❤️‍🔥 How to Burnout-Proof Your Career

Startup lessons on how to iterate and build an intentional career.

This is Part 4 of the Burnout Survival Guide: Building an intentional career beyond burnout.

Last week, I hosted my first in-person burnout recovery workshop for the Taiwanese Community in Seattle. We sat down with over 30 professionals in tech to talk about the unspoken truths of our community: the weight of the “model minority” myth, the pressure of high-performance work environments, and the cultural expectations that demand we just “work harder.”

Statistics show that Asian Americans have the lowest mental health service utilization rate of any racial group - often because the pressure to maintain a perfect professional facade outweighs the permission to seek help. This is why I was incredibly humbled by the vulnerability shared in that room, and I’m grateful to have the space to normalize conversations around mental health and building sustainable ways to work and live.

Burnout BFF x TJCCS Workshop

The session reminded me to finish the final installment of my Burnout Survival Guide: Building an Intentional Career. While the first three parts were distilled from my own recovery after a medical leave, preventing future burnout is a much longer, more iterative process that I am still navigating.

After climbing the corporate ladder for over a decade and finally finding my passion and purpose, here are a few lessons I’ve distilled along the way:

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The Burnout Survival Guide Refresher:

• Where are you on the burnout spectrum?

• The dark side of being high-functioning

• Are you in a toxic relationship with work?

• A step-by-step guide to taking medical leave

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How to Build an Intentional Career

1. Non-Negotiables are truly non-negotiable.

I’ve talked before about the “Big 4” non-negotiables - Sleep, Eat, Move, Play. These are essential for regulating our nervous system; neglecting any one of them over the long term is a surefire way to invite burnout back into your life.

For me, a job is simply unsustainable if it requires sacrificing my health. Whether I’m working for someone else or for myself, I prioritize these four above all else. To put it bluntly: I’m too tired to neglect my health for a paycheck.

2. Internal alignment is the key to authenticity.

Often, burnout is a symptom of a mismatch between our internal values and our external environment. Too many of us chase goals defined by society’s version of success rather than what we actually value. For the longest time, I didn’t know what actually fulfilled me, so I followed the conventional path: climb the ladder, chase the promotions, and secure the salary bumps to prove I was “on track.”

Now, I’ve learned to listen to my own voice. Staying true to my values and remaining authentic at work is my primary defense against burning out. My ADHD diagnosis following my burnout was also a wake-up call on the hidden cost of high-functioning masking - it serves as a reminder of the importance of honoring my own needs.

3. Cultivate radical self-awareness.

Internal alignment looks different for everyone, which is why self-awareness is the foundation of an intentional career. Understanding your strengths, work styles, and preferred environments provides the variables for your dream career equation. Usually, the data is already there in your past experiences - it just takes some reflection to connect the dots. If the answers aren't clear yet, consider it a signal to start experimenting :)

This is also why I have an unhealthy obsession with personality tests, Myers-Briggs (INTP), and even Astrology charts (Virgo Sun, Libra Rising). If self-awareness is vital to our life choices, why not make the process fun and a little mystical?

4. The Career Sweet Spot: Finding your Ikigai.

Ikigai is the Japanese concept of finding your “reason for being.” While we don’t necessarily need a thriving career to achieve ikigai, it certainly helps if we can do what we love professionally. The “Career Sweet Spot” is the intersection of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for.

To me, finding ikigai isn’t a fixed destination, but a framework that evolves alongside our priorities. In the past, I overindexed on the intersection of what I was good at and what I could be paid for. Now, I’m shifting my focus toward what I love, what I’m good at, and what the world needs - giving myself the space to experiment with the rest of the equation.

5. Give yourself space to iterate and experiment.

Finding your ikigai is a long-term process that requires constant iteration. We need to give ourselves the “runway” to make mistakes and learn, rather than obsessing over immediate results. Most startups fail to find product market fit not because the idea is bad, but because they ran out of time and funding to experiment.

As a recovering perfectionist, I have to constantly remind myself: doing is better than a perfect plan. Viewing my career as a lifelong adventure frees me from the weight of needing all the answers right now. A year ago, I never would have predicted I’d be here - speaking to a room of people about a topic I’m deeply passionate about, and using my art to tell stories of healing. But by following my interests and my intuition, one experiment at a time, I found my way here.

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This series has been such a cathartic way to process my own burnout journey, and I’d love to hear where you are on yours. If you’re in the middle of a career pivot or just want to share your own burnout story, feel free to reach out or hit reply!

If you want to keep the conversation going, you can find me here:

• LinkedIn: I share more about career strategy, workplace well-being, and spicy takes on tech trends.

• Instagram: This is where I share my behind-the-scenes, unfiltered rants, and my art!

Finally, if your team or community could use a space to talk about burnout recovery and intentional career (like we did in Seattle!), I’d love to bring a workshop to you. You can [book a time here] or just hit reply to start the conversation.