I know, the usual solutions: don’t work too much, eat well, have rest and stuff.
But there’s like this constant pressure to “do things” that always pressures to continue working/coding and makes it harder to have a proper rest without feeling “unproductive”.
How do you deal with that? Or maybe you don’t have that problem at all?
How to avoid burn-out?
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Yeah, man. I feel you.
Those tips like “do not work too much” or “spend some time on hobby or family after your workday” sound silly to me. In a founder’s life there is no “after work” time. You are always working. I can not just throw my phone away because if something is going bad with my servers or a client is in a trouble, I have to know because I value my clients very much and I worked so hard to earn that trust they give me.
And there are always opportunities. Always. They are around. When you run, when you sleep, when you eat, then you hug your partner - those ideas come to your head. Myriads of them.
I’m terrible at disciplining myself. So in my case burn-out can be avoided only by brutal force: I leave my laptop in co-working. Thus I’m physical can not work at home.
Another perfect way to trick me is to apply to a scheduled regular sport activity (not fluent time GYM). If you like volleyball, basketball, martial arts, etc apply one of those.
This will force you to end your workday 
But I think I still need to upgrade myself and my will and learn how to control my life without outer help.
One day I’ll just sit down and do nothing for a whole day.
Not today though…
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I’d like to introduce something from psychotherapy.
There is a common problem: you think that you have to do something. You spend time to do this. Once, you’ll burnout and for some period of time you’ll not be working on your stuff. Then you’ll blame yourself that you didn’t work. And it’s possible that after blaming you’ll feel bad, and think like “Oh, okay, I’ve already failed, I shouldn’t work anymore”.
It’s kind of vicious circle. One fail (due to burnout) leads to stop in working. Maybe you’re familiar with all the jokes like “Oh, so much things to do, oh oh… okay I’ll lie on my bed and watch series”.
How could this be solved and how to reduce stress? There are few methodologies, which are proven to be effective.
They are called CBT and REBT.
Regarding the burnout problem it may help to use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_emotive_behavior_therapy
It requires work, it requires time, however it reduces stress, allows you to fail from time to time, but overall you keep doing what you want.
In a nutshell you’re going to replace irrational beliefs to rational. And replace the “I have to” to “I want to”.
Do you have to work? Really? Why? Because you want to achieve something? Okay, but there is a logical error: “I want to” does not mean “I have to”. There is no correlation, there is no rule, there is no law. And be sure, REBT has answers to many of objections.
Thanks for the ref Victor, I’m digging it!
This is huge and complicated. Our true desires may be hidden so deeply. We are so dependent on our patterns and beliefs.
My parents worked very hard and always made an accent on it. They believed I will love them only because they are such big hard workers. I inherited this pattern and already got 2 burn-outs until I realized it is a non-sense and I actually do not have to work as a slave to get love and the respect of the society.
When I started to analyze my brain and get into the physology I was overwhelmed with the number of stress generators I have. And the amount of work required to fight it!
This made be strong believed that handling your own mind is the trickiest and the hardest part of an entrepreneur path
What works for me is I don’t keep anything in my memory – if a task appears I just write it down in my ToDo and forget about it until I finish what I’m currently working on or when I just feel like doing something. This also helps because I tend to forget stuff that needs to be done but that I personally don’t care about much or that I don’t like
It is a great piece of advice, Valentine. Thanks for this.
After I got this habit I started to talk to Siri more than to my GF.
My morning always starts with “hey Siri take a note…” not with “good morning honey” 