I'm at the end result of your situation now. I wish I'd gotten out from under it so much sooner. The death spiral really kicks off when you start losing effici

I'm at the end result of your situation now. I wish I'd gotten out from under it so much sooner. The death spiral really kicks off when you start losing efficiency (as you've described) and as a result there's always more work on your plate than you have the capacity to do. There's a paradox: the usual solution if you have extra work is to just push through it with some extra effort; once it's done you could theoretically go back to the usual routine. But your current predicament is because you've been working extra hard for too long already. You just go backwards if you try it. I've spent weeks and weeks trying to "catch up" on my current project - and the previous two projects - working after my kid has gone to bed, working again first thing in the morning, working weekends - it only gets worse if you keep doing it and you wind up with worse results (I've just now blown past a deadline myself). Trust me. My mental and physical health is fucking shot, I've got skin rashes, putting on weight and I've been giving too much parenting work to my wife... I'm probably going to be mentally fucked for weeks now. The solution is to reduce the workload. Drop some of the spinning plates, tell your boss you can't do XYZ in the allotted time, or just straight up quit.