71–80 of 370 posts
Burning out is working for something which is not your purpose or not knowing your purpose. If it were your purpose in life you could work without burning out. It’s all in your mind.
It takes a lot of time to recover from burnout, but it's definitely doable.
"What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work." https://thetech.com/2010/04/09/dubai-v130-n18 I recommend reading the whole section on burnout. Although burnout isn't really the topic of the article this is the most enlightening writing I have ever read on it. Hoping it might serve you.
I enjoyed the article a lot. Not only the burnout part but also to enlighten me why free marketeers true believers incorporate as their moral ground on it. This quote brought to me how naive that view can be: > I’m a free marketeer. I believe that voluntary exchange is not just a good method of incentivizing people to provide their labor and talents to society, but a robust moral system — goods and services represent…
Naive almost doesn’t capture the essence of this for me… Willful blindness maybe? I’m a pretty free market kind of guy, not because I believe it is the ultimate expression of human morality, but because I think for most industries it produces the best practical results of the various economic systems that have been tried at scale. But, here on this particular planet, negative externalities and monopolies are ubiquitous. I don’t get how people can’t see that. I also came from a poor background - by USA standards anyway - but found financial success in my adult life, so maybe that has something to do with it?
The term has roots in "seven", just like Sabbath, so with 14 years in the industry, you've skipped one.
I think a solid half-year off every seven to ten years is an excellent practice for intellectually demanding labor.
What makes it a sabbatical is that it's a change of pace which furthers your career. I'd love to take a sabbatical and just work on building stuff, personally: from soldering, to designing boards, probing them, writing firmware, I'm a rank amateur, and I'd love to level up for awhile, while free of the burden of justifying my salary in the process.
It could be painting, there's a popular author who wrote a book about the connection between painting and hacking, can't remember his name but his stuff gets posted here all the time.
What it isn't, is a vacation, or a convalescence. It sounds like you haven't hit "can't work", just "sucks to work", which is a blessing.
If you can't afford it, that's understandable, there are ways to get some of the benefit from a new job, but "relieved of the burden of delivering value" is an important factor.
I've known people who pushed "sucks to work" until it became "can't work", and they don't all make it back to the profession, a bit less than half in fact. Whatever you do, I urge you to take burnout seriously, because at the limit it's a serious medical condition which can cripple or kill you.
For the first few months, time just passed while I was at home, and I thought it would get better but it didn't. I realized I needed to change environments, so I ended up doing some traveling in Europe but staying at places for longer, not just hopping around(I also have been wanting to visit forever). It was cool, and fun, but also realized I needed to work to change habits and mindsets in order to totally feel recharged.
Habits like checking my emails, and social media, are very hard to turn off and were draining me of my mental energy and being able to enjoy the present moment. I wanted to travel without my phone, and to just get a not so "smart" phone. But, I ended up ditching that idea as I'm dependent on it even for travel. It's a work in progress, but I'm starting to notice changes in habits, and I hope to carry those forward with me. A lot of it has honestly been me working on emotional intelligence, and figuring out how to manage my emotions, which in turn will help me manage stress, work/life balance, etc, and in turn avoiding burnout.
Finding hobbies I enjoy, and spending time on it, like Art and drawing has also been rewarding. I think a lot of it is un-learning bad habits, and learning good ones, like taking care of yourself better. Wish you good luck on your journey!
I found that just moving teams and dropping a load of baggage made a huge difference and a huge improvement. I also found that regular physical exercise outside (running for me) is a game changer and totally allows your brain to disconnect. Finally, don't guilt trip yourself on your free time. There is nothing you "should" be doing on your spare time. Want to code? Fine. But do you really? Want to just veg out and wa…
0 - https://twitter.com/thisritchie/status/1426215815175680001?s...
Can you afford a sabbatical? The term has roots in "seven", just like Sabbath, so with 14 years in the industry, you've skipped one. I think a solid half-year off every seven to ten years is an excellent practice for intellectually demanding labor. What makes it a sabbatical is that it's a change of pace which furthers your career. I'd love to take a sabbatical and just work on building stuff, personally: from solder…
"What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work." https://thetech.com/2010/04/09/dubai-v130-n18 I recommend reading the whole section on burnout. Although burnout isn't really the topic of the article this is the most enlightening writing I have ever read on it. Hoping it might serve you.