Diego, please ask this on the Discussion section of Italki, I'm dying to read more points of view on this issue… :)

I think that's the point, Andrés: Things get serious when you start pushing you to get high performance and high results. It's when the line of pleasure-obligation is crossed and this is a problem...

First, I want to say that this has stirred up quite an interesting discussion. Well done people :) Secondly, I agree that in theory burning out is possible with any activity, but it's just that I've personally never felt it with languages. Language learning wise, I never did anything I didn't want to do and I never had anyone (nor myself) pushing me to study every day, with no breaks, and with material I didn't find interesting—and yet I study every single day.

I spend most of my time reading, listening and writting. Of course these are very important things while learning a language but I really feel the lack of speaking due to te fact that I have classes only once a week, it is the only day I have to exchange my learning experience. I feel the lack of being an active learner when I don't talk. Even with Italki it's difficult to find someone who's commited and has the desire to learn, practice and improve every day...

I think it is possbile, but for learning languages I haven't noticed too much. Maybe because for example for English, I would do something that I would be doing in my mother tongue anyway, like watch a movie I wanna see, read a book I wanna read,...if I were to read textbooks all day, or stuff that I'm not interested in, I might probably burn out too. On a similar level, I've been living in China for 3 years now, and just every day life, and especially having exactly the same conversations again and again with locals (and also expats) can drain a lot of energy, at least for me (and you don't really improve the language too much from small talk, better talk to the same people regularly to have different topics). I guess you need to find a good balance as with many things in life and have a way to "recharge your battery". ;-)