Watching Someone Disappear

I've been thinking about burnout a lot lately.

Not because it's new. If anything, I've probably spent the last thirteen years talking about some version of it almost every day. But every once in a while something shifts, and you realize you've been looking at the same thing for years without quite having the words for it.

I think that's where I am right now.

People ask me what it's like to spend all day listening to other people's lives. The truth is, after a while you stop hearing only individual stories. You start noticing patterns. Not in a clinical, "let's put this in a diagnostic box" sort of way. More like the way you notice the seasons changing. One day you realize the light looks different in the evening, or the tomatoes suddenly taste like tomatoes again, and you can't pinpoint exactly when it happened. You just know it did.

Working almost exclusively with people in the Bay Area tech community for the last thirteen years has been like that.

Eventually I realized I wasn't hearing hundreds of different burnout stories.

I was hearing the same story.

It always begins so innocently.

"It's just been a crazy quarter."

"Once we get through this launch..."

"Once we finally hire..."

"Once this reorg settles..."

I have this image in my head that milestones have become sentient. You finally cross one finish line, look around for a second to catch your breath, and another milestone is already standing there with a clipboard saying, "Sorry to interrupt your tiny moment of relief, but we'd actually like you over here now."

There is always another milestone.

And honestly? I don't think that's the part that's hurting people the most.

What strikes me is how hopeful they still are.

Nobody walks into my office saying, "I think I'm burned out."

They walk in asking me for podcast recommendations.

Or books.

Or magnesium.

(We've really put magnesium through a lot these last few years.)

They want to optimize their way back to themselves.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting there wondering something completely different.

When was the last time you took your mountain bike out?

The one you used to light up talking about.

When was the last date night with your fiancée that didn't have a curfew because you had to get home and finish work?

When was the last time you wrote just because you felt creative?

Or spent an afternoon in the garden?

Or walked your dog without answering Slack every five minutes?

We all have things that metabolize our stress — running, painting, surfing, cooking, music, friends, the woods, the gym, the weird little ritual of making pancakes every Saturday morning.

And somehow, those are always the first things to disappear.

Which is such a cruel trick, isn't it?

The very things that help us carry stress are the first things stress convinces us we no longer have time for.

By the time someone tells me writing a Slack message took forty minutes, or admits they haven't been on their bike in six months, or says they don't even remember the last time they laughed with their partner, I know we're no longer talking about productivity.

We're talking about someone slowly losing access to themselves.