Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

The entire 'Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman' book is just an incredible read.

When I struggled hard with burnout, I found that hobbies were an important part of fixing that -- but it was important that the hobbies had little-to-nothing to do with computers (I had computer-related hobbies too, of course, but they didn't seem particularly effective in terms of mitigating burnout).

I’ve had an ‘instrumental’ mindset for as long as I can remember. Almost my entire life after being a kid.

>I need to do this because I need to know that to pass my exams, get a good job to… etc

I feel for a lot of 30 and under people today it’s the same. I managed to capture the ‘playing around’ feeling very fleetingly earlier in my 20s but it doesn’t last long before some little productivity demon starts gnawing at you.

Even resting has its purpose: mentally recharge to work more, let muscles repair themselves to lift more.

I'm not a mental health connoisseur or anything, but removing your own pressure to perform seems like good advice regardless of your circumstances. If you're tired or stressed or whatever, labeling yourself as "a burned out person" seems to me like the only good thing it does is add more pressure. Because how can you do well if you're "damaged" in some way?

It's important to not just do old style sweep it under the rug when it's serious, but I do think the current zeitgeist over indexes on being a good person equating to being hyper aware of all your struggles and anxieties and so on, and I don't see how all that extra pressure will help, specially for young people. Most times "it's not that big of a deal" is really the best thing I can tell myself. That being said, asking for help from someone that knows what they are talking about also seems like a good idea, if you can't overcome it on your own. The universe doesn't give you any extra points for doing it alone.