How I Almost Burned Out Doing Everything “Right”
Sylwia Laskowska
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.
This is a reflection from the past few days, and I just need to write it down before the thoughts escape. You’ll soon see what I mean and why this is important to me.
On DEV, there are often posts about productivity or burnout. Sometimes even takes like burnout isn’t really burnout, just lack of direction, and impostor syndrome is not a syndrome at all, just gaps in knowledge.
Usually, when I come across something like that, I’m the first to comment:
“Guys, let’s be kinder to ourselves. Life is not about running ourselves into the ground in the name of some higher purpose or mythical growth.”
We shouldn’t push ourselves to exhaustion — especially since it often leads to the exact opposite of what we want.
Well… I can be very wise like that. But as it turns out, I don’t always follow my own advice.
Because I found myself right on the edge of serious overload. And as we all know, that’s a straight road to burnout if it lasts long enough.
How It Sneaks Up on You
Let me start with this: I have a good job. It’s interesting, socially meaningful, and on a normal day, the workload is very reasonable. However, we have a roadmap, and I knew before that February and March would be heavier.
On top of that, I have a normal life — family, shopping, cooking, managing a million little things.
These are my baseline responsibilities.
Then I added a few more things.
New Year’s resolutions: nothing crazy, just half an hour of exercise a day and some light dieting — intermittent fasting, small deficit. Sounds reasonable, right?
Then there’s my DEV blog. I publish one post per week. I genuinely love it. Writing doesn’t stress me at all — I swear it feels just as enjoyable to write as it is (hopefully) to read. It’s like a much more interesting version of Facebook for me 😄
But still — even if something is enjoyable, it takes time.
At the end of January, my talk got accepted for jsday in Bologna. The topic is quite challenging (WebGPU + WASM), and I set the bar high for myself — I wanted to prepare really good demos. At first, I went into full stress + research mode, but now I’m mostly excited.
Then at work, I was offered a side project. Usually, I say no. This time it sounded interesting, short, and a good opportunity to learn something new. And yes, also earn some extra money.
Why not?
Then came an offer to write a collaboration article on DEV. I reject 99.9% of those. Not because the products are bad — usually they’re great. But they’re often not aligned with what I actually do, and I don’t have time to prepare this articles properly.
This one, however, was perfectly aligned with my topics. It could be genuinely valuable. So maybe it’s not a sin to earn some extra money writing?
Funny how often that thought appeared.
Everything Was “Fine” — Until It Wasn’t
Notice something important:
Every single one of these things was small.
Interesting.
Reasonable.
Even exciting.
Everything was fine until early March.
Then I started feeling slightly irritated.
Then more often I would just sit and not even know what to start with, even though I had plenty of things to do.
Work got heavier, as expected. People started calling more often with different questions. I was getting more and more annoyed.
The side project dragged on. More stress, more discussions, more negotiations. All normal things — but definitely not helping my situation.
The collaboration article turned out to be much harder than expected. Another research rabbit hole. The article is still not published — although I’m not giving up on it yet.
So I tried to be smart about it.
The “Let Me Combine Everything” Phase
I started thinking how to kill multiple birds with one stone.
That’s how this article was born:
https://dev.to/sylwia-lask/why-are-we-still-doing-gpu-work-in-javascript-live-webgpu-benchmark-demo-4j6i
It was supposed to be:
- a conference demo
- a DEV article
- a test case for the plugin
Of course… something didn’t work there either.
At that point, I was already feeling mentally worse and worse. I was tired of any kind of activity.
I realized that for weeks I had been doing something after work every single day — often for many hours. I could count on one hand the evenings when I actually did nothing.
But all those things had to be finished, right?
I started struggling more and more with priorities. Motivation was dropping.
And of course, life happened on top of that — random side quests. Family visiting for the weekend. Accountants not finishing taxes on time, so I had to call and follow up…
At the same time, I rejected two more interesting opportunities — including one from a good friend. He said he’d call again in April… but a lot can change in business by then.
In other words: an abundance of opportunities.
When It Hits
At some point, it wasn’t just about feeling tired in the evening.
I started waking up tired.
I was going to sleep at 22:00 — which is very unlike me, because I’m a night owl.
I even started wondering if I had some weird virus. Or maybe spring fatigue? 😄
Then came something more worrying.
I started feeling like the quality of my work was dropping. Maybe not objectively. Maybe only in my head. But the thought itself was unsettling.
And then…
I got something like mild PTSD from the Teams notification sound 😅
What Actually Helped
I knew I had to change something, or this would end badly — both physically and mentally.
Funny enough, what helped me was… an LLM. In this case, ChatGPT.
Of course, it’s not a replacement for a psychologist. But for smaller crises, it can be surprisingly helpful — just by organizing your thoughts.
I described my situation. It processed everything logically and helped me build a “recovery plan”.
And here’s the important part:
I had many things that had to be done. I couldn’t just drop everything or go on vacation.
So instead, it suggested something simple:
Remove everything that is not a priority right now.
The Part That Surprised Me
Remember the exercise and intermittent fasting? Those were the first things to go.
They seem harmless. Healthy. Reasonable. But the model immediately “picked up” that this is not the time to stick to New Year’s resolutions.
I hesitated… but deep down I knew it was the right call.
A week or two break from exercise won’t destroy a habit. I still move, I walk, I’m active.
Intermittent fasting can wait. Worst case, I’ll go to the conference a bit chubbier 😄 (just kidding — it really doesn’t matter)
Everything that is not urgent can wait.
For the rest — no need for perfection. Good enough is enough.
If I like blogging, I can write lighter things for a while.
No new commitments. No competitions or hackathons, even if they’re tempting.
And most importantly:
Sleep and recovery are not optional.
It’s a Process
It’s not like everything suddenly became perfect.
I’m still tired.
But after putting things in order — both in my head and in my life — my passions started coming back.
I’m excited about the conference again. I genuinely want to show people cool things.
And just recently, nothing really excited me anymore.
Fun fact: It’s not even the first time I’ve been in a situation like this. In the past, after long periods of overload, I would just completely shut down — months of doing nothing after work, whether it was games or just watching series. This time, I caught it earlier.
One More Observation
There’s one pattern I noticed.
Several times, I said yes to something because of “extra money”.
Not because I needed it. It didn’t really change my financial situation.
And now?
I’ll probably need a few days off to recover.
So in the end… I’ll break even 😄
Final Thought
I want to say this one more time:
Every single thing I took on was small.
Reasonable.
Positive.
With a clear end in sight.
And still — I got overloaded.
So what happens if someone pushes like this not for weeks, but for months or years?
And then reads that burnout is their fault, because they woke up too late or learned the wrong way?
Take Care of Yourself
Your physical and mental health matter the most.
If you want to succeed in anything, it’s better to do less, but consistently.
If you need to sprint — make sure there’s a clear finish line, and a recovery phase afterwards.
And remember:
Plans are for you.
Not the other way around.
If something clearly doesn’t work — recalibrate.