From the venture capitalist Fred Wilson, writing about something I have experienced first-hand myself:
I’ve gone through a few periods of burnout in my career and it was usually brought on by a string of painful failures. I’ve watched others navigate that similarly. If you are heavily invested in something that doesn’t work, it hurts. And the more the investment is of yourself, your time, your enthusiasm, the worse it is.
I’ve gotten out of these periods of burnout by turning my attention to something else. Crypto was helpful for me back in 2013 and 2014 when I was going through one of those periods. It was something new that I could throw myself at, that was different, and that was working.
The first time I experienced burnout I spent time laying the groundwork for an India-specific Demand Side Platform for ads. This is before my current thinking on privacy and anonymity evolved to what it is, and in retrospect I’m glad I never built upon that work. The second time, with burnout combined with poor mental health, I spent time on the Someone To Talk To chat application that we recently discussed.