Luxury of time and recovering from burn out

It all started when I dreamed of earning lots of money to be able to purchase things that I want to try. At first, it was fulfilling to enjoy things I bought. A few weeks later, I was out of focus because I couldn’t manage my time handling tasks whether it was during my work hours or in my free time. I couldn’t figure it out as I was running out of time and doing tasks from my work. I began to breakdown really hard.

A good, long investment, playable PC

This was my dream of having a PC just to play games like what I wanted in my early teenage life. I was expecting to do other things like learning how to use Blender, Video editing and learn game development. I thought for sure that I could manage my time doing these. It did not go so well.

Accomplishments in DotA 2

Once I clocked out on my full time job, I really got pumped up and wanted to play DotA 2 for 1-2 games per day on weekdays, and 8-10 games on weekends. I reached Immortal in just a month and I wonder if I could reach the maximum potential and be at the top 5,000 ranking players in South East Asia.

I played Position 4/5 most of the time because thats the quickest queue I can tolerate and have fun. I remove toxicity and just mute them. Then again, It’s just me having frustration about the skills I have and I blame myself for doing so. This was the moment that I knew recently that I have changed and how it affects my work and passion for problem solving.

Excuses, Tardiness, and Mental/Physical Health

It didn’t go well at one point that my peripherals got wet because of leaking rain water from my roof on a stormy midnight. I panicked and tried my best to recover them and work whenever possible. I just said to my Team lead that everything is fine and I thought that was the case. Ever since then, I started to be wary of my room and repair any leakage.

There were times that I took care of a lost cat. Then I started sneezing and coughing quite a lot because of the furs and allergies. I wasn’t focusing on my job and I think it degraded me awfully.

I really like my company because of the culture they have, I learned a lot of things and courtesy of a working adult on a work from home environment. I also learned a lot of things from my circle especially they have a good reputation of doing community talks. I joined these community to inspire and give talk to them.

But as the saying goes.

A visible rotten fruit is always segregated from others.

Part ways, and unexpected journey

I got pressured with the bugs I created that I can fix immediately, and bugs that I never even worked on because of project shuffling between co-workers. Working tirelessly on a bug that is hard to reproduce, a feature that was easy to implement even I clarified to the team lead about the requirements, yet the testing was not as I imagine in the feature.

I began to see myself not aligning the estimated hours, and the confidence that I can achieve to completing those estimates. I began to breakdown again and had a hard time with my sleep schedule.

I began to notice that this was the perfect moment to improve our workflow. We began to add Unit/Widget/Integration testing on our project. A perfect automation that I no longer require to manually check and update them.

I thought maybe if we can implement this, Our workflow would enhance and it would require less time for testing. I began presenting this to my coworkers and they actually liked it.

I don’t really know what happened when I think about it. I was tasked to do what I was told and tried to improve the quality of work from the company I worked on. But maybe that is just one of the good things I knew. But in reality, There weren’t any new clients and some might have ghosted us. It was a tough decision from the higher ups and knowing well that I have these episode, they decided to let me go and give time to rest.

I thank my former company from the experience I gain, and the culture I learned from them. It was that time for me to rest and explore other opportunities.

Entrepreneur mindset and UI/UX design

After we parted ways. I practiced on working with Figma and Penpot, two tools that I can work on and practice my problem solving skills as well as Document everything that went through on my mind.

I was working on a travel note taking app for individuals, and event handling for organizers. I believe this was lacking in most travel agencies, and solo travelers that want alternative. Most note taking apps don’t do this and there is no way for their users to automate their travel.

I said to myself that this was easy and began to work intensively. Then it hit me when I wasn’t focusing my time working on my own, and playing competitive games just to clear my mind.

The knowledge I gain practicing UI/UX design wasn’t in vain, In fact. The resource and knowledge I gained while browsing product hunt and behance was helpful and I just think to myself, Do I really need this?

Months passed, little progress was made, DotA2 made me progress a lot.

Self-help books

My former CEO helped me teaching the ways of handling adult life. It’s the reason why the work culture there is great. I ask for an advice that usually is vague in some cases, and often times he would recommend me reading books. I got inspired and bought a few books. Even though there is one for free on the internet. I think that reading books without using smartphone is a great way to stay focus and learn everything there.

I started reading self-help books like Ikigai, Atomic habits, and Love language books. I urged myself not to play video games, and focus on reading books to help recover my burn out. That didn’t work out as I expect. Still, there are things I learned reading books especially it helps ease my mind and have a great meditation.

Mountains, Solo ride, and reaching out of nowhere.

I’m at that age where lost mind is wandering, and time flies like it didn’t count. I asked myself, Do I want to waste my time sitting and doing things I like? It hit me really hard again and again questioning things that I do.

It was then I started to drive alone and enjoy the time I had. I really like the view of the mountains

It then cleared my burn out after traveling mountainous places. I feel like I really want to solve this problem.
This time, I was happy that I could record my journey, learning color grading in video editing to adjust the moments I went and visualize the great imagery of the clouds and mountains.

Odd jobs, and Side projects

After 4 months spending my luxurious time, Starting January was the best episode of my life and I can’t wait to achieve these. For recruiters or hiring managers, If you question my resume gap. its because of the luxurious time I had this entire time and I want the best I could to cope and figure how can I proceed with my life.

Conclusion

Time is a luxurious asset that cannot be valued by anyone else other than myself. So even if I laze around doing nothing, its because I was trying to figure out things I can be productive, and forcing myself to work is just the opposite of trying to figure myself and be contented. The best productivity is not someone forcing me to work, it’s the best of myself that I can produce the best work.

You might guess, “This didn’t solve you solving your time and burn out”. burn out is not about the absence of productivity. It was time. time you wish you could go back. I never regret the things I did in the past. It’s to organize the time I wanted to try without regret. It takes time and its not that easy.