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Over-Optimized
You did everything right.
So why are you exhausted?
Burnout is often treated as a personal failure—something to push through, recover from, or fix with better habits. But for many capable, high-achieving people, exhaustion isn’t the result of weakness or lack of discipline. It’s the result of living inside systems optimized for efficiency, achievement, and output long after those goals stopped serving who they are now.
Over-Optimized reframes burnout as a design problem rather than a character flaw. Instead of asking how to work harder or become someone new, this book invites you to examine what your life has quietly been optimized for—and what it’s been costing you in return.
Through clear, reflective essays and practical pauses for reconfiguration, Rowan Ellis
Why competence often leads to depletion instead of fulfillment
How good decisions can slowly narrow a life
Why rest alone doesn’t solve misalignment
How values function best as boundaries, not aspirations
What sustainable change looks like when you can’t afford to burn everything down
This is not a productivity system, a hustle manifesto, or a reinvention story. It’s a grounded, thoughtful guide for people who want continuity without burnout—growth without self-erasure.
If you’re tired not because you’re lost, but because your life no longer fits, this book offers a way to redesign without collapse—and to stay well inside the life you’re already building.
So why are you exhausted?
Burnout is often treated as a personal failure—something to push through, recover from, or fix with better habits. But for many capable, high-achieving people, exhaustion isn’t the result of weakness or lack of discipline. It’s the result of living inside systems optimized for efficiency, achievement, and output long after those goals stopped serving who they are now.
Over-Optimized reframes burnout as a design problem rather than a character flaw. Instead of asking how to work harder or become someone new, this book invites you to examine what your life has quietly been optimized for—and what it’s been costing you in return.
Through clear, reflective essays and practical pauses for reconfiguration, Rowan Ellis
Why competence often leads to depletion instead of fulfillment
How good decisions can slowly narrow a life
Why rest alone doesn’t solve misalignment
How values function best as boundaries, not aspirations
What sustainable change looks like when you can’t afford to burn everything down
This is not a productivity system, a hustle manifesto, or a reinvention story. It’s a grounded, thoughtful guide for people who want continuity without burnout—growth without self-erasure.
If you’re tired not because you’re lost, but because your life no longer fits, this book offers a way to redesign without collapse—and to stay well inside the life you’re already building.
31 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 28, 2026
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