[read]

Have you tried constraining yourself to doing less?

I don't mean taking a vacation or sleeping more. I mean setting as a goal that you'll accomplish less every day, and with zero expectation about what to do with the free hours that open up. Just as you pressure yourself to do more, pressure yourself to do less.

Hypothesis: even if you tried to do nothing you wouldn't be able to. Your mind would start wandering to topics you haven't let it. Like that new challenge in a related niche that you'd love to get off the ground. Try doing nothing and suddenly your subconscious takes over. You discover thoughts you didn't even know were brewing.

The principle at work here is that constraint is no less important than freedom. Constraint is key in creativity. Limit yourself to less, and you start overflowing to a new direction.

Make sure you give it enough time. You need at least 1.5-2hr blocks of time where you can shut off the world and play uninterrupted, and you also need to schedule such unstructured play lots of times. Don't worry about feeling unproductive in the meantime. Worry more about noticing the pattern to your thoughts, and do that at the end of each block of time so you don't feel pressured to be noticing.

I'd love to hear what you discover.

[failingburnout]

I honestly hated this when I read it the first time. I've gotten a lot of intuitive advice in the thread for which I'm very thankful. I'll try variations of most of it.

But this... I read it 5 to 6 times. I have no idea if it will work, but it can't hurt. My next scheduled workday is Saturday and I'll absolutely put this into practice.

Other suggestions to take time off, get outside, etc are great and I will do them (as the Boston deep freeze allows), but I will try this ASAP and see if it helps. Even if it produces a day or two of output, it will be extremely useful. I will respond with results after saturday.