My short discussion with @knight made me wonder if anyone here in the 200wad community is feeling burned out due to having to write everyday to keep the streak. Are you?

We were talking about Makerlog, a task log that helps makers stay productive and ship faster. It uses the streak mechanism as well to motivate people, but it also has rest days built in - you get 1 rest day for every 10 streak days. Makerlog’s rest days were a response to maker burnout in the makerlog community which over time, became quite rampant. People also started to abuse the system, posting #life tasks (that’s not maker/shipping-related) just to keep the streak. I loved that the founder took a stand and decided to prioritise wellbeing and balance over the endless pursuit of the streak. I just wonder if the situation is similar here at 200wad? Does a majority of 200wad feel burnt out and out of whack by having to write everyday?

This question is also kind of relevant to what I was talking about recently, regarding writing gibberish as a way to keep showing up, as part of a writing/creative journey, part of writing for emergence, part of self-growth and learning. Even though writing daily is great for that, I do feel that there is one situation when you shouldn’t keep writing, even gibberish. 

When you feel burned out. 

When pushing yourself to keep a streak means losing wellbeing and work-life balance to the point of physical or emotional exhaustion, or even dysfunction and maladaptation in daily living, then no streak, no matter how glorious and hard won, is worth it. It’s uncanny that the emoji for the streak is the flame?, the exact same emoji we would associate with for burnout, isn’t it?!

My own experience: I’d burned out from work before, so I know how that feels like. But writing daily here doesn’t quite feel like that. Maybe initially I did feel kind of ‘browned out’, especially during my slump. But now, the habit had gotten quite ingrained, the effort less straining, and writing here is becoming quite comfortable and enjoyable. But that’s for now. Who knows what will happen in the future?

One thing’s for sure: if I ever feel burned out from writing daily, I’ll be the first to scoot. Wellbeing over writing, for sure.