People think burnout comes from working too much.

Too many hours.
Too many tasks.
Too much hustle.

That’s a lie. I’ve worked 14–16 hour days where I felt totally fine. Energised, focused, excited. And I’ve worked 3-hour days where I walked away absolutely wrecked.

Burnout never correlated with hours. It correlated with entropy.
[definiton: en·tro·py: lack of order or predictability; gradual decline into disorder]

And entropy is a systems problem not a personal one.

🔥 Human Systems Accumulate Entropy

In physics, entropy is disorder, chaos and randomness.
In companies, entropy is:

At Superpower, I work harder than I did in the last year of my previous startup. More hours. More decisions. More responsibility. More weight.

Yet I’m more motivated, more energised, and more excited to show up every day.

Why?

Because despite the intensity, the system has more order.
Entropy is lower. Meaning is higher. And all the science backs this up.

🔥 The Key Drivers of Entropy

#1 Loss of Coherence

Humans don’t burn out from effort, they burn out from narrative collapse.

When the story is clear → what you’re doing, why it matters, how it ladders up, and whether it’s working. You can grind, sprint, and push incredibly hard.

I find with my team despite them working incredibly long hours, they don’t complain about the input of time. They complain that things are unclear - or why their work matters.

#2 Open Loops

At one point, I realised I was ending every day with:

Even if I left early, my brain didn’t shut off. Open loops are cognitive parasites.

I literally end my day sometimes telling my wife - “you decide where we eat. I literally don’t want to make any decisions right now” or getting frustrated when she wants input around our personal finances or taxes. I was just too drained from making decision after decision. Towards the end of the day it feels like I just say “LGTM!” and not actually caring enough.

Burnout is not “being tired.” Burnout is going to sleep with your brain still running 27 tabs in the background.

#3 Too Many Cold Starts

This one is subtle but lethal. Every time you switch tasks, change direction, receive a DM, get pinged in a channel, or have someone ask you:

“Hey, quick question!”
or
“You got 5?”

…your brain does a cold start. Context reload. Priorities reshuffle. Working memory reset.

Do that once? Fine.
Do that 100 times in a day? You’re cooked.

Gloria Mark from UC Irvine found it takes 23 minutes to regain focus after an interruption. This is why a 3-hour “light day” can wipe you out: you weren’t working, you were constantly rebooting.

The days I struggle most at Superpower aren’t the heavy days. They’re the noisy ones.

When 20 people need something from me, across 8 platforms, with unclear urgency…
my brain becomes a customer support inbox.

#4 The Hidden Tax of Ambiguity

Interpreting messages and tasks is the biggest hidden tax I can think of. My team has just done a session on the benefits of amazing comms - it’s almost the most important think you can do. Conversely, interpreting tasks can destroy you.

This is the tax code of ambiguity:

The invisible parts drain 10× more energy than the visible ones.

#5 The Effort → Outcome Breakage

The most demoralising feeling in the world: You work hard, and nothing moves.

In the last year of my old startup, this was the killer. No matter what I did, it felt like pushing a boulder in mud.

Nothing is more exhausting than working hard and achieving nothing.

🪄 The Anti-Entropy Playbook

This playbook exists to reduce entropy, increase signal, and restore coherence so people can do the best work of their lives.

1. Simplify priorities → fewer goals, clearer direction

2. Close loops aggressively → and expect the same standard from your team

3. Define ownership clearly → no ambiguity on who drives vs. supports

4. Set clear KPIs → measurable targets remove guesswork

5. Create a Single Source of Truth → for every major surface area

6. Overcommunicate the narrative → repeat the “why” until it’s obvious

7. Keep teams pointed in one direction → eliminate strategy whiplash

8. Demand better updates in fewer channels → reduce noise, boost speed

9. Protect momentum → fewer distractions, fewer pivots, more compounding

Closing Thoughts

Burnout didn’t teach me to slow down. It taught me to build order.

I’m doing the most intense work of my life right now and I’ve never felt more alive.

Long hours don’t kill you. Chaos does.

Remember: Burnout is just physics.

Until next time,

Ajay

🧠 Ajay’s Resource Bank

A few tools and collections I’ve built (or obsessively curated) over the years:

• 100+ Mental Models
  Mental shortcuts and thinking tools I’ve refined over the past decade. These have evolved as I’ve gained experience — pruned, updated, and battle-tested.

• 100+ Questions
  If you want better answers, ask better questions. These are the ones I keep returning to — for strategy, reflection, and unlocking stuck conversations.

• Startup OS
  A lightweight operating system I built for running startups. I’m currently adapting it for growth teams as I scale Superpower — thinking about publishing it soon.

• Remote Games & Activities
  Fun team-building exercises and games (many made in Canva) that actually work. Good for offsites, Zoom fatigue, or breaking the ice with distributed teams.

✅ Ajay’s “would recommend” List

These are tools and services I use personally and professionally — and recommend without hesitation:

• Athyna – Offshore Hiring Done Right
  I personally have worked with assistants overseas and built offshore teams. Most people get this wrong by assuming you have to go the lowest cost for automated work. Try hiring high quality, strategic people for a fraction of the cost instead.

• Superpower – It starts with a 100+ lab tests
  I joined Superpower as Head of Growth, but I originally came on to fix my health. In return, I got a full diagnostic panel, a tailored action plan, and ongoing support that finally gave me clarity after years of flying blind.