Burnout

I will not succumb to mental burnout

I’ve been kind of slow this week, so decided to use this opportunity to simply wind down, and not care about anything. The past like 10 days have been very intense in terms of writing, essentially me being in ‘crunch mode’ to finish a project. I did manage to meet my own deadline, but was very close to a burnout because of it. Hence when I started doing things again, it became apparent that I’m on the verge of a complete mental block, so I decided to take a week off. Now I’m watching a lot of random shit and just playing games. Already feel refreshed after the first day.

However this reminded me of the standard questions that aspiring writers ask already established authors:

How many words per day you aim for? What can I do to see through the things that I’ve started? How do I get any better? Etc.

Now the problem is, that almost always the answers for these questions do not account for the fact that a human being is not a mindless droid with a quick reset button. Whenever we reach a point of ‘I’ve had enough’, our brain simply stops working in overtime and essentially boots up in ‘safe mode’, with minimal functions. Creativity isn’t among the those that is needed for ‘survival’ so it instantly gets sent to the trash, to lessen the burden on the body.

But famous and successful people never mention this, so all you end up with is ‘do the thing you aim to do everyday, without skipping, so you fall into a schedule, where you’re forced to create.’

Biggest bullshit answer ever.

When you’re hyper focused on something, you can achieve great results in a short amount of time, but that doesn’t mean that it will be an endless pool of progress. It’s similar to using a car. You have a set amount of gas to burn, you can take it slowly so you can take a longer trip, or go at maximum speed reaching your destination earlier, but without the fuel to continue or ability turn back.

You need a refill, the same way an empty gas tank does.

Now, I’m not a neuro-scientist or anyone doing research in the field of brain activity, but I think anyone at this point can tell you that doing something constantly will not bring the exact results you hope for. Not only do you need a rest, but also time to step back, away enough for you to be able to view things through an objective lens.

Writing is great, if you can keep on doing it daily: awesome! But it’s literally impossible to deal with the exact same thing every day without breaks, or keep up the quality. And if that’s not up to par, there’s no real reason for you force it. Why waste time on something that will be inevitably discarded? What was the point of it? Just so you can say that you haven’t skipped a single day? Cool, now you’re adding even more work days afterwards to correct your mistake.

It’s so goddamn stupid.

All you need is moderation, and the push to be able to go back to a project after a break. It’s that simple. Worrying about ‘not being able to finish’ is quite frankly utterly pointless. It just increases your own stress and affects your health.

If you want to complete the thing you’ve been working on, you simply NEED to escape into a different environment for a while. This also prevents burning out, allowing yourself to do usable work in the weeks after. What sounds better?

Taking a week off vs wasting 4 weeks of ‘maybe ok work’ on a project?

I think the answer is clear.

Take time off whenever you can and feel like it. You’re in no rush.