What is burnout, how the fuck do we save humanity from it?

I’ve been working on something for a good while, consistent for a mere 1.5 years and suddenly this weird thing happens, in my case since I’m in the investments business, everytime I hear someone say “Balance Sheet” I cringe from the inside and my first response is “Shut the fuck up !”.

I don’t understand why.

It’s called a burnout, i’ve experienced this once before 5 years ago, but why now? I can’t afford to lose time and frankly it’s already been 2 months since I’ve worked like I “used to” where it was more rewarding and at the same time felt like I am not doing enough and should keep pushing more, it was easier to track, easily putting 6-14 hours a day.

Now, the moment I think of doing some research I automatically want to do something else.

Why, why is this happening?

So to look for answers, I searched far and wide across the globe (Googled it and asked chatGPT).

Let’s focus first on the outer layer of things, I will get into the biology of it, but before that at a human level, I want to understand the causes and prevention.

Burnout, the clues in our day to day activities:

So burnout is not just “Worked too much”, the WHO defines burnout (here) as :

“Burn-out is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic workplace stress that has not been successfully managed. It is characterized by three dimensions:

• Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;
• Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and
• Reduced professional efficacy.”

As with most things coming from the WHO, I’d rather prefer the answer from this reddit post by by redhot2k (here).

So what we know is that a burnout is in essence occurring when it gets hammered into you, over an extended period of time that there is little to no reward left, either monetary or psychological (FUN) from your work. Or in short, a subconscious death of hope.

This can come from many many many ways, in my case it probably comes from the dissatisfaction of not being good enough, not progressing fast enough.

It also comes from me not being satisfied with the reward that i’m getting. Like I invest for a living and have made approximately 15-30% returns on all portfolios which is frankly much better than the market. Yet, I have this burden on me to push past that, to make 100%, 1000%, to instantly become a billionaire. Because compounding does not feel big in the moment. I am just not able to get rid of this looming sensation that i’m not rich enough yet, that I need to make significantly more money.

Not just that, I at some point stopped enjoying simple things like the pleasure from just researching about random shit like 3I Atlas or the Physics Wallah IPO or what makes locks strong or other dumb stuff.

This is exactly what i’m trying to find and this childlike curiosity is what I live for.

There are obviously other ways for one to suffer burnouts, which include:

1. Monotonicity of work : Suffering through drudgery every single day (Data entry, form filling, accounts, backend ops or coding etc) could be in any field or form.
2. Lack of alignment with the end goal : You stop feeling that the end goal is worth the effort for you.
3. Expecting too much : To be burdened by your own expectations, to see only the flaws in your work without appreciating the effort.
4. Linking self-worth with performance : “I’m only a great man if I can make money”, only works out if you survive long enough and keep persisting.
5. Consistent failure due to external factors : In fields with non-deterministic outputs like research, investing, entrepreneurship, trading, politics, production of any sort (content, movies, books) etc even if you do everything right there is no guarantee that you won’t fail repeatedly. These repeated failures will take a toll if you let them, if you don’t see the positive in the practice itself.

There may be many more causes too but cumulatively these particular traits if lent over an extended period of time might cause you to burn-out.

So what’s the solution?

I don’t have to really answer it, Richard Feynman does it so well that I’ll just copy paste it from “Surely you’re joking Mr Feynman”, this excerpt is from after he suffers a major burn-out and the loss of his wife:

“I'd invent things and play with things for my own entertainment. […] I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever. [..]. I had made up my mind I was going to enjoy physics and do whatever I liked. And before I knew it (it was a very short time) I was ``playing'' - working, really - with the same old problem that I loved so much, that I had stopped working on when I went to Los Alamos: my thesis-type problems; all those old-fashioned, wonderful things. […]

It was effortless. It was easy to play with these things. It was like uncorking a bottle: Everything flowed out effortlessly. I almost tried to resist it! There was no importance to what I was doing, but ultimately there was. The diagrams and the whole business that I got the Nobel Prize for came from that piddling around with the wobbling plate.” So effortlessly put.

I don’t “have to” do anything but rather, I want to. I want to read up about why i’m burning out, why trees have rings in their roots, why edibles work, why bread expires and so much more.

Just chilling with it, is quite frankly a good solution.

But not a good enough one.

How we are designed is, to do a task and get a reward.

To eliminate the friction behind the task is to attach no importance to the task except that it is but an object of pleasure, that just sitting here writing what I can think of, learning about things is equally trivial as an orgasm and the pursuit of it. Not something that needs to be stressed out like the fate of the world depended on it.

The reward of the task is to get pleasure in just seeing the final product. That it looks so good, that it reads so good, that it pleasures your soul to the end that the task itself becomes your treasure.

This did give me a good base to look at things, the idea that whatever you associate with your work, if that chronically is a repulsive feeling, then no shit that you will start feeling repulsed from your work.

While this gives me a sense of the Idea, I still don’t understand understand what has happened biologically.

So naturally i looked towards SCIENCE for an answer and found this neat-ass research paper : Here

And boy oh boy is this where things got interesting. Human bodies are extremely complex machines and we understand almost close to jack shit about them, just looking at this research paper there are so many events that unfold to even make you experience something as trivial as “feeling sad” that it’s just ridiculous.

Amongst all these what I found interesting are the impacts on your DNA and your brain.

DNA Impact:

Simply put, because of a burnout there is a very high likelihood that your sensitivity to stimulus changes. Across 25 studies, by testing bio-markers from epithelial cells (The outer lining of your inner cheeks) and immune cells, 3 key genes showed different methylation (Will explain later, chill) patterns in people going through a burnout vs those not going through a burnout.

The 3 key genes were :

1. NR3C1 - Glucocorticoid receptor gene : This is quite literally controls your cortisol receptor, varying this changes how sensitive you are to stressful stimuli.
2. SLC6A4 - Serotonin transporter gene : This is the control button to the reward mechanism that let’s us feel satisfaction. Varying sensitivity to Serotonin could show up in cases where you might not feel the same “happiness” in things you used to do.
3. BDNF - Brain Derived Neurotrophic Factor gene : This is Brain fertiliser, helps your neurons develop, maintain and make new connections. Quite literally shapes how “smart” you can be. Your ability to withstand hardships, your mood largely depends on BDNF.

Now what really was the difference, see DNA is present in literally 99% of all your cells so how is it getting shaped by external stimuli like prolonged stress from due to a bad boss ?

That’s where methylation comes in, see your genes across cells are the exact same, so your liver does not really need genes that signal high sperm or egg production. In fact that might get in the way of your liver so we evolved to have a Methylation (-CH3) system where, in your liver these reproduction signalling genes and other “useless” ones will get silenced by “taping” them with a methyl think of it like a volume nob. Methylation is largely a good thing because it also shuts down viruses and faults.

Where it goes against you is where burnout comes to play when you have an extended period of strong external stressor stimuli like when for an extended period you feel dissatisfied or not growing or not valued or not adequately compensated or not treated fairly etc etc your body adapts. The methylation system starts taping these 3 key genes to try and “get you back to normal” but it is really not possible until the whole system i.e. you decides to work on the problem.

An advanced form of this methylation is seen in people with extreme clinical depression. So yeah, if you don’t work on that burnout, it’s not going to be a happy ending.

The other is the impact it has on your brain, specifically the your HPA axis.

Brain Impact:

You have a system for reacting quickly in the event of stress. It’s called the HPA axis.

HPA : Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal axis (read about it from an official source : here

It consists of your:

1. Hypothalamus : In your brain, In response to stress, releases corticotrophin releasing hormone (CRH).
2. Pituitary Gland : In your brain behind your eyes close to the centre of the forehead, gets triggered by the CRH to release adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH)
3. Adrenal Glands : Located above your kidneys (2 nos), gets signalled by the ACTH to release adrenaline and cortisol so you can be fast as fuck in responding to a stressor.

Once you have enough cortisol produced, the high amount of cortisol then triggers your hypothalamus to stop making CRH which stops the ACTH which stops production of more cortisol and adrenaline.

Very neat system if you ask me, it’s also encouraged that within limits, you go through periodic bouts of stress to make sure your system works and you do not get “rusty”.

However, prolonged intense stress can make your HPA axis dysfunctional, either under-release cortisol or over-release it.

So what happened in the research paper we were looking at? The people who were going through a burn-out had a lower cortisol awakening rate (CAR) than healthy people. (One other study that confirms it : here) so what does that mean?

Well “ wON’T iT bE A GoOd THIng AYusH !! ??”

No.

Simply put cortisol in itself is not a bad thing, you need to have a stable natural cortisol cycle every day so you can react properly, work properly, wake up on time, stress about whether your kids will make it to the school, whether you’ll make it to your office and other day to day tasks (More on the Cortisol Awakening Response : here).

If you’re not having the right cortisol cycle but instead your HPA axis is underperforming, that will lead you to be perpetually tired, slow, lax, being detached from tasks not by choice but due to past revulsion.

That’s not the kind of state you want to stay in for long, because it will become a biological hurdle for you to be able to put in the effort you could muster earlier. Underperforming on most key tasks and if you ask me a recipe for an unsatisfied life, never getting to touch your peak potential.

Conclusion:

One of the things that sucks the most about burnouts is that it catches you unaware. A lot of people who are burnt out don’t even know that they are, while it also doesn’t affect anyone and everyone and different people have different reactions to things there is no denying that the longer you stay burnt out the worse it is.

Ideally high performing athletes, entrepreneurs, investors and creators do insane volumes without being burnt out, you want that and not an underperforming, miserable life. If you can, do try to see whether you are burnt out due to dis-incentivised over-work and how to align your incentives so that you can do what you think is your best and still feel great while doing it.

P.s : I think this why a lot of people quit their jobs.