AI helped me through burnout (but not how you think)

This time last year, I had just welcomed a new baby boy into my life, and I was on the tail end of my eight weeks of paternity leave. I was coming out of a year of record growth at my bootstrapped company, and was coming up on ten years of being a solo-founder.

Little did I know that the next year would be so treacherous.

The year everything broke

I don't know when exactly it started, but it seemed like overnight I could no longer function at work. And eventually, also at home. I suddenly lost my executive function, everything was overstimulating, and at many times, I felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

When I say "everything was overstimulating," I mean the "throw your hands over your ears" kind of overstimulating. Suddenly, it felt like I was an autistic kid standing next to a waterfall.

I didn't know what was happening, and I originally thought it was some sort of midlife-crisis, even though I wasn't having existential dread or regrets or anything like that. Also, I'm only 34! I was just so overwhelmed — all the time.

As you could imagine, struggling with executive dysfunction as a solo-founder is worse-case scenario, or at least it was to me. I know founders who've sold their company because of it.

I'm very fortunate to have built a business — quite intentionally — that can run without me, more or less. If I didn't have that setup prior, I'm not entirely sure we could've survived this episode without considerable life changes — because at the worst of it, I went months with near-zero output. I would stare at an empty text editor for hours, trying to will myself into productivity.

Early on I actually thought the business "running without me" for eight weeks was the "big trigger" for my midlife-not-midlife-crisis, but it turns out that wasn't the full story.

Grasping at straws

I returned to work after eight weeks of paternity, with nothing having exploded, business still running — thriving, even! My email inbox was a bit backed up, and still is, but everything just… kept working. While on leave, I did respond to high-priority emails at night or during naps, but other than that, it was almost entirely hands-off.

I got to enjoy the wonderful transition into this new phase of life with my wife and kids, and I got to care for my wife like she does for us. But as somebody who tends towards workaholism, I think it was also hard for me to "cold-turkey" work like that.

Like I said, I thought this time away was my original "trigger," because as cool as it sounds to take work off and go unnoticed, at around the seven week mark, I started to feel quite useless as far as work was concerned. I had been gone for what felt like a considerable amount of time, yet my business kept running, and it kept growing.

None of my customers noticed. New customers still came in.

This left me feeling largely superfluous in the grand scheme of things. Why do I put so much effort into working — into marketing, into sales, into onboarding, into support, into product — when it evidently doesn't make a bit of a difference at the end of the day?

Auto-pilot and 110% seemed to produce the same output.

I felt like this train of thought, of being useless, spiraled me into a crisis, or so I thought. (Looking back now, I think I had been in and out of burnout for a lot longer than I realized.)

I spent the next couple months, unable to start anything work-related, teetering on the edge of an emotional meltdown at any inconvenience or overstimulation, trying to figure out what was going on in my head. I tried a lot of things to cope. At the worst of it, I almost sold my company — twice.

I felt like maybe a drastic step like that would be a fresh start, a "hard reset" sounded nice, but at the end of the day the thought of breaking the routine I've built for myself didn't sit well with me. It felt too drastic. I designed my business around what works best for me, in every aspect, and losing that felt terrifying. Like an artist losing their studio.

I also felt I would've been letting my customers down.

I eventually ruled out a midlife-crisis simply because the symptoms and underlying reasons didn't align with what I was experiencing. And with that, I ruled out the "hard reset."

But if not a midlife-crisis, then what? Burnout?

Burnout, but not burnout

I wasn't convinced it was burnout, because I've been through burnout before and it was never this bad.

And as far as I can remember, no episode of burnout I had experienced was accompanied by overstimulation. Perhaps a short temper, or a lack of interest (an interest which could almost always be placed elsewhere), but never to the point where I can't take care of a crying newborn without feeling like my skin was trying to fly off my flesh.

This never happened with the other two kids, either. I was always the husband that would get up in the middle of the night to soothe the crying baby so that my wife could get some extra sleep — but this time, I couldn't. Some nights I would sleep with my hands over my ears.

I was now the dad that had to leave the dinner table and go sit on the stairs and cry because the kids were so overstimulating, even though they were just being normal kids. Nothing had really changed, just my perception of it changed. It was infuriating.

It was like everything was too loud. It probably doesn't make sense, but a lot of the time it felt like even lights were too loud. If an overhead light was on, I would instantly be overstimulated. I even had a meltdown one time when I had to drive into the sun when traveling.

This went on for awhile, and I was unable to find any real answers, and so I kept spiraling. I knew something was wrong, but apparently, I was the only man on earth to go through a sudden loss of executive function, with overstimulation, with frequent meltdowns (usually internally). It felt like almost every interaction I would have with another person was net-negative.

I felt very alone, and I drifted a long ways away from everybody in my life. At this point, I think I started to struggle with depression because I felt like there was no end in sight.

In my search, I learned about autistic burnout and autistic regression. Eventually, I'd learn that it's actually very common for undiagnosed adults to learn they're autistic after having kids, either due to burnout, or because their own kids get diagnosed neurodivergent.

From here, I entered into the rabbit hole.

The rabbit hole

It actually all started one night on the couch. I was watching "Love on the Spectrum" with my wife — a reality dating show following people with autism. But this ended up being a catalyst, because what started as little comments to my wife like 'huh, that's not normal?' and 'wait, you don't do that?' began to poke at me more and more.

I'd joke that maybe I'm autistic, and we'd have a laugh. But my curiosity would later get the best of me, and I'd start taking online tests — even paid tests. The scores would be incredibly high, so high in fact, that I'd get spooked and ask my wife to take the test too.

I thought they were rigged, but turns out they aren't.

I became obsessed with the question.

Eventually, the rabbit hole became my replacement for work. It became my hyperfixation, all day every day. I'd spend most of my time in the office researching, not working — watching videos, reading papers, reading online discussions, listening to podcasts — to finally reach the conclusion that I'm autistic. And to my surprise, none of what I was going through was as unique as I felt it was.

Nearly everything I was experiencing had a clinical name, and a lot of them are highly correlated at that. I finally felt like I was getting the answers I needed.

During these months, it felt like AI, namely ChatGPT, helped me more than I'd like to admit, just by answering the endless barrage of admittedly stupid questions I had. And it was very helpful in directing me to online discussions when prior research provided more questions than answers.

(You have to be careful with LLMs, though, because their sycophantic dial is set very high, and you could let it convince you of anything you wanted to be true.)

(TARS, set sycophantic setting to LOW.)

The big answer I found was that it was burnout, but at the same time it wasn't burnout — at least not the burnout I thought it was. It was autistic burnout, joined by autistic shutdowns.

Yet answers again have a funny way of turning into more questions.

The counterbalance

Diagnosed and undiagnosed ADHD runs in my family, and I've always recognized some of those traits in myself. I've always struggled with a low dopamine baseline, so in turn, I'm very impulsive when it comes to a chance for a dopamine boost. In fact, I'd describe the majority of my life as feeling perpetually understimulated, so my new reality of being constantly overstimulated was very new to me.

(Prior to the last year, I probably could've counted the times in my adult life I had been overstimulated on one hand. It just never happened, so I didn't even know what it was at first.)

(I would later learn that's not entirely accurate, I just had rather good coping mechanisms and avoidance tendencies.)

I never considered myself ADHD, though, solely because I didn't have the executive dysfunction that haunted my friends and family had who did have an ADHD diagnosis.

Turns out, I had a poor understanding of autism (particularly what used to be called Asperger's), and of neurodivergence in general. I'd have people ask me if I was autistic, but I'd brush it off because I never considered that I could be, much less both autistic and ADHD.

(I've replayed those moments in my head a lot and I wonder why I never looked into it. Why did I brush it off? Was I embarrassed? Was I offended? I could've understood myself a lot earlier in life if I had looked into it. But like I said, I had a poor understanding of neurodivergence, so I probably brushed it off because I was too "high-functioning.")

For a long time, I misunderstood the difference between myself and others with ADHD. I misread dysfunction as a difference in ambition or drive, because I didn't realize that I had an internal compensating system they probably didn't. I can see now that I did have the impairing parts all along, they were just being counterbalanced. My ADHD freeze states were always there, but they were overridden by rigid autistic routines. The seesaw was balanced.

For example, it was common for me to leave unfinished work for the next day, like a failing test with a clear error message, which would create enough internal discomfort that I could kickstart myself into hyperfocus the next morning, if I kept my routine. Sometimes I'd get distracted or bored and not get back to it for a couple days, but the "hack" usually worked for me.

Likewise, my drive for novelty and task switching was always there, it was just kept in check by an equally strong (or stronger) need for structure and predictability. I would constantly want to do new things, but I also want to keep doing what I'm doing — I need the euphoria that comes from achieving hard things, or being a successful business owner, or making more money, but I also need to be left alone to research some obscure topic for the next 4 weeks.

I've always felt that internal tension — that constant push and pull — between wanting to do a thing, but at the same time, wanting to do another thing that completely contradicts the prior thing.

For example, I want a big business, but I also want to keep it small — there's calm in the small, excitement in the big. With many things, I require predictably, yet I crave spontaneity.

I want to have friends, but I want to be alone and I forget about my friends. (It doesn't make sense to me either.)

It turns out this combination of forces, AuDHD, is not nearly as uncommon you'd think. And with it, my life would begin to make a lot more sense. I found myself replaying my entire life in my head, laughing at some parts and deeply grieving at others.

For a long time, these two forces kept each other in what seemed like equilibrium, and I felt like I could accomplish anything, as long as it was hard or interesting enough.

That balance has shown itself to be quite precarious in the real world, and neither side can compensate for the other anymore.

The result, executive dysfunction.

Freeze states

Instead of compensating for each other, the traits began to amplify each other's failures. ADHD paralysis prevents action, while my autistic rigidity makes inaction intolerable. I was stuck in a state where I couldn't start but I also couldn't rest. I couldn't just fire up a game to escape the work I didn't want to do, because I was working, and you can't play games while working. I couldn't go for a walk, because that wasn't my routine, and I couldn't change my routine. I couldn't get off work early, because work is 9-5 and not a minute earlier.

It felt like I was in deadlock, for lack of a better analogy. Some days, I would stare at a blank editor for hours. I'd have exactly what I want to do in my head, but I couldn't get my body to start writing characters into that stupid empty text file. It haunted me.

This deadlock is called a "freeze state," and I'd deal with them all day, for nearly anything. I'd sit on the couch wanting to play with the kids, but I couldn't. I'd sit in my office after work, but I couldn't leave. I'd start the shower and find myself unable to get in, or out. I'd sit down in a towel after the shower and find myself unable to get dressed.

Freeze states are like a paradox: on one end, my brain wants so badly to do something, yet on the other end, my brain will not let me do that thing. It doesn't make sense. It's infuriating.

I'd think, "it's my brain, why can't I control it?!"

I'm making it sound like I didn't get any work done, ever. But that's not true. I still did get some work done, but it wasn't in the same way that I used to get it done, and it wasn't at the same scale and volume that I used to get work done. And worse of all, it wasn't really on my terms.

In order to escape the freeze state around "starting," I now have to have a sense of urgency. This usually only comes in the form of a bug report, or a feature request from a large customer, or something else that screams something must be done now. If there's urgency, I can usually jump right into the task and start hyperfocusing, at least until I get bored or distracted or interrupted.

But where I used to be able to kickstart my hyperfocus almost at-will, I was now at the mercy of this mystical force called urgency. There were no morning kickstart hacks anymore, there was no manufacturing of urgency, and I think this just fueled my frustration, because I didn't feel in control of myself. I was at the mercy of "urgency."

In turn, this new way of working fueled my burnout even more.

The kickstart

Early on, I tried using AI to act as a kickstart, but it always fell short, and its mistakes overwhelmed me. I tried Cursor, Copilot, ChatGPT — none of these models wrote code that was good enough to trigger my hyperfocus, or at least snap me out of my freeze state. I watched people have success with AI, but for me, it only spewed garbage and it couldn't even follow simple instructions.

Maybe it was because I wrote Ruby and not TypeScript or React, but it felt like LLMs would write Ruby like a researcher writes Ruby, using syntax from 2005. Perhaps the training set for Ruby was outdated, but either way, this felt like a dead end to me, and so my output was still at the mercy of this thing called "urgency."

I would use AI to sketch code, but that wasn't a kickstart. It felt like productivity at times, but it wasn't real productivity, because nothing was being shipped to customers. I couldn't go from sketch to production, even if the plan was clearly laid out in front of me.

So much of my self-worth was wrapped up in my output — as a founder, as an engineer, and as an artist — and when it disappeared, I felt like I quite literally lost myself.

At some point late last year, I knew something had to change. What I was doing wasn't working — waiting to brute-force my way through burnout like I usually do wasn't working. At this point, it had been about a year of being in burnout — with no end in sight.

But I did eventually happen to stumble upon a kickstart for my freeze states: Claude Code. Claude was the first LLM that produced Ruby code that worked enough to kickstart my brain into fixing the code's architectural problems or exploring the idea further, rather than being overwhelmed with fixing the logical problems — the slop — in order to get to a half-way functioning proof-of-concept.

Claude was the first model which produced Ruby code that matched my own style, that would use modern Ruby syntax, follow The Rails Way of doing things, and which wrote code that was "close enough" to what I'd write myself, especially for a first-pass.

Once something exists in a "pretty good" but not "good enough" state, my perfectionism kicks my brain into gear to fix it from there. Often times that's taking the output and refactoring it by hand, other times that's refactoring it through prompting until it's interesting enough to start working by hand, or until it's "good enough."

It really does depend on my interest level. But the good thing about AI is that even if something is uninteresting, I can have it do it instead of struggling with a freeze state.

Of course, I find the former way of refactoring a first-pass by hand more artistically fulfilling, but to be honest, I'm not in a position right now to be too picky.

The productive week

Sunday marked the end of the first fully productive week I've had in over a year, and it marks the start of what's hopefully my second productive week. I won't go as far as saying that AI single-handedly got me through burnout, but it has helped me through it.

What began months ago as using Claude only after I would start, has turned into using Claude to help me start.

Letting Claude do that first, imperfect pass externalizes the initial "start" step. Instead of staring at a blank editor for hours, I watch Claude do its magic. It can be quite mesmerizing.

The week started with a quick prompt, half in jest, and ended with me feeling close to my old self again. The result of the prompt was actually pretty good, and more importantly, it worked — but it wasn't good enough. But most importantly, I actually wanted to fix it — triggering my first week-long, work-related hyperfixation in a long time.

It felt good to get completely lost in my work again. I didn't realize how much the feeling of "being productive" helps prop up my baseline dopamine levels until it disappeared.

I told my wife about my week, and she asked me how I felt. She knows how much I've struggled over this last year. I thought I would be more happy — overjoyed even — but at the time, I told her I was honestly kind of frustrated, because I didn't know why I suddenly had a productive week. (I did have a few moments during the week where tears of joy flowed down my face upon realization, but it was quickly followed up by a wave of "what am I doing right?")

I thought I would come out of burnout with all the answers, and I didn't have many. But it's normal for me to not understand how I'm feeling in the moment. I need time to process emotions and changes, so maybe I'll uncover more answers later as my brain brains.

I find writing helps me do this at a faster rate than I otherwise would. (This is the reason that I'm sitting here writing this right now.)

The burnout-crash loop

I do think an inflection point was realizing that I live in a continuous burnout-crash-recover loop, and the way my brain is wired, there's no way to exit the burnout-crash-recover loop.

Over the course of my life, I have gone through autistic burnout before, and I have had crashes, and I have had what I now recognize as shutdowns. I didn't have names for those at the time, so they were all just "burnout" to me. But I always recovered, mainly because I had very few responsibilities, and I could do what I needed to do.

Today, I have a lot of responsibilities. I have a wife, I have kids, I have a business, employees, taxes, mortgage, a car payment, a hobby farm, land to take care of. I have a few hours on the couch at night where the responsibilities might cease for a little while, but I didn't feel like I had enough room for the real recovery that I needed.

Sometimes I'd daydream about renting a cabin out in the mountains, bringing my desktop PC, and then either spending my time gaming, or building, or writing, or hunting — really, whatever I wanted to do at the time. The point being that I could actually do.

Part of being a functioning adult, and particularly of being a parent, is you tend to give up that freedom to do — in a rather "gradually, then suddenly" kind of way. It seems unavoidable.

My days belonged to my work.

My evenings belonged to my kids.

My nights belonged to my wife.

My weekends belonged to my responsibilities.

In my head, nothing belonged to me.

I'm a people pleaser when it comes to my family, and so it's hard for me to put myself first when my kids want to play. It's hard to go spend time alone when I know my wife wants to watch a movie together at the end of the day, when from her perspective, I just spent the whole day alone at work. But work is not recovery.

And sadly, everything — my days, my evenings, my nights — had devolved into this "crash" state, so I wasn't pleasing anyone anymore, and I was only making it worse by trying to please anybody.

I had no energy for anybody, not even myself, and I felt like my brain was running on low battery at all times.

Most days, I couldn't work even though I wanted to.

Most evenings, I couldn't play with my kids even though I wanted to.

Most nights, I couldn't say a word out loud even though the words in my head were unceasing (this was a nightly shutdown).

Most weekends, I didn't want to do anything.

The recovery phase

I read somebody online talk about the autistic burnout-crash loop, and recovery from it, and I realized that I was never actually recovering, at least not like they were recovering.

I would push through burnout until I crashed — or shutdown — and then I'd "recover" just enough to get out of that "crashed" state, but I wasn't recovering from the "burnout" state too. So the next day, I'd start off in the burnout state and fall right back into the crash state by the end of the day. It was an endless burnout-crash-burnout-crash loop.

The light-bulb moment for me was when this person said that the transition out of the crash state is not the recovery state, even if life dictates that it should or must be. Rather, recovery must be a separate step, and it must be intentional. There is no implicit recovery, at least for them, and turns out for me too.

The typical advice for recovering from burnout is to do things that interest you, but life had stripped me of my interests outside of work and family. I didn't even know where to start.

But I started to explore what sounded interesting right now, usually on a whim. If it's Sunday afternoon and theology sounds interesting, I pull off a good book I hadn't read yet from the bookshelf and read. I started to spend some nights playing video games, or working on side projects, or studying — whatever felt interesting or fun at that time.

Some nights, I'll stay up until 3am playing ARC Raiders (game of the decade, by the way), because I need that extra recovery time. Other nights, I'll stay out until 1am spending time enjoying a cigar with close friends, having deep meaningful conversations.

I used to tell myself I didn't have the time or energy, or I'd feel guilty spending my free time alone instead of with my wife — then feel doubly guilty for wanting to be elsewhere.

Without recovery time, no time spent with others is truly quality time.

I might be there physically, but I'm not there mentally.

But I try to make time now, even if that means a late night and less sleep. I can function on little sleep, but I can't function on little recovery — because little recovery is no recovery. At the end of it, I feel better, more energized, even if I didn't want to do it in the moment.

Some weekends, I spend reading books and studying topics that interest me, instead of devoting all of my time playing catchup on household chores, on the land, on the animals, on going out, on planning next week.

What was once, to me, the most stressful part of the week is now something I tend to look forward to.

(We've also been trying to implement a weekend routine, instead of letting the weekend be a free-for-all. I think that "unknown" was a reason weekends stressed me out.)

House rules

One thing I think really helped me to start "recovering" was downsizing my responsibilities. I sold our animals, I let go of having a perfect lawn, we do a smaller number of high-priority chores every weekend, and lastly, I revised our House Rules.

I was no longer available to help throughout the work day, unless there was an emergency. As much as I didn't want to disrupt our family routine, I relinquished my responsibility of making lunch for the family every day, and I starting taking lunch when I was at a stopping point, even if that was at 3pm (or dinner).

The strict routine of lunch at noon was no longer working for me, and often felt disruptive, even if I wasn't actually doing anything important at noon. The self-imposed constraint that I could only work between 9-12 and 2-5 became a hindrance in the same way a typical work meeting at 12 would — no focused work before, to avoid interruption, light work after, to avoid working late.

I was also tired of the constant interruption of my family entering my office to ask me questions, or do a quick favor — or even the feeling that I might be interrupted.

At the core of these changes, I think I wanted to more clearly separate work from home, and I wanted work to be my only responsibility during the work day. I was tired of feeling like I needed to constantly be dad, or monitor our chickens for predators (had a big hawk problem this year), or make sure our life-stock guard dog hadn't escaped, or make sure the animals were all fed and happy, or make sure the downed trees were cleared. I wanted to focus on getting back to work.

And as bad as it sounds, I didn't want to have to think about what we're having for lunch every day. I have enough on my plate already. I didn't want to place a mental barrier in the way of creative work just because my family was relying on me for lunch at noon (they also have their own strict routines which can trigger meltdowns if disrupted).

The House Rules boil down to: when I'm in my office, I'm not home. As much as I hate saying it, these rules were honestly my last ditch effort at working from home. I thought that if this fails, I was going to get an office so that I can have the clear separation that I need.

Anybody that works from home with little kids probably understands where I'm coming from. It's wonderful, but it's also very hard, especially in a creative field. What might work great with one kid who's two, doesn't really work with three kids ranging from the ages of one to six.

(Some days, even noise-cancelling headphones don't cut it.)

Working from home rules, but you need house rules.

Where I am now

After revising our House Rules, I felt a weight lifted off my shoulders, gradually as the week played out, then suddenly. Today, I no longer feel on the verge of interruption at all times during the work day, because I have more of a separate space for it.

(At least as separate as it can be right now!)

I don't know why breaking routines I've had for the last seven years is seeming more and more to be the answer. Maybe routines need to evolve over time. Maybe it ties back to ADHD taking the reigns during autistic burnout. Maybe I need to lean less towards my old ways of structure and routine when in a state of burnout and lean into more novel and spontaneous changes.

Like I said, it's like a seesaw. But even that analogy falls short, because I haven't felt that seesaw teeter back yet, and at this point, I'm not sure it ever will. Maybe it's broken and I have to adapt.

Maybe I'll be stuck relying on a sense of urgency going forward and should explore things like Pomodoro. In many ways, I feel like I've had to relearn how to be productive, mostly by letting go of the old way, leaving room to discover new ways — alternative ways.

I'm happy that AI, and Claude in particular, has helped me find an alternative "kickstart" to get me back to work. AI has also helped me understand myself better, and the way my brain works, even if its sycophantic dial is set dangerously high.

(So yes, the title is click-bait — but at the same time, it's true!)

I'm happy that I've been able to make some space for recovery outside of work, to enjoy my limited free time again.

I'm not out of the woods yet, but I'm definitely in some sort of clearing. I don't know if there's more trees beyond what's just in front of me, it's hard to tell, but I do feel more equipped today than I did a year ago to make it through what comes next.

Now back to finding those Sentinel Firing Cores…