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Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

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Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#221

Post by wnolens »

ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #214
wnolens wrote: post #139

Many of us have been here. You accelerated your life in a few ways - financially and career experience - compared to most people. There's a tax to pay. Some are good at paying it inline with work by having healthy workout routines, loving relationships, a higher purpose to suffer for. But a lot of us "burn out" and pay that tax afterwards. It sucks, I'm sorry. I took 6 months off, and wasn't ready to come back but ju…

> What is the source of my confidence if not in work? Your whole comment is great, but this stuck out. My job is my self confidence and it is my self worth, without it I lose those things and I've been struggling with this massively throughout this entire process.

For sure. I relate. Like if I'm not a big money making guy, am I even attractive to women? Intimately tied to this question, is the judgment I make of others. Ye old projection ;)

Is work all you've been doing for many years?

Personal theory: I think a person needs several pillars in the foundation of their life. One will inevitably be in disrepair at any given time, but the others support you. For many it's.. family, friends, partner, a physical practice, and career.

When my career is frustrating me, I walk away from my computer and have dinner with a friend or call my old man and see how he is. When a girlfriend dumps me, I work 60h weeks :) Putting all of yourself in one pillar is devastating when it falters, which it eventually will.

Jobs are pretty important, even if big picture we all die and wish we worked less. Practically, it's central to the life and identity of a modern human. So you're not struggling with nothing, despite what spiritual teachers (pseudo, or otherwise) try to tell you.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#222

Post by DieBruderBauer »

uncletaco wrote: post #63
TrueGeek wrote: post #56

> I'm not well off like most people on here, I can survive 4-6 months with no salary Be careful of comparing yourself to what people post online. It's easy to read social media and think everyone else is waking up at 5am, drinking their keto coffee, and making millions with their startup while working as a digital nomad. Even on a tech heavy site like HN I would classify someone with 6 months of savings as very well…

Same. Also several months of medical leave for burnout sounds very generous.

Common if you work for FAANG

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#223

Post by helloworld11 »

r00t4ccess wrote: post #184
ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even on a tech heavy site like HN I would classify someone with 6 months of savings as very well off. I'm under the impression most on here make hundreds of thousands of dollars, I make nowhere close. I am saved on this front purely by living in a very low cost of living area. You're right though, comparison with people online is probably just a recipe to feel bad.

Making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doesn’t make you rich, history shows that people who make more than average amounts of money have a hard time retaining meaningful amounts of it. Making a lot of money doesn’t automatically make you good with money.

>Making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doesn’t make you rich

Speaking of HN people living in bubbles.... Yes, it does explicitly make you rich, at least in terms of earnings replenishment. A person making hundreds of thousands of dollars per year is literally in the top 1% of the top 1% of the world's population. Regardless of how well they manage that money, they're making more of it than virtually all other human beings on the planet.

Also, unless you live in one ridiculously expensive place (and do nearly everything possible to maximize your expenses while living there), or you are absolutely clueless, or mulishly stubborn about your spending habits, (or possibly have incurred truly catastrophic medical bills in a place without decent public healthcare), then there's no way you COULDN'T manage to live below your means on earnings like these. Even in very pricey places like San Francisco, London, NYC, Paris etc, there are many, many people living right in their core areas on modest salaries and..... getting by without nearly bankrupting themselves! What a wonder.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#224

Post by ncfausti »

I have ADHD-I and I'm feeling almost exactly the same way, right up to a falling out with a company I had significant ownership in/was part of the founding team.

How are your daily routines? Are you taking breaks and pursuing the things you actually enjoy doing? Have you thought much about the kind of experiences that have brought you the most joy/satisfaction in life (both at work and outside of work)?

Maybe watch this video and see if it resonates with you. It's a talk by Dr. Russell Barkley on ADHD and it's what made me finally schedule a full analysis (after literally decades of putting it off).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tpB-B8BXk0

If you'd like to talk I'm here to listen.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#225

Post by cjbgkagh »

ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #213
cjbgkagh wrote: post #130

A lot of burnout is actually ME/CFS and now possibly Long Covid. ADHD people are more likely to burn out due to shared genetic causes like hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS). hEDS is vastly more common than doctors think it is by 100x - so it’s very difficult to get diagnosed. The more common subvariants of hEDS are not even all that hypermobile. This isn’t to say you have hEDS just given ADHS+burnout+reading…

Thankfully I can be confident it's not COVID of any particular length. I have never caught COVID at any point and I actually have the data to back up the claim unlike most people which is helpful since I can rule it out. I'd never heard of the rest of this, but it's quite interesting.

You can get Long Covid from the vaccine, it is being called vaccine injuries. Quite a number of the people in LongCovid support groups have never had Covid and yet acquired Long Covid symptoms shortly after taking the vaccine. I acquired subclinical pericarditis from the vaccine booster. It’s the kind of thing doctors can’t detect in either an Echocardiogram or a MRI so it wouldn’t get included in adverse reaction statistics. It hurt like hell but fortunately was quickly resolved with colchicine. The cardiologist I saw said he was seeing a substantial spike in subclinical pericarditis.

Regardless of the cause you can test if you have ME/CFS by doing a max exertion test. Do cardio as hard as you can, and if you can’t get close to the same level two days later then you likely have Post Exertional Malaise (PEM) which is defining characteristic of ME/CFS/LongCovid/VaccineInjury.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#227

Post by [deleted] »

jokethrowaway wrote: post #36
ThrowAway1922A wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean if they want to try and medicate me I'm not going to say no at this point, regardless of my personal views on the diagnosis. I've reached a point where I don't think any additional harm would be caused by doing so. I'm going to find out in ~2 weeks at my next meeting whether they want to try medicine or not and I will just do whatever they tell me to do. I mean I'm not a psychologist, I'm paying them for their…

I'd think hard and long before taking medications (personally, I already have, and decided not to). Psychologists have a tendency to overprescribe drugs and you have no idea how that will screw up who you are and what you think. Even if you don't have to pay for those drugs thanks to some healtcare insurance (whether public or private), some money will still flow towards the maker of drugs and that means they have an…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#228

Post by lcall »

If the same if for other activities, not just work, you might want to be checked for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS, similar to long covid). It can be like having a permanent flu in some ways (exhaustion, brain fog, non-restorative sleep, sensitivity to stimuli). Many doctors may have been influenced by a now-debunked study that claimed that gradually increasing exercise or getting CBT was the fix, but now the CDC, Mayo, UpToDate, and others seem to have better information. One source is batemanhornecenter.org . Diagnosis (at least in the past) involved eliminating other diseases and depression.

Also just an idea: finding what you can do might help understand the situation.

Re: Ask HN: How to deal with burnout and its consequences?

#230

Post by awavering »

Medical leave for burnout sounds great, until they throw you right back in the same environment that caused the burnout. It's not surprising you don't care anymore.

It may be useful to do some budgeting to see if you can juice your savings in the short term and reduce your recurring expenses to give yourself a longer sabbatical timeline. This can be challenging to do if you're already emotionally numb, but I found planning an escape from work to be an exciting escape in and of itself.

If you end up taking a break, you'll have time to reflect on other things you'd like to do that don't elicit the same numbness you're experiencing right now. There are plenty of ways to build identity and confidence that aren't full-time tech employment.

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