Nobody Told Me Loving Tech Could Burn You Out
I treated my career like a hackathon for years. The wall I hit taught me that consistency, not intensity, is what builds something that lasts.
When I started in IT, I was obsessed.
Late nights. Early mornings. Every new language I could find. Every project I could say yes to. I thought that was the price of admission — that the people who "made it" were the ones who simply refused to stop.
For a while, it worked. Clients came in. Software shipped. I started leading teams. From the outside, the curve looked steep and clean.
Then I hit the wall.
What burnout actually felt like
It wasn't dramatic. There was no breakdown, no resignation letter. Just a slow erosion. I'd open my editor and stare at it. Ideas that used to arrive before I'd finished my coffee now took days. I was busier than ever, and producing less than I had two years earlier.
The cruel part: from the outside, I looked productive. From the inside, I was running on fumes and pretending I wasn't.
The lesson nobody packaged neatly
After enough cycles of this, I learned the only sentence that actually changed how I work:
Consistency beats intensity.
A career isn't a hackathon. It's twenty years of small, repeated decisions. The engineer who codes for four focused hours a day for a decade will out-build the one who does fourteen-hour sprints and then disappears for two weeks to recover.
Burnout doesn't make sustainable careers. Systems do. Boundaries do. Rest does.
What changed in practice
Three things, mostly:
- I take breaks without guilt. A walk between meetings is not stolen time. It's the reason the next two hours actually produce something.
- I say no more often. Every yes to a low-leverage project is a no to the deep work that compounds.
- I optimise for the long term. Short-term applause is the worst metric you can chase. Output over a year matters. Output over a week is mostly noise.
The strange result: I'm getting more done now than when I was grinding. The work is also better.
If you recognise yourself in this
Two reminders, from one tired engineer to another:
- You're not lazy. You're probably exhausted.
- Rest isn't a reward you earn. It's a requirement you ignored.
This is a marathon. Run it like one.
Written by
Oben Desmond Ashu
Full-Stack Engineer · Social Finance UK
Your Environment Compounds Faster Than Your Effort
If I'd done it all alone it would have taken a decade. The right room compresses ten years of growth into two — and the wrong one quietly steals the same amount.
This landed at the right moment. We're three months into a build we never validated. Bookmarking the prototype checklist.
The 'consistency over intensity' line is one I've been trying to articulate to my team for months. Stealing this.
Curious how you decide which prototype format to use — landing page vs Figma vs Notion. Is it gut feel or a checklist?