Burnout rarely announces itself as exhaustion — it usually arrives disguised as mild cynicism. The medieval Persian polymath Al-Ghazali described a phenomenon he called 'hardening of the heart': a gradual deadening not of effort but of meaning, where a person continues performing competently while quietly losing the inner connection to why the work matters. It's distinct from laziness or fatigue. Al-Ghazali's remedy was counterintuitive: not more rest, but deliberate re-exposure to the original question that made the work feel worthwhile in the first place. If you've been optimizing, shipping, and executing well but feel oddly hollow about it — the move isn't to push through or take a break. It's to locate the specific moment you stopped asking 'why this?' and start asking it again.

Name the last work project you felt genuinely curious about, not just competent at. How long ago was that?

Drawing from Sufi Islamic Philosophy — Al-Ghazali