What burning out taught me about building resilience in business

In 2022, burnout hit me hard, forcing me to confront a question that changed everything: What am I really working for?

A shift in perspective

In 2022, I burnt out and crashed. From a high-performance team lead, I suddenly turned into a virtual snail.

I was struggling to get out of bed, I couldn’t concentrate for more than 5 minutes before feeling exhausted, and most of all, I no longer cared.

Managing a team of 12 people for the first time suddenly turned from ‘exciting opportunity’ to crippling pressure.

This stress manifested in chronic physical illnesses like vertigo and gastritis, which had put me out of commission for almost a year, losing me over 20kg of weight in total.

Fast forward 18 months, I’d become an entrepreneur with a much deeper sense of purpose, fulfillment and drive. But all this was only possible because of the lessons I’ve learnt after burning out the first time.

Because of burnout, my perspective has entirely shifted on issues like:

How personal and company-wide goals should be set
The kind of team I was willing to build
What constitutes ‘real growth’ in a business

Here's what burning out taught me about building resilience in business.

Finite vs Infinite game

After recovering from burnout, I started asking myself “What am I really working for?”

Was my career goal at the time worth the personal sacrifices I’ve had to make?

That’s when I came across the concept of “Finite vs Infinite Game” by James P. Carse, exploring two competing concepts on work and life in general:

Finite Games: People play these games with the aim of winning, leading to a definitive conclusion. The finite game has a clear set of rules, boundaries and objectives (think chess).
Infinite Games: The main goal is to simply keep on playing. These games focus on continuous growth, learning, and transformation without a fixed endpoint (think any open world RPG game).

I realized that up until this point, I was playing a Finite Game. My goals were:

To maximize profits for my team
To become the top expert in my field
To earn the recognition of being a thought-leader

But, as I discovered, the key to long-term success was actually to be playing an infinite game. All my business decisions should be based on one single overarching goal:

To build a foundation that lets me keep doing what I love, indefinitely.

In other words, my goal is simply to keep on playing.

The ‘Last Man Standing’ strategy

In the digital and tech industry, every entrepreneur seems to be obsessed with the first mover’s advantage.

All my peers seem to be on a race to find a new innovation that gives them the edge.

But what if the real advantage lies not in being the first, but in being the one who lasts the longest?

That’s the kind of strategy you get to employ when you play the infinite game, to be the Last Man Standing.

We’re not trying to out-grow, out-spend, or out-compete the market.

Instead we’re focused on building a resilient team that prioritizes sustainable growth, adaptability and deliver long-term value — a business that can weather challenges, evolve with the times and remain relevant for years to come.

Here’s how this strategy translates in practice:

How we work with clients

Playing the infinite game and adopting the last man standing strategy means we also work with our clients differently.

Adding intentional constraints

How and when we onboard new clients changes drastically when we’re playing the infinite game.

Instead of maximizing profits by filling out our team capacity and onboarding as many clients as possible, we’ve taken a different approach.

We want our teams to have ‘free time’. That’s when innovation and creativity happens. It’s how we take a ‘last man standing’ approach.

That’s why we’ve set an explicit cap to only onboard 3 projects each quarter, averaging at only 1 project per month.

Does it hurt our bottom line? Yes, perhaps, but it also allows us to:

Choose projects that are worthwhile and meaningful, while working with clients we get along with.
Giving our team breathing space to grow along with us without burning them out
Focusing on our service quality to retain each client for years to come

Project ‘value fit’

Limiting project slots means that we can afford to choose which projects we work with more carefully. At Cric, we ask two simple questions when choosing our projects for each quarter:

Is the project meaningful for us as a business?
Do our clients share the same set of values as our team?

At Criclabs, we’re on a mission to build something remarkable — a product that changes the world and how we interact with it.

We want to achieve this mission while also playing the infinite game, and we can only do that if these two criteria are met.

The result? We’re consistently working on projects that not only align with our mission but also energize our team and push us to innovate.

These are the kinds of projects that bring out the best in us—ones where our expertise is valued, our creativity thrives, and our impact is meaningful.

Reshaping the road ahead

Burnout has shaped how I conduct my business in a profound way. It’s taught me to play the infinite game and throw away the urge to become a first-mover in favor of becoming ‘the last man standing’.

To anyone feeling the weight of burnout, know that there’s a way forward. It starts with asking yourself the same question that changed everything for me: What am I really working for? The answer might just reshape your future.

Toc 1