This is not a guide to curing burnout. It is more like a log — a way of slowing down enough to see what is actually going on.

In my last blog, I thought there was a past version of me who handled everything perfectly and that I was somehow degrading. Now I think I have found the real problem.

Status Quo

When I was in high school, I had quite an unforgettable experience. In my first year, I met someone who always fascinated me, and it was a wonderful year. In my second year, I was in a wonderful relationship — life seemed perfect. In my third year, things started to go wrong. We broke up, but I kept going. I was still very self-disciplined: running at least 5km every day, working out, going to bed at 11 and waking up at 5:30 to learn programming. Then I was admitted to WZBC. For the whole summer holiday, I barely did any workout — my watch was broken, I had no track to run on, and the gym was expensive. I stopped. Partially those were excuses, and I know it.

When I finally arrived at college, I was excited. I imagined it as a place where people are enthusiastic about what they do, where everyone pursues their goals. It was not. Courses were neither challenging nor interesting, so attending class always felt like trading time and energy for nothing. Still, I managed to motivate myself — running with my phone, using the school gym. It just was not the same without data and a decent environment, but programming went on, and I kept learning. School was easy. I joined BP Debate Union as tech support and a debater with potential. Everything was on track.

Until my second year, when I became President of BPDU. My workload tripled overnight. I now had to plan and host every event, prepare topics and arguments, manage team dynamics, and handle administrative paperwork — all at once. On top of that, I was preparing for IELTS. During winter break, I scored 7.5, but somehow I agreed to go for 8 in the next semester. I was too exhausted to refuse, even if getting an 8 does benefit my future. Now, in the second semester of my second year, tasks are chasing me instead of me accomplishing them one by one.

What Now?

Analytically, the problem is easy to see once you lay it out:

High School

• Second year: Student, in a relationship
• Third year: Student, coder, runner

College

• First year: Student, debater, coder
• Second year (first half): Student, debater, coder, IELTS prep
• Second year (second half): Student, debater, coder, IELTS prep, President, developer, blog writer, maintainer of all of BPDU’s online infrastructure

But there is something the table does not show: the branches are not isolated. They feed each other in ways I did not expect.

Coding helps my debating — I can automate prep tasks, manage club logistics, build tools that save hours. Debate sharpens my English. Better English makes me a cleaner coder. The cross-pollination is real, and it compounds faster than any single branch ever could alone.

But that is also exactly the trap. Because the time each branch demands grows with it. The better I get at each, the more there is to do inside it. My advantage — being across different fields — is inseparable from my disadvantage. I am building width when what I also need is depth.

That is the tension I have not solved yet: how to keep the branches talking to each other without being stretched so thin across them that I become a non-expert in all of them. I am looking for that balance — digging deeper into each field, not just wider.

Being a perfectionist makes everything worse. Every task demands full effort. And just switching between them burns energy before the work even begins. Irregular sleep followed. Insufficient rest followed. A negative loop closed around me.

Solutions

To break a negative loop, you only need to break one link in the chain.

I fixed my sleep first. The result was immediate — I can wake up and actually welcome the day now. My body has learned when to offer me its peak cognitive window, and everything flows smoother inside it.

I came back to running. It is not about fitness, not really. It is about reclaiming a sense of discipline and self-control when everything else feels like it is happening to you. And when I run, the part of my brain that never stops thinking finally goes quiet.

I started writing. This blog is part of that — a way to track myself, to slow down enough to see what is actually going on.

I am also forcing myself to finish the second IELTS regardless of the result, just to close that branch and free up the space it occupies.

Looking Forward

I do not know exactly what the next version of this looks like. But I think that is fine. The old version of me — the one who ran every morning and coded before sunrise — was not more capable. He just had fewer fronts to fight on. The current version is learning something harder: how to keep moving when the map has more roads than you can walk at once.

The loop is not fully broken. But it is looser than it was. And that, for now, is enough to keep going.