You don't need any productivity advice. You know it all. Start with the high-priority task, get up early, forget about sugar, do sports, meditate, and breathe fresh air…
December 2020 - December 2022.
Working all the time. For a good two years, I lived with work being the priority. 14-hour days weren’t rare. Indeed, on average, I worked less, only 2 to 6 hours. Exhaustion didn’t exist; I was still a kid, 13, 14, and 15 years old. My drive was immense, and I knew no bounds in my desire to progress. My days weren’t highly optimized. I still had a bunch of bad habits and low actual skills. I just pushed. Yes, my work was also balanced by school.
In a weird sense, bad habits balanced kept fatigue at bay. When I couldn’t work, I would spend the rest of the day watching videos, two hours a day on average. Yes, using social media counters burnout, and educational videos somewhat boost creativity. I had other mechanisms to keep burnout at bay - splitting attention. I used to program, yet I also created content. Specifically, I created cinematic videos; I know that’s silly. I wanted to gain an audience to sell my apps to. Retrospectively, I learned a lot because of how stupid I was.
January 2023 – June 2023.
Fast track. In January, I started to fix my life by removing every addiction and bad habit. I began to take notes, and my life was consistently filled with fourteen-hour days and six hours of deep work. Optimizations in my lifestyle, such as going to the gym, getting up early, getting three hours of sunlight a day, and attaining better skills, made me a competent worker. By April, I had nothing holding me back anymore. No distractions, no bad habits, better skills, goals, …
My life was great. Monumental improvements in any endeavor gave my life purpose, discipline, focus, and unlimited motivation. March to May 2023 were the best chapters of my life so far. It’s fantastic to have a creative and productive peak. My new advanced self-improvement channel balanced my entrepreneurial pursuits in the form of my mental math apps. School was irrelevant because I continued to work during the lessons and was still known to be the brightest student. Accelerating social skills pleased me. I also got my traumas replaced by a crush, and having no traumas is also a quality-of-life improvement. Every area of life was improving.
June 2023.
Then I started to suffer. My life was going uphill, yet I began feeling a faint sadness. After a few fantastic months, I couldn’t explain why I got so emotional. I would go for a walk and conclude that I’m moving in the right direction. That’s what success must feel like, I thought. I would enjoy the sunshine and warm breeze – yet tears of sadness were dripping. I didn’t know what was bothering me. There was no reason to be in pain.
I thought I'm not a little bitch. Frankly, I had no time to cry. I had to get things done. My life was the best it had ever been. I decided to stop being weak, and having trained in the discipline over a long time, I did just that. Surprisingly, my emotional state bettered.
It went downhill from here. Then, I asked out a girl I wanted for a few months and got
rejected. That hit hard, very hard; now, one month has passed, and I couldn’t move on. Still, I continued to
work as usual. Approximately one week after the rejection, something changed. I couldn’t sit down and focus. I
underestimated the emotional toll this rejection would take. I overestimated my resilience – I progressed so
fast, never hesitated, and always did what I was supposed to – As a result, many failures stacked up, and I now
had to process everything at once. I ignored my body’s warnings, using faint sadness.
I had burned out.
Burnout
Lost days. My diary is a testament to strategic thinking and unparalleled progress. - Something strange happened in the days I burned out. I lost any memories from the ten days of burnout. I don’t know what I did all day long. Nothing happened. My notes were empty. Now, it’s early July, and I can’t recall anything. I only remember being unable to sit down despite my discipline, drive, goals, and time management. During my burnout, everything felt very draining and mundane. I didn’t feel like going for walks anymore.
I consider my burnout over; however, it will take some time until I return. As of now, my productivity is cut in half. While my actual burnout lasted only ten days, I worked almost break-free for 900 days straight. Even though I used social media two hours a day in the first 700 days, I still worked every day, even on trips. Now what? I could take potential months of pointless struggle to recover fully. However, I understand that pushing things will make things worse.
Deeper reasons for my burnout.* While exhaustion and too-fast progress were necessary, they weren’t sufficient. I understand a few things. For example, the brain changes drastically as a teenager, so a break is required for construction work. It was also the first time I was supposed to handle a rejection from a girl I thought I liked. A stack of failures overstretched my resilience. Then, there’s a reason I don’t want to accept. I believe my apps, my first business project, were false hopes. Why do I think so? Because the first ad campaign was a disaster, it was an impactful failure in my stacked-up mistakes. Furthermore, my purpose became love, and this business stuff moved in the background.
Why I profited from burnout
I consider myself fortunate. I am well aware that burnout can cause permanent damage and even be fatal. Some people struggle to recover, especially if they persist despite exhaustion. Stress leads to health issues for many. I've shared how I started to suffer emotionally for no apparent reason. Some end up in far worse situations. Those who experience a creative peak often find it challenging to cope with the decline. Burnout is a serious matter, and I am grateful for the lessons it has taught me.
I learned how to work. I’m glad I learned the differences between working hard, being busy, and being productive. Everyone eventually has to realize which tasks they do are necessary and which aren’t because they require expertise.
I learned what I was truly capable of. Burning out while a teenager is absolutely fine; one can recover quickly. Burning out with thirty is problematic because recovery will be difficult. You see, now I learned that when I turn sad out of nothing, I need to rest. The symptoms of burnout are different for everyone. Thus, learning to burn out is necessary to prevent it. Your true capabilities are larger than you think but not infinite. As a man, you need to know your true edge.
Don’t be scared. I burned out after 900 days of uninterrupted work, with frequent 14-hour days and zero balance. Some people will work for a month and conclude that they reached their limits. Other people will view this text as an encouragement to be a peasant. After all, what should one struggle for if one burns out in the end? Remember, you are capable of a lot more than you think. Your capacity is finite, nonetheless.
Best practices. Don’t compromise on rest. It’s ok to take a day off once in a while. On the day you want to rest, discipline yourself not to check emails and focus on rest. Find your perfect rest. Lying in bed and staring at the ceiling without distractions works wonderfully for me. I increased my discipline to overcome burnout because I knew it would work for me. I hate to admit it, but bad habits may also heal burnout. Someone who enjoyed nights out before they decided to do something with their life will recover using nights out.
Rest is a part of work.
*Added a year later. This text received especially heavy modification on June 22nd, 2024, exactly one year after the burnout. Back then, I restrained myself because I thought this girl was reading and needed to impress her. I saw my writings as a weapon. My assumption would prove correct months later. She indeed read—more in the texts from November and October 2023. I also restrained myself because I was too scared to move on from my apps. I how much darkness that would bring. Now, a year later, I have more insight and greater skills to express myself. Thus, I decided to enhance this text.