Today I wanted to write a philosophical essay about AI. Or maybe something more technical. But once again, I decided to go for something personal.
...
For further actions, you may consider blocking this person and/or reporting abuse
It is actually hilarious how terrible we are at taking our own brilliant advice. I am officially volunteering to come over and hide your laptop the next time you try to say yes to another side project. 😂
You handled the crash perfectly though. We should absolutely use the AI that is available for help when our own brains are just too fried to see straight.
You are going to completely own that stage in Bologna, with or without the fasting. So tonight, close all those open tabs, order the most unhealthy takeout you can find, and do absolutely nothing for the whole evening. 😃
Haha, I could really use someone like that, just closing my laptop the moment I think “oh, this might be fun!” 😄
And you know what… I think I can actually allow myself that kind of evening today. It looks like the final call for my “small” side project at work just wrapped up 🎉
Which, by the way, was supposed to take a week… and ended up taking 1.5 months. Of course 😅
That’s actually another piece of advice I got from GPT: before saying yes to something “small”, imagine it taking 2–3x longer, and only then ask yourself if it still feels fun & exciting.
Spoiler: sometimes the answer changes real quick 😄
A week turning into six weeks? I am absolutely shocked. Said no developer ever. 😂
That GPT advice is painfully accurate, but an AI cannot physically pull the plug on your router when you get a "fun" new idea. That is where I come in.
I am officially submitting my application for the role of your personal reality check and laptop closer. The pay is probably terrible, but the job satisfaction of saving you from your own stubborn optimism would be immense. 😊
Enjoy the empty evening. If you even look at a code editor tonight, I will know.
Perfect, the job is yours 😄 hired on the spot — especially since a few new “interesting opportunities” just appeared 😅
And yeah… who could have possibly predicted that a “small” project at work would get extended! First the deadline slipped a bit, then a bit more… and well, here we are 😂
I’ll try to behave tonight though. Try 😄
Hired on the spot? Excellent. My first official act as your personal reality check is to aggressively decline all of those new opportunities on your behalf. They are all cancelled. 😁
"Try to behave" sounds suspiciously like you are already planning a secret coding session. Do not make me come over there and actually confiscate that laptop. 🧐
Seriously though, enjoy the weekend. You are officially off duty. 😊
Please do, I am officially handing over my laptop confiscation rights to you! 😂 It really is ridiculous how easy it is to solve everyone else's problems and completely ignore our own.
I appreciate that so much. Honestly, outsourcing my fried brain to AI today was the best decision I could have made. Sometimes you just need a digital co-pilot to step in!
Thank you for the hype for Bologna—I really needed to hear that. The fasting is officially paused, the tabs are closing as we speak, and I am already browsing for the most obnoxious, carb-heavy takeout in a five-mile radius. Doing absolutely nothing is my only plan for the rest of the night. 🍕😴
Nice reflective article. And good for you, you can actually recognize when you’re burned out and ease off the gas pedal for a bit. I’m low-key jealous. I really wish I could do that.
Me though? I hit the edge of going insane after juggling a million things and barely sleeping for weeks, and I’m like: “That’s it. When this is over, I’m taking a full week off.”
Do I follow through? Absolutely NOT! Never! 😄
I get one solid 8-hour sleep, wake up feeling like I’ve been rebooted, full of energy, totally fresh and immediately go: “week off? Pff, are you serious? Weak. Screw that, let’s start a new project… and now!”
And just like that, round two of total exhaustion and misery begins.
I can never learn my lesson, and I don’t think I ever will.😕
Honestly, compared to you I’m playing on easy mode 😄
I take on small things, and from what I’ve seen, you’re more like:
“I’ll build a production-ready app… and while I’m at it, I’ll write a post and record a YouTube video about it”
So I’m not surprised your brain needs a full system reboot from time to time 😅
But yeah… I know exactly that “one good sleep → new project immediately” loop. Dangerous one.
One thing that definitely helps me is not having my own family (no wife or kids) and I’m not particularly outgoing either to spend too much time with friends. Most of my time outside goes to the occasional office visit and a weekly grocery run.
If I had as many responsibilities as you do, I honestly don’t think I’d have the time, or energy to play this “game” on “hard mode.”😄
Funny enough, family can sometimes give you an unexpected superpower 😄
You know you only have one or two hours for work or your passions, and that you have to do it now, because later there simply won’t be time. So you just… do it.
And then a month or six later, it turns out you’ve done 10x more than people who had “all the time in the world”, precisely because of that pressure.
You might be right 😄I still have no idea, I've never been in that kind of situation😄
that reboot feeling after one good sleep is a trap you think ok fixed not even close she thought it was a virus or spring fatigue then you get just enough energy to say yes again and you are back in the same loop same tasks same evenings gone
Exactly, that’s what Giorgi was pointing out. It’s a bit of an illusion.
You get one good night of sleep, feel “fixed”… and then jump straight back into the same loop 😅
yeah, nothing looks dramatic until teams sound gives you mild PTSD and then yeah the math gets clearer
Great article. chatGPT helped you, but it really pissed me off when I had the same situation. The problem was that whenever I opened VS Code, my brain was split - it either wanted to code or play. I was at a crossroads. When I chose code, I couldn't write anything working, and when I minimized VS code window and clicked on the game shortcut, I constantly lost the match. Eventually, evening would come like that. I asked chatGPT for advice, and he told me to rest. I lay for four hours watching TV, then watching YouTube, then just staring at the ceiling, then at the wall... I sat down at the computer again, and the feeling didn't go away. I asked chatGPT for an answer again, and this time he said I needed to rest again 🥴 I had a whole day off, and the next day, the same thing happened. It somehow went away on its own after a couple of days, but sometimes I get that feeling of involuntary laziness again... The only thing that saves me is playing my synthesizer. And even then, I'm such a shitty pianist that the cacophony makes me dizzy afterwards. The problem was, I don't have a metronome.
That’s why competitive games aren’t the best choice for relaxing, they just don’t work 😂 I’m way too competitive to actually unwind while playing them. When I want to relax, I stick to driving sims or open-world games instead - they’re awesome! 😄
I’m actually the opposite. I don’t play games at all, because I get way too hooked 😅 Doesn’t even matter what kind of game it is… I once spent two years playing Pokémon Go with full dedication 😂
I'm the same way. I've finished RDR2 twice and I still jump in sometimes just to ride around the map on horseback. - I'm addicted 😄
Oh nooo, don’t even mention it, I’ll get completely hooked 😄
That's guaranteed. 😆
I know exactly that feeling 😅 When your brain wants to do everything and nothing at the same time.
Funny thing is, forcing “more rest” doesn’t always fix it, sometimes it just turns into… staring at walls professionally.
For me, what helped was actually reducing the number of choices, not just resting.
Also… synthesizer > VS Code on those days, 100% 🎹
Really strong post. The part that hit hardest was that none of the commitments were individually reckless. They were all reasonable, even healthy or exciting, and yet the stack of them still pushed you to the edge. 100% feel that lol fml.
Thanks for the comment! 😊 It really shows how common this is. So many of us fall into exactly the same pattern.
We test in Prod! 😂
I can totally relate
Haha, yeah… apparently we also test our life decisions in prod 😄
I had a feeling this was coming.
Reading your recent posts and comments, there was something — hard to define, but noticeable. Not a loss of clarity, quite the opposite. More like the kind of fatigue that builds up when you’ve been “doing everything right” for too long.
This article makes it explicit.
What you describe through systems and structure is very close to what I tried to express in “Respiration,” just at another level.
Same phenomenon: continuous pressure, no real release.
At some point, it’s not a question of doing things better. It’s knowing when to stop pushing.
Because the real goal isn’t to optimize everything.
It’s to last.
And to last, you have to listen — not to the system, but to yourself.
Exactly — it’s very close to what you described in Respiration, just from a slightly different angle. Same underlying mechanism.
One good thing in my case is that all of this has a clear end date. In about two weeks, I’ll most likely have no extra commitments left besides work. And even these next two weeks — I’m taking them calmly, no pressure.
I’ll try to use April to actually rest, mostly mentally… although we’ll see how that goes 😄
The funny part is — I’ve known these timelines for a long time. And still, it turns out you can push yourself so far that you don’t even make it to the finish line without making some changes along the way.
That’s exactly the trap.
Knowing there’s an end date doesn’t really protect you — it just makes it easier to push a bit further each time.
Until you realize you won’t reach that “end” in a good state unless you adjust along the way.
Good call taking it slower now.
Finishing matters less than still having the energy to continue after.
Hahaha but Pascal, let's be honest, my march posts wasn't at least THAT bad 😅 They were the only things from my side projects that I actually enjoyed doing 😆
Haha no — that’s not what I meant 🙂
It’s not about quality — your recent posts are actually sharper and more precise.
It’s something harder to pin down. Maybe just a slight shift in tone…
less in the exploration, a bit more in the conclusions.
Not better or worse. Just a different phase, I guess.
Just my two cents here. Your post is very relatable.
I understand these feelings. I know personally I try to hold myself to a fairly high standard. That is a fast track to burnout even if managed well.
Sometimes, having a mini protest and just saying "no" frees up so much space in the mind. If you can somehow manage to tell everyone and everything "no" for a whole day, or even just a few hours, it is monumentally effective for mental well being.
It sort of, "resets" your thinking. You are forcing space, where there desperately needs to be space. It is not selfish (as many of us think it may feel) it is longevity management. Allow the mind to be free and protest life for a bit. I find it helps me bounce back faster!
This is a personal secret I discovered after many, many, experiences. LOL. If I am pushed too far, I will silently protest life. Its healthy. 😂😂😂
Thanks a lot for this comment, I’m sure it will help many people!
I have to admit though, it doesn’t always work that well for me 😅 I’m a serious overthinker, and when I don’t have anything to do, my brain starts wandering into some really weird places.
Staying busy with interesting projects actually helps a lot with that… well, at least until I overdo it and end up right where this post started 😄
Nice to recognize the initial sign. Step back a bit is always a great advice. AI capable to increase speed of development - but even when the coding part is give to LLM, the development process energy consumation is steel same ( just sorter time ). So that is dangerous. I am not so lucky with my job, because with my collegue near 3 months rework a legacy code, which we was modernize ( means just eliminate dependency 80% ) a previous year. That means security team was happy, but code still unmaintanable. Right now we reworking, but he asked me about what happen if we finally finish our works, we also need to found a new job? So current year the based fustration level seems higher ever before.
Yeah… unfortunately that’s a very real problem. In my case, at work we currently have a roadmap planned all the way to 2031, so on paper it looks super stable. But honestly… who knows what’s going to happen in the AI era. Things are moving so fast that even long-term plans feel a bit… optimistic. So I guess the best we can do is keep adapting and not get too comfortable 🙃
Hi Sylwia, thanks for this post, which illustrates how things can get out of control, so easily even without a hint.
Unfortunately i am in similar conditions, too, by similar causes: personal projects, thoughts to apply for a conf talk. lots of "todo things" in mind, but very less achievement. And so little sleep... Some concerns about life, future, family, responsibilities...
Anyway. I think we must take our lessons. For surely, i need to.
I can relate to this a lot — sending you a virtual hug 🤍 and I’m rooting for you.
If you’re thinking about submitting a conference talk — definitely go for it. Just… try not to overthink it. Submit it and then forget about it for a while.
The truth is, sometimes you get accepted, sometimes you get rejected — and very often it has little to do with your topic or skills. It’s more about the lineup, what the organizers are looking for, or what’s already on the agenda.
I’ve had many rejections too, and when I later looked at the final lineup, I often completely understood why. So I don’t take it personally anymore.
And most importantly — take care of yourself. None of this is worth losing sleep over for too long.
Thanks Sylwia. I applied for ZurichJS conf, that will take place in September. I was thinking 2 proposals, one a soft talk about my career transition (I submitted this one) and 2nd a technical one, about web performance. But, for this 2nd one, was considering to build a demo app, and i could not do this unfortunately.. as said, many todo items less achievements.
I should definitely sleep more but nowadays, it seems so impossible. Thanks again
and yes, already there are great talkers announced.. so.. it is just a distant hope :)
Good luck then! 😊
And honestly — submitting one talk is already a big step, so well done for that. You can always submit the technical one next time, no need to do everything at once.
Try to take care of your energy too — I know it sounds simple, but without sleep everything becomes 10x harder. One good, well-rested idea is worth more than ten half-finished ones.
Fingers crossed for ZurichJS 🤞
I learnt this the hard way. I thought I was always the guy who knew how to do everything and accomplish anything he starts.
Now, that is true. but then later I learn that for someone who's not comfortable with not having anything to do, initiating more than 10 seemingly ambitious projects - that's a recipe for a burnout and worst: you can't finish them all. Same symptoms, waking tired, crashing out fast and my mind is too tired to dream. Later, I learn that not having anything to do is completely okay and I will admit I'm not 100% comfortable with not having anything to do or accomplish but i nearly there, I am 95% there.
Next, there was this one startup I worked for - I designed their microservices and used to have a team of 15 people to help maintain all the services but later they all quit because the company was delaying payment but I stayed. I stayed with only 2 remaining coworkers trying to keep the system running without salary for 7 frigging months and my gf was supporting us both. I worked tirelessly, 10 - 12 hours a day, even on weekends and public holidays and festivals when you're supposed to go meet families but I was trying to make everything perfect, even if they're paying me nothing except stupid words of encouragement. Later I burnt out to an extreme, every time I woke up, I just wanted to go back to sleep and when I did have energy, my stupid ass decided to start a side project while my manager was pinging me constantly. all because of me thinking I am invincible and I can save everything from falling apart. Later I managed to quit and took some rest. Here I learn that I should never sacrifice my time and mental health for such situation, knowing how and when to quit should be your first move.
I am doing much better now, I code on weekdays, side projects/gaming or long distance motorcycle ride with my gf on weekends, cancelled all of my freelance projects and I have accomplished much more than I ever had compared to the last 4 years. I designed and built distributed systems, explore and challenged conventional tech stacks, built a database migration tool called Piper... etc and moreeee
I can relate to this so much, especially the startup part.
I also worked at a startup like that once. Luckily, I have to give them credit, they always paid on time. But the pressure and “we need to save everything” mindset? Very familiar.
I’m really glad you managed to get out of that and find a better balance. And honestly… weekend motorcycle rides with your girlfriend sound like a dream 😄
Also, thank you for sharing your story, this is exactly how it works. When you finally slow down and allow yourself to rest, you actually end up doing more, not less.
Funny how chatgpt can change the way one approaches work. A couple of years ago I was kind of in the same situation: many ongoing projects, some interesting, some just to make extra money, life, pre-teen daughter, sick father and medical bills, etc. So I was feeling really overwhelmed. My therapist was not helping much, since he is not an IT guy and when I tried to explain my quagmires, he would just nod. Then came chatgpt, and wow! Now I can set clear priorities and my way of working has become much more structured, the way I like it. I am a freelancer, so sometimes there are good times, some bad, but I love what I do: coding. Right now I am working in Dennis, a code refactoring tool and protocol, quite cool project actually, and chatgpt helped me setting a rule: "the moment you begin debugging your code, it's time to quit", so I do. At that time, my brain starts to get mushy and I stop everything and go to bed, no alarmclock set, and sleep until my body alone has recuperated at it's natural rate. Anyways, great article, it resonated because reminded me of myself a couple of years back. Keep it up, ah! and your GPU->Javascript article was also really good, even if you feel it lacked a little bit. Greetings, CR.
Thank you so much for this comment, I honestly didn’t even think about it this way! 😊
You’re absolutely right, a therapist won’t tell us how to structure programming work, and definitely won’t come up with something like “stop when you start debugging your own code” 😄😄
At the same time, I’m not sure it’s a perfect comparison to a therapist either. GPT feels more like something that helps organize thoughts we would probably arrive at ourselves… just without turning it into yet another task on the list 😅
And honestly , if you managed to find your balance after a situation like that, then there’s hope for me too 😄
Finding that balance is a matter of ... listening to chatGPT put order in your development/coding road to success. AI is still too stupid to tell it "I need an online store, make one for me". Instead, feed it little crumbles and unrelated ideas, then ask it to put order to it and it's very effective. It helps a lot in the design and architecture phase, which in my case, must be cemented in Unobtanium before I write one line of code. (Or pseudo code that I feed to the AI). And yes, be aware of that "debugging self created bugs" at 3 AM, that doesn't bring equilibrium. Instead, close laptop, a cup of warm milk with honey and off to bed, the backburner of your brain will come up with a brilliant solution while you sleep.
Haha, this comment came at the perfect moment 😂
I mean, I can beautifully write about balance and healthy workflows… but real life? Yeah, that’s a different story 😅
As luck would have it, most of my responsibilities finally wrapped up, so I can fully focus on preparing for my conference in two weeks. I told myself: “Okay, just 30 minutes on the slides - I’ve got like 6 left - and then I’m done for today.”
Well… you can probably guess how that went 🙃
I started checking one thing, then another (to be fair, I did finish the slides). But then I opened my demo. And suddenly, together with Claude xD, I decided that the WASM part wasn’t “good enough”, too simple of an algorithm. Even Claude admitted though that the WebGPU part was actually solid and well done.
So of course… I improved the WASM algorithm, added a quick JS benchmark, then started tweaking the WebGPU part , and that’s where I fell straight into the classic loop of “improving something that was already good.”
At 4 AM. FOUR 😭
Eventually I gave up. Slept. Woke up. Looked at it again… and realized those changes made zero sense, so I just reverted everything 🤡
So yeah… 100% agree with you. Sometimes the best optimization is literally: close the laptop, go to sleep, and let your brain do its thing in the background 😄
I got 3 rules that I follow religiously:
German Rule: "Wenn es nicht kaputt ist, repariere es nicht."
Vespene Gas Rule: "No wasting vespene gas on coding something that is not set in Unobtanium first"
Golden Rule: "No code deletions, no modifications, no "refactoring" if not needed, and IF I see I need to delete something, I first run through it again and try to find flaws, no deletions "just because..." (similar to German Rule but more strict).
These 3 rules have saved me a lot of time, and I learned to implement them thanks to AI helping me thinking straight.
Golden rules, seriously! And finally… my German from school came in handy 😂
I’m actually going to apply exactly this approach today to my demo. No more overthinking, no unnecessary “improvements.” I’ll just polish it properly: write a README, deploy it to GitHub Pages… and my job is done here 😄
I had to put those golden rules in play because, to be hones, I am a messy programmer. At college, 30 years ago or so, I started with Cobol, Pascal, C/C++, and even assembler code. Diagrams were made on paper, re drawn, days of planning and when coding finally came, it was HELL debugging my teammates mistakes. Anyway, today I am grateful for those 3 rules, they have kept me sane when I start to feel overwhelmed by code or bugs. And good luck in your presentation, break a leg!
That's why I don't do new year's resolutions xD I always disappoint myself hehehe.
On a more serious note. I was forced by insomnia and subsequent depression to drop all "non essentials" as well... Which is surprisingly much if you think about it... Doing taxes and forcing food into my body we're basically the only things I had going on for a while. I already had discovered that walking helped me during the day, to stop the panic attacks that would start at night, so I rebuild my life around walking 😁 New projects would have to accept that I was outside walking for at least 2 hours during the day and there were times I thought I would never work again.
Right now (2 years later) I'm doing one of the coolest work projects I've ever had and while insomnia remains a big limiting factor, doing those few things now, gives me way more satisfaction. I also enjoy food again, maybe a little bit too much 😅
Thanks a lot for sharing this — seriously, I really appreciate it 🙌 And I’m genuinely happy to hear that this is mostly behind you now and that you’ve found your balance again.
And yeah, I totally agree — doing less, but better, is probably the way to go.
In my case though, I think I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum 😅 Definitely much closer to mania than depression. Extra projects actually help me a lot mentally, because my brain just needs something to chew on. If I don’t give it anything meaningful, it will still find something… just usually completely useless, like overanalyzing relationships or going into “what is the point of everything” mode 🙃
The downside is… it’s very easy to get carried away.
I’m already a bit worried about what happens after my talk in Bologna — because I’ll clearly need a break, and I don’t want to fall into that overthinking spiral again. Maybe I’ll just blog more instead… so you’ll have something to read during your Sunday lunch — maybe even two posts 😄
Hahaha that would be great! I'm sure you'll find something enjoyable to do afterwards! The balance of things is different for everyone and it can also change overtime, as your life changes too. Walking works for me, because my brain is sufficiently engaged to not spiral into some dark abyss, while still allowing my thoughts to wander freely. I get some of my best ideas to fix complex problems, while walking!
I think over-analysing is something most people do when their brain gets a chance 😁 it's not necessarily a bad thing though, as long as your brain is kind to yourself... Brains are immensely powerful things that can make you feel really good, or really really bad. As long as you have your brain more or less under control, things should work out ok! 😉
Haha, I can relate to that . I also like walking, but for me what works best is probably functional training, even just 30 minutes a day makes a big difference. I guess everyone has to find the kind of movement that works for them, and honestly, done is better than perfect.
And about overthinking… I’m not even sure it’s that universal for everyone 😄 But yeah, sometimes it helps, sometimes it gets in the way. It really depends on how you manage to direct it.
Such an important reminder for all of us. We're so good at giving advice and so bad at taking it ourselves. The Teams notification PTSD is a very real signal that the system is redlining. Glad you caught it early and recalibrated. Take that break, the dev world will still be here when you're rested!
Thank you! 🙌
And yes, exactly — sometimes taking a proper break actually lets us do more in the long run!
This hit harder than most “productivity” posts because it doesn’t come from theory—it comes from actually living through the edge of burnout.
What really stood out is how everything you added was reasonable. That’s the scary part. No single decision was wrong, but the accumulation of “good things” quietly turned into overload. A lot of people miss that—burnout isn’t always caused by doing the wrong things, sometimes it’s just doing too many right things at once.
I also really liked your honesty about the “extra money” decisions. That’s such a subtle trap—when something is aligned, interesting, and rewarding, it becomes much harder to say no… even when your capacity is already full.
The part about removing even “healthy” habits like exercise and fasting was especially insightful. Most advice online would say never drop those, but in reality, recovery sometimes means reducing total load, not optimizing it. That’s a level of self-awareness people don’t talk about enough.
And the Teams notification line 😅 — funny, but also very real. That’s usually the moment when you realize your system is overloaded, not just your schedule.
If anything, this reinforces a powerful idea:
capacity is a real, limited resource—even for motivated people doing meaningful work.
Thanks for writing this so openly. It’s the kind of post that quietly helps people recalibrate before they hit the same wall.
Thank you so much — honestly, I couldn’t have summarized it better myself 🙌
And yes, exactly — it’s so important to realize that we don’t have to do everything at once. That’s where FOMO quietly sneaks in and pushes us over the edge.
Yeah true
"Take Care of Yourself" The most important message of all.
If you cannot take care of yourself, how could you of others, other tasks, other challenges?
We are capable of a lot, but over- and underestimate ourselves in too many cases.
Of course, I can do that, too.
I can handle a side-project.
I want to develop a game.
I want to excercise.
Yes you can. Doesn't mean you should right now.
Reflection is a very healthy and important task. Probably the most important in our own life. On a regular basis, weekly, monthly, yearly... because time passes by, and there is only this one chance.
Step back from everything and have a walk. Get a coffee and just observe others. Put your phone/watch/notebook away and just... be!
Some things I hold dearly after years of burning bright and falling down hard:
I wish you the best and am glad to read about your growth here.
Take care :)
Thank you for this comment — really appreciated!
It’s actually funny, because when I asked ChatGPT for advice, out of everything on my list it found literally ONE thing that was both important and urgent… and it had nothing to do with programming 😄 it was my accountants being late.
I also really like that 24-hour rule for decisions — that’s a great life hack.
This hit me right in the gut. I'm a solo developer — 730+ commits over 6 months on a voice-powered task manager, plus daily marketing across 7 platforms, plus a full-time life.
The part about "sneaking up on you" is so accurate. Everything individually feels reasonable. Exercise? 30 minutes. Blog post? One per week. Code? Just one more feature. But the compound effect of all those "reasonable" things is brutal.
What saved me recently: I had to force myself into a "zero features" sprint. Two days where I only fixed bugs and polished what already existed. No new code, no new features. It felt wrong at first — like I was wasting time. But the mental relief was immediate.
The irony of building a productivity tool while nearly burning out building it... is not lost on me.
Thanks for writing this honestly. The "be kinder to ourselves" advice is easy to give and impossibly hard to follow.
This is a powerful story — seriously 🙌
And it really shows how common this pattern is. That irony of building a productivity tool while almost burning out in the process… yeah, that hits hard 😅
Also, the “zero-features” sprint is such a golden idea. And funny enough — I often advocate for exactly that kind of approach to stakeholders at work, with zero hesitation. But when it comes to your own project… somehow it’s a completely different story 😄
Ha, the irony is real! Building a tool designed to reduce overwhelm... while being completely overwhelmed building it. The universe has a sense of humor.
The "zero-features sprint" thing is interesting because it goes against every indie hacker instinct. We're wired to ship features — that's the dopamine hit. But spending 48 hours making existing code more solid? That takes a different kind of discipline. Like you said — easy to recommend to others, impossibly hard to do on your own project.
What helped me was framing it differently: it's not "I'm not building anything new." It's "I'm making sure what I already built actually works when real people touch it." Reframing polish as user empathy instead of stagnation.
Thanks for the kind words — your article resonated with a LOT of us solo builders. The comments section proves you hit a nerve.
This resonates more than I'd like to admit. The pattern you described — "everything was small and reasonable" — is exactly how meetings creep into overload too.
One thing I noticed: every unfinished meeting creates invisible cognitive debt. Action items you can't find, decisions nobody documented, follow-ups that slip. And that debt compounds quietly until you're suddenly doing twice the work because you forgot something obvious.
For me, the fix was building a habit of capturing meeting outcomes as a non-negotiable — not an afterthought. I use a Notion template with AI prompt blocks that extracts summaries, action items, and decisions in about 2 minutes after each meeting. It sounds like overhead, but it actually saves hours of "wait, what did we decide?" chaos later.
Not saying it's a solution to everything here — but removing one constant low-grade stressor made the other commitments feel more manageable. Sometimes the overload isn't about doing less. It's about making sure the things you're already doing don't create hidden work downstream.
Exactly — meetings can be brutal 😅
I work remotely, and sometimes I feel like people just enjoy chatting, so I get pulled into calls for every tiny thing… and suddenly it turns into a whole day full of meetings that completely break my flow.
And the funny part is — some of those could literally be a two-sentence message on Teams.
I really like your idea with capturing outcomes though — that’s a great approach.
This is exactly the trap — "quick sync" calls that turn into an hour, then another, then suddenly it's 4pm and you haven't written a single line of code. The asynchronous communication culture makes such a difference. When you default to async, meetings become a deliberate choice rather than the path of least resistance. That's the real shift — not just capturing outcomes, but changing when meetings happen at all. Glad the approach resonated!
Ha! "Could literally be a two-sentence message on Teams" is the most accurate description of meeting overload I've ever heard. The默认 default to "let's jump on a call" culture is so ingrained — especially remote, where people miss the casual hallway chat. The Teams message IS the hallway chat replacement, but somehow we forgot that async text doesn't need to be a meeting. Your point about flow being broken is the real cost. Deep work needs 2-3 hour blocks, and one "quick sync" destroys that. Hard to get back.
This really resonated. The "everything is small and reasonable" trap is the most dangerous one because you never see a single moment where you went too far. It's death by a thousand reasonable commitments.
Thanks for writing this instead of the philosophical AI essay. This was more useful.
Thank you for this comment, I’m really glad the post was helpful 😊 And yeah… the AI philosophical essay will have to wait for now 😄
This resonates deeply. As a solo dev building a voice-powered task manager, burnout is the #1 enemy. I learned to delegate... to AI. My voice pipeline (native STT -> LLM -> TTS) does the work of 3 people. But the real game changer was accepting that 80% is good enough to ship. The perfectionism trap is real — my best releases came from 'good enough' moments, not perfect ones.
Been working on saying no to opportunities a little bit more often recently. Thanks for writing this cause it's forcing me to reflect on how that's going ;)
I actually mentioned this somewhere in the comments here: ChatGPT suggested a really useful filter: “If this task took 2–3x longer than you expect, would you still want to do it?”
And very often the honest answer is… “yeah, not really” 😄
Glad you liked the post!
This was really honest and relatable. It’s surprising how small, positive things can slowly turn into overload. Thank you for sharing this, it’s a good reminder to take care of ourselves and not try to do everything at once.
Thank you! 😊
And yes — in my case, it was probably partly FOMO as well 😅
It’s so easy to see all these interesting opportunities and think “I don’t want to miss this one”… and then suddenly you’re doing everything at once.
That’s so true 😊 FOMO really makes everything feel urgent, even when it isn’t. I guess it’s more about choosing the right time for things instead of trying to do everything at once 😅
The Cumulative Load of "Small Wins": When Success Becomes a System Failure
This is such a vital reflection on the deceptive nature of incrementalism. We often look for a "big disaster" to explain burnout, but your experience perfectly illustrates how a system can crash simply through the accumulation of perfectly "reasonable" data points.
The Myth of the Independent Task
From a systems perspective, we often treat tasks like isolated containers—one for work, one for the blog, one for the gym. But in reality, they all draw from the same central processing unit: your nervous system.
When you described trying to "combine everything" (the WebGPU demo/article/plugin), it was a brilliant attempt at data compression. You tried to make the system more efficient by overlapping flows. But as you found, when the underlying system is already at thermal throttling limits, even the "optimization" process becomes an added tax.
The "Silent" Signals
I love that you pointed out the Teams notification "PTSD." In complex systems, that’s a classic sign of signal fatigue. Your brain stopped seeing the notification as "information" and started seeing it as "system interference."
The fact that an LLM helped you by simply pruning the tree is telling. Sometimes, when we are inside the flow, we lose the ability to see the "deadwood"—the habits like intermittent fasting or extra exercise that are "good" in a vacuum but "toxic" when the system needs a recovery cycle.
The Break-Even Trap
Your observation about "breaking even" on the extra income is a profound bit of systemic logic. We often calculate the input (hours vs. dollars) but forget to calculate the depreciation (mental health, future productivity). If the "extra" work forces a week of total shutdown, the net gain is zero—or even negative.
A Reflective Thought
I wonder if we need to start viewing our "Roadmaps" not as fixed paths, but as dynamic buffer zones. If the workload in one stream spikes, the other streams shouldn't just stay the same—they should automatically scale back to maintain the integrity of the whole.
Thank you for being so candid about the "sneaky" side of burnout. It’s a reminder that "doing everything right" can still lead to a system crash if we forget to monitor the core temperature.
That’s a great summary — honestly, I couldn’t have said it better myself 😊
And yes, this is exactly the tricky part — there’s no single moment where you clearly go too far. It’s something you have to notice early, catch the pattern, and react before it quietly builds up into something bigger.
Definitely a good reminder for all of us to stay a bit more aware of where we are on that curve.
You’re spot on—it’s that "quiet build-up" that makes it so dangerous. In a codebase, we’d call this a resource leak: individual functions are returning correctly, but they aren't releasing their memory back to the pool. Eventually, the whole system just chokes.
I think the reason we miss it is because our internal monitoring is usually tuned for "Critical Errors" (big fights, failed projects, health crises) rather than "High Background Noise." When every task is a "Small Win," our dopamine system tells us we're succeeding, even while our nervous system is sending out a "Thermal Throttling" signal.
It makes me wonder if we need to build more "intentional friction" into our decision-making. Usually, we try to make saying "yes" as frictionless as possible to stay productive, but maybe the real skill is creating a manual "confirmation prompt" for the soul—something that forces us to look at the entire stack before we push one more "small, reasonable" task onto it.
Enjoy Bologna! Speaking second is a total win—you get to move from "System Execution" mode to "Input/Learning" mode before the lunch break even hits. That sounds like a perfect recovery curve.
I learned a principle in life, and it's a beautiful way of living:
Dividing the day into three parts: a part for my work, a part for my family, and a part for myself.
I believe this principle is healthy and serious, and I truly believe in it.
But sometimes, I find it hard to apply it 😅
I wish you more success and happiness with your work, your family, and yourself — all together.
Thanks 🧊
That’s actually very true — I really like this way of thinking about the day 😊
My only problem is that “family time” is a bit… in-between. It’s partly for me, partly for them — but it’s not really time for deep work, and it’s not exactly time for full relaxation either (no proper rest, no scrolling, no series 😄).
And then what’s left as “my time” is quite limited… so there’s always that dilemma: do I use it for self-development or for actual rest?
This hit hard. The scary part is nothing you did was “wrong” — just too many right things stacked together. That’s the trap most people miss. Respect for catching it early and actually cutting things instead of pushing through like a machine.
Thank you so much! 🙌
That’s exactly why I decided to write about it instead of keeping it to myself. Too many people fall into this trap — and on top of that, they’re often told they’re not doing enough, which makes it even worse 😅
Hey Sylwia, your reflection is so down-to-earth and honest. I think it’s so easy to forget how much it costs us in our minds to do these little things. I really love your approach to doing things because of the joy of the journey rather than just the grind. Thanks for reminding me to find the fun in it all and that taking a break is actually a sign of strength rather than weakness. 🤍
Thank you so much 🤍
Yes, absolutely — a break is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. And I fully intend to give myself a much lighter April this time 😄
The thing that I learned here is to always know which to prioritize for the day. That is an underrated skill that really goes a long way. Great read.
Yes, exactly, that’s a great approach. Planning your day and knowing what to prioritize really makes a huge difference. Such a simple thing, but super powerful.
What you described, "Each thing was small and reasonable, but the stack crashed the system. Is exactly the pattern our Decision Load Index research was trying to formalize.
The key finding from the DLI work: cognitive load doesn't accumulate linearly. There's a threshold effect. Below it, you can add tasks indefinitely with a mild cost. Past it, each addition multiplies the total burden rather than adding to it.
Your ChatGPT conversation worked not because AI is better at planning, but because an outside view can see the full stack that you're too close to see. You'd priced each item individually. It priced the interaction effects.
The "break-even on extra income" observation is the most important paragraph in the piece. Most people calculate time vs. dollars. They don't calculate cognitive depreciation. The reduced capacity in the days after. Once you account for recovery cost, the math almost always flips.
Pre-print with the measurement model, if useful: [DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.18217577]
I’ve never heard of the Decision Load Index before, but it sounds very convincing — that threshold effect especially makes a lot of sense!
And yeah, in my case I think the real “nail in the coffin” was that side project that was supposed to take a few evenings… maybe a week — and somehow stretched into 1.5 months.
It’s not even that I was constantly working on it, but it stayed open in the background the whole time. And I think that’s the tricky part — those unfinished loops. They quietly drain your capacity because you can’t fully relax when something is still hanging over you.
Funny that I read your post now - I just spent part of my weekend analyzing all the work I put into running the household and estimating how much time each task takes annually. I pasted the spreadsheet into ChatGPT and it flat out told me that there are areas in my life I spend an unnecessary amount of time on, without getting nearly enough return on the investment. It made me realize something similar to your post - a lot of your capacity can be eaten up by things that seem small on their own but add up over time.
It's wild how personal systems can mirror technical ones. You can optimize every 'microservice' in your life, doing everything 'right,' but without proper circuit breakers or backpressure, even the best architecture collapses into overload. Thanks for sharing this important reflection.
I absolutely love this analogy 😂🔥
Treating weekly capacity like a fixed budget, not a minimum, was the shift that helped me. If I hit 80% of planned work, that’s success — the 20% buffer is for the things I didn’t plan for, and there are always things I didn’t plan for. Stopped asking ‘did I do enough’ and started asking ‘was the system sustainable.’
This resonates. I had the same pattern
with language learning — added Anki,
then podcasts, then grammar books, all
individually reasonable, all collectively
exhausting.
The fix for me was switching from
optimizing the system to just showing up
with one thing. Less decision fatigue,
better retention.
Exactly this 🙌
If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life, it’s that consistency really pays off.
The line every single thing I took on was small, reasonable, positive is what makes this article stand out from the usual burnout posts. Most burnout stories involve obvious red flags bad job, toxic environment, unrealistic deadlines. This one is scarier because there are no red flags. Just a slow accumulation of good decisions.
The part about extra money appearing multiple times as a justification really hit. It's almost like we use rational-sounding reasons to say yes to things we'd otherwise instinctively decline. The brain finds a justification, and by the time the cost shows up, the connection is invisible.
Glad you caught it early this time. Good luck in Bologna WebGPU + WASM sounds genuinely exciting.
Thanks a lot for this comment — you described it perfectly.
And yes, that’s exactly how it was with the money. Honestly, I would never take on that kind of work for free (especially not that side project 😅). And the funny part is… I didn’t actually need that extra money at all.
To be fair, I did learn a lot from it — so it wasn’t wasted. But at the same time, once money is involved, you can’t really do things half-heartedly. There’s a level of responsibility that comes with it, and that’s something I probably underestimated.
And thanks for the kind words about the conference! The schedule just dropped and it turns out I’ll be speaking second — so I’ll be done by 11 and can just enjoy the rest of the talks and beautiful Bologna. How cool is that 😄
The part about catching it earlier this time is the real win here. Not the recovery plan. Not dropping the fasting. The fact that you recognized the pattern before it became months of shutdown. That's what actually compounds in the right direction.
Good luck in Bologna. WebGPU + WASM is a serious topic to carry on stage. The conference will be better for you being in it. 🙏
Totally — recognizing the pattern early is the real win here. The rest is almost just storytelling and something for readers to connect with 😄
But for me, an even more important point in this post is how deceptive overperformance can be. Pushing hard for weeks or months without proper recovery feels productive… until it suddenly isn’t.
I almost ran myself into the ground — and I was doing it by choice, for things that were supposed to be fun. So I can only imagine how much harder it is when someone is in that mode for months because they have to, not because they want to.
And thank you for the kind words about the conference 🙏 I’m actually really excited about it already!
Excellent article! I almost experienced burnout myself while doing an intensive AWS DevOps mentorship program in the Balkan region for 9 months, trying to keep up with both the theory and the assignments!
That’s exactly the kind of situation I had in mind 😅
It’s something great, valuable, even exciting… and yet it slowly drains your energy over time.
I’m actually part of the AWS Community Builders program now, and there are so many amazing things happening there that sometimes I wish I had a second life just to take advantage of all of it 😄
Nice read. Be kind to yourself.
Thank you so much 😊 I’m actually very kind to myself. Maybe a bit too kind sometimes… to the point where I end up taking on too many fun and positive things 😄
the wildest part about burnout is it hits hardest when youre actually being productive and disciplined bc your brain has no signal to stop... like doing everything right IS the trap sometimes
Yeah, exactly, that’s so true! That “no signal to stop” part really resonates with me. When everything looks productive and reasonable, it’s so easy to just keep going… and that’s exactly where the trap is.
will this post always be at the top!? ..... jesus 🙃
Hopefully not, but at least it keeps things interesting in the comments 😄
This hit close to home. I'm a solo dev building a mobile app — 740+ commits in 6 months, React Native + Supabase + a full voice AI pipeline. Every single line of code, every deployment, every marketing post: just me.
The trap you're describing is real. I kept telling myself "just ship one more feature" while ignoring the fact that I was working 14-hour days. The discipline that makes you productive is the same discipline that prevents you from stopping.
What saved me was accepting that "done enough" beats "done right." I shipped with known imperfections — a UI that wasn't pixel-perfect, edge cases I documented but didn't fix. The app works. Users don't care about the 5% I was losing sleep over.
The hardest lesson: your project survives a day off. It doesn't survive you burning out.
Did you find a specific signal that told you "this is too much" before it was too late?
This hit home. I spent the last month building digital products and the hardest part was not the work — it was giving myself permission to stop at "good enough" instead of perfect. Every product I shipped felt unfinished. But the ones I almost abandoned are the ones getting the most traffic now. Done really does beat perfect.