I've shared links and other resources in this newsletter plenty of times on the topic of burnout. What it is, how to avoid it, how to recognize it. One thing that I don't recall sharing is a more neuroscientific approach to the topic, preferably one that is not too difficult to follow.
To that end, some time ago I saved
an X/Twitter thread by Emma Cartisano, who describes, in layman's terms, what happens to our brain when we're burnt out. Emma has done neuroscientific research in the past and, interestingly, has experienced burnout herself.
A thread on X on the brain's behaviour during burnout
The part of the thread on the brain's response isn't long, and she immediately gets into some practical advice that you might find helpful if this is something you're concerned about.
Like I said, this is a topic that comes up a lot. When I search this newsletter's archives, I see the word "burnout" appearing in 57 different issues. That naturally suggests this is a topic people continue to write about (which is good), but it's also indicative of the gravity of the problem (which isn't good).
I hope the thread above will help you, but if you want further research on the subject, go to this newsletter's archive page and do an on-page search for the word "burnout". (As a side point, while the entire archive is now online on my website, search engines haven't indexed all the pages yet, so a site-specific search won't currently turn up many results).
Now on to this week's hand-picked productivity links!
