(insert confused Carl meme with caption “you guys can get ahead??”)
I feel you, I have been facing the same issue pretty much my whole life, the last 3 years I have been able to identify it and make some progress. I am not in a perfect state, not even a good one, but I am making progress and I am happy with it.
For me, the problem was trying to catch up. My pattern involved the following cycle:
I would feel I am “behind” and the guilt would start to build up.
The guilt would get so bad that I would start doing the things.
As I was catching up, the guilt would decrease, and I would start feeling the exhaustion building up.
I would try to power through until I would crash and go into a state of depression.
Repeat from step 1.
In other words, I was exhausting myself while trying to catch-up, when I was finally ahead the guilt wouldn’t be enough to motivate me anymore, and I would crash.
Changing my outlook helped a lot. Instead of trying to catch-up, now I am aiming for consistenxy. This is really hard, as it involves taking a break when I need to even if it means “getting behind”. When I changed my outlook my productivity decreased considerably and it took a few months to get at an acceptable state. I tried to be patient, keeping records helped a lot as I was able to see the improve from one week to another.
Recognising my rest needs is really hard, I just don’t feel it untill my brain goes absolutely numb. Keeping a journal has helped me analyze my behaviours and recognise my limits. I try to respect those limits by being proactive and schedule rest days before I crash.
Ultimately, this is my experience and yours may be different. Some general guidelines would be to try to take things one step at the time and rely on your journal because your memory is not a reliable source of information.
PS I fucking hate journaling, it’s the worst things ever, and having to rely so much on it drives me crazy.