The Hidden Danger of Burnout No One Warns You About

For most of my career, I trusted my ability to assess risk.

I spent decades working in technology, much of it in information security and startups. Risk was not an abstract concept to me. It was my job to anticipate what could go wrong, question assumptions, identify vulnerabilities, and make decisions when the consequences mattered.

And yet, at one of the most important moments of my life, I failed to recognize a vulnerability in myself.

I was severely burned out.

I didn’t understand how much it had affected my judgment until after the financial consequences could no longer be undone.

Ultimately, I lost approximately $3 million in retirement savings through an offshore cryptocurrency lending platform.

There were many factors involved in what happened, and I have spent the past three years pursuing accountability. But there is another part of this story that has taken me much longer to understand.

The actual risk was not the risk that had been presented to me. Burnout helps explain why those representations went insufficiently challenged. It does not turn a misrepresented risk into an informed decision.

I was not functioning normally when I made some of the decisions that put me in that position.

The frightening part is that I thought I was.

When we talk about burnout, we often imagine someone who simply cannot continue.

They stop working. They cannot get out of bed. They know something is terribly wrong.

That wasn’t my experience.

I could still solve technical problems. I could still have complicated conversations and make decisions. From the outside, I probably looked functional.

After spending so many years in technology, long hours and constant pressure had become normal. There was always another problem to solve, another deadline, another system that needed attention.

You learn to push through exhaustion.

And when you successfully push through it enough times, you can begin to believe that pushing through is evidence that you’re okay.

I had spent years relying on the same brain to tell me whether that brain was functioning properly.

That is a dangerous feedback loop.

By the time my retirement savings were exposed to this level of risk, I was cognitively depleted. Looking back, things that should have caused me to slow down didn’t have the effect they normally would have.

I was still processing information.

I just wasn’t processing it the way I would have when rested and healthy.

One of the most dangerous symptoms of burnout for me was brain fog.

In technology and information security, your ability to think clearly is one of your most valuable tools. You constantly evaluate incomplete information, weigh competing risks, and ask what you might be missing.

But cognitive decline from exhaustion can happen gradually.

There isn’t necessarily a morning when you wake up and suddenly realize, “My judgment is impaired.”

Your depleted state slowly becomes your normal state. That makes self-detection extraordinarily difficult.

Poor sleep becomes normal.

Difficulty concentrating becomes normal.

Working harder to accomplish things that once came easily becomes normal.

And because you’re still getting things done, you interpret continued output as proof that you’re still functioning well.

I now think that is one of burnout’s most dangerous illusions.

Being able to function is not the same as functioning normally.

Losing approximately $3 million was devastating.

This wasn’t money I could simply earn back with another good year. It represented decades of work and the retirement security I thought I had built.

There was also an irony that was difficult to escape.

I had spent much of my professional life thinking about security.

I understood that sophisticated systems fail when assumptions fail. I understood layered defenses. I understood that you don’t protect something important by relying on a single control.

Yet when it came to myself, I had effectively created a system with a single point of failure.

Historically, my judgment had served me well. What I didn’t recognize was that years of accumulated burnout had changed the condition in which that judgment was operating.

Years of accumulated burnout mattered.

My ability to make good decisions depended on the condition of the person making them.

That sounds obvious to me today.

It wasn’t obvious to me then.

I wish I had treated major personal decisions the way I treated high-risk decisions professionally.

In security, when the consequences of a mistake are severe, you don’t necessarily rely on one person simply because that person is experienced.

You require another set of eyes.

You create opportunities to detect mistakes before they become irreversible.

I should have done the same thing in my personal life.

When I was exhausted, financially exposed, or making a decision with potentially life-changing consequences, I should have deliberately slowed the process down.

I should have asked someone I trusted to independently look at what I was doing.

Not because that person was necessarily smarter or more experienced than I was.

Because they weren’t exhausted in exactly the same way I was.

I’ve come to believe that this is particularly important for people who have spent their lives being highly independent.

Competence can become its own vulnerability.

The longer you’ve successfully solved difficult problems by yourself, the easier it becomes to assume that you will recognize when you shouldn’t be solving the next one alone.

But severe burnout can impair the very judgment needed to recognize that you are burned out.

I once thought recovery from burnout was mostly about taking time off.

Rest matters enormously, but my experience has taught me that recovery is also about changing the system that produced the burnout.

Sleep has to become a priority rather than something sacrificed whenever work demands it.

Exercise and nutrition matter.

Disconnecting from devices matters.

Having interests and relationships outside work matters.

But I’ve also learned the importance of external checks.

If I notice that I am exhausted, overwhelmed, unusually impulsive, or struggling to concentrate, I no longer think the solution is simply to try harder.

Sometimes the right response is to make fewer decisions.

And for decisions that cannot easily be reversed, the safest response may be to involve another person.

It’s good risk management.

I cannot undo the decision that changed my financial life.

I can continue pursuing accountability, and I can rebuild what I’m able to rebuild. But I can’t go back and give my younger self the awareness I have now.

What I can do is share what I learned.

If you have been pushing yourself for years, don’t use the fact that you’re still functioning as proof that you’re okay.

Pay attention when concentration becomes harder.

Pay attention when exhaustion becomes your baseline.

Pay attention when you stop enjoying things you once cared about.

Pay attention when your solution to diminished performance is simply to work longer.

And be particularly careful when making decisions that could permanently change your life.

You may need someone else’s perspective.

Most importantly, you may need to recognize that the mind evaluating your condition is the same mind affected by that condition.

I spent a career looking for vulnerabilities in complicated systems.

One of the most consequential vulnerabilities I ever encountered was one I couldn’t see while I was inside it.

Burnout didn’t make me incapable of functioning.

It did something much harder to detect.

It allowed me to keep functioning while gradually becoming less capable of recognizing that I wasn’t functioning like myself.

I learned that distinction at an extraordinary cost.

I hope someone else can learn it before they have to.