David's Dojo Journey - Installment 11

I am on vacation this week for the first time in quite a while after a very intense season of work. When I am in the midst of the grind for a long time, I don't realize the toll that it is taking on me. After a couple days away, that toll was easier to see and I realize that I am showing early signs of burnout in many areas of my life, including chess.

This installment is going to be a bit different as I'm not going to talk about chess directly. I'm going to talk about burnout, how it relates to chess, and a potential path forward.

What is burnout?

According to Adam Grant, the helpful Wharton thinker:

"The core of burnout is emotional exhaustion. Feeling so depleted and exhausted that you don't have anything to give."

That rings true to me. While I'm not do the depth of depletion and exhaustion such I don't have anything to give quite yet, I can see clearly that I am more depleted and emotionally exhausted than I should be. I have been at that place in several points of my career and it takes hard work and time to get out of that place. So, I have no interest in returning. One symptom for me is that things that used to give me joy start to yield less joy or no joy at all. And that is where we will turn to the next part of this reflection.

How does burnout relate to chess?

I do chess for fun. It brings me joy. I like to work hard at training through the Dojo Program and have seen great results over these last few months. But, if I am honest with myself, training hard and playing intense 45+30 games is yielding much less joy than it used to. There is a part of me that doesn't want to admit that. But, being honest with myself has always proven to be the best path forward.

I guess it makes sense - layering 20 hours of intense chess training on top of a very demanding job, a demanding side gig as a law professor, not to mention three amazing kids from 7-14 eventually is going to take its toll. While I would like to believe I don't have limits, I definitely have limits and I've been working beyond them for longer than I can without a real impact.

So, for me, burnout relates to chess in that it has reduced the amount of joy I used to get from working hard at the game. In that way, the reduced joy that I have been experiencing from chess helped me diagnose my condition.

What is a potential path forward?

There is a short term and a long term answer to this question. The short term answer is pretty easy - I'm going to step away from my hard training routine for a while. No Polgar puzzles, no long time controls, no waking up at 5:00 to get an hour in before work and staying up late getting a couple more hours in. At least until my early signs of burnout are gone and the joy in the journey returns.

I'll still be writing these installments because I think this is still an important part of my journey and writing will help me process where I am in the recovery cycle.

I have little doubt that I will be back at training through the Dojo program at some point. I'm not exactly sure when that will be. It could be a week, a month, a few months or a year. But, I'm sure I'll be back. Until then, I'll be playing Rapid swiss and arena tournaments on Lichess and having fun with the game!

Until the next installment!