GoKawiil
Tech News
A practicing surgeon writes about recurring bouts of depression, anxiety and burnout during 13 years in medicine, prompted by the suicide of Brisbane gastroenterologist Dr Andrew Bryant. He describes extreme on-call schedules, including 12 days of 24-hour availability out of 14, and long study hours during exam preparation as major stressors affecting his family and personal life.
A workplace analysis argues that organizations often lean on high-performing employees to compensate for unclear responsibilities and broken processes. Because these employees consistently step up and deliver, leaders increasingly pile more work onto them rather than fixing underlying structural issues.
A PhD student wrote to Nature's advice column describing a loss of motivation after switching from wet-lab work to bioinformatics, citing years-long difficulty obtaining clinical metadata needed for their project. Life coach Vikki Wright and educator Nicole Barnes responded, framing the experience as a recognizable 'third-year slump' tied to adjusting to a new working environment rather than necessarily a sign to quit.
An Entrepreneur contributor argues that traditional workplace mental health tools—EAPs, wellness days, counseling—are necessary but not enough as AI, heavier workloads and constant change strain employees. The writer proposes 'Human Capacity Development,' a broader approach focused on building employees' resilience, adaptability and skills rather than just addressing distress after it appears.
New research indicates that companies offering formal sabbatical policies—extended time off lasting months rather than days—see meaningful retention benefits. Employers who allow staff to take these extended breaks report reduced burnout, stronger workplace culture, and improved work-life balance among their teams.
A programmer describes a personal breakdown driven by anxiety over generative AI's impact on creative and technical work, particularly coding. They argue AI art is easy to dismiss as inferior, but AI-assisted programming poses a harder challenge because large language models have become genuinely competent at generating code, forcing every developer to decide how to respond.
A veteran product leader who left a decade-long healthtech career to become a part-time fractional product leader reports ongoing burnout even after her health issue resolved and her workload dropped to its lightest in years. She sought coaching after struggling repeatedly in job interviews for enterprise roles, question whether her burnout was blocking her performance or whether she had overestimated her own skills. Standard fixes like rest, PTO, and quitting for a new company failed to resolve her exhaustion.
Data from time-tracking tool RescueTime shows the average employee gets only 85 minutes of undisturbed focus per day, squeezed out by meetings, notifications, and constant task-switching. A related Gallup survey on worker engagement found rising workloads and unclear job boundaries are further eroding enthusiasm and creative capacity, especially as companies downsize without replacing roles.
Daniel Lubetzky, who built Kind Snacks and sold it for $5 billion in 2020, told Business Insider he often survived on just four to five hours of sleep while scaling the company, sacrificing exercise and sunlight in the process. The Shark Tank investor said the grind visibly affected his health and appearance, leading him to compare himself to a 'phantom raccoon.'
An Entrepreneur analysis of long-running content creators finds that those who avoid burnout share one trait: they build support systems before they're overwhelmed, not after. Most creators start by handling every role themselves—ideation, filming, editing, writing and community management—which works only until channel growth adds new demands faster than one person can absorb them.
An Entrepreneur contributor reflects on Women's Equality Day, marking the 1920 certification of the 19th Amendment, by connecting the decades-long suffrage struggle to the physical and mental toll faced by today's female founders. The writer describes her own experience overworking to the point of illness while citing data showing female entrepreneurship grew 69% from 2019 to 2024, with 83% of female founders reporting high stress and 54% facing burnout.