Of course, things didn't work out right away.
Mustering up my courage, I talked to HR and my boss and took a short time off for health reasons – I had accumulated a lot of unclaimed sick days. But I didn't spend it the way I usually did (which was fundamentally wrong!). I followed the recommendations from
the Roadmap.
At first, I felt uncomfortable, but by the end of the week I was able to relax completely for the first time in many years (as I now recognize).
After returning from vacation, I was ready to start working again. But I no longer intended to be caught in the same trap. I once again requested a one-on-one meeting with my lead, explaining my goals and concerns. We distributed my duties and workload in such a way that it did not harm my psychological state.
Again, for the first couple of months it's hard to stick to your own rules. I kept making the same old mistakes, falling back into apathy a couple of times. If I was in therapy, I'd probably be able to make more noticeable progress faster.
But what happened, happened: stumbling and rolling back, I was still moving forward. The main thing is that I no longer felt helpless, realized what I needed to do and what I was doing wrong.
At that time
the Roadmap became more than a reference book for me; it was almost a pocket bible. I re-read it over and over again, each time noticing something I missed before, and perceiving the information in a new way, taking my new experience into account.
Now that I can confidently say that burnout is a thing of the past for me, I'd like to share this life-saving guide with others. This is the least I can do, because once it helped me, too.