After suffering career burnout for the past 4-5 years, here's how I've come to understand its cause:

Burnout is a response to repeated attempts to make meaningful change while lacking the agency to do so. See problems > try to fix them > get shot down or ignored.

My mission and career objective from here on out: no more burnout.

That means holding a tighter grip on my own destiny, so I can keep the agency required to enact meaningful change. Really looking forward to it.

Wow, I never expected writing about burnout to resonate with so many (does anyone ever mean to go viral?). My issues with burnout were born long ago but I should have examined it much earlier. It’s still comforting to have strategies now for dealing with something so widespread.