Confessions of a Burned-Out Hustler

Let me start with a confession: I spent the first half of my adult life giving too much $%#&. Not the good kind, like caring about climate change or whether my kid learns to read. No, I’m talking about the soul-sucking ones - the ones you waste on quarterly reports, LinkedIn humblebrags, and pretending to care about “collaboration” during meetings that should’ve been an email.

At 37, I found myself in a place so strange, so unfamiliar, that it made me question every life choice I’d ever made. No, I wasn’t lost in the wilderness or stranded on a desert island. I was in a boardroom.

For years, I had been climbing the corporate ladder like a caffeinated squirrel, each rung feeling like an achievement, each title upgrade a little pat on the back. From fixing glitchy PCs in a dingy backroom to designing sprawling data centers, the journey had been exhilarating. There was a time when I could lose myself in the hum of servers, the thrill of troubleshooting a system failure at 2 AM, the quiet satisfaction of bringing a dead machine back to life, as if I was some IT necromancer. A time when getting my hands dirty—screwing open CPUs, patching networks, fixing things on the fly—was not just my job, it was my adrenaline rush. I could smell a hardware issue across the room, diagnostic tools were there just to confirm what my nose already knew. It was messy, hands-on, and deeply satisfying. Back then, work was alive and I loved it.

Then somewhere between patching networks and untangling wires, things changed, the excitement dulled. What was once about building had become about managing. I stopped fixing things and started approving budgets. Instead of writing scripts, I was writing emails. Boardrooms replaced server rooms, PowerPoint decks replaced SSH and Telnet terminals, and my hands, once accustomed to untangling wires, were now navigating the endless hellscape of Outlook. I spent my days managing project schedules and talking about "strategic initiatives" & "synergy". The guy who once thrived on figuring out why a database server was throwing a tantrum was now stuck in endless meetings about why the next quarter’s numbers weren’t looking aggressive enough. The rush of solving real problems had been replaced by a sea of action items, none of which involved actually doing anything. I had become what my younger self would’ve mocked—a suit-wearing corporate guy who talked more than he built.

I had spent my entire career in fast-moving industries, riding the wave of technological change, but now, for the first time, I felt like I was standing still while the world sprinted ahead. Worse, I was stuck in a loop—repeating the same conversations, approving the same plans, making the same projections—just with different client logos and fiscal years stamped on them. Was this what success was supposed to feel like? Because if it was, I had clearly been SCAMMED.

The Half-Life of a Career

Then, like a beacon of hope in the corporate fog, I stumbled upon an article by Subroto Bagchi, where he compared professional careers to nuclear fuel. I thought, “Great, another metaphor I’ll have to pretend to understand in a meeting”. Then the concept struck me hard—our careers are at their peak when we are in an enriched state, but over time, we reach a 'half-life' where we start losing our energy and relevance. The decay is exponential, and by the time we notice it, it’s often too late.

Looking back, I realized I had unknowingly hit my half-life years ago. The corporate world had drained my energy, and I had become 'spent fuel'—coasting through meetings, executing redundant strategies, and mistaking busyness for progress. I had stopped asking myself the most critical question: "What is new and different about myself in the last quarter?"

Bagchi’s philosophy urged me to prefix 'new' to every aspect of my life—new skills, new experiences, new perspectives. It was time to re-enrich myself before I decayed further. And so, I did the unthinkable. I Quit.

I remember the day I walked away from the corporate world. Not in a dramatic, movie-worthy fashion with a resignation letter thrown on the table, but in a quiet, resolute manner. Fourteen years in the industry, a well-paying, high-ranking position at IBM, and a career path that seemed set for decades to come—yet something inside me whispered, "This isn't it."

Leaving wasn’t easy. Walking away from stability, from a role that gave me authority and respect, was terrifying. But the thought of staying felt even more suffocating. I had spent years optimizing business processes, streamlining operations, and fixing inefficiencies in corporate machinery. But what about the inefficiencies in my own life? What about my own growth, my own fulfillment?

Rewiring My Life: Risk, Resilience, and Reinvention

What followed was a decade-long roller coaster—an entrepreneurial journey where I learned more than any MBA program could ever teach. Some businesses tanked, some thrived. Some ideas took wings, others crash-landed in flames. Re-energizing my professional self meant stepping outside my comfort zone. I took up consulting gigs, mentored startups, and explored blockchain technologies. I went beyond just 'managing' and started 'building' again—this time, not just tech, but businesses,  and ideas.

I dabbled in everything—from selling properties and running restaurants to incubating startups—experiencing the sheer thrill of learning something new every day. It was exhausting, exhilarating, and often outright ridiculous. Every quarter, I made sure I had a solid answer to the question, "What’s new?"—whether it was a new city I visited, a new skill I picked up, or a new project I launched.

And let’s be honest—along the way, I made money, lost money… well, mostly lost. Turns out, I was great at building things, but managing money? Not so much. I mean, I could build an entire operational framework from scratch, but ask me to track cash flow, and suddenly I’m that guy trying to balance a seesaw with an elephant on one end. It took me a while to realize that I’m a builder, an operator—I thrive in the chaos of making things work. But handling money? That should’ve come with a warning label. In hindsight, my career trajectory had always pointed in one direction: Support Professional. I was always the guy ensuring systems ran smoothly, making things efficient, keeping the engine running. But wealth management? Let’s just say if you had invested in my ventures, you’d have earned a lifetime of stories but not much in dividends.

The hustle was intense—relentless hours, constant pivots, sleepless nights fuelled by adrenaline (and copious amounts of caffeine). Every new venture demanded everything, and at some point, the price started showing up on my body and mind. There were near burnouts—days when I questioned if I had made a terrible mistake, moments when exhaustion hit so hard that even the thrill of chasing the next big thing wasn’t enough to keep me going. The mental strain of uncertainty, of watching plans crumble, of having to pick up the pieces again and again—it’s something no one prepares you for.

But here’s what I learned: resilience isn’t about never falling; it’s about getting back up every damn time. The difference between those who succeed and those who don’t isn’t intelligence, luck, or even talent—it’s mental endurance. The ability to hold on just a little longer when everything is screaming at you to quit. To find clarity in the chaos. To accept that failure isn’t the opposite of success—it’s just part of the process.

Navigating uncharted waters meant constantly recalibrating my mindset. I learned to lean into uncertainty rather than fight it. I started treating setbacks as detours, not dead ends. And most importantly, I realized that staying strong mentally isn’t just about grit—it’s about balance. Learning when to push and when to pause. Understanding that rest isn’t a reward; it’s a necessity.

Because at the end of the day, no matter how ambitious, driven, or passionate you are—if you burn out, none of it matters. Jack Welch once said, "Change before you have to." But sometimes, life doesn’t give you a choice—it forces change upon you. And just when I was starting to grasp the importance of balance, life decided to teach me that lesson in the most unexpected way.

The World Shut Down. 

Embracing the Pause

The pandemic pulled the brakes on everything. Suddenly, the pace of my life, which had been a blur of meetings, launches, and relentless problem-solving, came to a grinding halt. There was too much time and almost nothing to do. For the first time, I was forced to sit with my thoughts—and that’s a dangerous thing for someone wired to keep moving. Standing at yet another crossroads, it was a moment of reckoning. The stagnation was killing me, but Instead of fearing stagnation and wallowing in existential dread, I started respecting it and did something unusual—I turned to farming for answers. Yes, Farming. Because nothing says “midlife crisis” like trading PowerPoint decks for potato fields.

Farming was never part of my playbook (well, except for some deeply buried fantasy of one day retreating to the countryside, renouncing worldly chaos, and finally achieving inner peace—though knowing me, that would last about a week). I had spent my life in air-conditioned offices, strategizing in meeting rooms, lost in the digital world. The closest I had come to agriculture was the occasional weekend trip to vineyards and coffee plantations (and no, I hadn’t visited my village in 22 years). Yet, when I found myself at a standstill, I turned to farming—not as a career shift, but as a way to make sense of what was happening in my life.

For years, I had pushed myself to operate at peak productivity, treating rest as a luxury rather than a necessity. Burnout was just a milestone, not a warning sign. But it finally hit me—slumps aren’t dead ends; they’re just the winter before spring. So instead of fighting stagnation, I started embracing it. I allowed myself to slow down, reflect, and pick up new skills without the relentless pressure of immediate results. I wasn’t falling behind—I was restoring my soil, getting ready for the next season of growth.

At first, it felt absurd. What did I, someone who had spent decades optimizing workflows and scaling processes, have in common with a farmer? But as I dug deeper—both metaphorically and literally—I saw the parallels. Farmers don’t chase endless harvests. They understand that growth happens in cycles: sowing, nurturing, harvesting, and then, crucially, resting. The land needs time to replenish before it can produce again. And so does a career and a mind.

In my consulting life, time was a luxury I rarely had. One day, I’d be advising on supply chain optimization; the next, I’d be deep in discussions about fintech product development. There was barely a moment to truly learn an industry before I had to walk into a client meeting, projecting the confidence of an ‘expert.’ The pressure to keep up, to stay ahead, to always have the answers—it was relentless. But now, that weight was gone. For the first time in years, I could learn without a deadline looming over me.

One of the most frustrating truths about farming is that you can’t rush it. No matter how much effort you put in, crops take their own time. I mean, you can’t dig up the seeds every day to check if they’re growing — you just have to trust the process.

Cultivating Renewal – Rebuilding from Within

In the corporate world, we’re wired for speed. Rapid promotions, quick wins, instant success. I had internalized this so deeply that every time my career plateaued, I panicked. But watching farmers wait patiently for their crops to grow made me see reinvention differently. The skills I was developing now might not bear fruit for months or years—and for the first time, that didn’t scare me. Now I have always known this truth in theory, but I had never understood it this deeply before.

Most professionals don’t burn out because of overwork—they burn out because they stop growing. A field that is cultivated year after year without replenishment eventually turns barren. The same happens to the mind when learning takes a backseat. Growth isn’t just about relentless motion; sometimes, it’s about stepping back and enriching the soil before the next harvest.

So, I went back to being a student—but this time, without deadlines, deliverables, or performance reviews. I started reading behavioral psychology, diving deep into what makes people tick. I had always believed I had a sharp instinct for reading people, but now I had theories and research backing it up. It refined the way I listened, observed, and interpreted situations. And let’s be honest—when you’re spending days, weeks, even months alone on a farm, surrounded by crops instead of conference calls, you either start talking to plants or you pick up a book. I chose the latter.

Somewhere between analyzing human behavior and watching the clouds roll over the fields, I found myself writing again. At first, it was just scattered thoughts, observations, maybe a few witty takes on my absurd situation. But soon, writing became a way to process, to reflect, to articulate the things I was learning.

One thing led to another, and before I knew it, I wasn’t just passing time—I was rebuilding myself, piece by piece. The mind, much like the land, thrives when nurtured. And after years of depletion, I had finally started to restore mine.

Till, Team, Triumph: Where Shared Efforts Bear Fruit

Farming isn’t a solitary pursuit. It thrives on collaboration. Farmers don’t just work their own fields—they exchange seeds, techniques, and market insights. They help each other navigate unpredictable weather, lending a hand when a neighbor’s crops fail. They understand that a good harvest isn’t just about individual effort but about the collective strength of the community.

The same holds true in the corporate world. Too often, organizations promote the illusion of self-sufficiency, measuring success through individual milestones. But like a farmer can’t thrive in isolation, neither can a professional, nor a team. The most powerful teams aren’t a collection of rockstars—they are a group of people focused on a single goal, each playing their part, no matter their title.

Remember FIFA 2014? Germany’s squad had zero superstars. Unless you consider Lahm a star — which, in the company of Ronaldo, Messi, Ronaldinho, Neymar, and Zlatan — he wasn’t. And let’s not forget Miroslav Klose, who, at 36, should have been watching from the sidelines, at least by footballing standards. Yet, this no-frills German team annihilated the star-studded banners of world football. Why? Because they played as a team. There were no individual showboats—just eleven players moving as one unit, proving that a well-coordinated team will always outperform a disjointed group of brilliant individuals.

Jack Welch once shared a story about a GE business leader who overlooked the potential of a newly opened center in Bangalore. His reason? It was staffed with Indian engineers, and he doubted their ability to drive high-impact results. Welch disagreed and doubled down on the Bangalore team, ensuring they were given opportunities and visibility. Fast forward a few years, and that very center became a powerhouse, fueling GE businesses across aviation, healthcare, and beyond. The lesson? No role, no team, and no individual should ever be underestimated.

That’s as true in leadership as it is in farming. A great harvest isn’t the result of a single brilliant idea — it’s the outcome of many hands working together, from the one who tills the land to the one who brings the crop to market. In the same way, no corporate strategy succeeds without the collective effort of a team, where each member plays a vital role in moving the needle forward.

Six months into this journey, I saw the parallels more clearly than ever. Every conversation, every exchange of ideas felt like cross-pollination—strengthening my perspective, expanding my horizon, and reminding me that growth isn’t just about individual reinvention but about collective upliftment.

The Seeds of Reinvention

The biggest takeaway? Reinvention isn’t about clinging desperately to past relevance. It’s about embracing the natural cycles of growth, learning, and renewal—while ensuring that we support each other. Because the team member struggling today might just need a helping hand. And tomorrow? He could be the one carrying the team forward, just like a sturdy bowling arm that turns the tide of a match.

Much like in farming, success is never a solo journey. It’s the result of the seeds we plant, the people we nurture, and the hands we extend when someone needs it most. And if all else fails, at least you’ll have some really good potatoes.

Today, when people ask me what I do, I don’t have a single answer. I build, I consult, I mentor, I experiment. I work on ideas that excite me, solve problems that intrigue me, and above all, I keep asking myself, "What’s new?" Because if I ever stop being able to answer that question, I’ll know it’s time to reinvent again.

Maybe one day, I’ll find myself back in a boardroom, or maybe I’ll be knee-deep in soil, planting the seeds of my next big idea. Either way, I know one thing for sure: I’ll never let myself become ‘spent fuel’ again.

And if I ever do, well… there’s always another field to Plow.