It was after three in the morning, and I was lying in bed staring at the ceiling for what felt like the third time that week. My body was tired enough to sleep for hours, but my mind refused to stop. I was thinking about the meeting in the morning, the presentation I had not finished, the message I still had not answered, the delayed task, and the problem I was supposed to solve before another day started, even though I had not really finished the previous one.
The strange thing is that I did not hate my work. Maybe this is one of the first lies we believe about burnout: that it only happens when we are doing something we hate, or when someone forces us to stay in a bad job. My experience was different. I burned out while doing something I genuinely loved, and maybe I burned out exactly because I loved it too much.
For many years, I had a very simple idea about work: if you want to go further, you have to give more than everyone else. I arrived early, left late, carried problems home with me, and woke up already thinking about them. Nobody always had to ask me to do that. I was doing it to myself, and if I am honest, I was proud of it too.
I was the kind of person who could stay in the office after everyone else had left and feel that I was doing the right thing. At one point in my career, I would even look at a colleague closing his laptop at six in the evening and wonder how he could leave while there was still work to do.
Today, when I think about that version of myself, I smile a little. Maybe that person was not lazy like I thought. Maybe he simply understood something that took me years to learn.
In the Beginning, Passion Was a Good Thing
I still remember the early years, when every new problem made me curious instead of tired. I loved the moment when everything looked confusing and then, slowly, the pieces started making sense. I could talk for hours about the projects I was working on, the ideas we wanted to try, and the things we would do “when we reached the next stage.”
My friends used to joke that almost every conversation with me somehow ended up becoming a conversation about work. No matter how far the topic started from it, I would eventually find a way to bring in a project, an idea, or a problem I was trying to solve.
At the time, I did not see anything wrong with that. I actually thought I was lucky. Many people wake up every morning hating their jobs. I woke up thinking about what I wanted to build next. What more could I ask for?
The problem with passion is that it does not tell you when you start using it against yourself.
Nothing dramatic happened in one day. I did not wake up one morning and suddenly hate my work. The change was much slower than that, which is probably why I did not notice it clearly in the beginning.
First, I needed more time to start my day. Then some meetings that used to excite me began to feel heavy. Ideas that once came naturally started requiring effort. The phone that I used to open the second a notification arrived slowly became something I placed face down on the table because I did not want to see the screen light up.
Then I started watching the clock.
That was strange for me. I used to be surprised by how quickly the day passed. Now I knew exactly how much time was left before the end of it.
My body never sent me a PowerPoint presentation saying, “You are burned out.” Bodies are not that organised. They send smaller signs: bad sleep, headaches, tension without a clear reason, irritation over things that normally would not matter, and the feeling that after a long day you do not want to speak to anyone.
And instead of listening, you tell yourself the same thing again and again: this is only a difficult period. It will pass.
Then another difficult period comes.
The Problem Was Not Only That I Worked Too Much
It took me time to understand that the number of hours was not the only problem. Some people work long hours and do not reach the same point. Others burn out without spending twelve hours every day in an office.
For me, the deeper problem was that work slowly started eating everything around it.
There was no longer a clear line between the time I was working and the time I was not. I could leave the office, but my mind was still there. I could sit with someone and listen with only half of my attention because the other half was trying to solve a problem. I would open my phone “for one minute” to check something and suddenly realise thirty minutes later that I had gone back to work without noticing.
Even rest became something I needed to justify. If I spent a day doing nothing related to work, part of me felt that I had wasted the day. If I spent two hours doing something that was not “useful,” that small voice in my head would remind me of everything I could have finished instead.
This was probably one of the worst things I did to myself: I turned productivity from a habit into a measure of my personal value.
If I achieved a lot, I felt good about myself. If I had a weak day, I felt that I was the weak one.
Once that happens, you do not need a difficult manager anymore. You become the worst manager you could have.
I Thought Being Tired Was Part of the Game
In some of the work environments I experienced, being exhausted almost had its own status. The busy person looked important. The person whose phone never stopped ringing looked needed. The person who never had time looked successful.
We would tell each other, “I only slept four hours last night,” almost like we were talking about a sports achievement.
Then we laughed, drank another coffee, and continued working.
Nobody stopped to ask why not sleeping had become something to be proud of.
And I have to be fair with myself here. I was not only a victim of this culture. I was part of it. I believed in it. I repeated it. And maybe, at times, I made other people feel they had to survive the same pace because I was surviving it.
This is something I do not like to make prettier when I look back. It is very easy to tell a burnout story where you are the innocent person destroyed by a bad company. Real life is usually more complicated.
Sometimes the company is part of the problem. The manager is part of it. The pressure is part of it. But sometimes you are also the person opening the door every morning and saying, “Give me more, I can handle it.”
Until one day you cannot.
Your Body Does Not Care About Your Ambition
I remember one night sitting in front of my computer when my body started reacting in a way I did not understand. I felt dizzy, nauseous, and my heart was beating much faster than normal. For a few minutes, work completely disappeared from my mind. I was only thinking that something was wrong.
That moment forced me to look at the situation from outside.
I had always been very good at finding small explanations for everything. Tired? Sleep better tonight. Stressed? Finish this task and you will feel better. Not motivated? Maybe you need a new project. Cannot focus? Drink coffee.
Every sign had a small answer that allowed me to avoid the bigger question.
Until those small answers stopped working.
For the first time, I stopped asking, “How can I become productive again?” and started asking, “Why did I reach a point where opening my email can change my mood?”
That was a much harder question.
When I Took Some Distance, I Realised I Did Not Hate Work
I took some time away from it. I was not looking for a spiritual transformation or a new version of myself. I simply needed some silence.
During the first days, I discovered that leaving work was harder than I expected. You can close the laptop, but there is no button to close your head. I kept thinking automatically about the same problems, then reminding myself that I was not required to solve them at that moment.
After a few days, something started to change.
Ideas came back, but in a different way. They were no longer arriving with deadlines, anxiety, and a list of things that needed to happen immediately. They were just ideas.
At some point, I understood something important: I had not stopped loving what I did. I had lost the ability to enjoy it because I had placed so much pressure and expectation on top of it that even the things I loved became heavy.
The passion was not dead.
I was simply suffocating it.
Coming Back Was Not a Heroic Transformation
I did not come back from that period as a completely different person who sleeps eight hours every night, exercises every morning, closes the phone at six, and lives a perfectly balanced life.
Those stories work better on LinkedIn than they do in real life.
I came back with many of the same bad habits, and it took time to change them. But one thing had changed: I no longer saw boundaries as a sign that someone cared less.
I started understanding that there is a difference between a real crisis that requires one very long night and a company that lives in permanent crisis until every night becomes normal. There is a difference between giving more because the moment deserves it and making “more” the new minimum every time.
I also started asking myself a different question: am I working because something actually needs to be done, or am I working because I feel guilty when I am not working?
That difference changed a lot for me.
I slowly brought back small things into my life that had nothing to do with professional results. Time with people without the phone becoming a third person at the table. Hobbies that did not need to become side projects. Hours that could pass without me asking what I had produced during them.
And I learned that rest does not need to improve your performance to deserve a place in your life.
Sometimes you rest simply because you are tired.
It took me a surprisingly long time to understand something that simple.
The Most Dangerous Thing About Burnout Is That It Can Look Like Success
From the outside, nobody may see anything wrong.
Maybe you just received a promotion. Your projects are moving. More people are calling you. You have more responsibility, better income, and a stronger name in your industry.
Every indicator we are taught to associate with progress can look green.
And inside, you are slowly switching off.
This is why I now understand how someone can be professionally successful and still reach a point where they do not want to open their laptop in the morning. It is not a contradiction.
Professional success and personal wellbeing are not the same thing, even if we often act like one automatically creates the other.
Sometimes you get everything you thought you wanted and then realise that the way you got it made you unable to enjoy it.
That was one of the hardest things for me to accept.
Today, I Understand the Colleague Who Left at Six
Years later, when I remember the way I used to look at people who finished their work on time and went home, I feel a little embarrassed.
I thought I was more hungry for success than they were.
Maybe some of them simply knew where work ended and life started.
I do not believe the answer is for everyone to work less or stop caring about what they do. I still love working. I can still spend very long hours on something I believe in, and there are still periods when I work more than I probably should.
The difference is that I no longer consider that a virtue by itself.
Working late is not an achievement.
Pressure is not an identity.
And being needed by everyone all the time does not always mean you are important. Sometimes it simply means the system around you was not built properly.
As for passion, I learned to respect it enough not to consume it completely.
Because you can love something so much that you give it everything, then realise years later that it never asked you to give it your whole self.
If I could go back to that night, to three in the morning, to the person lying in bed staring at the ceiling and thinking about the meeting in a few hours, I would not tell him to become stronger. I would not tell him to organise his time better. I would not tell him to find new motivation.
I would tell him something much simpler:
You do not need to burn yourself to prove that you deserve the place you reached.
And then I would have to explain one idea that the younger version of me would probably have laughed at:
That colleague who closed his laptop at six and went home?
Maybe he understood work better than all of us.