I have a hypothesis about burnout that feels true, but I can’t validate it because it’s purely based on introspection and things other people said. Still it might inspire a fix that works:
Most fatigue is emotional fatigue, and most emotional fatigue (or all?) comes from what I call cognitive dissonance, or subagents that disagree. These subagents are relatively independent agents in you that represent and try to achieve needs that you have. For example the reason that it’s hard to concentrate if you have to the toilet is because the subagent that wants you to go to the toilet is interfering with your otherwise aligned coalition of agents that are aiming at something else.
If you repeatedly do something that increases cognitive dissonance, by not meeting a specific need that you have, or acting against something you want, you build up a debt. Your subagents become increasingly “distrustful” of one another, until they just stop playing along at all and stage a “coup”, so to speak. This is when parts of you become so much at odds with your usual motivations that they completely block you. We call that burnout.
Most of the time, we’re barely aware that we’re doing this. We put on tight clothes, sit in noisy places, deprive ourselves of sleep, tolerate scary people, skip lunch. We think that we get used to it, but we just forcefully ignore it. We take stimulants to dull the senses just so that we can keep our focus. That’s how we unwittingly build up the dissonance. It’s putting on emotional debt one escape at the time.
Suggestions for putting this model to use:
Identify the things you secretly need that you’re hiding from yourself. For example I might find that I’m really not happy with my insecure financial situation.
Strive to be altruistic, but only under the condition that those needs are already mostly met. For example I might reduce my hours from 60 to 40 so that I have enough time for rejuvenation.
Routinely check in with yourself, to make sure you’re not unknowingly damaging yourself. “Am I hungry/thirsty? Am I cold/warm? Can I handle what this person just said? Do I feel safe?”
Notice the failure mode of trying to please someone else just so that they will give you something you need. Be self-sufficient. See social anxiety as an indication that you’re not. For example I might put some more attention on optimizing my self-care and housekeeping skills, and get a side job, so that failing in my EA efforts will not damage me
Recognize that stimulants are an excellent tool to ignore your needs. Coffee has wrecked me more than once.
Schedule downtime (like meditation or just staring at a wall) so that it becomes impossible to ignore your feelings, forcing you to deal with them
I feel like this misses out on the main way I get fatigued from work, which is exhausting how much I can do before something in my brain (the hippocampus?) demands I stop for memory consolidation. If I take a roughly 90 minute break of doing nothing directed, possible with sleep, I’ll be able to continue on after hitting this point. The felt experience is like I can’t commit anything addition to long-term memory.
Not really a source of burnout though since it happens over the course of hours rather than days and is recovered from with rest, but maybe people would mistake something like this for burnout if they just kept pushing through it all the time.
I have a hypothesis about burnout that feels true, but I can’t validate it because it’s purely based on introspection and things other people said. Still it might inspire a fix that works:
Most fatigue is emotional fatigue, and most emotional fatigue (or all?) comes from what I call cognitive dissonance, or subagents that disagree. These subagents are relatively independent agents in you that represent and try to achieve needs that you have. For example the reason that it’s hard to concentrate if you have to the toilet is because the subagent that wants you to go to the toilet is interfering with your otherwise aligned coalition of agents that are aiming at something else.
If you repeatedly do something that increases cognitive dissonance, by not meeting a specific need that you have, or acting against something you want, you build up a debt. Your subagents become increasingly “distrustful” of one another, until they just stop playing along at all and stage a “coup”, so to speak. This is when parts of you become so much at odds with your usual motivations that they completely block you. We call that burnout.
Most of the time, we’re barely aware that we’re doing this. We put on tight clothes, sit in noisy places, deprive ourselves of sleep, tolerate scary people, skip lunch. We think that we get used to it, but we just forcefully ignore it. We take stimulants to dull the senses just so that we can keep our focus. That’s how we unwittingly build up the dissonance. It’s putting on emotional debt one escape at the time.
Suggestions for putting this model to use:
Identify the things you secretly need that you’re hiding from yourself. For example I might find that I’m really not happy with my insecure financial situation.
Strive to be altruistic, but only under the condition that those needs are already mostly met. For example I might reduce my hours from 60 to 40 so that I have enough time for rejuvenation.
Routinely check in with yourself, to make sure you’re not unknowingly damaging yourself. “Am I hungry/thirsty? Am I cold/warm? Can I handle what this person just said? Do I feel safe?”
Notice the failure mode of trying to please someone else just so that they will give you something you need. Be self-sufficient. See social anxiety as an indication that you’re not. For example I might put some more attention on optimizing my self-care and housekeeping skills, and get a side job, so that failing in my EA efforts will not damage me
Recognize that stimulants are an excellent tool to ignore your needs. Coffee has wrecked me more than once.
Schedule downtime (like meditation or just staring at a wall) so that it becomes impossible to ignore your feelings, forcing you to deal with them
I feel like this misses out on the main way I get fatigued from work, which is exhausting how much I can do before something in my brain (the hippocampus?) demands I stop for memory consolidation. If I take a roughly 90 minute break of doing nothing directed, possible with sleep, I’ll be able to continue on after hitting this point. The felt experience is like I can’t commit anything addition to long-term memory.
Not really a source of burnout though since it happens over the course of hours rather than days and is recovered from with rest, but maybe people would mistake something like this for burnout if they just kept pushing through it all the time.
This is how it feels to me to be mentally fatigued.