Ask HN: Tips to relearn how to care about my job?

> I work on a product which just clones other similar products with a slightly better price point, so it’s hard to really care about the goal, but it would be nice to shift that mentality slightly.

Building something that has already been built at a better price point can be an interesting challenge. Obviously there's only so much control you have over the project, but learning how to deliver solid software on a budget is a super valuable skill. If you want to shift your mentality I would suggest that you approach it as it's own learning process.

Then, try talking out loud to yourself as you walk. Sounds strange, I know, but it can actually be really fun and elucidating. For me, it was a helpful exercise to clarify my values, goals, and find more creative ideas for moving forward. You can put in some earbuds and those around you will be none the wiser.

Someone else mentioned this, and I will echo it too. Be compassionate with yourself. It will take some time to find your way out of your rut. It's completely normal and from this you will grow stronger and more resilient.

You mentioned therapy, which is a great and I think everyone should try at least once. I would also recommend coaching. The difference is that therapy deals more with trauma and healing where coaching deals more with a person's present situation and guiding them to a more desirable future. In a coaching relationship, you are seen as the expert of your life, and the coach simply acts as a partner to help you discover the answers that are already within you. Disclaimer: I am a coach by training so I am biased, but I've worked with a couple different coaches myself and have found it to be incredibly powerful.

There is no shame in this. Think of it as hiring a personal trainer. Like everything else, self-improvement is a skill. :)

There's a bit of a leap here -- you're made unhappy by your job, but it's harder to say how much of the cause is the job vs. you. The relevant question is really just whether taking your current mind and putting it in a different job will make everything better, or if the issue is, at least partially, how you're relating to your job.

I say this as someone who's had a string of jobs where I'm unhappy for ~similar reasons. Each was a bit different, but the consistent undertone of unhappiness makes me think that it might be higher leverage for me to examine my relationship with my job instead of just hoping over and over again. I suspect there's ways of thinking about my job that I'm "carrying" with me, and addressing those things will do more for my happiness.

1. Find a project at work that you are interested in, and move over to that.

2. Join a completely different team/org at work.

3. Join a completely different company, doing different types of work.

4. Join a socially responsible company, doing charity work.

5. Quit your job, and take a 6 month break. Don't think about work during that break.

6. Go see a therapist for at least a couple of months.

7. Improve your diet and exercise routines, potentially with professional help from a trainer or a nutritionist.

8. Begin a treatment plan using drugs w/ the approval of a psychiatrist.

9. Begin a treatment plan using drugs without the approval of a psychiatrist, YOLO mushrooms time.

10. Leave your job, and move into an entirely different industry. Go start a farm.

11. Take a trip to a country with a radically different way of life, to gather some perspective.

12. Take some daily time to do something away from a computer - like join a pottery club.

13. Read some philosophy books on the meaning of life. Do some introspection based on what you read.

14. Pick a goal at work, like getting a promotion, and figure out what you need to do that.

I want to also offer a quick theory of burnout. Burnout is caused by 3 different sources:

1. Plain old overwork. Too much on-call is not good for your soul.

2. Mission doubt. If you begin to doubt the reason why you are doing something, you will get burned out.

3. Broken steering. If you feel that nothing you do actually is changing the situation, that you're unable to make meaningful progress in your work.

What I want to stress about this theory is that you don't need all three to have burnout. Some people think that taking an extended vacation is the cure to all burnout, because their theory only accounts for source 1, when you can have burnout from a job where you only work 20 hours a week. You might wish to first try and figure out which of these 3 sources seem like the cause for your burnout, and then which of the 14 options seem most appealing to you.