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Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

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Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#1
I'm completely burnout and engaging in self-destructive behavior recently. Like reporting done tasks even before not even starting them.

This is the second time I am this burnout. Last time I had to literally drop everything and take 2 weeks off. I wasn't sure if that fixed the problem but because of shame and having to work to pay my bills I slogged through and continued working for another 3 years.

I'm at the same situation yet again where I'm just about to drop everything and take some time off. I'm looking for some direction about how to figure out root cause of this. Couple of things I would mention is that I'm in south east asia, commute is long 2+ hrs, work in small company with lot of stress (nothing too dramatic as lot of others I know have similar lifestyles but they are coping it just fine)

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#2
My number one piece of advise is to set realistic expectations and speak up when you don't think others are setting realistic expectations of you and those around you. This is especially true in the competitive and isolated environments of startups. I have been in many prolonged 100+ hour a week, deadline motivated design sessions that left me in severe burnout. Everyone has different capacities for this but every human mind has a limit. It starts screaming for things it is not getting sitting in front of a computer monitor for 16 hours a day. My ability to abuse myself like this has dropped sharply as well as I have aged.

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#3
I have been there, and it's hard to see a way out of what is making you miserable, or alternatively preventing you from being happy. Is it the work? Is it something in your personal life? Personally, I have found that I've fought against what I felt like I SHOULD be doing. I should be a hero and finish some big project. I should work towards being promoted.

Try and evaluate what you actually want, how do you FEEL? I don't know anything more about your situation, but why do you feel like you have to commute so far? Why do you feel like you need to stay in your job?

What would you rather do? Most importantly, talk to someone and ask for help. Talk with a family member, a friend, your boss. It's not in their best interest for you to burn out and rage quit. They want to help you succeed.

Don't hesitate to reach out via email if you want to chat. I've been there and maybe can help.

But take this as an opportunity to evaluate what is making you unhappy and what makes you happy.

All the best!

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#4
Non-computer hobbies, time with people (including romance, et al), and exercise.

Some random suggestions:

- Learn to play Ukulele

- Cook for yourself more

- Join a co-ed team sport you enjoy (this actually covers all 3)

- Talk to your coworkers about doing remote work (even just once per week)

  * Your commute is seriously long, and that's a lot of wasted time.
- Be honest, even if it scares the hell out of you. Especially when it scares the hell out of you.

- Network as much as you can -- it might help to know there are other places to work that wont stress you out so much.

  * Try meetup.com to find communities in your field
  * If you're an expat, look for expat groups on Facebook. Lots of networking opportunities involving remote workers.

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#5
Why are you reporting done tasks before starting them? Are you feeling pressured by your boss to get more done? What would happen if you didn't do this? Are you scared of something or trying to compete with coworkers?

What are your personal and professional goals? Does your current job help you achieve them? Whenever I felt burned out it was typically because I couldn't find any deeper meaning in my work.

Also, how many hours a day do you work? Don't assume others are coping just fine. It may look this from the outside, but you never know what's really going on. They'll likely say the same thing about you. A 2-hour commute is a red flag to me. There has been a bunch of research on how commute time has a strong influencing on work and life happiness.

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#6
My strong suggestion is never false report anything. It is a rabbit hole that you don't want to go into. I think the odds that you will get fired for taking too long on tasks is EXTREMELY low. When you are young, you think everyone has got their shit together. In reality, there are probably developers out there who can't code for shit. In one of my first job, I had a "peer" who kept asking me basic questions until I figured out I pretty much coded up what they had to do. I didn't mind that ... what shocked me was that this person had an entry level programming job and no ability to code. I felt bad for that person.

Anyways ... long story short ... reduce your commute big time. No more than an hour for sanity. Also, if you are not highly paid in tech and are feeling burned out, may I suggest you change your field for a bit. Life is too short to do stuff you hate. And it doesn't seem like you are making a lot of money/saving up.

Best of luck and stay sane!

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#7
post #4

Non-computer hobbies, time with people (including romance, et al), and exercise. Some random suggestions: - Learn to play Ukulele - Cook for yourself more - Join a co-ed team sport you enjoy (this actually covers all 3 ) - Talk to your coworkers about doing remote work (even just once per week) * Your commute is seriously long, and that's a lot of wasted time. - Be honest, even if it scares the hell out of you. Espec…

I think this is the only useful answer so far in this thread!

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#8
I quit my job about 4 months ago feeling the onset of burnout. I was completely useless for most of that time but have just recently managed to get back into creative work.

By the way, look up comments by the Hacker News user ahoyhere (Amy Hoy). It was her comment on the physical causes of burnout that motivated me to quit when I did. I think that nipped in the bud something that could have become much worse.

You mention you keep working because of "shame" and "having to pay the bills". Hypothetical situation: if you had another medical condition, say a heart attack, and your doctor ordered you to take 3 months in bed, could you do it? Live off savings, move in with your parents, etc?

If you're really living on the edge financially (no savings, in debt, no support network) then keep working. But, my theory is that people in that situation don't feel "burned out" - they feel stressed and exhausted, maybe, but they're motivated to keep moving. Burnout is when you're pushing hard on something that feels ultimately pointless. For me, it was working on a project I knew was going to fail, a position I could have financially walked away from at any time, but I stayed because I felt it wasn't socially acceptable to walk.

After I quit my job I had a background anxiety on what I'd do when my savings ran down and I needed to find something else. I honestly thought I'd rather Howard-Roark it and lug boxes around in a warehouse or work as a garage mechanic than write code for money ever again. (Funnily enough I'm also in SE Asia, Chiang Mai right now). What saved me was easing my way back into goal-directed activities, but goal-directed activities which I found intrinsically fun and rewarding - swimming, playing strategy games, riding a motorbike around. Eventually I wanted a more challenging project and took 2 weeks to research and write a long article for an online blog, unpaid but I treated it as a full-time job.

Just this last week I've finally got back into coding again, and realised that I enjoy frontend web coding, making something which looks cool and which you can show to people. I was a very good CS student and used to think I should work on something more challenging than HTML/CSS/JS, but - frontend web dev is something I know I can well enough to be useful.

Engineers have a problem that we're always "failing". Our work is so complex and error-prone. In most other jobs its hard to tell how well you're doing. Salespeople are one other group who also "fail" often, but salespeople also get a lot of social validation and buzz when they succeed. Engineers don't, and combined with their low self-esteem end up feeling they need to hit 100% accuracy, everything done on time with no bugs, or they're below par. Clueless and disinterested managers don't help.

Having rediscovered my confidence in one particular specialism (frontend web dev) is very powerful. If in future I encounter another hairy, undocumented ball of PHP and JS - I'll simply tell whoever's responsible that I can't fix it until they fix their workflow. On the other hand, if I find a good team, with technical (or at least technically-aware) management, realistic goals and a useful product, I know I can be valuable and useful to them.

I'm so glad I quit when I did. Had I stayed another 6 months by burnout may have lasted 3 years, not 3 months. But recovery wasn't a linear process, it was more digging around in my brain until I uncovered my natural sources of motivation.

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#9
post #8

I quit my job about 4 months ago feeling the onset of burnout. I was completely useless for most of that time but have just recently managed to get back into creative work. By the way, look up comments by the Hacker News user ahoyhere (Amy Hoy). It was her comment on the physical causes of burnout that motivated me to quit when I did. I think that nipped in the bud something that could have become much worse. You men…

Amy's post is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5633063

Re: Ask HN: How did you overcome and avoid work related burnout?

#10
Here are things that worked for me ...

- reduce caffeine intake; I've changed from 5 to 2 cups of coffee a day, and try not to have one after 3pm; I feel I can relax when I go home now

- exercise; I only walk 3 times a week for half an hour each time, but it has helped tremendously

- do some non-coding activities when you get home; whether a hobby or watching TV, getting away from IT and programming for awhile makes me feel refreshed the next day

- switch from Java to C# (assuming those are your only 2 options); bigger and more stressful companies tend to use Java, while the cool medium-sized companies that are pleasant to work at tend to use C#; of course there are lots of exceptions

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