Burn out is not really something physical. You probably need some rest, but it is less than what you think (measured in days). Your own mind is dissatisfied with some of what you are doing and it is raising red flags. You need to figure out what is it.
Do you like writing software? This is the first question. If you do, keep going, but you need to focus on something else. Maybe a slightly different industry, or smaller companies, or even something on your own.
I agree with the comments about college. You don't know what you are missing out until you do. It's great that you are self taught, which is an important skill for college.
There are a few reasons to enroll. You are unlikely to be implementing data structures in your day job. However, some algorithms are very hard to understand, and it forces your brain to work really hard to crack them. Then algorithmic problems at work become rather trivial. And the remaining non-trivial can be reduced to one of the problems you already know.
Second, there's the exchange of ideas. You'll notice that many billionaires are college dropouts. Meaning that they did enroll and took classes, and decided to quit because they found a big opportunity. Odds are you are going to leave college in debt instead of a billionaire, but you'll leave with knowledge and connections, which are worth more.
And of course, your CV will be better for it.
Adrenal gland.. Mostly relies on good neurochemistry, which relies on 2 things: good diet, and good gut health. Meaning: eat your yogurt (and bio flora for your tummy) and get all your amino acids! Good gut health = great digestion -> what you eat becomes good neurochem -> happiness and clarity.
Can you provide the source for this? I would like to read up.
Any other sources of knowledge to learn about neurosciences you would like to recommend would also be helpful.
There being no concise source on the matter of general health, diet, good neurochemistry, and mood, I can but offer a collection of disparate books:
Principles of Neuroscience (Kandel, Schwartz, Jessell) is a great textbook.
Emotional Intelligence (Bradberry)
Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind (Suzuki Roshi)
I also read a lot of personal experience vault essays on erowid.org (regarding "experimental medicine," for lack of better terminology)
This is ridiculous advice for someone who is in U.S. So you want him to get into a huge debt w/o even knowing what he wants to do?
OP, if you want to find what you want to do or just "find yourself" don't bother wasting money and time at college and just travel for 6 months to some remote place and live there with locals.
Second, you mention traveling and living in a remote area with locals. This is definitely a good thing to do. But it can also drop you into debt just as quickly as college in the US if you don’t research first. And you may or may not learn anything if you are not careful. In other words it’s still a risk.
In college, you are in a cohort of peers who are prioritizing growing/learning over most other things. In the workforce, that is not a guarantee.
Sure you may be lucky enough to join an organization that is willing to take risks for the sake of learning, but I would argue that this is incredibly rare as companies are motivated to make profits and the ROI is not always clear.
This doesn't mean that college will automatically make you adaptable and intellectually curious. You will only get back what you put into it.
I'm not hiring, but I'd personally rather see someone who self taught themselves some specific discipline, and then used the money they would have spent on college to apply their knowledge to build something for themselves (whether that's taking knowledge of math and building an investment portfolio, or taking knowledge of software and building a business/app, etc.)
If I were you I'd just ask "am I getting what I want out of college?" and if not, change that. If you don't know what else it's about, observe, ask, research, ask people on HN, whatever.
Disclaimer: never went.
Now in terms of math I can only speak for myself but it would probably take me 10x longer to learn what I have learnt, if it wasn't for being surrounded by professionals and a peer group where I can have my assumptions tested against.
Now I'm not saying it's impossible to self teach yourself advanced mathematics, but without tutorials, office hours, students to talk to, professors to talk to, it's going to be a very difficult road and one I'm not sure I could do the self-taught method.
Heh. I got a specially tough mathematical logic professor and failed multiple times. It literally took me years until I finally passed the class. And several textbooks and nights with little to no sleep. I had to rinse my brain and put it back a few times until I finally got it.
Sure, go with a textbook if you are ok with some superficial knowledge. But it's nonsense to compare that with spending months studying a single subject under a tough teacher.
It is not something required to be successful, but I'm getting tired of hearing stuff like "just buy a book, it's the same thing". No, it's not.
It is, however, a good idea to do so, and use that to figure out if going deeper in those subjects would be worthwhile.
Disclaimer: never learned calculus properly. Teacher wasn't strict enough, and I didn't care at the time. Big mistake.
You're at your peak in terms of learning new subjects, so if you get a chance, learn a few random ones! It's said that apple's focus on design and typography wouldn't have happened if Steve Jobs hadn't dropped in on some calligraphy classes during college.
For example, let's say one isn't sure about going to college. Instead of spending 4 years and a bajillion dollars to find out if college is right for you, and it might not be, how about washing dishes for a few months at a local restaurant? For one, you might love washing dishes. Two, a lot of stuff can come into focus when you spend doing something you don't really want to do. Just a thought.
This has never been a problem in terms of skills or employment and advancement. The only part I feel I missed out on is the networking aspect, and perhaps doing a minor subject, some language, literature or general studies unit or two would make one a more well-rounded person.
It's hard to justify the time and expense just for these benefits though.
And, as a bonus, in non-english speaking countries foreigners will have often a easier time getting admitted in an exclusive university than locals because universities want to be more international and increase diversity.
It's not worth getting into debts for an education you could have for free somewhere else.
My loans won't be paid off until I'm in my mid 40s. I feel like a sucker who fell for a scam. It's objectively the biggest mistake I ever made.
I'm sure my perspective will be soundly dismissed on HN. I'm sure I must have done college "wrong" or something. Whatever. I'm not trying to blame anyone else. My choices seemed like good ones at the time; these things are only clear in retrospect.
Felt like I did college wrong too, and it cost 4 years and ~22k USD, in return for .. nothing much really.
Unless, you're going to be a doctor/lawyer/engineer/$FIELD_THAT_REQUIRES_LICENSING... then college is a scam, and a waste of time and money.
Don't be fooled, education != college. You CAN get educated for much less, in MANY other ways, for much less money (if not free).
In fact, avoid any situation which pushes you to give up a healthy sleep schedule.