Avoiding Burnout • Hacker News Board

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#101

Post by ahoyhere » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:06 AM UTC

_nxnx wrote: post #96

ahoyhere wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, CFS has a psychological component… In the way that, if X happens the same to you and me, and you don't care, but I do, then my adrenals/thyroid go into overdrive, yours don't; I get sick, you don't. Some people get CFS because of minor stress, some people don't get it until their life is a living hell. That's the psychological aspect of it. But that doesn't make it a psychological disorder in any way, shape or f…

I'm more interested in understanding what is going on in the brain/body rather than arguing over terminology. Both psychological and other factors seem to cause burnout/CFS, although psychological factors do seem to be the most important. Depression is a resulting symptom, not a cause. Stress and burnout affect different people in different ways: some people get depressed, others develop chronic pain (fibromyalgia, M…

If I am depressed and jump in front of a train, or if I think that's a safe and normal thing to lie on the tracks, or if somebody pushes me, or if I trip, the result is the same: Splat.

There's little point in saying "Splats are primarily psychological" if accidents and mistaken facts seem to be at play often enough. Or if people splat other ways (e.g. in car crashes, tightrope accidents). The result is the same. Splatty splat splat. The outcome only tells you so much.

I can tell you one thing: Totally overhauling my "motivation, goals, and emotions" did absolutely diddlysquat in making me better because while I started off with a combination of routine infection and "psychological" stress (which, of course, is a kind of misnomer because you can measure it with blood tests)... it did permanent damage to my mechanicals. Splat.

Also, a lot of doctors think FM/ME/CFS are the same thing. And a lot think adrenal fatigue/hypothyroid and CFS are the same thing. Maybe they are separate but cause each other.

Genetics certainly play a part; hypothyroid is incredibly heritable, for example. It causes lots of the same symptoms and may be a symptom/cause (or both) itself.

But nobody claims that hypothyroidism is psychological, not even slightly, much less primarily.

But the cause for an individual almost doesn't matter. You have to cut stress no matter whether it was a primary cause for you or not.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#102

Post by ahoyhere » Wed, May 01, 2013, 5:08 AM UTC

jennita wrote: post #98

ahoyhere wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

jennita, I'm glad you're feeling better now. I don't mean to belittle your experiences whatsoever, because depression is a terrible thing. I just want to explain: You wrote your husband was able to "force you" to get out of bed (good man) and brush your teeth and do sit-ups etc. When I say "I can't get out of bed," I mean if I stand, my heart rate doubles, it feels like the "bottom falls out" of my head, the world st…

Dang :( I'm really sorry you have to deal with this. I've definitely not been through anything like that. Thanks for explaining it better, I really had no idea what it was. (I also just googled it and am reading more about it) Don't worry, I hope it didn't bother you that I tried to relate to it. I do hope you can find a way to get better though!

No worries at all. I haven't had to go through chemo, so I'm sorry you had to go through that! That must have been terrible. We've all had our problems, and nobody was saying "Mine is worse!" -- I know you weren't, and I certainly wasn't, and hopefully it didn't sound like I was.

Like I said… I blame the lack of words!

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#103

Post by ttunguz » Wed, May 01, 2013, 2:03 PM UTC

gertef wrote: post #87

ttunguz wrote: post #56

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…

What if your Snippets just say "tried to fix stuff. still broken" over and over and over again?

ha!

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#104

Post by pserwylo » Wed, May 01, 2013, 9:38 PM UTC

oldmanjoe wrote: post #28

pserwylo wrote: post #2

I feel like this is useful information for much more than just people involved in work. Specifically, as PhD students, my partner and I (and pretty much all of our colleagues) often face burnout, and are always looking for ways to combat it. I quite like the sound of most things in this article, and think I will try to adopt some of the principles to my study and see if they will help. Specifically, I need to get bac…

Ensure you have (at least) monthly meetings with a supervisor. This provides good feedback and stops you getting lost in the weeds. It helps if you have small milestones attached to each meeting (reading a book/paper, editing a chapter, etc). A sign the PhD is going awry is when they stop attending regular meetings and duck out of your way in the corridor. ;-) Then they start getting stressed

Haha, yeah, I have experienced both ends of the stick. One supervisor I get along with beautifully, we've been meeting essentially every week for the last two years, and she has full access to the JIRA install I'm using to log my research tasks against. The other we just chat in the elevator, and have a meeting every couple of months or so.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#105

Post by jennita » Wed, May 01, 2013, 9:51 PM UTC

ahoyhere wrote: post #102

jennita wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dang :( I'm really sorry you have to deal with this. I've definitely not been through anything like that. Thanks for explaining it better, I really had no idea what it was. (I also just googled it and am reading more about it) Don't worry, I hope it didn't bother you that I tried to relate to it. I do hope you can find a way to get better though!

No worries at all. I haven't had to go through chemo, so I'm sorry you had to go through that! That must have been terrible. We've all had our problems, and nobody was saying "Mine is worse!" -- I know you weren't, and I certainly wasn't, and hopefully it didn't sound like I was. Like I said… I blame the lack of words!

haha let's hug it out! :D

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#106

Post by mdkess » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:01 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #97

mdkess wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you AREN'T making large amounts of sacrifice toward high risk problems, I'd say you're doing something wrong. Startups are a perfect example of this. We see serial entrepreneurs fail spectacularly (see Color), we read about entrepreneurs who kill themselves after a string of failures, and we read all of the time about the new guys and girls who tried their hardest yet never managed to take off. People like to writ…

(Side note: Google's probably the wrong example if you want risk adverse. Projects fail all the time at Google. I would've picked a big company like IBM or Cisco, where I've heard you tend not to try at all.)

The other side of risk adverse isn't apathy. At a big company, if you're smart, work hard, and do what tasks are assigned to you, chances are you'll have a long and profitable career. Fresh out of school, a smart and motivated engineer could expect to make say $750,000 - $1,500,000 over five years working there, with almost no personal risk. Over their career, at present value, probably pushing to $10 million.

If you start a company, however, your returns vary extensively. If you're smart and dedicated after five years you might come out broke - or even in debt. Or you'll come out being barely able to make the rent. Or you'll be a millionaire or billionaire. As an entrepreneur, your risk five year returns would be somewhere between -$100,000 to $10,000,000+, with the expectation I would guess quite a bit lower than the Googler's.

That's not to say that either is the right choice - mathematically, the big corporation choice will make you more money in the expectation and probably take less of your time. But you know, life's not about optimizing the integral of income over your career.

Re: Avoiding Burnout

#107

Post by nostrademons » Thu, May 02, 2013, 12:55 AM UTC

mdkess wrote: post #106

nostrademons wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Side note: Google's probably the wrong example if you want risk adverse. Projects fail all the time at Google. I would've picked a big company like IBM or Cisco, where I've heard you tend not to try at all.)

The other side of risk adverse isn't apathy. At a big company, if you're smart, work hard, and do what tasks are assigned to you, chances are you'll have a long and profitable career. Fresh out of school, a smart and motivated engineer could expect to make say $750,000 - $1,500,000 over five years working there, with almost no personal risk. Over their career, at present value, probably pushing to $10 million. If you…

I'm saying that "At a big company, if you're smart, work hard, and do what tasks are assigned to you, chances are you'll have a long and profitable career" is false, at least at Google. If you're smart, work hard, and do what tasks are assigned to you, you'll top out at SWE3 with a salary in the low six-figures. Getting promoted to Senior SWE requires selecting the right projects and some degree of leadership and organizational awareness. Getting promoted to Staff or above also requires sticking your neck out to promote some initiatives that may be controversial, and convincing people to go along with you. This is not all that different from the skillset required to be an entrepreneur.

That's why I suggested picking a big corporation with more of a reputation for "doing what you're told", like IBM, Cisco, or even Apple. Google in a couple years might be there, but right now you cannot get to the higher engineering levels without sticking your neck out on an initiative that may be controversial at first.

(It's also true that the risk/reward curve is flattened a bit at Google than at a startup: at Google, you're still being paid a relatively fat salary if your high-risk project fails, you just don't advance. And if it succeeds, you end up with a raise and a promotion, not F-U money [usually]. But this article is about the emotional aspects of failure, not the financial ones, and those are still just as relevant at fast-growers as at startups.)