I worked extremely hard at my last start-up to the point of being completely burnt out. I&#x27;m happy because it made me stronger, but I&#x27;ll never forget being over and for about 4-5 months after, never looking at a computer. I didn&#x27;t want anything to do with them for awhile, and pursued a vicious &quot;I&#x27;m gonna go pro in golf&quot; campaign (can&#x27;t take the idealism&#x2F;ambition out of a true entrepreneur).<p>I&#x27;m really happy now, but I understand burn-out at a much deeper level than I had before. There was a time when I would think &quot;just get over it,&quot; but now I understand it has very real effects. When you don&#x27;t want to think, it&#x27;s not always a simple case of laziness. It takes work to switch into your &quot;system 2&quot; (as called by &quot;Thinking Fast and Slow&quot;) -- your focused mindset. Then once you&#x27;re in this mindset, it&#x27;s no picnic.<p>What&#x27;s fascinating is that if you stay in system 2 for too long, you begin to show signs of paranoia and depression. You become withdrawn and isolate yourself further from society. You might hypothesize this is a natural reaction of an _injured_ animal, but it&#x27;s hard for you to understand that your brain is exhausted and needs to rest. Instead, you say &quot;go faster!&quot; and it begins to try to come up with more &amp; more schemes to prevent you from going into system 2. Fantasies that would have meant nothing to you well-rested are now of utmost importance because you&#x27;re actually procrastinating because you&#x27;re actually fatigued.<p>Burn-out is a real thing. I love work and I work very hard, but there&#x27;s times when you have to say &quot;You know what, this weekend is all mine.&quot; Those are the weekends I sleep anywhere from 10-14 hours each night, and not because I&#x27;m indulging, but just like muscles, my brain is resting and hopefully &quot;growing&quot;.