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Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#81

Post by i_haz_rabies »

thrower123 wrote: post #76
throwlaplace wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the world has a job they can't afford to take leave from. and if you imagine that 99% of the world doesn't have a job that's taxing enough that they'd be burnt out then you don't understand menial labor and how utterly psychologically exhausting it is to do repetitive boring tasks. So what then? People suffer and struggle and try to improve the lives of their children and then they die. I say all this not beca…

Mindless repetitive tasks are just fine. You don't have to think about what you're doing, so you are free to let your mind wander to better places. I've done this sort of thing for years, I know what I'm talking about. Mental labor is crushing.

A summer of thinning apples 7am-6pm was one of the most skull-numbing, awful jobs I've ever had. I would rather try my luck living by myself in the tundra than do that for my whole life.

Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#82

Post by tartoran »

sneak wrote: post #35
epicgiga wrote: post #14

A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model. Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. Increasingly this is the direction western corporations are moving. Their ideal model is: place performance quotas above long term sustainability, people then burn themselves out, you then fire them for performance reasons, and you have them on an aggressive noncompete and threaten them with it w…

Slavery is not voluntary, and any individual job is. They are absolutely not comparable. You can always quit and go home. It is insane to compare the two. This is an inaccurate comparison with an agenda.

Slavery is harsher and involuntary, true, but the comparison stands as this is a softer but veiled slavery. You’re free to go but if other places are like that you’re technically really not free to go anywhere..

Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#83

Post by krageon »

sneak wrote: post #35
epicgiga wrote: post #14

A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model. Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. Increasingly this is the direction western corporations are moving. Their ideal model is: place performance quotas above long term sustainability, people then burn themselves out, you then fire them for performance reasons, and you have them on an aggressive noncompete and threaten them with it w…

Slavery is not voluntary, and any individual job is. They are absolutely not comparable. You can always quit and go home. It is insane to compare the two. This is an inaccurate comparison with an agenda.

> You can always quit and go home

And starve to death shivering in the street, or go back to the same job again and again. That isn't choice, it just looks like it if you don't see the bigger picture.

Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#84

Post by krageon »

torgian wrote: post #8

This is a good article. I’ve experienced burn out before in my previous career, but never experienced very bad symptoms like the lady in this article did. Anecdotally, I believe burnout is more likely when you work on a job that only cares about profits, or is not fulfilling in some meaningful way. I personally couldn’t work at most of the software companies out there. Why would I want to work for some ad company, or…

> Why would I want to work for some [...] company [...] that doesn’t benefit humanity

I apologise for the editorialised quoting, I hope I stayed true to the original text.

More on-topic: People work at places like that because it could be so much worse. If it doesn't benefit humanity, maybe it also doesn't actively harm it. Of course this does not apply to ad companies, but there are plenty of vacuous shops that produce things that exist a thousand times over in other places and offer absolutely zero societal benefit. It's busywork, but it's better than starving or preying on your fellow man.

Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#86

Post by wnkrshm »

thrower123 wrote: post #76
throwlaplace wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

99% of the world has a job they can't afford to take leave from. and if you imagine that 99% of the world doesn't have a job that's taxing enough that they'd be burnt out then you don't understand menial labor and how utterly psychologically exhausting it is to do repetitive boring tasks. So what then? People suffer and struggle and try to improve the lives of their children and then they die. I say all this not beca…

Mindless repetitive tasks are just fine. You don't have to think about what you're doing, so you are free to let your mind wander to better places. I've done this sort of thing for years, I know what I'm talking about. Mental labor is crushing.

The manufacturing work where you have to use humans is usually not as devoid of mental work as may think - things change all the time in your environment, you have to identify different kinds of things to be aware about.

If you're part of a production chain, how many parts are coming down the line? Am I letting people wait further down the line? For many manufacturing steps in a production line you need to manage an amount of tools and parts and keep control of your 'caches' because when you are not working on a part coming down the line, you're preparing intermediate steps, to be able to keep the pace.

Edit: And this task switching all the time can make it hard to get into any kind of flow state with the work. Because the 'disturbances' don't happen in a constant rhythm.

Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#88

Post by apacheCamel »

P_I_Staker wrote: post #67
lvturner wrote: post #4

I think the scariest thing about burn-out, is that not everyone is financially able to take the recommended time off to recover - what then? I've certainly been close to being in this boat, had to take a job before I fully recovered, so took one I felt might be a bit lighter on the load and still give me some chance of recovery. Pleased to report it has been mostly successful.

Don't forget if you stop working for any reason, you're now a failure, met with suspicion, and expected to explain that for the rest of your life. It's not even about the financial aspect, our society is very punitive to people that want to leave their cages for a while. What you wanted more than this office for one year out of your 30+ year career? There must be something wrong with you.

I've had some really weird experiences with this. Directly after school, I took a year off basically "waiting" for my job to finally accept me (long story, they eventually did) and now, every single recruiter or company I talk to demands I explain why I took a year off. "I see you didn't immediately join the workforce, care to explain?" is what they hit me with every single time. It is unbelievable that I need to explain it to them. They are usually accepting when I tell them I was just waiting for my first job to accept me, but I can't imagine it would be the same if I just needed some "me" time before starting my career.

Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#89

Post by commandlinefan »

leftyted wrote: post #79
epicgiga wrote: post #14

A lot of companies are actively factoring this into their HR model. Their model is to hire fresh people and burn them out. Increasingly this is the direction western corporations are moving. Their ideal model is: place performance quotas above long term sustainability, people then burn themselves out, you then fire them for performance reasons, and you have them on an aggressive noncompete and threaten them with it w…

There is a difference between being a slave i.e. being owned and being a "wage slave" i.e. operating under significant coercion. We are all coerced to some degree; that's part of being an organism (coerced by nature) and living in a society (coerced by the crushing weight of social interactions). But we aren't owned . Though it's not your intention, this blurring of categories justifies real slavery. If everyone is a…

(Not OP but) I know it’s an unreasonable and probably inappropriate comparison, but I’m also old enough to have watched the demographics of professional computer programming shift from mostly white guys managing mostly other white guys to mostly white guys managing mostly brown people. I really don’t think it’s my imagination that at least some of the mostly white guys doing the managing have adopted more and more of a plantation-driver mentality.

Re: Burnout: 'Sick and tired of feeling sick and tired'

#90

Post by eitland »

dnautics wrote: post #5
lvturner wrote: post #4

I think the scariest thing about burn-out, is that not everyone is financially able to take the recommended time off to recover - what then? I've certainly been close to being in this boat, had to take a job before I fully recovered, so took one I felt might be a bit lighter on the load and still give me some chance of recovery. Pleased to report it has been mostly successful.

what if the 'recommended time off to recover' is wrong? I believe that burnout comes from a missing a reward that is expected after protracted and intense labor, thereby training your brain that labor = bad. Maybe the right thing to do is to retrain your brain that labor = good, with primary stimuli. Making green dots appear is definitely one very effective way to get over burnout. I haven't had a major burnout incid…

As someone who hit the brick wall pretty hard at the end of last millennium this is the best most relatable description I've seen.

Does anyone know if there has been any research into this explanation and, if so any pointers to where I can read more?

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