• AI tools promised to reduce work and save time, but in practice, they often cause developers to take on substantially more tasks simultaneously.
• The shift from tackling sequential, focused problems to overseeing multiple parallel AI agents creates continuous, exhausting context switching.
  • Each agent occasionally requires human review, decision-making, or plan approvals, constantly interrupting deeper focus.
• Analysis of the author's GitHub contributions reveals that in 2026, activity surged back to early-career levels despite serving in a leadership role (VP of Technology).
  • GitHub contributions in 2026 surpassed every full year between 2021 and 2025, driven by the low marginal cost of initiating new tasks and experiments.
• Work patterns have devolved into cycles of intense bursts followed by acute cognitive burnout and fatigue.
  • New model capabilities spark rapid project starts ("cheap implementation"), until reviewing overhead forces an eventual retreat.
• The capacity to generate and implement tasks has far outpaced the mental capacity to think through and manage them.

Hacker News Discussion

• Many commenters strongly resonated with the fatigue, framing the issue as an epidemic of "side quests" that distract from core objectives.
• Commenters emphasized strict task discipline as a countermeasure:
  • Planning finite daily to-do lists away from the keyboard and strictly resisting unvetted tangent projects.
• Discussion drew parallels to Cory Doctorow's "Reverse Centaur" concept, where humans become overwhelmed assembly-line assistants servicing autonomous machine output.
• Others pointed out that delegating mundane work removes low-stress mental breathers, concentrating the entire workday into high-friction, consequential decision-making.
• A split emerged on adoption: some view AI agents as essential superpowers worth the discipline overhead, while others argue juggling agents mimics bad management and leads directly to burnout.

• The Reality of AI Burnout: AI-assisted software engineering delivers high-speed productivity on paper, but it introduces a hidden cost of cognitive overload, fatigue, and a new form of "AI burnout."
• The Productivity Trap: AI tools compress highly intense cognitive workflows (prompting, reviewing, and debugging) into shorter periods. Instead of working less, engineers fill saved time with more tasks, replacing rewarding creative work with exhausting oversight.
• Loss of Craft and Fulfillment: The traditional cycle of planning and writing code is highly satisfying. AI bypasses this tactile process, turning engineers into supervisors of code they didn't write, which dramatically diminishes feelings of ownership, pride, and achievement.
• Erase of System Intuition: Delegating codebase comprehension to AI agents leads to "cognitive debt." Engineers stop holding the architecture and edge cases in their heads, losing the deep intuition required to spot bugs or design flaws early.
• Review Bottlenecks: AI dramatically increases code output, but human capacity to review that code remains unchanged. Senior engineers absorb a disproportionate amount of risk and cognitive load trying to clean up thousands of lines of mediocre, AI-generated code.
• Practical Solutions to Reclaim Balance:
  • Acknowledge Wins: Keep a win-log, track hours, and demo results to restore a sense of personal achievement.
  • Rethink AI Workflows: Focus heavily on the "planning" phase, decompose large tasks, and avoid jumping straight from one AI-heavy task to another.
  • Preserve the Craft: Protect specific hours or passion projects for manual coding without AI intervention.
  • Set Boundaries: Enforce strict work hours, take deliberate breaks to counter continuous cognitive demands, and stop once daily goals are met.

• The Core Premise: True exhaustion often stems from an "existential vacuum"—a lack of deep, meaningful purpose—rather than just an excessive workload.
• The Existential Vacuum: Drawing from Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, the text explains that people who have achieved objective stability and comfort frequently face internal anxiety. This feeling is not a nuisance to eliminate through standard escapism, but a signal pointing toward a starvation for real meaning.
• Comfort vs. Fulfillment: Society has optimized for reducing physical suffering and increasing comfort, which is frequently mistaken for genuine fulfillment. Millennials are noted as the first generation to widely expect their careers to fulfill a deeper life purpose beyond basic biological survival.
• The Evolution of Human Drives: Individuals often transition through three major life phases: seeking pleasure in youth, chasing power in their 20s and 30s, and searching for long-term purpose into their 40s and beyond.
• The Startup Experience: Over 15 years as a startup founder, the author attempted standard burnout remedies (meditation, vacations, cutting caffeine, therapy) but found they failed because the underlying issue was a deficiency in ultimate purpose rather than too much labor.
• A Dual Responsibility: For individuals who have achieved material abundance, two responsibilities emerge: spreading that wealth to others and transitioning from chasing more material assets to pursuing higher impact.

Hacker News Discussion

• Shifting Definitions of Meaning: Commenters noted that what feels meaningful changes over time due to personal growth or a loss of novelty. Hard work initially fueled by purpose can feel hollow years later if societal, customer, or partner responses do not align with the intended outcome.
• The Danger of High Expectations: Several participants discussed how expecting a career to double as a source of deep cosmic meaning sets a dangerously high standard, often leading directly to the exact existential exhaustion mentioned in the essay.
• The Illusion of "Doing Good": Users expressed disillusionment with tech and startup cultures that mask profit-chasing under the guise of "changing the world," which often worsens disillusionment when the day-to-day reality feels mundane.
• Action as the Antidote: A few commenters emphasized moving away from overthinking or trying to perfectly structure data/projects, advising instead to directly start local, concrete actions—such as investigating neighborhood politics or council funding—to anchor oneself in tangible reality.

vgl [[Ignite by Neeltje van Horen]]

1 filteren, 2 aandacht, 4 nieuwsgierigheid, 6 doelgerichtheid, 8/9 planmatig handelen, kiezen/beslissen, 12 metacognitie, 15 motivatie

1, aandacht. 2,3 stress/flex,4 dingen niet doen, 5 taken starten

4,5,6. 7,9 aandacht, taakinitiatie, planning/prioritering (ook herziening daarvan obv interne prios), tijdsbesteding, doelgerichtheid

1,5 zijn bij burn-out aan de orde lijkt me

https://web.archive.org/web/20260405100013/https://wij-leren.nl/executieve-functies.php

Overzicht en definities met refs van executieve functies. Nav artikel waar iemand burn-out hiermee in verband bracht, hoe in herstel die weer te verbeteren.

• Task Expansion & Role Blurring: AI lowers the barrier to entry for complex tasks, leading employees to take on work outside their core expertise. Product managers and designers are now writing code, while researchers take on engineering tasks.
• Specialist Burden: This expansion creates a "cleanup" tax. For example, senior engineers now spend significant time reviewing, debugging, and mentoring colleagues who produce "vibe-coded" AI outputs, often through informal and unmanaged channels like Slack.
• The "Ambient Work" Phenomenon: Because AI interactions feel conversational and "easy," work has become ambient. Employees find themselves prompting AI during lunch, between meetings, or late at night, eliminating natural mental downtime.
• Intensified Multitasking: Workers are running multiple AI agents in parallel while simultaneously performing manual tasks. This creates a high sense of "momentum" but leads to extreme cognitive load and constant attention-switching.
• The Productivity Trap: AI acts as a "partner" that makes revived or deferred tasks feel doable. This creates a flywheel where people don't work less; they simply take on more volume, leading to "unsustainable intensity" that managers often mistake for genuine productivity.
• Sustainability Risks: The researchers warn that while AI feels like "play" initially, it eventually leads to cognitive fatigue, impaired decision-making, and burnout as the quiet increase in workload becomes overwhelming.

Hacker News Discussion

• Cognitive Fatigue: Users highlighted that "AI fatigue" is distinct from normal work tiredness. It stems from the "constant vigilance" required to audit AI output and the lack of a "flow state" due to unpredictable waiting times for generations.
• Executive Function Strain: Commenters noted that managing autonomous agents is more exhausting than manual work. One user compared it to Level 3 autonomous driving—you aren't driving, but you must remain "fully hands-on" to ensure the AI doesn't touch the wrong files or hallucinate.
• The Jevons Paradox: Several participants pointed out that as the "cost" of work decreases due to AI, the demand for work increases proportionally. Instead of saving time, workers are expected to triple their output, which leaves them more stressed than before.
• Management Expectations: A common theme was that leadership often mandates AI usage and pre-supposes productivity gains, leaving no room for cases where AI makes work slower or lower quality. This forces employees to "perform" productivity while working longer hours.
• Vibe Coding vs. Engineering: There is a heated debate between those who see "vibe coding" (prompt-heavy development) as a massive efficiency gain and veterans who argue it produces "average code" that becomes a maintenance nightmare in large, legacy codebases.

Burnout includes both physical and mental fatigue. Decreased in performance, mood, and even sleep problems.

for - book - Burnout from Humans: A little book about AI that is not really about AI - Aiden Cinnamon Tea & Dorothy Ladybugboss - 2024

https://web.archive.org/web/20241113110726/https://www.experimental-history.com/p/so-you-wanna-de-bog-yourself

from 2024/01 by Adam Mastroianni

https://web.archive.org/web/20241002103957/https://whyy.org/segments/is-giftedness-a-form-of-neurodivergence/ mentioned in Mensa Heurekasig mailinglist. Art from #2024/05/20 on seeing hiq as neurodivergence, wrt 'gifted burnout'

This rings true. The friction, the struggle is the work, at least when it comes to my knowledge work. Interesting is that when the jump happens I tend to phrase it as an escape, a way of fleeing forward. When I got stuck in a major research project in 2020, the key insight to unlock it was a gasp of desperation more than a bolt of lightning. Colleagues immediately told me that was the key, but to me it felt like using a cheat code. Now in hindsight, I think it was the best possible outcome but that oroginal sense of escape remains.

Matuschak through focusing on specific people in a specific context, entering into a deeper emotional connection would provide meaning both in the now and over the long term. This certainly applies to my work #hazp08 and perhaps all my project that stand out in hindsight either have that or are singular efforts where the doing held such a link to myself.

I find the concepts behind my work meaningful, and enjoyable, but usualll not the work. The most enjoyable work usually is disconnected from anything else.

[[Andy Matischak]] on the value and quality of his work. Over the long haul, he found his work (at Apple) meaningless, even if it felt good at the time. The statement 'if someonee alse had done the work' the results would have been similar chimes. My work may be seen by others as meaningful in the moment, but I only see that it doesn't matter in the long run. A million others for any of us. M writes he felt confident, I never had any answer to the question what I'm good at. I just get total internal silence in response, and always have gotten.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TSoeQSegRW4&list=PL3NaIVgSlAVKWUrFOkDW7AEjXaiPQu_IM 3 Things I Wish I Knew Before Burning Out on YouTube

05:00 hustle culture: do what you love, and do it aggressively, not loving the thing and working hard leads to burnout

Our support of teachers from professional, community, and personal levels can have tangible results.

PD to focus on effective strategies, coping, and ways to manage stress helpful?

How is this different than demoralization?

Add to other definitions of burnout

!- Title : The Burnout Society !- Author : Philosopher Byung-Chul Han - the price for freedom, the price for the pathological advocacy of "Yes, we can" is compulsion to achieve high goals, and failure and depression when it cannot be realistically achieve - the goal, as promoted is far too lofty and failure is all but assured

The only way to prevent burnout

Baig, Abdul Mannan. ‘Counting the Neurological Cost of COVID-19’. Nature Reviews Neurology 18, no. 1 (January 2022): 5–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41582-021-00593-7.

Pham, Q. T., Le, X. T. T., Phan, T. C., Nguyen, Q. N., Ta, N. K. T., Nguyen, A. N., Nguyen, T. T., Nguyen, Q. T., Le, H. T., Luong, A. M., Koh, D., Hoang, M. T., Pham, H. Q., Vu, L. G., Nguyen, T. H., Tran, B. X., Latkin, C. A., Ho, C. S. H., & Ho, R. C. M. (2021). Impacts of COVID-19 on the Life and Work of Healthcare Workers During the Nationwide Partial Lockdown in Vietnam. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, 563193. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.563193

The BMJ. (2021, March 1). “It’s really important we don’t situate vaccine hesitancy and low uptake of the vaccine as a problem of particular individuals or communities." @ProfKevinFenton joins the #DeepBreathIn podcast to talk covid vaccines and their uptake http://ow.ly/iIXf50DMtDE http://ow.ly/dAzS50DMtDF https://t.co/FEJAvBODLf [Tweet]. @bmj_latest. https://twitter.com/bmj_latest/status/1366407891419283456

Spagnoli, Paola, Carmela Buono, Liliya Scafuri Kovalchuk, Gennaro Cordasco, and Anna Esposito. ‘Perfectionism and Burnout During the COVID-19 Crisis: A Two-Wave Cross-Lagged Study’. Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2021). https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.631994.

Williams, C. (n.d.). Pandemic burnout: Do you have it and what can you do about it? New Scientist. Retrieved 5 February 2021, from https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24933202-400-pandemic-burnout-do-you-have-it-and-what-can-you-do-about-it/

Długosz, P., & Kryvachuk, L. (2020). Neurotic generation of Covid-19 in Eastern Europe. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/mwhzk

Weibelzahl, S., Reiter, J., & Duden, G. (2020). Pandemic-Induced Depression and Anxiety in Healthcare Professionals. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/5rehd

Sultana, A., Sharma, R., Hossain, M. M., Bhattacharya, S., & Purohit, N. (2020). Burnout Among Healthcare Providers During COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Evidence-based Interventions [Preprint]. SocArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/4hxga

Hayes, S., Priestley, J. L., Ishmakhametov, N., & Ray, H. E. (2020). “I’m not Working from Home, I’m Living at Work”: Perceived Stress and Work-Related Burnout before and during COVID-19 [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/vnkwa

Długosz, P. (2020). Neurotic coronavirus generation? The report from the second wave of research on the students from Kraków [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6ecr7

Senior, J. (2020, May 3). Opinion | What One Doctor’s Suicide Taught Us. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/opinion/coronavirus-doctors-mental-health.html

Blanchard, M. A., & Heeren, A. (2020). Why We Should Move from Reductionism and Embrace a Network Approach to Parental Burnout? [Preprint]. PsyArXiv. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/y34cq

Johnson, S. U., Ebrahimi, O. V., & Hoffart, A. (2020, May 20). Level and Predictors of PTSD Symptoms Among Health Workers and Public Service Providers During the COVID-19 Outbreak. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/w8c6p

Urbina, A. (2020, May 8). What do we know about University Academics’ Mental Health? A Systematic Literature Review. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/37jhr

Nous avons là un titre simple, mais en apparence seulement. Car la liaison grammaticale établie entre les deux termes "télétravail" et "burn-out" dit déjà que l'auteure fait l'hypothèse d'une causalité, ou au moins d'une corrélation, entre ces deux notions. En l'occurrence, le télétravail pourrait conduire au burn-out. C'est la position que va ensuite défendre l'auteure.

Précisons d'ailleurs que, dans le corps de l'article, l'auteure aborde d'abord la question du burn-out, puis seulement celle du télétravail. On pouvait donc s'attendre à ce qu'elle intitule son article "Burn-out et télétravail". L'inversion des termes me semble dès lors très significative de la direction de la corrélation.

En bref : on a, dans ces deux mots et leur liaison, tout l'article en résumé. Le télétravail n'est pas une réponse satisfaisante au burn-out mais, au contraire, le télétravail peut mener au burn-out là où il est censé le soigner.

Ways to beat burnout:

1. Take less job responsibilities
2. Identify what gives you energy, and what drains it
3. Manage your digital distractions
4. Don't give all of your energy to work
5. Just say "no" to too many projects
6. Make self care a priority
7. Lean on your support network
8. Manage well

Burnout also affects your private life

Need to be "on the call" even after the work is one of the greatest burnout symptoms

Symptoms of a burnout:

• You’ve become cynical or critical at work
• You drag yourself to work and have trouble getting started
• You’re irritable or impatient with co-workers, customers or clients
• You lack the energy to be consistently productive
• You find it hard to concentrate
• You lack satisfaction from your achievements
• You feel disillusioned about your job
• You use food, drugs or alcohol to feel better or to simply not feel
• Your sleep habits have changed
• You’re troubled by unexplained headaches, stomach or bowel problems, or other physical complaints

How burnout starts and what it is

On how quickly poor teaching burns out teachers.