The only known cures for burnout is either removing yourself from the environment or getting more progress. You might be measuring progress differently to your body. Your body wants good food, exercise, sex, hugs, friends, spirituality, sleep, etc.
One trap people tend to fall into is early retirement - work life sucks, therefore, save money, live like a miser, work like a dog, and it will be over by 40. But the body may not take this very well. I'm not saying FIRE is bad, but be careful how you do it.
I saw a video pop into my feed the other day which was timely, discussing this very subject. Maybe you'll find something useful in it, or at the very least find it relatable:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEWV5yaj_2o&pp=ygUQcHJpbWFnZ...
Here is your problem root cause - wrong expectations.
Obvious solution would be to change the expectations.
Your work is not your god nor your mommy to bless you with motivation, meaning, higher calling etc.
Children. Please don’t make them to satisfy your craving for meaning, this would eventually make yours and their life miserable.
I personally made kids because I thought it was the right thing to do and because i had a partner who shared my views.
I knew in advance it will be hard and i will not get any magical meaning bestowed upon me.
At the same time they gave me extraordinary motivation to pull myself out of my spiritually and somewhat economically miserable life.
i had a burnout experience a few years ago, and didn't realise until i got a very strange symptom. i was constantly thirsty for water, even after drinking two litres of it. apparently this is a stress-symptom some people experience.
to give you advice:
if you want change but not sure where to start, simply pick one small thing and see how it makes you feel. you have mentioned starting your own business... perhaps start sketching on it and observe. listen closely to your mind and body as you go through the process, did it light a fire or feel like a chore? imo, sitting around thinking about doing things is a mind-numbing experience, it's by going through them we get information about what it means.
if you're actually ready to leave the life you're in and looking for validation, watch Office Space. it will calm your nerves and make you feel great about switching directions in life towards something more meaningful. i sent it to my brother when he had a similar crisis and it helped him.
best of luck!
I too used to wait for Mondays and get excited about going to work. I used to relish that feeling of solving a big hard problem. Now having gone through enough rounds of corporate BS, layoffs, reorgs, incompetence, greed, and the like you wonder “what’s it all for”. You also look at the world and see more pressing problems than adding an AI chatbot to a photo sharing app.
Much of it is how the industry has changed. I don’t dislike software engineering. In fact i love it. I dislike all the BS - especially in the last few years. Previously it felt like we were on the “same team” pushing for big change with the big tech companies. Increasingly they’re just pale images of their former self. “Don’t be evil” is far far gone from the ethos of these companies that have no qualms sacrificing values once core to Silicon Valley and the project of an open internet. Now it just seems they rode those “values” to a certain level of profitability and discarded them to get to the next level of making money. Now their is a strong feeling amongst management engineers are entitled babies, and a corresponding distrust of increasingly, and disconnected, narcissistic tech executives.
I would recommend taking breaks and leaving any and all laptops at home. Establish an identity away from work be it as a dad, husband, with hobbies or otherwise. You can also find ways to volunteer in your community. And don’t discount seeing a mental health professional!
Professionally my most fulfilling days involve mentoring and being of service to others. Helping someone else have a fulfilling career leaves me feeling better than solving a big hairy tech problem these days.
I never imagined having children and I think that's a big part of why - it seems rather cruel to create someone who will face the same blackhole of meaninglessness as a way to assuage my own troubles, and I doubt it would work anyway.
Most people throughout history I believe have mitigated this via religion; I think it can be very helpful if you are able to believe in one. My problem is that I never have really been able to.
So I guess I'm onto the next techbro cliche - I've got a book or two on stoicism that I mean to read through at some point and see if there's anything to that.
All that is to say that I think it's pretty tough. I will say that I moved to a smaller company awhile back and it at least feels like I get to make some decisions that matter at least a bit; it's been a good change of pace.
C'est la vie. It's the Existential crisis every modern human gets hit.
Know that this worldly life is no more than play, amusement, luxury, mutual boasting, and competition in wealth and children. This is like rain that causes plants to grow, to the delight of the planters. But later the plants dry up and you see them wither, then they are reduced to chaff. And in the Hereafter there will be either severe punishment or forgiveness and pleasure of Allah, whereas the life of this world is no more than the delusion of enjoyment. [2]
If I'm right, at 26 to 27 you would have had some peak strange strong experience.
What goes up. Must come down.
This period is your down period, you will bounce back.
If I'm right, we may experience the peak, again at 52 to 54.
There is a commenter at age 50 and he will experience the same strong peak again when he reaches 52 to 54.
I always found it means it’s time to move on to something I enjoy again. I have a good track record of solving stuff other people don’t like (I, for instance, like projects with millions of lines of terrible code that no one knows how to fix/add on to) and I have a good track record for rapidly doing a tech startup. MVPs I have done in a weekend and had the startups I did it for raise millions. But what I personally hate is an actual business… I like the seed stage, the bustle, the sleeping under the desk to push it out. When it starts to make real money I get bored and depressed; when I enter the 40th meeting about some drop shadow of a button or when we ‘need to’ discuss trivial new functionality for days with 10+ people. When every day becomes working down the same task lists and processes are hardened so all code looks the same because standards (usually 1000x more work to write than just hacking it). I accepted this but when I like a place, I still sometimes (last time was 2020) fall in the trap that I stay too long. And then I start to feel useless, I don't want to work on some feature for weeks that most people won’t notice etc. It feels pointless and then I feel like you describe.
I fixed it so far every time by moving to another country and going into (one or more) startups. Currently I am in 4 startups; I like two of them a bit too much so hope I will be strong enough to get out soon.