[asauce]

As the author mentions, the most critical part of pushing yourself is setting up a lifestyle that enables you to do so.

A couple years ago I was extremely naive and prioritized my work over everything else. Exercise, nutrition, sleep, and even relationships were seen as a waste of time, and were just a barrier to achieving more.

Then, eventually I burnt out. But even then I still tried to push myself. I started having anxiety, dissociation (mainly depersonalization), and a lack of passion towards anything in my life. It was a really rough point in my life.

After a lot of work I am now at a stage in my life when I can push myself again. However my highest priority is to maintain a lifestyle that allows me to push myself in a sustainable manner. This means good nutrition, fitness, and prioritizing my own mental well being.

The effects of that burn out are unbelievable. I still live with a lot of that today, but have learned to manage it. Push yourself, but please take care.

[u678u]

I've noticed a lot of hard driving entrepreneurs seem to work very hard all the time. 20 years later when you read their autobiographies you notice some big breaks where they travel or hang out at their beach house, esp between projects.

[albertgoeswoof]

Its almost as if giving an illusion of constant hard work all the time will “inspire” the people they employee to work hard too

[DavidPiper]

> After a lot of work I am now at a stage in my life when I can push myself again

Could you elaborate on what kind(s) of work you went through to get back to that personal equilibrium?

[asauce]

Yes of course.

Admittedly, upon burning out, it took a while for me to actually acknowledge the multiple issues I was having in my life. I still had the toxic mentality of “just push through”, and therefore a lot of the personal work I did was incremental.

The very first thing I did was reduce my workload. It was probably still too much, but at the time it was unthinkable to stop working entirely.

Sleep, diet and exercise were next. Diet was nothing crazy, but I just wanted to eat consistent meals (I was massively underweight). Unfortunately I also had to come to terms with the fact that I am part of the population that needs at least 8 hours of sleep. I really wish I could manage on less sleep, but it is what it is. I’m also not a huge fan of running, but it massively reduced the amount of depressive and anxious thoughts, so I kept doing it.

After those changes I found that my energy levels were much better than before.

The next phase was completely mental. I hated that I failed at something, and had to learn to forgive myself. To be honest, I am still working on that. Also, I was terrified of burning out again, and went through a weird phase of over thinking and analyzing everything. Turns out it was analysis paralysis. Experimentation/tinkering helped with that. It also helped me relearn how to learn, and how to enjoy work again.

A therapist probably would’ve sped up this part of my recovery, but I hated admitting that I had a problem that I couldn’t solve myself. Very toxic mentality and one I still face to this day.

I also recently started journaling. I’m not overly consistent (working on that!), but it forces me to take a step back and evaluate my mental state at the time of writing.

It’s an ongoing process, and there are probably a lot of steps I’ve missed. However these were the major goals that I had, and achieving them definitely helped. It’s very cliche, but forgiving yourself and being honest with your capabilities is crucial.

Hopefully someone reading this can take something away from this. Burnout is no joke, and it has permanently changed my life.

TL;DR: 1. Reduction of workload. 2. Prioritize physical well being (food, exercise, sleep), and being honest with my body. 3. Improve mental well being. 4. Start experimenting, and relearning how to learn/work.

[seesaw]

I went through a very similar experience. I burnt out trying to balance work and family, and trying to give my 110% for both. I also started taking it easy (at the expense of career growth), started sleeping better and exercising. I am mentally and physically better now. But I am unable to bring myself to work hard as I used to do in the past. I am scared I will burn myself out again and won’t survive that.

[DavidPiper]

Thank you, this helps a lot :), I'm glad you're out the other side!

[natovan]

You is me.