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Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

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Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#251

Post by idrios »

thdespou wrote: post #91
mattlondon wrote: post #16

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…

+1 Start doing Callisthenics. 100 pushups, 100 pullups, 100 squats and 6 miles of run every day will help you immensely. Eliminate excuse's.

Doing this will make you strong enough to win any fight with just one punch, too

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#252

Post by Version467 »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #125
Version467 wrote: post #48

I'm still pretty young so this might not apply, but I tried to skip university and make it as a freelancer. Worked out fine money wise, but got severe burn out working on a project that I shouldn't have taken on in the first place, but needed the money. I recovered fine, but it was pretty brutal. For a while I couldn't even look at code without getting nauseous and a having a splitting headache. I'm not exaggerating…

Hey, just wanted to mention that your path is pretty similar to mine. No college, jumped into gamedev to get out of high school, ended up burning out hard and doing nothing for a solid year after that job. I was playing Heroes of Newerth (a dota clone) all day every day. The game was super buggy, which annoyed me – I knew I could fix the bugs if I was given access to the code. Long story short, managed to get a job t…

Hey, thanks for the kind words. Really, I appreciate it a lot!

Saying that others would not be impressed by my professional achievements doesn't mean that I'm not proud of my work. I have many valuable qualities, being a 10x Developer is not one of them. You're right, I am good enough to do whatever I want to. But I am very happy that post-burnout I want different things.

Striving for a stable life with a healthy mix of meaningful work and a good social circle is not what my teenage self envisioned for my future, but it has made me much much happier than striving for an impressive resumé. I'm sure there's lots to come in the future, but I'm proud that I had this realisation relatively early in my professional life. Without this change in perspective I would've been miserable forever. Because in the end, I really am no Carmack. And that's totally fine :)

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#253

Post by pretendscholar »

mattlondon wrote: post #16

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…

Weightlifting is the best anti-depressant I've ever tried.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#254

Post by kilroy123 »

thesuitonym wrote: post #243
kilroy123 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is what I did. Took 2 1/2 years and didn't write a line of code for two of those years. I simply fucked off and traveled the world. Half the time I didn't even know what day of the week it was. It was glorious and it cured my burn out.

How do you live without an income for so long?

By being single with no children and working in tech.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#255

Post by w0m »

zokier wrote: post #245
mattlondon wrote: post #16

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…

> 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. Don't you think these two pieces of advice are conflicting?

'I need to be reading docs on the latest release to determine if we need to upgrade...' is moreso what he meant I think.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#256

Post by oaiey »

bsenftner wrote: post #98
ryandvm wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a society we should figure out some sort of systemic work exchange program where people suffering from burnout can leave their career for 8 months to work in a brewery or be a fire watcher or herd goats or whatever until they figure out that, "damn, my old job wasn't so bad after all." Either that or they become a full time goat herder...

You do realize, illegal work environments and unreasonable expectations on developers is "best practices" in software development. As a society we need to end illegal best practices that require developers to work so hard they have physically damaged brain issues from the overwork and stress afterwards.

Very true. Most agile principles are optimized to squeeze the most out of everyone. There is no space for breathing.

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#257

Post by barbariangrunge »

highwaylights wrote: post #96

This 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…

You don’t need to care less, but it helps.

If I may: consider it an achievement to work for 60 minutes with heavy focus. Sincerely do so, and even reward yourself with some sort of token for it to represent the effort you did. Use larger tokens for milestones. Over the weeks, these tokens will help motivate you to pull yourself out of your slump and feel good about your work again

I will write an article series on why this works one day, but for now, give it a try? Tiny wins do a lot to help burnout

The absolute simplest version of this is just pomodoro timers with a tally

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#258

Post by croutonwagon »

Within a specific role....no.

Within an org or job type after making a change. Yes.

I learned long ago to maintain hobby's that scratch certain itches that my career also does (ie: engineering, problem solving, analytical thinking etc), but work with different levels of 'criticality'.

I also matain hobby's that work different parts of my brain (ie: music/creativity and fishing/hunting/no tech).

Combined they help with burnout.

What i have noticed in the last year or two is that I am burning out on life, not work. Work is fine. But people in general are burning me out. Again, that has had me focus more on the isolating type hobbies as an escape (ie: fishing/working on things in the house etc)

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#259

Post by micromacrofoot »

papito wrote: post #142
micromacrofoot wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sabbatical sounds outrageously stressful to me. I'd immediately have significantly worse health insurance, I wouldn't be contributing to retirement, all the while I'd be draining away my safety net.

That depends on what you do with that. You can also look at this as an investment in yourself that will substantially increase your income later. If you have something to show for it after you sabbatical, you can actually win long term.

> If you have something to show for it after you sabbatical

this is also a terrifying concept: what if I don't?

Re: Ask HN: Has anyone managed to find enjoyment in their work after burnout?

#260

Post by micromacrofoot »

ncr100 wrote: post #244
micromacrofoot wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A sabbatical sounds outrageously stressful to me. I'd immediately have significantly worse health insurance, I wouldn't be contributing to retirement, all the while I'd be draining away my safety net.

Obvious for me to say: there's a point in time when you're going to stop working and you're going to be draining away your safety net regardless, because you're retired. So with a sabbatical now, just think that you're making time now so that you can have a better retirement later because you'll be ready for an enjoyable retirement as opposed to needing to take two or three or five years of your retirement, just calm…

Understood, but to an extent retirement isn't a choice. At a certain age I will find it harder to get a job and harder to do most things.

You also have the concept of compounding interest. A year of savings at age 30 is much more valuable than a year of savings when I'm 60.

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