

You only live once; time is your most precious and finite commodity. Each day that passes is irrevocably gone - and as morbid as it may be, you don’t know which will be your last. I have had friends drop dead in their 20s and 30s both out of the blue, and after agonising illnesses.

If your work makes you happy, great. If your work is gently or not so gently killing you, and you are persevering for some abstract goal of “more”, you are taking a dangerous wager - your precious time against the chance of making it into the 0.0001% - the idea being that if you win, then you won’t have to work. That’s fundamentally the bet we take when we venture into a career.

There’s a shortcut. Don’t work any more than you absolutely have to to keep the lights on.

I left my business a few years ago after a decade, withered and broken, mentally and physically damaged. I do as little contracting as I can get away with to cover my living expenses, which I’ve dramatically cut by moving off grid in a cheap country. I have so much time to read, to work on projects and hobbies, to just stand and stare at the river running by.

I used to stand in the shower, weeping, and think about how I would kill myself.

Now I weep only with happiness.

Life doesn’t have to be a slog.