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Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

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Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#31

Post by javajosh »

The most insidious cause of burnout is excitement. To be excited about a project, to be important to it, wanting to be a hero, wanting to be looked up to by your coworkers, is such a powerful motivation to ignore your own health. And it is exciting/interesting to see what your limits really are.

The best thing you can do is develop habits that help you recover at every timescale. On the smallest timescale the Pomodoro Technique is really, really good at least in part because it quickly proves you wrong if you think you shouldn't stop because "momentum". Never, not once in using the technique, have I ever lost momentum and in fact quite often I come back to the problem with much greater clarity and speed. (Note that taking a 5 minute break every 25 minutes is entirely different than taking a meeting or working on another problem. Those are context switches and are the worst of all worlds - you're not working on the problem AND you're not resting.)

On the daily timescale, morning meditation serves the same purpose as the 5 minute break, but it's more intense and more holistic. I see it as giving you "headroom" for your day so you can deal with things as they come, with equanimity. My worst days have always been the ones where I stubbornly refused to meditate (and I often do that because I have been meditating regularly and feel like I don't need it anymore. Ha. My mind is sometimes a real dick.)

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#32

Post by nrdgrrrl »

BlargMcLarg wrote: post #7

All the "strategies" (really just tips) follow the same pattern of either tunneling on overwork as a cause, treating symptoms or pathos. >Sid and Michelle emphasized that the earlier a manager can identify burnout the better. Honestly, at the point of identification, you're likely too late. Especially for something as insidious as burnout, which can last for years and not show any symptoms before it is beyond the poi…

No post body was provided.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#33

Post by pizza »

One of the key things I've learned is that the weekend is not for recharging. Every day of the week is. There's that quote goes "now is the time to put away childish things" - and also its complement, at the end of the day, guarantee you have a structure allowing you to do something you want to do for a few hours.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#34

Post by cjbgkagh »

4ggr0 wrote: post #15
cjbgkagh wrote: post #11

It bears repeating, many people who think they have burnout actually have chronic fatigue (CFS/ME) but don’t know it yet. Repeated burnouts may simply be a relapse and recovery cycle. A number of the genetic predispositions to CFS also tends to have behavioral components (anxiety disorders and ADHD) that include a preference for a career in software. Now with Covid many of those who may never have had CFS are finding…

I'm ADD and suspect that I had a burnout in 2020(not diagnosed, but in retrospect I am quite sure). Had COVID 2 weeks ago and since then I can't really focus even with meds and sleep refreshes me even less than before. All that being said, do you have some resources to share? Sounds like I could be one of the people you describe...

Main thing is instead of searching for burnout treatment search for CFS/ME treatments.

There is no simple explanation nor easy treatments. It’s also very different depending on what’s actually wrong with you. I have hEDS so the treatments I do focuses on immunomodulators like LDN and LDA, hormone replacement therapy like Testosterone and T3, dysautonomia meds like propranolol, and research peptides like ipamorelin. I take a lot of vitamins as well but I’m not sure about their efficacy. These are serious meds and not recommend for most - but they have recovered a lot of functionality for me. People should do their own research. My hope is that they find out that CFS is caused by auto-antibodies and could be cured by a neutralizing aptamer like BC007. But the CFS research is only starting in earnest now with LongCovid so it could be many years before a proper treatment is available.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#35

Post by dijit »

s_dev wrote: post #24
nixgeek wrote: post #12

“Working at a startup is demanding. GitLab team members are often under a lot of pressure.” Isn’t being a $7.5B publicly-traded company the definition of not a startup?

This is HN while not everyone's subscribes to everything pg says there is a lot of agreement on what constitutes a startup and differentiates it from other more conventional businesses. PG says a startup is any company who looks at growth as their primary measure. A business is any company who looks at the bottom line as their primary measure. So it depends on the definition you wish to subscribe to. There isn't a un…

> PG says a startup is any company who looks at growth as their primary measure.

Intel is a startup by this definition.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#36

Post by thenerdhead »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #11

It bears repeating, many people who think they have burnout actually have chronic fatigue (CFS/ME) but don’t know it yet. Repeated burnouts may simply be a relapse and recovery cycle. A number of the genetic predispositions to CFS also tends to have behavioral components (anxiety disorders and ADHD) that include a preference for a career in software. Now with Covid many of those who may never have had CFS are finding…

While it sounds correlated, I don't know if that's true. They surely can complement each other quite well though!

2021 I had long covid for almost 14 months. I still worked and burnt out once about halfway through the year.

2022 I recovered and am burning out right now again halfway through the year.

I have plenty of energy. I work on compelling side projects, exercise everyday, and raise two kids. I just don't really feel valued at work for a plethora of reasons and it makes it hard to want to work right now after busting my ass everyday.

What I've found is the "treatment" to burnout is clarity. As I continue to reflect on why I'm burned out, it's many things that are bringing clarity to my long term goals in life. This goes back to self-determination theory of feeling a sense of competence, relatedness, and autonomy. When any of these are threatened or perceived that way at work, I see myself burning out.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#37

Post by StevenWaterman »

I suffered from severe burnout around a year ago, and only now am I starting to feel back to normal. Nothing here would have helped me, and it's pretty clear to me why that is the case.

(Paraphrased from literature that I read at the time)

There's two kinds of burnout. One is caused by overwork, stress, long hours, not enough breaks, no holidays, not enough headcount, and so on. The kind of things this article talks about.

Instead, my burnout was caused by a lack of progress, which destroyed a lot of my other needs that I wasn't even thinking about. I felt no autonomy, no meaning to my work, and I felt out of place in the team because it seemed like I was the only one that was so bothered by it.

I wasn't working too much, and I often was only doing a few hours of work a day. However, because of organisational issues, I was making no progress, barely any improvements to the code, and was completely demotivated. I did try taking time off and taking it easy, as the traditional methods to combat burnout. Far from helping, they just made things worse, because that wasn't the problem. Looking back, the issue was a company pretending to care about Agile and just making everything worse in the process.

This ended up being a bit of a rambling vent, and I'm sorry about that - but my point is that we need to be aware that not all burnout is from stress and overwork. A lack of motivating factors can look the same as poor hygiene factors. Your reactionary measures *must* include actually talking to the person about what is causing the stress, and if needed, being willing to fix the organisational issues that are the root cause.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#38

Post by PeterStuer »

is this an out of season April's Fool joke?

Burnout's main cause is cognitive dissonance between the will to contribute and succeed, and the believe in the outcomes and methods.

NONE of the points mentioned (with the exception of seeking external help) in this article would make any significant difference to someone advanced n the road to a burnout.

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#39

Post by allknowingfrog »

paulcole wrote: post #14
sys_64738 wrote: post #5

A lot of this is fluff. I don't really care about plaudits, your gratitude or other fake positive reinforcement. Give me extra money if you think I'm doing a good job. For those who need a manager to tell you that you're burned out then that's totally the wrong way to perceive it. You tell the manager that you are and tell the manager you're taking time off. It's not a conversation. Those are statements you make and…

One person's fluff is another person's meaningful gesture. A $100 gift is worth more than a $100 bill to many people.

I'm probably off-topic here, but isn't a gift card just money with restrictions? I guess maybe the "gift" is the freedom from responsibility, in the sense that you won't feel guilty about where you spend the money (because someone else decided for you). Is there a more favorable explanation for the value of a gift card as a gesture?

Re: Preventing Burnout: A Manager's Toolkit

#40

Post by 0daystock »

irremediable wrote: post #13
0daystock wrote: post #8

A lot of this is centered around doing less, expecting less from your workers, hiring more and "being more positive". These are pretty sentiments, but frankly they're completely dis-joined from the reality of working in a competitive, high-stakes engineering environment, where your boss WILL call you while you're on vacation, where you WILL go 8-12 months without finding a qualified candidate, where you WILL feel pre…

> the reality of working in a competitive, high-stakes engineering environment, where your boss WILL call you while you're on vacation, where you WILL go 8-12 months without finding a qualified candidate, where you WILL feel pressure to deliver products by deadlines. This sounds like an unproductive environment? Like... a boss shouldn't need to call reports on their vacation, that's why engineers build systems and au…

It was without a doubt dysfunctional, and I have since left the position, but that role was incredibly rewarding financially and taught me many things about myself, and what I desire out of life. So while I was totally burnt out by the end, the juice was certainly worth the squeeze - and I would probably do it again instead of a quiet job where my supervisor could just lower expectations, though I recognize that's not true for everybody.
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