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Recovering from Burnout and Depression

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Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#251

Post by ahartman00 »

Bakary wrote: post #217
mkalygin wrote: post #124

Recently I was feeling very frustrated about my work, about what I do in my life. This was lasting for about 1 month. I've noticed that in such periods I compare myself to others and intentionally think that I'm worse. Like literally the most useless person in the world. Usually I find any particular metric (even meaningless) and compare. This is very self-destructing activity. What helps me in fight with burnout is…

I've heard about this thought process often and I feel that the root cause is that tying your self-worth to your "usefulness" to others or to society at large is ultimately self-defeating.

see this recent discussion:

"Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14314958

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#252

Post by ahartman00 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #201
ggggtez wrote: post #29

Are there any studies on how long engineers take to recover from burnout? 6 months sounds about right from what I've heard anecdotally.

I suspect there's considerable variance.

I believe the anecdotes in this thread range from about 1 month to 2 years, iirc. I've been feeling a little burnt out lately. But reading this thread reminded me of how much I have to be grateful for, and there were many good tips. Like focus on the positives. So for me, like 1 hour or so :)

There are many factors at play here.

How bad is it? What is the cause? How long does it take to address the cause? Ie if the cause is not having meaning, how long does it take to find something meaningful? If it is a bad community, how long does it take to find people you like?

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#253

Post by webmaven »

crush-n-spread wrote: post #141
webmaven wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I did this riding the bus for hours when I was a kid Why? > because I had no friends. Why?

Wow, that really was a clever post you made. I think you're smarter than me, and I feel bad about myself.

That wasn't my intent (well, the "feeling bad" part wasn't, anyway), but I guess I'll just have to take what I can get.

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#254

Post by webmaven »

biot wrote: post #182
projektir wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last I checked, the free will question wasn't shut, and I wouldn't suggest basing your entire model of the world on something that pretty much nobody has a good understanding of right now. O.o It sounds like you've simply bought modern "nihilism", i.e., the "everything is meaningless and nothing matters" philosophy that a lot of logical types seem to believe but none actually live (since it's not workable). Digging d…

Oh, I'm not saying that I live under a nihilist viewpoint. Even if free will is little more than an illusion masked by seemingly infinite complexity, I happily buy into the illusion and (for the most part) operate as if I have unlimited agency / free will. My comment was more to say that you have to stop asking "why" at some point and just go with the flow otherwise you descend into meaningless.

> I [...] operate as if I have unlimited agency / free will.

That's a different sort of trap, as it ignores the effects of circumstance (even minor things, like whether organ donation is an opt-in or opt-out checkbox can have huge real-world effects).

It also leads to blaming the unfortunate for making poor choices when those choices have been both constrained and biased by circumstance.

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#255

Post by webmaven »

projektir wrote: post #155
webmaven wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why the sense of urgency? What is it that is so important that only you personally can do it? Sometimes it isn't that only you personally can , but rather that only you personally will .

I mentioned that: > But people find themselves in these insurmountable goals and feel like they need to do so much work, that brings other questions. Why them? What is everyone else doing? If you find yourself in that situation, you may want to ask why this is happening, because it's strange . You should also realize that the chance of failure is very high, and if your goal is truly important to you, that should worr…

All good points. The only thing I feel I can add that addresses the strangeness in a general way are these quotes:

“There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?” - Robert F. Kennedy

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” - George Bernard Shaw

“The sweet spot is in good ideas that seem like bad ideas.” - Peter Theil

“Pursue the good ideas that, for some reason, others won't.” - Chris Dixon

“It's actually pretty easy to be contrarian. It's hard to be contrarian and right.” - Reid Hoffman

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#256

Post by crush-n-spread »

webmaven wrote: post #253
crush-n-spread wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, that really was a clever post you made. I think you're smarter than me, and I feel bad about myself.

That wasn't my intent (well, the "feeling bad" part wasn't, anyway), but I guess I'll just have to take what I can get.

I misinterpreted that then. Cheers.

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#257

Post by dredmorbius »

ahartman00 wrote: post #252
dredmorbius wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect there's considerable variance.

I believe the anecdotes in this thread range from about 1 month to 2 years, iirc. I've been feeling a little burnt out lately. But reading this thread reminded me of how much I have to be grateful for, and there were many good tips. Like focus on the positives. So for me, like 1 hour or so :) There are many factors at play here. How bad is it? What is the cause? How long does it take to address the cause? Ie if the c…

Not my field, but:

* Suicide is one terminal option.

* There's a fair history of people who've suffered burnout, or equivalent earlier terms (nervous breakdown, nervous exhaustion, possibly also PTSD and its antecedants -- combat fatigue and shell shock), for the rest of their natural lives.

* Others who've taken multi-year / multi-decadal breaks, or transitioned to other careers or professions.

Again: I suspect considerable variance.

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#258

Post by dvtv75 »

jly wrote: post #64
55555 wrote: post #15

I think a big factor in burnout is that most work is ultimately meaningless, or even morally wrong, and on a deep level, we're aware of that. Why is it so hard to make yourself work? Probably because you actually should be doing something else with your life. If someone paid you money to kick a dog, you'd feel a strong urge to do something else. That's because you shouldn't kick dogs. But when we feel the same urge t…

I think this is more true than many would like to admit. Maybe 'most work' as meaningless isn't the way I would phrase it, but I know many including myself that are often creatively and technically challenged, work an average number of hours, but feel the mental stress of burnout purely because of the guilt and resentment of spending so much time on the specific job function, itself. To put it a little more abstract…

Interestingly, I've been thinking very much along these lines with regard to my present job. It occurs to me that the actual reason for my current role is to fleece the taxpayer of as much public funding as possible, and in about nine hours I'll be working a day just to fleece the city of property taxpayer's money.

A quick bit of arithmetic reveals that we charge a significant amount ($50k+) for what we do, but put Nobody needs what we do. If my workplace collapsed in an earthquake, nobody would notice. Most people don't even know we exist, and are very surprised that such a facility exists here.

As you say, these thoughts have a serious impact on me. Every time we have a new hire I urge them to join the union and to use the place like it's a one-night stand. I would do almost anything I could find, but there is little appropriate work for me.

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#259

Post by 55555 »

thesagan wrote: post #104
jly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is more true than many would like to admit. Maybe 'most work' as meaningless isn't the way I would phrase it, but I know many including myself that are often creatively and technically challenged, work an average number of hours, but feel the mental stress of burnout purely because of the guilt and resentment of spending so much time on the specific job function, itself. To put it a little more abstract…

I identify with a lot of what you write, especially about wanting to avoid hurting other people in the pursuit of profits. What has bothered me lately, very much so, is how in-the-minority I feel about this "social crisis" that I feel is occurring: hurting people/ourselves in pursuit of money that we won't personally even see. (In-the-minority from the people that surround me in my work and personal life.) I'm [finis…

I wish I had advice for you but I don't. I just want to relate that it was also extremely hard on me when I had the same realization.

Re: Recovering from Burnout and Depression

#260

Post by webmaven »

ge96 wrote: post #137
webmaven wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An aside here, just in case you ever find that you miss using jQuery for something: There are several jQuery-mostly-compatible replacements that are much smaller.

I've heard of lighter versions of jQuery and it's not really like I'm against jQuery in this particular case internet speed is really bad... and I did not know of a way to async load scripts and not have the $.is not defined problem. Mainly though the jQuery library itself is 80KB (jquery-min)... the downloading speed thing (watching network) it's hit and miss, I mean I see a 1KB file take nearly 1 second to download…

Right, jQuery is 80k, but there are replacements that are as small as 8k, or even 4k: http://minifiedjs.com/#sizeCmp
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