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Experiencing probably the biggest most painful burnout of my life and it's happened when I least expected it - when I finally seemed to have achieved a decent work/life balance. I have some ideas why (thread)
...so we think of burnout as something experienced with a single bout of overworking, it's a very linear thing to understand, you overexert yourself and hit your limit, you take some time out and recover and get back to it, hopefully learning a lesson.
However, we rarely learn our lesson and when this toxic routine happens over and over again you create a much deeper, longer lasting damage that doesn't surface right away.
I spent years of having an extremely unhealthy work/life balance. 8 years roughly. Working until I slept, pulling all nighters, getting up early to put extra hours in so I didn't feel pressure during regular working hours. This did a few things -
It normalized these working conditions as much as I told myself it was wrong. My body began to associate getting results and producing good work with overworking - that's where the magic happens, right?
What this also did was push my standards to an unattainable level. To the point where I would feel physically sick if I didn't believe my work met these standards. It would consume every waking minute until I got it to a place I was happy with.
This year, I finally began achieving a good work/life balance. I run every day, I make time for reading regularly, I get to bed at 11pm and mostly shut off work after dinner. On paper I'm living a healthy lifestyle and should be full of life.
I had a short burst of energy but it didn't take long for the real damage of years of unhealthy work habits to show up - I started feeling unfulfilled, guilty, empty, unproductive and unhappy with anything I managed to do in my new healthy working hours. I felt lazy, slow, behind
I wasn't of course, but the years of pushing myself to the absolute limits made a healthy lifestyle feel like a cop out. I don't really have an answer right now as to how I can fix this but it seems clear that not instilling a hustle mentality into people starting their career
- especially freelancers and small business owners who are holding themselves up - will prevent some of the difficulties I have experienced.
You don't achieve success from working ridiculously hard, that is toxic, narrow-minded advice usually spoken from people disregarding their own privileges, luck and most probably masking deeply rooted mental health problems that are the byproduct of an overworking mentality.
It is our duty to be truthful about our own paths to success and not sell an unrealistic dream to aspiring creatives. I have definitely in the past glorified parts of the process not fully understanding the true long term impact of these unhealthy habits. We must do better
That's all right now, hopefully I can expand more on this when I understand it a bit more - please look after your mental health as early as you can 
