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To me, this guy sounds like he's suffering from classic burnout. I know because I could have written the exact same thing when I burnt out in undergrad: "I tri

To me, this guy sounds like he's suffering from classic burnout. I know because I could have written the exact same thing when I burnt out in undergrad: "I tried prioritizing my work, focusing on the things I felt the most passionately about, but when I tried to work on the projects at the top of this list I couldn't summon any energy. Yet I spent hours and hours thinking obsessively about the ultimate point of my work." I mean, heck, the guy said he was reading 50 (no doubt challenging) books a year on his work. That's insane. It's pretty simple: you can't work at an insane pace forever, and eventually your subconscious will rebel and stop working with you. In my case, it felt like my intentions and actions were connected by a plastic gear, and I had spent so many years jamming that gear as hard as I could that it stripped the teeth off of it. My intentions could spin as hard as they wanted to, but eventually I just found it impossible to do anything.

retsibsi 8y ago
If you're comfortable sharing, what did you do to get out of that state?
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
> “It's pretty simple: you can't work at an insane pace forever, and eventually your subconscious will rebel and stop working with you.” I think there are versions of this where the issue is not pace or volume of work, but rather “meaning” or greater societal impact. I used to work at a place that gathers a ton of location data on its users, and then packages it into data products & advertising products. It wasn’t the pace of work that burnt me out there, but instead the lack of meaningful impact. Even a light workload at such a place was already heavy enough to create burnout. Just as you need rest from volume of work, you also need rest from work that exploits others or work that does not appear to have a constructive purpose.
Grangar 8y ago
The plastic gear thing sounds incredibly familiar. (How) did you fix it?

retsibsi 8y ago

If you're comfortable sharing, what did you do to get out of that state?

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

> “It's pretty simple: you can't work at an insane pace forever, and eventually your subconscious will rebel and stop working with you.” I think there are versions of this where the issue is not pace or volume of work, but rather “meaning” or greater societal impact. I used to work at a place that gathers a ton of location data on its users, and then packages it into data products & advertising products. It wasn’t the pace of work that burnt me out there, but instead the lack of meaningful impact. Even a light workload at such a place was already heavy enough to create burnout. Just as you need rest from volume of work, you also need rest from work that exploits others or work that does not appear to have a constructive purpose.

Grangar 8y ago

The plastic gear thing sounds incredibly familiar. (How) did you fix it?