169 - Burnout

Burnout is a constant risk in cognitively intensive and high-impact jobs, particularly on the cutting edge where uncertainty and stress are frequently greater. For startups, this is doubly true, when team members frequently end up working far more than 40 hours per week.

Since Startups are often a combination of work and passion they often consume both working and personal hours, as people more easily structure their lives to revolve around them. For remote roles the risk is even greater, as there is no "office" to leave, so stepping out of the office is mental, requiring discipline, policies, and/or boundaries.

In January 2021 I made the choice to switch gears to focusing full-time on our technology, leaving Seattle behind some months later, before leaving the US behind entirely in 2022. My co-founder once asked me how I avoided burnout, to which I replied that I constantly balance on the edge of burnout.

I've balanced on the edge of burnout for more than 3 years now, dedicating what time I'm able, whenever I'm able, in whatever ways make sense and add value. What makes that practical, or for that matter even possible, is that there is very literally nothing else worth dedicating my working hours to. Every other path leads to extinction, so there is nothing else that can "pull" me in a different direction.

Even being rather Stoic in my mindset, I still face factors that "push" burnout, like the AI industry's many mentally ill "Experts", various popular frauds, and other forms of exhausting nonsense. However, absent any pull such things are vastly easier to counter. This is partly thanks to the dynamics of coping mechanisms and "fight or flight" responses, where an absence of flight as a viable option makes "fight" become far more potent and focused.

Some viable options for minimizing the "push" of burnout from bad actors and nonsense are setting firm boundaries and promptly blocking those who cross them, as well as taking detox periods from platforms to avoid default behavioral patterns that reinforce it. For example, if you recognize that you're visiting a platform to check on it through default impulses, absent any higher cognition, then it may be time to unpin it from your toolbar for a week.

Burnout can be as damaging as persistent sleep deprivation in some ways, as it significantly impairs your motivational system and all of the cognitive processes that depend upon it.

For most people today balancing on the edge of burnout isn't a viable option either, as it only works for me due to a highly improbable edge case blocking any alternative sources of value. However, the "pull" of other sources is greatly minimized for those who find meaning beyond money in the work that they do.

I was recently reminded of the common experience people have of doing work for paychecks, not because they find it meaningful. The look in someone's eyes when they see the opportunity to do something that matters and make a career of it is a priceless moment.