Recently got burned out for the first time. Context switching and constant hard thinking were a direct cause. I unofficially took on a chief architect’s role do

Recently got burned out for the first time. Context switching and constant hard thinking were a direct cause. I unofficially took on a chief architect’s role doing design and planning for a huge project, was doing some managerial work assigning tasks and mentoring younger team members through it, and was writing code as an individual contributor. I just wanted it to succeed so badly, I took on an absolute ton without any systems in place in my own habits and daily life to protect me. I would be in a conference room tracking ten different threads of work day in and day out. Making decisions for every component, directing people, debugging…at first I felt like a god. Everyone was looking to me, we made more progress in six months than the last two years, meetings would get cancelled because I couldn’t be there to make a decision (should have been a massive red flag but it fed my ego). But the way I work is to put my head down and get addicted to a problem in some sense. I can’t stop until it’s done. I think of these as loops in my brain, and I deeply need to close them. It is both a strength and tremendous weakness. As I climbed to principle engineer and above, this was a huge boon. A few weeks of nonstop coding, then crash for a couple weeks till the next tasks come along. But at a certain level, I stopped having clear cut tasks. The work had huge scope and was totally open ended. I was doing quarterly planning and this quarter’s work wasn’t done yet, etc. I got lost pushing to be “done” and it never came. One day my brain started hurting all the time. I started crying when I had to think about work, out of nowhere…really scary for me who always thought I was rock solid even after months of long days doing nothing but thinking hard. I tried to push through, ask for more money to soothe my pain, the company offered me a sort of break. But I had to quit cold turkey. Now I am taking a real break and the thought of that work makes my body tense up. I get tearful again. I am going to take a lot of time to build some workout habits, some set hours of the day where I will never “work”, and do some emotional digging into my loops. Thanks for sharing! It is so nice to hear everyone’s stories.