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While LinkedIn feeds overflow with AI startup triumph stories and soaring revenue dashboards as 2025 closes, tech veteran Ajeet Raina surfaces an uncomfortable truth: "The internet has created a strange culture where showing your bank balance is normal, but talking about your blood pressure feels awkward." In a poignant year-end reflection, Raina spotlights the silent casualties of the AI gold rush – chronic pain, anxiety, and neglected well-being masked by public success narratives.

The Unseen Toll of "Shipping Faster"

Raina observes that beneath the curated highlight reels lies a pervasive reality: developers sacrificing sleep for GitHub streaks, founders skipping health checkups for product launches, and engineers replacing home-cooked meals with perpetual delivery apps. This normalization of self-sacrifice sends dangerous signals to emerging talent, implying that success requires trading well-being for output.

"Your startup can pivot. Your health cannot always recover," Raina warns. "The damage from months of poor sleep, skipped meals, and ignored stress signals accumulates quietly until it doesn't."

Rebuilding Foundations: Health as Core Infrastructure

The piece shifts from diagnosis to actionable philosophy, challenging tech's core productivity assumptions:

  • Nutrition as Fuel, Not Interruption: Rejecting rushed meals between meetings as mere gap-fillers, Raina emphasizes intentional eating as cognitive maintenance: "Your gut health affects your brain. That 'mental fog' might just be last week's junk food talking."
  • Rest as Performance Multiplier: Countering glorified burnout, he reframes downtime as essential for innovation: "The most creative solutions often come during walks, not during the fifth hour of staring at a screen."
  • The Launch Fallacy: Dismantling the "health later" delusion endemic to project cycles, Raina states bluntly: "'I'll focus on health after this launch' is a lie we tell ourselves. There's always another launch."

A 2026 Manifesto: Rewriting Tech's Value System

Raina issues a radical challenge for the coming year: normalize health milestones alongside business achievements. This means:

  • Showcasing morning walks alongside product updates
  • Celebrating cooked meals with the enthusiasm of feature launches
  • Admitting burnout openly instead of performing constant productivity
  • Prioritizing personal check-ins beyond professional progress

His message to young builders is particularly urgent: "Your energy feels infinite right now. It isn't. The habits you build today compound just like your skills do." Veteran founders' private health struggles, he notes, often become permanent debts paid for temporary successes.

The Sustainable Success Imperative

The closing argument transcends wellness advice, framing balanced well-being as technical debt prevention for human systems: "Building something meaningful includes building a life worth living." As Raina commits to cooking more meals and taking postponed health checkups, he reframes the ultimate KPI:

"I'm resolving to remember that I'm building FOR a life, not instead of one."

This stands as a critical industry wake-up call: sustainable innovation requires rejecting burnout as a badge of honor. The health of those driving technological advancement isn't a personal concern – it's foundational infrastructure for the entire ecosystem's future.

Source: What Your Feed Isn't Showing You by Ajeet Raina