Is burnout and depression real? How you know you are in it?
Is that real or is it just boredom feeling? I might be suffering from it but how you know for sure you are suffering from it and it is real?
You won't find an answer by asking people on HN. You need individual assessment and care from a counselor or therapist.
If it's just boredom, you can always stop seeing them. If it's more than that, you'll find that it's worth the time and money to see a professional.
However, there has been a lot of discussion of burnout on HN, and you might benefit from hearing what people who have experienced it have to say about it. Just type "burnout" into the HN search box and you'll see lots of past discussions.
You may have a burst here and there, but it's short lived.
To fight this, you need to regularly (do not skip a week) put focus on your hobbies, spend time away from work (ex: a day trip up to Mt. Diablo), spend time with people that make you happy, spend time outside, sleep 8 hours a day (a lack of sleep will make you a zombie), meditate, exercise and stretch (make sure you do a light jog before stretching)
fighting depression isn't something you focus on after you're depressed, it's something you focus on while you're content so you don't get depressed. Crawling out of depression is extremely difficult, so make consistent efforts to fight it now.
Since then I have learned to recognize the signs much earlier and I take time off when I need to. Hey wow, guess who took today and tomorrow off. We are going to shop for Raspberry Pi parts .... that should fix me :)
Oh sunlight helps, a lot!
Burnout is the result of ignoring the signs of chronic mental fatigue, at least in my personal experience.
The things you can do is : Take a few days off Try to sleep a lot
No (or way less than usual) interest in going to work
Feeling tired, bored all or most of the time
Unable to concentrate on even the most trivial tasks