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Avoiding Burnout

andrewdumont.me

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Re: Avoiding Burnout

#51

Post by amerika »

DanielRibeiro wrote: post #7

I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago: Burnout is caused by resentment Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]: No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your…

Similar to learned helplessness. Maybe Nietzsche wasn't so far off after all when he identified resentment as the scourge of civilization...

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#52

Post by amerika »

veb wrote: post #6

It's funny. I work in New Zealand, and I do my 37.5 hours a week as required (any more than that, and I get over-time) but that 37.5 hours takes such. a. long. time! When I was working for a startup, and working from whatever time I woke up, till 3am in the morning, time flew by so quickly. I could easily do 80 hours, and have great fun. I was creative, and energised. As soon as I went from a startup to working for a…

And we've built a society on the notion that this kind of "stability" is best! Warning signs all around.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#53

Post by AznHisoka »

cscheid wrote: post #42
DanielRibeiro wrote: post #7

I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago: Burnout is caused by resentment Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]: No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your…

Thank you for this! It totally reminds me of Feynman's spinning plates story: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html

do you have any more of these stories you can recommend?

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#54

Post by keefe »

DanielRibeiro wrote: post #7

I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago: Burnout is caused by resentment Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]: No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your…

our modern goals could be on too large a time scale for our brains to understand; that is interesting w.r.t. gamification as well.

I experienced a purely physical burnout, which could be related to lack of sleep/dreaming or some kind of neurotransmitter depletion. It's a distinct sensation that seems to build exponentially so I am very touchy about this in my older age (30s). If I feel it coming on, that's the time to crack a beer.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#55

Post by DigitalJack »

AznHisoka wrote: post #48
DanielRibeiro wrote: post #7

I remember reading this published insight[1] from Marissa Mayer a few months ago: Burnout is caused by resentment Which sounded amazing, until this guy who dated a neuroscientist commented[2]: No. Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your…

"On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past." I wonder what the equivalent would be for a programmer/software engineer? Prototyping? Proof of concepts? I often find myself spending a lot of time on a new framework/architecture on…

What I have started doing is working on a vastly reduced version of bigger projects that I want to accomplish. You could call them prototypes, but I try not to saddle myself with the baggage of the larger project...

I use the larger project as a starting point for deriving the smaller project, but once I've got the small project defined, I do my best not to be hindered by the larger project ideas and just work the smaller project by itself.

I try to make it small enough to finish in a weekend.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#56

Post by ttunguz »

Coincidentally, NPR profiled a productivity researcher from HBS this morning. (I haven't been able to find the segment yet, but when they post it I will link to it.) According to her research, the most important driver of productivity is motivation which aligns with Daniel's comment.

Her recommendation for improving motivation? Use tools like IDoneThis to track what you've accomplished each day and take the time now and again to reflect on your progress through that journey.

At Google, we had an internal product called Snippets which is functionally identical to IDoneThis. I'd always believed the purpose of Snippets was to improve communication across a team and company about the contributions of employees. But perhaps I missed perhaps the more important benefit: motivation management and burnout prevention.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#57

Post by ttunguz »

Coincidentally, NPR profiled a productivity researcher from HBS this morning. (I haven't been able to find the segment yet, but when they post it I will link to it.) According to her research, the most important driver of productivity is motivation which aligns with Daniel's comment.

Her recommendation for improving motivation? Use tools like IDoneThis to track what you've accomplished each day and take the time now and again to reflect on your progress through that journey.

At Google, we had an internal product called Snippets which is functionally identical to IDoneThis. I'd always believed the purpose of Snippets was to improve communication across a team and company about the contributions of employees. But perhaps I missed perhaps the more important benefit: motivation management and burnout prevention.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#58

Post by asdashopping »

dabeeeenster wrote: post #35

I cannot understand people who feel "on top of the world" yet are still working within a business that is not cash-flow positive month to month. "We didn't need a break, we felt great. Better than great." Yet they are still burning up runway. Just lunacy.

Because for some people happiness is about more than cash flow.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#59

Post by mylons »

AznHisoka wrote: post #53
cscheid wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this! It totally reminds me of Feynman's spinning plates story: http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~kilcup/262/feynman.html

do you have any more of these stories you can recommend?

There are more anecdotal stories like this in this book: http://www.amazon.com/Surely-Feynman-Adventures-Curious-Char...

Feynman's entire approach to life seems to be to "play" with it. He's an expert troll, the original pick up artist, nobel prize winning physicist, guest biologist, expert safe cracker, computer programmer, etc. His stories are fantastic, and a reminder that life is a ride. You should enjoy the ride, above all else.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#60

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

jerf wrote: post #49
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unlikely to work as you probably don't see that as work therefore you're not fighting the link between work and failure.

Your nucleus accumbens isn't necessarily very smart, and isn't necessarily segmenting its world into "work" and "not work". "Work" here is a poor term in this context, it's an English word and subject to a lot of ambiguity. It might be somewhat more accurate to rephrase that as "You are training yourself to believe that all effort is futile", effort towards anything , which is why you end up just staring into space.…

I think it depends on the individual and how they see work, how one aspect of their life leaks into another another and so on.

Speaking personally I know that even when I'm stressed at work I still know the difference between tasks carried out as part of my job, and tasks carried out which are potentially similar, and which may be being carried out in a work setting, but which are not work.

Don't get me wrong, if I feel work is going badly, doing something else and being OK at it is almost certainly a good thing, I just think that doing something work related and doing it well is probably better.

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