[marsouin]

Burning out is like having a swelling injury. You need to relieve the pressure. I work in a high stress environment, coding and managing people and the way I've learned to cope with it does not lie in having a healthy routine or anything, it just isn't enough. You need to stop doing whatever causes the swelling, regularly, before you can do it again. When you have tendinitis, you stop using whatever sport causes it.

So, every year, I take two weeks off in a remote location where there is no electricity, let alone reception. I am going off the grid. That comes in addition to regular holidays, like a week every three to four months. On weekends I turn off all notifications.

We are not machines, your body and your mind need to have different activities, apart from your regular schedule. You need to have time to think, to do nothing. I think we need to come to terms with the fact that our time does not have to be productive 24/7. Life should be messier than the optimized version of it we try to will into being.