I realize this may come off poorly, but I intend this as a serious question: What is stopping you from trying a career switch now?
I get we all need to pay the bills, but hear me out: could you explore alternative options slowly?
One piece of insight I received from my advisor: “How do you know someone really wanted something. They DID it.”
If you are serious about wanting to try something else, start doing it. See if it is something you get excited about. Maybe you can’t do it full time right away, but you can do something toward that goal now, regardless of your age.
It's difficult to hold down a job and re-skill yourself at the same time. It's more difficult as one gets older. It's even more difficult if you're burnt out.
Once you get done with re-skilling, the question still remains: how are you going to get someone to hire you?
To answer/comment in reverse:
“How are you going to get someone to hire you?”
For this question, I fall back in a fundamental belief system I have: value for value. Everyone looks for value when they make a major purchase. You expect to get more “value” then it “costs” you when you buy something. Same is true with employment.
The easiest way to guarantee employment (in my experience) is to ensure the value you provide greatly exceeds your total cost. I am talking ideally a 5-10X multiplier (minimally).
For your cost, keep in mind this is your total cost, and I am not just talking about your “fully burdened rate”, I am also talking about the “Emotional/drama/personality” you bring. If you are a model worker, and the person everyone likes, then you have positive karma, if you are someone that makes things harder, that is an additional “cost”.
For the value, be very honest with yourself. What do you bring from a technical/personality point of view. Are you really a 10X programmer, or if switching fields, how good will you really be on day one, 10, 100.
As long as you can give a positive ratio, with a high multiple, I suspect finding a job won’t be hard.
Okay, to your main point:
Finding time/motivation when none is there.
I personally have been through burnout. It sucks. The only surefire way I have found to get through it is time and finding meaning in the day to day.
But to the finding the time: the simple answer is if this is really important to you, then you make the time, every day. You don’t have to spend a ton of time, but even just 30mins a day can get you somewhere if you are diligent. It just comes down to how disciplined you can be with yourself. It sounds easy, but I know from experience that it is usually the “easy” things that are the hardest to really do.
I get we all need to pay the bills, but hear me out: could you explore alternative options slowly?
One piece of insight I received from my advisor: “How do you know someone really wanted something. They DID it.”
If you are serious about wanting to try something else, start doing it. See if it is something you get excited about. Maybe you can’t do it full time right away, but you can do something toward that goal now, regardless of your age.
My 2 cents...