Tell HN: Burnout is bad to your brain, take care

Brain going bad is burnout. Subtle, but important perspective that helps spot symptoms early on.

If I have one thing to share about burn out, it’s that I didn’t think I would get it. Maybe someone reading this is like I was.

I always and energy to do everything. I was often the hero making sure we recovered from errors over the weekend, we hit unrealistic deadlines, or we were prepared for stakeholders beyond what we thought was possible. I thought this was rewarding and that it would help my career, so it was worth it. I liked feeling useful and needed by my team.

It seemed for a decade or so that this fountain of energy, what I assumed was innate enthusiasm, would never end. It seemed like the natural thing to do.

Well, eventually real life happened. I had kids to care for. I had a relationship to maintain. I couldn’t continue working time and a half in perpetuity. Weekend projects and learning got sidelined.

The healthy response to this would be recognizing how crazy it was in the first place. Instead I doubled down in both directions. I’d be an awesome parent and partner, AND I’d keep doing my best at work. It’ll be easy I said, I just need to manage my time better. I just need to plan and strategize. It’s only hard right now because I’m working hard, not smart.

I was wrong. Everything suffered. I began to resent myself for it, steadily whittling down my self esteem and confidence. I brought a worse version of myself to everything I did. And worse all the time.

I wish I was kidding but this gradual descent took a decade. It wasn’t just burn out. It was a complete restructuring of my internal monologue and outward lens on the world. I became incredibly depressed. It wasn’t until years, literally years, of intense burn out that I began to consider that I was experiencing burn out.

Burn out is a trendy buzz word, I figured. Work is supposed to be challenging. People the world over have found work hard for all of time and that’s precisely why it’s called work, right?

I had endless excuses for why I needed to work harder. I needed to stop going so easy on myself. Yet simultaneously I felt overwhelmed with the expectations I believed people had of me. Life gradually began to seem something like impossible. How could I possibly do all of this stuff?

Thinking this was normal was my ultimate undoing. I never stopped to think shit, Steve, you’ve got some dumb ideas. Take a break. Relax. Do less. I kept insisting to myself that it was all expected, required, necessary. By failing to do all of it I wasn’t experiencing the natural consequence of taking on too much… I was discovering that I was incompetent, unskilled, intelligent, etc.

Please don’t let yourself be me. It snuck up on me in the craziest way. I thought I was smarter than that, frankly. I don’t consider myself particularly smart, but I thought this would be relatively easy to avoid. I figured the signs would be obvious.

They probably are to others. For you, it might be incredibly insidious and entrenched much deeper than you’d imagine.

Maybe the best strategy is caring for yourself. My burn out was the product of insecurity and feeling the need to put others first almost relentlessly. Don’t do that. You matter as much as the people around you. Take care of yourself.

the book - from strength to strength - might help with understanding the transition between pre-40 and post-40 in terms of how one's brain works

This is too real. This weekend is when I finally start looking for a new job. Corporate life just fucking sucks. Work is "easy" but it's just not rewarding. The before/after OP described is kind of on point. But add in the fact that I just don't give a fuck about this company anymore. There's nothing I work on that contributes to the betterment of society. Equivalent of pushing paper at this point.

Going to get a good fucking rest (10 hours of full sleep). Run in the morning. Then grind out applications and hitting up connections.

I have a similar story. Burnt out and thought my brain was cooked. Then I got my sleep apnea sorted. Then found out I had celiac (the apnea might be related).

Getting that all sorted is like an insane nootropic. I'm smart again and can work real fast.