The Good Kind of Tired: Why “Happily Exhausted” Deserves Its Own Word
You know the feeling. Your legs are jelly after the final whistle, your eyes burn after the last line of code compiles, your arms ache from carrying a laughing kid on your shoulders all day at the zoo. By every objective measure you should be miserable… but you’re grinning like an idiot.
We’ve all been there, yet English still doesn’t have a single, perfect word for it.
Other languages do:
- Danish/Norwegian: godtræt – literally “good-tired”
- Japanese: 心地よい疲れ (kokochi-yoi tsukare) – “pleasant fatigue”
- German: kaputt aber glücklich – “broken but happy”
In English we make do with phrases: happily exhausted, pleasantly tired, blissfully wrecked, or simply “that good kind of tired.”
The Happy Sisyphus
Camus famously said the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. Most of us picture poor Sisyphus cursing the boulder as it rolls back down for the ten-thousandth time.
But what if he’s smiling on the way down?
What if, after a lifetime of pushing, he’s finally godtræt—muscles screaming, lungs burning, and absolutely content because the hill was worth it?
That’s the vibe I’m talking about.
A Real-Life Happy Sisyphus: Andrew Ng at 2 A.M.
Go rewatch the early lectures of Andrew Ng’s legendary Stanford Machine Learning course on YouTube (the 2011–2014 versions).
You can literally see the exhaustion in his eyes. The slight slump in the shoulders. The occasional thousand-yard stare when he pauses to think.
And yet… he’s glowing.
There’s this quiet, unbreakable contentment that leaks through every frame. You feel like he’d rather be nowhere else on Earth than standing in that half-lit classroom at 2 A.M. explaining backpropagation for the 47th take.
Years later he confirmed it in an interview, that “Most people don’t realize those videos were usually recorded between midnight and 4 A.M. after a full day of research, teaching, and everything else. I was exhausted… but I loved every second of it.” — Andrew Ng
He also says it’s about the fourth time that he’s seen people being surprised about AI as if it came out of nowhere but is excited every time (paraphrased from this podcast).
That, right there, is peak happily exhausted.
We Need a Word
Until the dictionary catches up, I’m borrowing godtræt without apology.
Because sometimes you finish a marathon, or ship a passion project, or dance until the venue turns the lights on—and you’re destroyed in the best possible way.
You are absolutely, perfectly, deliciously godtræt.
And tomorrow you’ll probably do it all again.
💛
What’s your favorite word or phrase for this feeling?
PS: I don’t speak Danish, Japanese or German. So I had to rely on Grok for the expressions and google translate to verify them. Hopefully I got them right☺️
