Burnout has progressed far enough that I cannot readily identify activities I genuinely enjoy. The anhedonia is present and it is being managed through more work rather than being addressed.

How Aurelius might see it

One way to read this — take what fits, leave what doesn’t.

You've run so empty that even rest feels like a stranger — you can't find what refills you because the tank has been dry for too long. The real problem isn't that joy is gone; it's that you've been using more work as the fix for a wound that work made. That loop is what's keeping you stuck.

The short answer

You're treating burnout with the thing that caused it — more work. The first move isn't to find joy again; it's to stop the drain. Deliberately doing less, even briefly, is not laziness. It's the only way the signal for what you actually enjoy can come back.

You keep working harder hoping to outrun how hollow things feel. Research on burnout consistently shows that when demands stay high and recovery never comes, the ability to feel reward or pleasure gets ground down — not because something is permanently broken, but because the system has had no chance to reset. The flatness you're describing is a predictable result of that pattern, not a character flaw. Marcus Aurelius put it plainly: stop roving and wandering to and fro, and give yourself the quiet to learn something good. He wasn't talking about vacation. He meant: stop the restless motion that feels productive but isn't. More work as a response to burnout is exactly that restless motion — it keeps you moving so you never have to feel how tired you are. This week, pick one 30-minute block each day and protect it from work entirely. Don't try to 'find joy' in it. Just sit with no task. Walk. Eat without a screen. The goal isn't to feel better immediately — it's to stop adding to the drain. If the flatness feels heavy or hard to carry alone, talking to a counselor or therapist who works with exhaustion and overwork is worth considering.