No post body was provided.
Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
131–140 of 370 posts
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#132Oh yes I have:
1. Do only what's necessary working or the bare minimum if people don't mind;
2. Enjoy your time outside work: play games, watch series/movie/tv, read, etc;
3. Learn new things outside work from the field of your profession;
4. Try to practice these new things in your work;
5. Repeat until vacations or new plans.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
+1 Start doing Callisthenics. 100 pushups, 100 pullups, 100 squats and 6 miles of run every day will help you immensely. Eliminate excuse's.
This is great advice, but a mile without stopping is a huge achievement if you haven't been a runner before.
I could crank out a mile easily. At least a person can just run slowly. 100 pullups though? That just ain't happening
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#134This advice is going to be hated by a lot of people but.. care less. You’re in an industry that values your skills and seems to always have demand. Whether or not that’s true in the future, it certainly is today , so the best thing you can do is put yourself first and worry less about work as a whole. Especially if it’s not your own company. Spend more time on you, on activities with friends and family, on hobbies. I…
I have been through the same. Caring less, working 40 hours and nevertheless, productivity went up. Work is a tool to enable your private life. Not the other way around.
I work to enjoy my personal time. It allows me to do the things I want. It’s nothing more.
So, totally in agreement. I don’t live to work, I work only to live.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#135Can 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…
> Hackers and painters
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#136Please see a licensed mental health professional with experience in this domain. Your root problem(s) may not be what you think it is.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#137Yes absolutely. I wrote an entire book that was basically "I'm fed up with the world and my job right now, there's got to be more to life than this". I found more meaning in my work as I got to know myself better. Similar to an oxygen mask in an airplane, I had to put myself first before I could for others(or work for that matter). The only advice I'd give someone in this situation is to work on yourself everyday unt…
This. There have been times when I thought about changing careers, but when I look back, that was an obviously terrible idea (in my case).
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#138Can 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…
> Can you afford a sabbatical? I would definitely not want to have no income for half a year (or more). Especially considering the current economic downturn. It would probably stress me out even more.
I don't know. I just lost my job and I have fewer savings than I wanted (six months just about), and I am feeling phenomenal. I started finally working on my own long-neglected passion projects, and I feel excited about coding again. Started drinking way less, stopped stress-eating, etc.
Granted I was planning on doing this anyway (just a bit ahead of schedule for me), I needed to be ejected from the hamster wheel by force to acknowledge that it was the job and not me.
Then next year I will start looking again, but I will be way more picky. A job that you hate can wreck you.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#139Yes. I needed perspective.
I took night classes to get my real estate license and was planning to change careers. Seemed like a good idea. After going through the training, getting the license, seeing how brokerages worked and what was involved in the field...I knew I could do it but I realized pretty quickly that I hated just about everything around how the industry worked. It honestly seems more designed to extract money from people who decide to get their license than anything else. Fees on top of fees on top of fees. My favorite was a Keller Williams speaker who looked like he was on drugs and told us all how to trick rich people into being friends so they would refer people to us. Scouting doctor's offices decorations and inviting them to do things that they seemed interested in, etc. Creating shopping or tennis groups for ladies to hang out where you can mention you're a realtor next time one of them says they are looking to sell. It was all so sleazy.
After that, I took a step back, realized that I was in one of the best fields in the entire country. Decided to suck it up and move forward, realizing that my worst days were better than most other folks best.
Since doing that I've done a lot more training and tried to ensure I get stronger and the things that interest me the most. I do scaled agile training and consulting to help create environments that will help organizations work more effectively together and prevent programmer burnout. I started focusing my energy on finding ways to fix the issues that caused my initial burnout.
It's going well so far. Picked up a good bit of consulting work and will probably be teaching some training courses fairly regularly in the future. It's nice to have an outlet to fix things that matter to me.
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?
#140This advice is going to be hated by a lot of people but.. care less. You’re in an industry that values your skills and seems to always have demand. Whether or not that’s true in the future, it certainly is today , so the best thing you can do is put yourself first and worry less about work as a whole. Especially if it’s not your own company. Spend more time on you, on activities with friends and family, on hobbies. I…
> care less.
This is the right and timeless advice. Indifference and equanimity towards your craft and output is the way I came out of my burnout. I can't believe that listening to your body has become a hated advice these days. Are we so deep in the pit?