By Tanisha Kohli

Work gives people meaning. I was no stranger to it, and for years, I let work define me, comfort me, and validate my place in the world. It gave me a sense of self and something to wake up to. I was getting high off my achievements and kept chasing the feeling until the high wasn’t high enough for me.

When things shifted at work, the very thing I clung to for meaning started to crumble. Miss Anxiety, whom I had made my friend, resurfaced, and the burnout that I had been running from finally caught up with me. I think I reached a space where I was dissociated from my burnout—cognitively working, but without motivation.

There’s a word in French for this experience: désœuvrement—a state of being emptied out by productivity. A quiet collapse of the soul behind the performance of functionality. The English version is clearer lol: dead inside (you get where I am going with this)

Who Was I Without Work?

The dilemma of who I am without my clinging to my work as part of my identity, or what are my passions? Hobbies? And no definite answer to these questions didn’t make me feel good. The identity I had created in my mind didn’t exist, and it was difficult to swallow my ego and accept that I had no idea who I was.

I became even more impatient with myself and got stuck with questions of what my purpose is. Am I losing time in comparison to my peers? I felt lost thinking why I was going through this, and I would envy the people around me who seemed to love their jobs or were working towards their ‘dream jobs’.

I became the girl with questions (I still am) on what our purpose is, and why I exist. How do I deal with the ups and downs of life, and where does work fit into this? All of my questions led me to philosophy, as I tried to make sense of things and found comfort in the questions others had asked before me. That’s how I began drifting between schools of thought.

What Work Means—And What It Doesn’t

I used to read Alain de Botton a lot. His books—School of Life, A Therapeutic Journey—gave structure to my questions. In The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, he mentions

“We don’t turn to work solely for money—we look to it for meaning, identity, and purpose. And for a while, I did too. I gave work everything. Even hustle culture, for all its obvious downsides, wasn’t entirely misguided: when things were going well, work could feel transcendent. It made me feel like I had a reason to be here.”

The Bhagavad Gita speaks of Karma Yoga—the idea that we should act without clinging to outcomes.

“To work not for rewards, but out of integrity. Buddhism echoes this principle. In theory, it’s beautiful: liberating, ego-dissolving. In practice, it’s something else. I still catch myself obsessing over results before I’ve even begun.”

I skimmed Stoicism next. Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. Their core belief? Live in accordance with virtue and reason. Work was noble if aligned with nature.

“At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: ‘I have to go to work—as a human being.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.1

Work, in this view, becomes an act of dignity. But what happens when our internal nature is weary, and reason leads us into spirals rather than clarity? Their principles felt noble but distant, and hard to hold onto when you’re exhausted.

Karl Marx framed work as self-expression, as a form of essence. A liberating concept—but I didn’t feel like it clicked for me. I didn’t feel like I was expressing anything. I felt like I was being expressed through a value system I hadn’t even consented to.

But it was Byung-Chul Han whose thoughts really disturbed me.

“He says we’re no longer oppressed from the outside—we oppress ourselves, in the name of freedom. We exploit ourselves, believing it’s growth. We don’t need bosses anymore because we’ve become our own. Productivity isn’t just a system, it’s a belief. A quiet dogma.”

That landed hard.

I realized that the motivational speakers, the CEOs with podcast empires, the morning routine cults—they have become the new religion, and anyone who doesn’t believe it is outside of this social construct is looked down upon.

Going through different schools of thought didn’t really give me comfort. In fact, it confused me more, but it gave me language. And sometimes language is the first form of grace. Not an answer, but a way of staying with the question, without having to escape it immediately.

Well, how did I get here?

If I look back now, part of it was conditioning, this idea that freedom lies in financial independence, and that passion should be pursued until burnout. And add to this, I was working in crypto, where you feel you are redefining legacy businesses, and shipping work almost at the speed of light (not literally, but you get the point)

You might wonder why I was working there. Well, the dopamine was real. The stakes felt BIG, and you feel part of something bigger than you. I liked belonging, I guess, and who doesn’t?

When I first entered the space, it felt like I had stumbled into the coolest workspace. NFTs were blowing up. My friend helped me with my first web3 gig—working with a Perp DEX. It was fully remote, good pay, and a sharp team. I moved fast: long-form content, PR, growth, KOLs, strategy—the whole thing. Every skill I had leveled up. And then I just… kept going. I worked 12—to 16-hour days.

But here’s the part no one warns you about: if your identity is built entirely around being useful, you will eventually become useless to yourself.

Burnout isn’t an on/off switch. It’s a slow erosion. You miss one workout. You forget what your voice sounds like when it’s not pitching or posting. You start mistaking anxiety for ambition. You feel like you’re sprinting on a treadmill of shifting narratives, and the more exhausted you get, the more convinced you are that this is what it takes to win.

And then it ends. My role ended abruptly. Just like that, the story I’d been writing for three years disappeared, and I finally realized the extent of my exhaustion and burnout. My fierce loyalty to my company and the drive to push boundaries led me to go beyond the lines of burnout. I am guilty of blurring those lines myself.

And all I could think was: now what?

I Pivoted, But the Loop Repeated

I thought a change of pace would be good, so I entered the space of newsletters. I had always loved newsletters in the web3 space just because of the sheer way of reporting and the freedom that comes with writing, which is brilliant. I was hoping a new format would reenergize me. It was a lot of fun, new things to learn, but mentally, I felt exhausted. By November, my body once again issued a final warning. I had pushed too far, again. The loop was repeating. And so, I stopped. Not in the romantic “quit my job to travel” way, but in the reluctant, I-have-no-choice way.

What I Learned When I Finally Slowed Down

The pause forced me to confront my reality: the late nights that bled into mornings, the migraines I brushed off, the persistent insomnia I normalized. And Miss Anxiety, who had become my friend, needed to go.

So I made some changes. Small, but intentional:

• I rediscovered walking. I’d walk for hours, no destination, just movement.
• I enrolled in a Buddhism course I’d meant to take for years.
• I stopped trying to control things and making myself miserable.
• I slow-traveled through my own country (India), choosing places I wouldn’t typically go. I’ll write more about those experiences later, but the biggest realization? Travel offers its kind of intelligence. One that emerges only when your mind is quiet enough to notice.

To be clear: this wasn’t a clean, enlightened pivot. My therapist told me that the 10-day Buddhism retreat might be escapism. And maybe it was. I told her I didn’t care. Sometimes we escape toward something, not away from it. A recent yoga class by my friend and teacher reminded me of a truth I’d forgotten: there is a difference between a pause and an escape. One heals. The other hides. Sometimes, it takes both

Why I’m Sharing This Now

Because I know others are still where I was—running, striving, trying to outpace the fatigue. And if that’s you, I hope you pause before your body forces you to.

Balance isn’t optional in this world. It’s essential. For me, it meant redefining how I work—and more importantly, why I work (Still figuring that btw)

Maybe your version looks different. But wherever you are, I hope you remember: you don’t have to earn your right to rest.

Sometimes, the most meaningful work we do is the work of returning to ourselves.

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About the author: Tanisha Kohli is a strategist and writer working at the intersection of technology, media, and decentralisation. She has six years of experience spanning public relations, startups, and the Web3 ecosystem. Her work focuses on shaping narratives around emerging technologies with a core interest in systems thinking, internet culture, and reputation-based economies.

She consults with early-stage projects on brand, content, and community strategy, particularly in the blockchain and decentralised finance (DeFi) space.