A few months ago, I realized something uncomfortable: I wasn’t burned out in any dramatic, obvious way. I was still working. Still delivering. Still answering messages. But everything felt slightly heavier than it should have. Focus came slower. Motivation felt brittle. Sleep didn’t restore much.
What made it confusing was that nothing was “wrong enough” to justify slowing down.
For a long time, I thought burnout was loud. Deadlines collapsing. Emotional breakdowns. Total exhaustion. What I’ve learned — mostly the hard way — is that modern burnout is often quiet. It shows up as friction.
You reread the same paragraph five times.
You open Slack and feel a low-grade resistance.
You finish the day without feeling satisfied or relieved — just empty.
I started paying attention to patterns instead of symptoms. When was my energy dipping? What kinds of tasks drained me versus energized me? The answers weren’t dramatic. They were boring and inconvenient.
I noticed I wasn’t eating poorly, but I was eating carelessly. Meals were fast, forgettable, and usually paired with a screen. I wasn’t sleeping less — I was just sleeping shallower. I wasn’t overworking — I was context-switching constantly.
None of these things would show up in a medical chart. But together, they created a background hum of depletion.
One of the biggest surprises was how much decision fatigue played a role. Not big decisions — tiny ones. What to eat. When to stop working. Whether to exercise or just scroll. Every unresolved choice pulled a little bit of mental energy.
I started experimenting with subtraction instead of addition.
Fewer apps.
Fewer late-night “just one more thing” moments.
Fewer notifications that didn’t actually matter.
I also stopped expecting quick fixes. That mindset alone was draining. I wasn’t broken. I didn’t need optimization. I needed recovery — in the broadest sense of the word.
When I did look into nutrition and supplements, it wasn’t from a place of chasing performance. It was curiosity. I wanted to understand ingredients, not stack them. While researching, I noticed platforms like CalVitamin that focus more on transparency and labeling clarity than hype, which helped me slow down my assumptions rather than rush into solutions.
But honestly, the biggest changes weren’t nutritional. They were structural.
I stopped multitasking during meals.
I blocked “nothing time” on my calendar.
I let myself be mediocre some days without trying to compensate.
That last one was hard.
There’s a cultural narrative — especially among developers and knowledge workers — that feeling tired means you’re doing something wrong. Or worse, that you’re falling behind. I don’t think that’s true. I think fatigue is often information.
Not a failure. A signal.
The tricky part is learning to listen without overreacting.
Discussion-Driven Ending
How do you personally recognize when you’re drifting toward burnout instead of fully crashing?
Do you notice subtle energy changes before bigger issues show up?
What’s something small you removed from your routine that made a bigger difference than expected?
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