Burnout is a big word

By Georg Malahov

It's Friday, and I'm tired. Not dramatically — ordinarily: went to bed late, didn't sleep enough, and felt wrecked all day. The tasks on the plan were simple, but they stretched across the whole day, and things still didn't quite come together — there are slips and loose ends, everything a little unfinished.

This is the middle of a launch: the extension I spent all of November getting into the store is published, and now every evening goes into finishing touches. For several weeks in a row I've been going to bed later than I should and getting up earlier than I'd like. The inner drive is still carrying me, but it's been a heavy week: yesterday, instead of fixing a couple of small bugs, I had to rework a whole chunk of the architecture.

In the evening I did what works best on days like this: I went to the pool. Swam — not much, but I swam. Sat in the sauna, even caught an Aufguss — the ritual where the sauna master pours water over the stones and whirls the steam around with a towel. And I drove home content. On the way I put words to my state: I'm on the edge of... well, "burnout" is probably too big a word. I'm very tired — in one word.

From here I have a well-worn move, and it's a boring one. Don't play the hero at night. Come home, spend time with the kids, have dinner, and go to bed at a reasonable hour. Then get up to an alarm, at five or six, while everyone's still asleep — and calmly, with a fresh head, finish the very bugs that wouldn't yield in the evening, and test everything properly. Evening heroics reliably give me a result that I end up redoing in the morning anyway.

Other things help too: going out for a walk after lunch, even when it feels like there's no time. And at the end of the week, looking at what's been done. And quite a lot has been: the app is in the store, payments go through, I'm already showing it to people.

So the plan for tomorrow is simple: early alarm, quiet apartment, finish, test — and publish the new version next week.