Today, after a few days of slowly circling the drain that is worsening burnout, I realized I had to find a way to stay focused despite how tired I’m getting and decided to skip straight to pulling out the big guns. I’ve been putting it off for a while now, since I don’t always enjoy the experience, but there’s no arguing with how effective it is when it comes to keeping me on task and at least marginally focused on fairly straight-foward work. So, rather than deal with the various thoughts swirling around my head about my job, my work hours, how I feel about doing this work, and literally anything else that might normally occupy my mind, I blasted them all away by subjecting myself to the ten-hour version of the He-Man Hey Yeah Yeah video (officially titled “HEYYEYAAEYAAAEYAEYAA” but no one I know calls it that). I started the video shortly after I started work and have left it running all day, taking my headphones off when I need to be capable of complex thought and leaving them on while conducting rote tasks, doing simpler thought work (like writing this blog), and running the hours and hours of tests I need to do today. So far, I’ve kept my sanity and managed to be more productive than any other day this week, despite being four days into this parade of mounting exhaustion.