I Built the Same Burning Building Three Times

How I stopped trying to productivity-hack my way out of burnout, and found a method that actually works.

First, Who Am I?

I’m coach Jeremy Gruensteiner. I’m not a burnout coach who read about the problem in a personal development book, or some self-improvement junkie chasing the next trendy method. I’m someone who rebuilt the trap in every role I held, in every industry I found myself in, and in every fresh start. I tried all the productivity hacks, the retreats, thousands of dollars invested any solution I could find that promised relief; until I found the way out.

Starting My Professional Life in Tech

I was always the tech support for my friends and family, having even built computers for my high school. Eventually I found myself doing something I had dreamed of as a geeky teenager, being a software engineer. Eventually that led to Project Management and Engineering Leadership roles. I was a trusted resource and was described as the “lynchpin for success” on multiple projects and teams. I found myself constantly working longer hours, spilling into nights and weekends. My standards for myself were extremely high, and I constantly felt like I couldn’t ever catch up, that I wasn’t doing enough.

I was terrified of being seen as a fraud, so I said yes to everything. I lived for my work, and my life outside of work suffered. My personal relationships outside of work started to become transactional at best, leaving me feeling completely isolated and alone. I used food and alcohol to cope and mask how awful I felt. I became the most unhealthy I’d ever been tipping the scales at over 300 lbs and feeling a deep level of disgust and hatred for the man looking back at me in the mirror.

Hitting the Wall

During this time, I realized something needed to change drastically if I wanted to actually stop hating my life (and myself). I found an incredible fitness community where I started making positive progress towards improving my health. I hired coaches, I thought I had found the relief I desperately needed. I had traded the happy hour-to-bar close weekends and delivery food binges for fitness and Olympic Weightlifting. My physical health improved and I felt stronger than ever, and my mental health and mental strength was diminishing further and further until I questioned if I was even surviving anymore.

By this point I was managing an entire engineering department, and making the highest salary of my life. On paper, everything should have been great, and then we were given the highest-pressure project any of us had experienced with an impossible timeline. A project with no options, no negotiations, no delays allowed, no failure tolerated; the most intense Death March I had ever experienced.

I did what I thought good leaders should do, I constantly fell on the sword to protect my team. I fulfilled roles that we didn’t have support in, pushing code for the first time in years, handing user support, product management, project management. I wore so many hats on this project, I might as well have started a new career as a human hat rack.

We finally delivered the project, it was everything we promised and more. We were ready to celebrate after the months of toil and pressure, and then our stakeholders decided they actually wanted something completely different after the first month. We were given an ultimatum to rebuild all the work we just did in one month, or else.

I broke. I had meetings with HR, meetings with our COO trying to find a realistic solution, all the while I felt completely trapped and drained. I had one final meeting with the company’s COO, and was given the choice: “Stick it out, or quit.” I asked for time to consider it with a deadline of 48 hours. I got into my car to drive to the gym, and after getting half a mile down the road, I pulled over and wrote an email that terrified me. I put in my 2-week notice without any follow-up plan, no job prospects, not even a polished resume.

The Escape That Wasn’t

Within a month, I found myself in new company and a new role. I was excited, and thinking “I finally found my place!” The old patterns emerged within months and I could feel like I was starting to walk down that same path again, and decided I wanted something different to pursue my passion in fitness and start coaching full time.

It was a completely fresh start in a completely different world. I was so hopeful that I would escape my cycle of burnout forever, and I rebuilt the same burning building within six months. Burnout from long hours, stress from lack of clients, feeling incredibly scarce and afraid of the future.

Finding the Real Exit

During this chapter I found the exit from the constant traps I found myself in. I realized that the pattern repeated because of the identity I had built for myself. This was an identity that turned into a prison, with the way I spoke and wrote being the bars and locks for that personal prison. I found the mindset tools I needed to change the identity I created, not the environment I was in. I learned that this identity was just a story I was telling myself, and realized that I can rewrite a story.

I returned to working in technology, and now I’m known as the calmest person in any meeting. My salary keeps improving while it feels effortless. I have PTO I actually take, and get to both live and enjoy my life. It was the same industry that chewed me up and spit me out, and now a completely different life.

The pattern didn’t care what industry I was in. It came with me every time, because it wasn’t about the work. It was about the story I was telling myself about what I had to do to stay safe. I rewrote who I want to become and now I get to live my life Rewritten.

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