I never believed burnout was a real thing when I was in college. Part of this was having an infinite supply of energy(which in the long context of things, I still very much do), but in the most part, I think it was due to the fact that I was very loose gripped on projects. Regardless of the timeframe, as soon as I hit that first MAJOR roadblock, it was wraps and I was onto the next thing that was bugging my mind. The curious parts of my brain were always firing, they knew that if something wasn't working, instead of fermenting on it, I'd get a hit from a brand new challenge. And I'd hack at that challenge, until I hit a roadblock big enough for me to jump ship. While there are merits to sticking through challenges, and merit in knowing when to give up, I don't at all regret those jump-ships, purely because it gave me a good top level view of ten's(dare I say hundreds) of different worldviews, engineering philosophies, design standpoints etc.
"Move fast and break things"
But coming out of undergrad, I had yearned to work on "harder" things. Large scale projects. And for whatever reason, be it maturity, economic prospect, or a better focus, I found myself tied to these projects for a longer timeframe, despite the sort of roadblocks and challenges that would have previously caused me to jumpship. But in the fire of the pit, there were often periods of dread. Friends and family would call this "burnout", and I quickly learned of the consequences of this previously fake-to-me syndrome of spending every waking hour glued to VSCode 6-7 days a week for weeks at a time.
But in the turmoil, and several rounds at that, I've come to learn that this feeling of deadness and loss of ambition for the goal, isn't really a symptom of working oneself too hard. It's an emotional defense against failure. This problem that I haven't been able to solve for hours, days, no, weeks. It's impossible. My brain and my body tell me to give up. My soul would never give up. So my body induces dread, tiredness, loss of color as a self-defense mechanism. Give up. Move on.
It's kind of poetic in a sense. Your soul has dreams among the stars, but your body yearns for thermodynamic equilibrium. Stay safe, stay cold and in your shell. It's an active war against yourself.
insert live laugh love-esque quote disguised as a sigma male motivation tweet
in writing this I realize I draw a distinction between body and soul. I think i'm more of a anti-descartes subscriber in that they're ultimately tied together in this life, but that is a book for another time...