An abstract is a reduction, I tried to write this with some context so that it becomes easier to figure out if this is something that you might be flirting with or not, to make it live. As a person that has come pretty close to burning out (not quite ready to admit that I did) I figure I can sketch the situations a bit clearer than if you've never experienced this first hand.

I know we just had a burn-out discussion on the first page, that's exactly why I wrote this.

Please note that it is very well possible to be well on the road towards being burned out without realising it and that by showing what is and what is not burn-out related it might help a few people to realise what is going on.

Sometimes the 'normal' lack of inspiration or drive for a while gets mistakenly labelled as burn-out, sometimes you get the notice that person 'x' is no longer because they and those around them failed to notice the seriousness of the situation until it was much too late.

If you feel that it is a waste of space and time to write this you're welcome to use the 'flag' option, I thought it was relevant and that's why I spent the time on putting it together.

The problem with your blog post is that it doesn't show your voice at all! I couldn't tell that you were pretty close to burning out nor did you mention anything that seemed to be part of your own experience.

You start the blog with some introduction, you put a link to Wikipedia and then you re-list the Wikipedia phases.

So, I'm not dismissing your time spent writing this and I'm pretty sure it helps, but there are probably much better ways to rewrite that blog post and make it better.

This is HN. Writing stuff here is like writing it in two-foot high letters on a prominent wall in NYC, except more public, more accountable, and far more permanent.

So, rather than beg for more, I thank jacquesm for being willing to share as much as he already has.

Yes, his sharing is mostly in the form of ambiguous subtext. That's okay. I can read hints and I enjoy ambiguity.

Here's a general piece of valuable advice: If you want people to tell you what their life lessons really are, meet them offline, perhaps in a bar or coffeeshop. Keep all recording devices off. Promise not to blog what they tell you without permission, and/or until one or both of you are dead. Keep that promise.

Meta-advice: Make a habit of meeting people in coffeeshops. Though it has many advantages, the Google-enabled internet is a lousy medium for heart-to-heart honesty.

Feel free to do so!

For me writing about burning out is like writing about a disease that I may or may not have suffered from, as I wrote here - and elsewhere - I spent three full years 'off' because the sight of a keyboard disgusted me, I couldn't see the point in shifting bits on hard drives around any longer. Doing physical stuff was a welcome change from all this virtual work and I still do a lot of that on the side now to keep a balance in my life.

The wikipedia article is very dry, as a rule I list the sources of the stuff that I write and I took the list and expanded on it to put this in to context so that it becomes easier to see if you are at risk or not.

Writing about my personal experience is a different kettle of fish altogether, I'm not even sure if I am quite ready to document that phase of my life, it was not the most happy occasion. What prompted this was the ease with which people throw the term 'burn-out' around, as if it is somehow a fashionable thing to be suffering from, instead of a serious and potentially debilitating (and in some very unfortunate cases life threatening) condition.

I'll think about putting together a piece on what exactly was my road to total misery and how I recovered from it (and to some extent am still recovering) but I still shy away from listing myself as having burnt-out, simply because during the whole thing I never felt bad about myself per-se, just about the work.