Burnout is about moving forward

TL;DR

• If you feel burnout, try to move forward.
• You have many dimensions to your life where you can make progress.
• Any progress will make you feel better and reduce your burnout.
• It will work best, if you progress in the area of your life that is stuck the most, or that is most important to you at the moment.

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As many other developer I’m prone to the veeling of burnout.

I run a few projects, I work at Readwise, I have a family and a small toddler. I have enough things that happen in my life.

Right now I’m going through a period where everything stopped moving at the pace I’m used to:

• My wife got a little sick, so I spent some time taking care of her, of our son.
• I was working on a feature at Readwise that was a little over my head performance wise. SO it has been going through the process of review and rewrites for a couple of weeks now.
• I’m working on updating TuxSEO generation reliability, which is much harder then I relized.
• My inlaws are visiting us, so I have to find new places to work from.

This has been going on work 3 weeks now.

This morning I felt burnout the most. I did not want to do anything (work). I pushed through and got started…

And suddenly, things started to flow again. Not becuase all those things got fixed, they didn’t. Just because I shipped one small update at work, related to that project I mentioned above. Then another, then another.

Suddenly I don’t feel so burntout anymore. Just because things started moving along.

So, my suggestion to you is this. If you feel burnout, try to move forward. You have many dimensions to your life where you can make progress. Any progress will make you feel better and reduce your burnout. It will work best, if you progress in the area of your life that is stuck the most, or that is most important to you at the moment.

“most important” can be work, no shame in that. On a grander scale of things, family is the most important, of course. But, there is no shame admitting that getting unblocked at work, is more important to you in that second. All the other things will get better to if you approach that part of your life first.