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
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