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Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

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Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#51

Post by seabass-labrax »

JohnFen wrote: post #17

The best dev I ever knew developed a serious case of burnout. He went to truck-driving school and drove long-haul trucks for a couple of years. He then came back to software development cured of his burnout. Not saying that you should drive trucks, but I think doing something else -- something completely unrelated to dev work -- might be of help.

There was a rather weird episode in British political history just after the first wave of COVID lockdowns. The performance arts, limited to outdoor events, were struggling, leading to jokes mocking the government's advice for these performers to 'upskill' as computer programmers. Simultaneously, the lack of temporary residents from other EU countries (who comprise the majority of truck/lorry drivers) due to Brexit meant that computer programmers were joking about 'upskilling' to become drivers with double a programmer's salary!

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#52

Post by Gnarl »

Been freelancing for ~20 years now. Mostly high-end contracts. Did develop burnout that morphed into depression. Avoided social contact for a good while but then a guy who was much worse off, came into my life and dragged me out street drumming as a part of a rag-tag improv group. Turns out I was pretty good at it. That pretty much cured me, having people - perfect strangers - react happily and wildly to the beats and grooves.

At age 50 I finally got that drivers license and find now that driving is therapy: having to concentrate on one thing only.

TLDR; do something that's fun and is outside of what you'd normally do. Reset your brain!

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#53

Post by seabass-labrax »

cameldrv wrote: post #29
23B1 wrote: post #9

When I was burned out I dedicated myself to learning something completely outside of my current context. I plan on doing this regularly now, maybe every 2-3 years. On my docket is: - Woodworking - Cooking - especially baking, since it can be extremely challenging to create the 'perfect' baguette or croissant - Gardening - Writing a novel etc. Best solution for burnout IMO is to completely refresh your mind with somet…

Yep. For me it was flying gliders. Most important things I think are that the activity is challenging, involves learning, and does not involve the use of a computer.

I'll bet you there'll be RNAV approaches for gliders in a decade or two ;)

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#54

Post by rodrigodlu »

You need to try a little bit of everything.

In my case I'm giving myself time, but using my own stash. I'm not exactly burned out RN, but not willing to work with the same stuff as before or at the same type of environment.

DIY stuff really helps. I did some furniture myself, doing basic maintenance on my car, cooking.

Trying to get better at journaling myself with stuff like Logstash/Obsidian along with mechanical keyboards.

Also I always wanted to become more proficient with VIM and motions.

So really spending time with small little things and realizing the differences, from one type of saw cutting the wood for my furniture to how different is the blue switch to brown switch in a mech keyb, or why it's now faster for me to change oil and filters on my car than taking it to a place.

This takes a lot of pressure while I'm learning the technologies and figuring out what kind of challenges I want for myself for the next decade, and having plenty energy to follow all this hype around AI and understanding what's bullshit or not.

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#55

Post by 23B1 »

shaftway wrote: post #21
23B1 wrote: post #9

When I was burned out I dedicated myself to learning something completely outside of my current context. I plan on doing this regularly now, maybe every 2-3 years. On my docket is: - Woodworking - Cooking - especially baking, since it can be extremely challenging to create the 'perfect' baguette or croissant - Gardening - Writing a novel etc. Best solution for burnout IMO is to completely refresh your mind with somet…

Not sure woodworking is "low-stress", though I guess it depends on what exactly you plan on making. I have had a number of failures at all phases of projects. One was 20 hours of work and a grand in materials that I were totally junk (I had to pay more to drop it off at the dump). One was fairly low material cost, but ~40 hours in it was ruined. Now I make duplicates in case of failures. My last project I got materia…

Nobody is going to lose their job, die, or start a war because of our bad woodworking projects ;-)

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#56

Post by moralestapia »

mcv wrote: post #14
moralestapia wrote: post #8

You need a vacation. Do you have some money saved up? If so, just take a vacation.

Vacations are important. Even just a week can sometimes give you a very healthy reset. Of course I don't mean just a week off, but getting out of the house, travelling somewhere nice and just enjoying seeing new places. If it has to be cheap: go camping.

Yes, just make sure to completely remove yourself from work (and other chores).

If you bring your laptop with you and keep doing stuff in it, it doesn't count.

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#57

Post by unforeseen9991 »

lostlogin wrote: post #45
qazxcvbnmlp wrote: post #39

Burnout comes from reward != work/effort put in over a long period of time. Building your own thing can be very conducive to burnout b/c most of the time you’re not really getting a lot of positive ideas. Everyone likes to say that vacation is the solution to burnout, and it can be, but it’s not the end all be all. Your brain needs to feel contentment at the end of a typical day. Contentment indicates you’re filling…

> Burnout comes from reward != work/effort put in over a long period of time. I don’t agree. You can be well paid and well rewarded and burnt out. People need holiday, breaks and time to relax. If you are busy and stressed for a long period, hobbies don’t get time, life admin doesn’t get done and exhaustion comes to dominates weekends and evenings.

Yeah, by that definition people going to school or learning a new career that can take years of effort would all be in perpetual burnout.

I think that's way too simplistic of a definition of what causes burnout.

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#58

Post by __jambo »

leros wrote: post #10

I have a few thoughts: 1) Can you afford to live off a manual labor job? If so, that might be a good approach since you can work that manual labor job and still have mental energy afterwards to work on your SaaS. It's much harder doing mental tech work after already doing mentally taxing work at your job. 2) If you do contracting, does it have to be full time? Presumably you could make more money doing tech contracti…

> you can work that manual labor job and still have mental energy afterwards to work on your SaaS. It's much harder doing mental tech work after already doing mentally taxing work at your job.

this is exactly what I was thinking. Thank for the validation, I'm glad someone else has this experience. Also I do a lot of debugging subconsciously, so taking other tech work is just a lot.

Re: Ask HN: Any freelancers here? I need burnout advice

#59

Post by __jambo »

rossdavidh wrote: post #30

Nearly all work (contract or not) is something that somebody would rather pay you to do, than do themselves. Well run software companies with tidy, well architected software need far fewer devs than the ones with nasty bloat and a lot of legacy problems, so that's why most of the jobs are with the latter. The reality is that work is only occasionally fun, and usually something you would not do if you didn't want the…

>Well run software companies with tidy, well architected software need far fewer devs than the ones with nasty bloat and a lot of legacy problems

this is a good point I can relate with!

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