Have I Set Myself on Fire? The Birth of Burnout from Passion
Patient 0: When the Spark Becomes a Wildfire
When the spark turns into an uncontrollable fire that doesn’t only forge beauty but burns everything else around it.
Today, I’m not writing as a systems researcher explaining complex concepts of the mind and workplace scenarios. I’m writing as Patient Zero—the one burning out while writing about burnout.
I’ve connected to a mission or purpose twice in my life. The first time wasn’t passion. It was the pure feeling of being accepted, being seen, being good at something for the first time. I danced around with that feeling, confusing it for passion. And while some parts of it remained, once I stripped away the belief systems that led me there, I realised it wasn’t what turned on the wheels and life within me inherently. It wasn’t cellular.
The 99-Day Rewire is different. It feels like something I can sustain long term. I knew in my bones it wasn’t fleeting. And that’s rare—especially with my ADHD brain that quickly bores and moves on. (My painting kit from two years ago can confirm… I painted once. Oh, and the kung fu suit? Worn once too.)
Every day, I sit down between three to seven hours and write for this blog. And not once have I resented the commitment. Not once. There were times in my career I felt the same—like the 48 hours I spent awake at site before opening Ain Dubai. I never regretted that either. That’s the common denominator: when passion is present, it pushes you beyond any commitment you thought possible. It consumes you. It expands you. It overrides the boundaries you thought you had.
Even now—from the moment I finally manage to close my eyes to the moment I open them—I’m already thinking about what’s next, where I could take this experiment, what else this could become. Not just for me. But for all of us. Maybe, just maybe, this grain of love will spark more. Maybe we’ll finally see it’s time to stop, to spring clean everything about the way we operate within systems.
But here’s what’s creeping in: I’m starting to feel the beginnings of burnout again. Not from toxic meetings or unrealistic corporate timelines—but from within. From the endless internal drive to do, to write, to give, to create. Even working with a boutique firm now—as part of this experiment to find new ways of interacting with the system—I see the to-do lists growing longer. And I see myself returning to patterns I thought I’d left behind.
So now I’m asking myself:
Can passion become just another mask for overworking?
Can you burn out from the thing you love most?
Maslach and Leiter (1997) wrote about how emotional exhaustion can happen even in purpose-driven work, especially when identity and work blend too tightly. It’s when boundaries dissolve and there’s no line between who you are and what you do. That’s exactly where I’m finding myself now.
And I keep thinking—while you can control breaks in a system, how do you control desire?
How do you regulate curiosity? How do you slow down the very thing that wakes you at 5am begging to be written?
When Purpose Fuels the Fire—and Depletes the Brain
Since the start of this experiment, I’ve felt lit up. My mind races with ideas. I wake up thinking about the next post. This isn’t a phase. It’s a calling.
But even aligned energy depletes over time.
Dopamine—the molecule of motivation—is not an infinite resource. It plays a critical role in reward anticipation and sustained goal-directed behaviour, but prolonged cognitive or emotional effort without adequate recovery leads to motivational fatigue (Westbrook & Braver, 2016). This isn’t burnout in the traditional sense—it’s a neurochemical depletion. The drive is still there, but the fuel is low – and this is what I fear is coming just don’t see when.
Recent studies in cognitive effort-based decision-making show that the brain begins to assign higher “costs” to tasks that previously felt effortless when dopamine levels are taxed (Hosking et al., 2014). Even purpose-driven work—if not balanced with recovery—can lose its spark, not due to a loss of interest, but because the brain's mesolimbic dopamine system can no longer sustain the same response to reward and effort (Chong et al., 2017).
This is why hyperfocus, common in ADHD and high-performing individuals, often leads to exhaustion. It's not a lack of discipline—it's a physiological response to sustained overdrive. The ventral striatum, a region involved in motivation and reward, can become less responsive when constantly overstimulated, which can result in a sense of emotional flatness or drop in engagement (Treadway & Zald, 2013).
It’s not that I don’t care anymore. It’s that my system is maxed out.
And ironically, the more purpose-driven the task, the harder it is to pull away. That’s the danger of conflating passion with productivity—it tricks the brain into sprinting without ever scheduling a finish line. And it also explains my horrible sleeping patterns – I have had an inhumane hyperfocus streak that never ends. I have been more tired than ever in my life.
When Curiosity Becomes Too Loud to Carry
While working in waves has been the most compatible rhythm for my neurodivergent brain, those waves are now crashing harder. I wake up with ideas to be written, masterplans to develop, worried I will forget them all, I rush to the drawing board.. It’s not the absence of inspiration—it’s the overload of it. My brain is brimming with insights I’m scared I’ll lose.So hours and days pass me by.
This is the strange cruelty of ADHD: a mind wired for novelty, bursting with curiosity, yet prone to working memory dysfunction (Barkley, 2010). You’re flooded with ideas but can’t always catch them. You live in constant creation—but with nowhere to store it all.
Curiosity becomes heavy.
Csikszentmihalyi’s Flow Theory (1990) speaks of the beauty in being lost in something meaningful. But for someone like me, life can feel like one endless flow state—where time disappears, and so does the line between creativity and depletion. Without intentional recovery, that same fire starts to scorch.
Even desire has a threshold. And when your internal engine never turns off, rest feels like betrayal. But if we don’t protect our curiosity, it collapses under its own weight. Not because we care too little—because we care too much.
Final Thoughts: Purpose Without Boundaries Burns
This isn’t a warning against purpose—it’s a wake-up call that even the most meaningful work can drain you if left unmanaged. Passion doesn’t protect us from burnout. It disguises it.
Sustainable purpose isn’t about relentless output. It’s about rhythm. It’s knowing when to let the spark burn and when to protect the fuel. If we don’t learn how to hold our passion with structure, it will consume the very thing it was meant to elevate.
Not everything that feels urgent is true passion.
Not everything that energises you is sustainable.
And not everything that drives you is yours to carry.
Leaving you with some reflections today
Waking up fuelled by vision is not the same as waking up chased by pressure.
Creating from love feels expansive; creating from fear feels like survival.
Passion flows—even when you rest. Pressure doesn’t let you stop.
Let’s rewire together!
References
Barkley, R. A. (2010). Attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder: A handbook for diagnosis and treatment (3rd ed.). Guilford Press.
Chong, T. T.-J., Bonnelle, V., Manohar, S., Veromann, K. R., Muhammed, K., Tofaris, G. K., ... & Husain, M. (2017). Dopamine enhances willingness to exert effort for reward in Parkinson’s disease. Cortex, 90, 181–190. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2016.09.021
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
Hosking, J. G., Cocker, P. J., & Winstanley, C. A. (2014). Dissociable contributions of anterior cingulate cortex and basolateral amygdala on a rodent cost/benefit decision-making task of cognitive effort. Neuropsychopharmacology, 39(7), 1558–1567. https://doi.org/10.1038/npp.2014.18
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (1997). The truth about burnout: How organizations cause personal stress and what to do about it. Jossey-Bass.
Treadway, M. T., & Zald, D. H. (2013). Parsing anhedonia: Translational models of reward-processing deficits in psychopathology. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 22(3), 244–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721413478615
Westbrook, A., & Braver, T. S. (2016). Dopaminergic modulation of cognitive control: Theoretical framework and empirical evidence. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 25(5), 312–318. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721416655880
