I have a story for young HNers: if you want to learn about burnout, I propose to you a dangerous thing to try out (note: I did warn you). I did it myself (note:

I have a story for young HNers: if you want to learn about burnout, I propose to you a dangerous thing to try out (note: I did warn you). I did it myself (note: I did warn you twice). What I tried out was studying as much as possible for the longest period of time on university. Do this as long until you either (1) cry yourself to sleep at night from exhaustion or (2) start to feel emotionally numb. This has to be combined with the condition that you see yourself having a reduced output/productivity. I expected to get (1) but instead I got (2). I then went to the wikipedia page on burnout and looked at the checklist [1] and saw I had almost all of them, except for the most severe ones. I took on half the amount of study work (which was still more than most students would do) and since it was the end of the second semester, the summer holidays arrived. The next academic year I was fine. Why did I do this? Simple: I recognize that I am a person who wants to work hard. So I knew I'd get a burnout sooner or later in my life. It's better then to be acquainted with it, so that I can see the warning signals. Also, it's easier to experiment with this on university than in a working environment, since it's easier to take uni a bit less seriously than work -- for me at least. Also, I prefer to make deliberate mistakes as young as possible when I know there's a high likelihood I'll make them down the line anyway. Note: I did warn you thrice. It is a dangerous experiment, but so is any experiment where you want to look up your limits. Knowing your limits, however, can be very beneficial. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20150413145539/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burnout_%28psychology%29 https://web.archive.org/web/20150413145539/http://en.wikiped...