As I ease out into a short sabbatical, I find myself turning back to dig the seeds of my repeated cycle of exhaustion and burnout in the last few years.

Many factors were at play, some more personal that I’m comfortable discussing here. But I have unearthed at least one failure mode that I see reflected and diffracted in others lives, especially people who like me love to think, to make sense, to understand. So that seems worth a blog post, if only to plant a pointer to the problem, and my own way to solve it.

I’ve christened this issue the “true goal fallacy”: the unchecked yet embodied assumption that there is a correct goal in the world, a true essence in need of discovery and revealing.

Case Study: Team Lead Crash

A concrete example: the inciting incident of my first burnout was my promotion to team lead.

[...]

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Outline:

(00:48) Case Study: Team Lead Crash

(03:48) Axiology of True Goal Fallacy

(06:20) Absorbing Ambiguity And Allowing Feedback

(11:55) On Never Being Fully Cured

The original text contained 3 footnotes which were omitted from this narration.

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First published:
June 9th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/B4zKRZh5oxyGnAdos/the-true-goal-fallacy

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.