“I used to be good at this — now I can't do anything right”

When yesterday’s self becomes the standardYou sit down to something that once felt ordinary and notice how quickly the old comparison shows up. The myth is blunt: if you were really good at this, it wouldn’t be this hard now. So the slow reply, the clumsy draft, the forgotten detail starts to feel like evidence that the good version of you was temporary, maybe even imaginary.

Why the broken meter keeps sounding certainWhat makes that story feel convincing is that burnout and incompetence can look the same from the outside. Work that used to take an hour now takes three. You start over-checking, over-apologizing, and explaining every choice because the instrument you’re reading from is already depleted. It doesn’t measure capacity cleanly anymore, so every small wobble gets treated like a verdict.

A small test beside an older fileTry a private comparison, not a performance. Pull up one piece of work from a steadier stretch — something you still respect — and place it beside today’s output for two minutes. Don’t rank them. Just notice whether the gap is skill, conditions, or both. The point isn’t to prove you’re fine. It’s to stop letting a tired reading pretend it’s final.