I guess I have a different theory of burnout. to me it happens when I can't connect the dots anymore. its not because I worked too hard. company found a vertical and how I spend all my time trying to fix 'bugs' that are really because the product is being mis-applied. most of the senior team left and its clear that we aren't going to be taking on any other work than cleaning up. sales are flagging and its clear that the whole narrative was corrupt to begin with.

the only projects I can remember, paid or not, are the ones that took up a huge fraction of my output and really did something cool. do that. shoot big. make something really different.

don't turn programming into sitting at the end of an queue, picking up random things and gamifying retiring them as fast you can. you have a chisel. make a sculpture.