81–90 of 124 posts
I'd describe my burnout as 50 percent PTSD, 50 percent taking everything too seriously. Every time I'm feeling down, tired and burned out, I find something in there that helps me let go a bit. Good luck with everything.
Eventually start building back on yourself. Focus on something you haven't for a while. Call back an old friend with which you have lost contact but didn't want to. Focus on your family, do some sports. Read a book.
Eventually the passion will comeback and you will have your energy again.
As humans we live in cycles, it is normal to break up once in a while.
Don't forget to sleep. Sleep what your body feels like it
I took up cycling. When I was 35 I was having trouble with back pain that I assumed was rooted in not exercising. I find cycling to be the least objectionable form of exercise. My hip popped back into socket after a couple weeks and that was the main cause of back pain but I find I feel significantly worse and am less productive if I don't keep up with the exercise. For purely code stuff, I tend to learn a new langua…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With hindsight, do you think you could have avoided your burnout? Was it due to long hours? The type of work? Something else?
I think so, yeah. Aside from not listening to the obvious warning signs (insomnia, anxiety, depression, increased frequency of physical illness, etc.), there were definitely other red flags. I think my biggest since issue was - and probably continues to be - very poor work/life balance (no hobbies, basically no social life outside of work, etc). Obviously it's hard to disentangle cause and effect, but I suspect a pre…
Of course I'd expect someone already burning out to deceive themselves and game their own metrics (like reading and answering emails at night and not counting the time spent).
One thing that's helped in terms of coming up with ideas, for projects that are more on the digital art side, has been thinking about how the realm of comedic media is stale. From there, what could I make with my current skillset and that would make friends, others, and myself legit laugh at and engage with. Through dwelling I came up with a 3d mocapped Joe Biden avatar whose voice was cloned using a speech synthesis library along with a cloned lexicon using gpt2. Had it streaming on Twitch and connected the chat api as input for it to respond to, enabling users to interact with it. Some of the stuff it spit out was pretty wild.
In terms of ideas for utility projects, I've found it helps to think about something you enjoy using in your hobbies, but that you wish it was improved upon. Personally, and oddly enough, I enjoy learning about and observing candle chart technical indicators (not the line/triangle drawing type of thing. Just isn't my thing and can easily lead to confirmation bias), but use apps that either charge a high premium, invade user privacy, crap UI, cap number of indicators used, and/or don't offer much in terms of charting options. So I decided to build my own app that answers those issues and am currently getting close to releasing... somewhat lol.
Just think about what was taken from you during those troubled times, whether it was sense of humor, joy, etc, and think of how to get back what was robbed of you. Cliche to say, but it takes small steps at first, and from there the ideas/execution will snowball.
> One thing I've never really recovered is the passion I had for side projects I know how this feels. After a few bouts of burnout over my ~20 year career, I'm not convinced we fully recover from all of it. I think each bout leaves some permanent damage, along with increased risk of subsequent bouts. I made a similar comment here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22164678 The best general advice I can give is don…
I am in mid 30s now (single; kinda by choice; with no financial liability) and it feels like it’s some kind of fake life I’m living at work even though I know that people one forth of my skill have lived it through and make it through 55 and all.
I considered switching caterers like studying public policy etc or sometimes just doing a one year MBA from somewhere but even the thought scares the shit out of me (thought of MBA I mean). I like history, literature. I often fantasise about working in film making (industry) (not something to do with computers though). I had done woodworking and I had really liked it. Then I dropped.
I am slowly trying to make peace with it. Trying to get into some nice MNC for 6-7 years and kinda stick around and then a stock of things after that.
Why I’m not exploring other fields is because one thing I don’t want in my life at this stage is not earning a living - bills and saving for emergency (in this country you gotta do that; there’s no healthcare).
I think I’m not alone like this. There are many people like me. Or that’s the hope. Maybe I’ll make it somehow.
I think I should meet some kickass career counsellor or make a long post on some subreddit. I had tried here once. In fact that’s how I had created this account.
I "burned out" while working at a FAANG and it just turned out to be a health problem, accelerated by the food there. All of my side projects from the time are extremely uninspired.
Can you share some general information about the health problem, in case the rest of us should be watching out for it?
[1] https://nautil.us/issue/67/reboot/iron-is-the-new-cholestero...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Big agreement here! Though, as it turns out, software is eating the world, and every analog hobby I've picked up eventually wants to become a computer hobby. You can choose to resist this entirely, or give in a bit. The analog part is still there waiting for you whenever you're tired of starting at rectangles. (Example A: FM synthesis ideas should obviously be reimplemented in python... Oh wait, super collider exists…
Example 3: Board games are cool and analog, I'll start designing those. Oh but now if I want to find a publisher in this era of a totally saturated market the game should look nice, so I should spend some serious time on the graphic design and sell sheets and writing up the game rules and designing graphics to put in the game rules and making and editing pitch videos...on my computer. Oh and it's really hard to find…
Which reminds me of one other important point: "you don't have to monetize your joy."
https://repeller.com/trap-of-turning-hobbies-into-hustles/?f...
I took up cycling. When I was 35 I was having trouble with back pain that I assumed was rooted in not exercising. I find cycling to be the least objectionable form of exercise. My hip popped back into socket after a couple weeks and that was the main cause of back pain but I find I feel significantly worse and am less productive if I don't keep up with the exercise. For purely code stuff, I tend to learn a new langua…
I had the same exact issue but was exacerbated by cycling unfortunately. If you do get into cycling which is a great post burnout stress reliever, I highly recommend a bike fitting - it’ll make cycling so much more enjoyable and avoid further injury. This with plenty of stretching and a standing desk mostly solved my back issues.
I developed back pain cycling at some point, which turned out to me coming from right hamstrings. Regular stretching solved it immediately.
And a bike fitting is a thousand percent worth the effort. Cycling is a bit weird in that it's a low impact sport, but uses very repetitive motions. If things are well adjusted, you can ride bikes til you're ninety. And if they're not, you can slowly exacerbate bad pressure on the knee until it's a nightmare.