Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

neilthanedar.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 424 posts

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#41

Post by HendrikHensen »

GMoromisato wrote: post #15
antman123 wrote: post #4

get married and have kids

I don't think people should have kids because they otherwise lack meaning, but it's absolutely true that kids change you in ways you would never have believed. If you think you might want kids but aren't sure, just do it.

> I don't think people should have kids because they otherwise lack meaning

I'm past the age where I can (or rather should have) kids and I have to say, the past decade or so I'm more and more thinking that people SHOULD have kids to have (more) meaning in their life. Put it another way, I've begun thinking that having children is a nice way to have a default baseline of meaning in your life. I really see that with all my friends, who all have kids.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#42

Post by HendrikHensen »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #9
antman123 wrote: post #4

get married and have kids

This solves it for most, but secular society has lost any structural capability to succeed in this. Marriage rates have dropped over 70%. There are extremely thriving sub-communities in places though. Graft on to those.

> This solves it for most, but secular society has lost any structural capability to succeed in this.

Can you explain how you see a causation between religion and marriage success?

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#44

Post by macNchz »

StilesCrisis wrote: post #16
unstyledcontent wrote: post #14

I'm burned out because I have to raise two young children, work a full time job in a demanding career, and then in the hour or two a day of time that isn't accounted for in those two tasks, I need to maintain a household and try to care for myself. I feel a strong sense of purpose caring for my family, but don't have enough time to meet life's demands. Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more mon…

Sadly, having more money doesn’t buy time. At least, not until you have enough money that you can hire assistants, but that’s pretty extreme.

Hiring a housekeeper to come every couple of weeks has pretty much directly bought me time, at a pretty reasonable price. I like living in a neat and tidy home, but never cared much for scrubbing grout or polishing the stovetop in my free hours. I’m delighted every time she comes, and I never wake up Saturday thinking I’ll have to vacuum under the couch cushions.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#45

Post by m463 »

unstyledcontent wrote: post #14

I'm burned out because I have to raise two young children, work a full time job in a demanding career, and then in the hour or two a day of time that isn't accounted for in those two tasks, I need to maintain a household and try to care for myself. I feel a strong sense of purpose caring for my family, but don't have enough time to meet life's demands. Maybe other people relate more to this post because they more mon…

Appropriate responsibility. Let the kids assume even the most minor appropriate responsibility. maintain an healthy neutrality.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#46

Post by llmslave2 »

Maybe this hits for millennials and older but as a gen-z I think it's safe to say we're burnt out because everything we want is simply too expensive, our degrees are useless, dating and relationships have become damaged because of the apps, and we are inheriting a world that is broken and continues to shatter.

The older generations have everything and still feel burnt out and unhappy? Cool. Cool cool cool. That will certainly help with the nihilism.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#47

Post by jcims »

I've been in an engineering manager role on and off for the past 7 years at two different companies. Both of which are highly regulated and incur a ton of audits, attestations and this impenetrable knot of distributed dependencies for segregation of duty and other 'stuff'. As a result I'm in meetings 75% of my working hours and rarely get involved with anything close to the actual technology my team delivers.

In the past two months I've been on two 4-6 hour incident management calls due to failures in our service providers and it's been quite some time since I felt that good about a day's work. No meetings, no planning, no bullshit...just raw collaboration and tactical problem solving. Even got to flex some of the skills that have been dormant for far too long.

Feelsgoodman.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#48

Post by primaprashant »

Good stuff. You will enjoy my short essay, I want to give a lot of fucks! [1], which argues against the typical conclusion reached by people working at big corp long enough: "Stop caring. Stop giving a fuck. Focus on things outside of work".

The core insight it, if you start to feel the need to stop caring, instead of changing your character and values, treat it as a strong signal to change your environment.

[1]: https://anandprashant.com/posts/i-want-to-give-a-lot-of-fuck...

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#49

Post by tsunamifury »

justchad wrote: post #2

This resonates with me right now. I helped build a unicorn startup over the last 10 years but feel empty and burnt out when I’m working now. I feel like I’m wasting my time in exchange for a paycheck. I recently turned in my notice, I’m going on sabbatical. I’m hoping to find my passion and follow that. Finding that is something I’m struggling with though. Anyways, great article!

For all the yammering in this thread you’ve centered on the real problem no one can admit here.

You burn out creating value for others that you end up either not owning or it not materially contributing to your immediate community.

We evolved to work for ourselves and our tribe again immense satisfaction from that. Cleaning your house, pulling weeds volunteering locally. Etc.

But endlessly serving shareholders (ownership class or not) while giving up way more value then you out in yields a deep sense of happiness because we can’t express the unfairness woven into our life so deeply.

Re: You’re not burnt out, you’re existentially starving

#50

Post by parpfish »

One thing that I always try to bring up in these discussions is that “burnout” and “overwork” are two different problems, and I think this author would agree with me.

If your problem could be fixed with a raise or a nice vacation, that’s overwork. 996 schedules, crunch time, and a high cost of living make overwork.

Burnout is when you stat asking yourself “what’s the point of doing any of this?” and your life is overwhelmed with apathy and anhedonia. Closer to a career-induced bout of major depression.

Post reply on HN