I’ve been running my company which focuses on helping people find purpose (novel job app). I’ve been building it for almost 5 years. When I started it was only for foodservice and when Covid hit I lost all my customers overnight. So I pivoted to include all industries. I’ll mention here I’m a solo founder with no tech background and I live on and off in South America with my outsourced team - constant bugs, behind deadlines by six months, extraordinary high bills for terrible quality of work in my opinion. I’m the product manager, QA, sales and marketing, etc. they just drop the ball and I’m running around picking up the pieces for things I don’t even understand - I didn’t go to school for this stuff.
Anyway, after years of +12 hour days seven days a week - I’ve taken about 4 weeks off total these past years - I can say that I super burnt out and have been for some time.
There are times when I can’t do anything, literally. It is terrible. But I just push through - I have no choice as my whole life and all my money are tied into this. Plus, I am really passionate about what I’m doing to help others (even though it seems almost everyone is trying to just rip me off as I delegate work).
Anyway, the thing is - from my life and observing others that I’m helping find jobs and purpose…you must have purpose or inspiration or you will get burnt out. If you don’t you will think what’s the point of working if you don’t find a purpose in your job or that you are really creating value in anything. Or if you have nothing going on in your personal life with purpose, then you will get burnt out on that. Without purpose you just always think what’s the point- why do anything, it’s a waste - bad place to be when the world is very full of opportunities.
You need goals and intrigue to keep going and not flop from your burnout. The burnout will probably always be there, it’s just having the inspiration to continue, like small wins towards that purpose. Small wins for me are seeing the amazing reviews on the App Store…like higher rated than the incumbents without cheating ;)
It was the win the other month speaking in front of my state senate to successfully lobby a bill that passed that will help a lot of people. It is the progress I’m making on writing my book about how to find more opportunities in life - a kids book for adults. It’s the fact that I’m in my late 30s and live with my dad who I never had a great relationship with (single dad raised me since I was 1) and I now do after trying so many years to have one. My purpose, my small wins. They keep me going.
So, if you feel stuck, the only thing I can say is keep changing things, trying new things, challenging things - the way you think and what you do. With enough change you will find something that inspires you eventually I hope. The rate of change you allow will determine how quickly that happens.
Best of luck - just remember there is a lot of stuff in this world, enough to keep you occupied with something interesting until you die I hope.