I was lucky to have had my burnout crisis at the beginning of my career(over 15 years ago) and learned from them. The most impacting one happened while I was wr

I was lucky to have had my burnout crisis at the beginning of my career(over 15 years ago) and learned from them. The most impacting one happened while I was writing my final graduation paper, where I pushed so hard to finish the implementation that I ate poorly and slept only a few hours for several weeks. After that crisis, for over a week, I could not even look at my code or text. I risk failing or even losing my passion for keeping doing what I love doing. After reflecting on an incident with my friend for a long time, I came to realize that taking days off every once in a while is not enough, and what maybe have saved me from burnout all these years is my habit of taking time off every day. I have lots of activities out of work, for example, going to the gym three times a week, writing this blog, making Youtube videos, running my farm fishing business, reading consistently, and running my own SaaS and Open-source projects. Those are all self-imposed restrictions to get out of work on time and put my mind and body into different activities. Every day, I do something out of work for at least 2 hours, and I restrict work for the time it needs to be restricted. Once I started doing that, my productivity increased drastically even tho I started working fewer hours. Worth noting that all my other activities outside of work are not time-sensitive, which means I can do them when I have time, and if I need more dedication for something, I can easily make it fit into my agenda. For that, I use the 2 days rule (I am allowed to skip any of that activity once but not twice in a row). This is important because having a hard agenda can increase your chances of burnout. The only hard activity I have in my schedule is to work 8 hours 5 days a week. The others I can move to best fit my needs that week. My life hack to do it to Have a daily “Hour of something.” Having a personal routine helps you achieve goals out of work on a daily bases. I recently introduced two new routines in my day. One hour of cleaning where every day. For this hour, I will clean or organize something in my house. This one hour helps my digital detox and cleans my mind. I liked the cleaning because it is practical and infinity and it gives me a sense of compliment, as a side effect my house is cleaner and neater. The next, I am still incorporating, but I call the “hours of reading,” and it is 30 minutes at the moment. After lunch, I take 30 minutes to read a book instead of jumping back to work. This moment is when I calmly sit in the middle of the day and turn off my mind not to think about work; with that, I can keep up with my reading and learn something new. These two routines grantees me at least 1:30 hours a day of not working and gets my mind and body back to a normal state. I usually do my “cleaning hour” after work, so I use it as the commute back home time. Since I work from home, it takes me 30 seconds to disconnect from work, and I do not want to bring to my personal life any stress I collect over my day of work.