81–90 of 119 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
i find my balance in sports, that require 100% attention It's not a sport but I recommend cooking, doing Legos (have you tried EV3?), etc as a way to connect to physical things.
Old fashioned jigsaw puzzles are good for this too, though for problem-solving types perhaps a bit too hard to put down...
I also think you can fall into a kind of reverse burnout. If you work in a slow beauacratic environment with no stress, no accountability, no change and no challenge then you really do start to notice all of the same symptoms.
Lie 1. The technology doesn't matter. All languages sucks and are turing complete anyways. Who cares if it's in perl or enterprise java? Does my happiness really depend on writing python?
Lie 2. The technology does matter. If I'm working on a Social-Mobile-Location startup using python with free reign over technology I'll be in developer bliss right? Wait, maybe if it's all go and protocol buffers I'll be giddy with joy. Frankly the difference between new and old technology is usually the choosing between decades old tech and decades old tech. (Oh, you're using epoll/select/kqueue? The 1980's called, they want their tech back) (Javascript? The 1990's called, it's for you) Heaven forbid you go talk to startup folks with your 90's programming language called Java.
Lie 3. (From PHB) "while long term overtime doesn't scale, it's a great tool to boost productivity in the short term during crunch time, after all a startup is defined as a way to cram 10 years of life experience into one"
So here's what I believe to be the truth, for me, so far.
1. Burn out takes longer than you'd ever imagine to recover from. After a certain point you just don't care if the fire alarm is going off and the building's burning down because it's always burning down. Once you leave that situation/job, it's hard to shake that mentality.
2. New technologies, platforms, and protocols are fun. Learning is fun. I don't mind writing my own libraries because it helps scratch that itch of always wanting to know how things work just one level deeper.
3. People matter exponentially more than anything else. It's not just working with smart people. I've worked with lots of smart people with the emotional IQ of a poorly trained Rottweiler. The best engineers I've ever worked with are usually people who've made the decision that engineering is not the most important thing in their life. They've also discovered Lie #2 and so are a little bit less dogmatic. "Oh you want to send binary encoded messages over UDP to collect statistics, I remember when we did that with ASN1. Here's a nickel kid, go get yourself a real protocol".
Where's "Don't exercise?" That'd be pretty close to the top of my list. A quick 2-3 mile jog around the neighborhood can help get me out of work-related funks. (I work at a home office, though, so it's easier for me to say "fuck it" and go do something sweaty in the middle of the day...) My theory is that, since the only real item on your jogging to-do list is to put one foot in front of the other, your brain is free…
Work related items on my mental To-Do list sometimes take more than a day to do, and it can eat away at me if I don't cross things off that list. "Bah! Today was a total waste of time!"
Where's "Don't exercise?" That'd be pretty close to the top of my list. A quick 2-3 mile jog around the neighborhood can help get me out of work-related funks. (I work at a home office, though, so it's easier for me to say "fuck it" and go do something sweaty in the middle of the day...) My theory is that, since the only real item on your jogging to-do list is to put one foot in front of the other, your brain is free…
This goes back to the post that said something about only giving advice when it's asked for.
I've burnt out before while exercising pretty heavily. The reasons he listed, after a while, can completely ruin anything your exercise does. Especially when you're "Free to wander" and just keep thinking about how bad the job sucks.
Anyone else getting sick of this false dichotomy of "long hours" and "having a life"? What am I going to do with that life, visit new restaurants / collect stamps / try new variations of yoga / go out to bars? Alright the last one ain't so bad.
Seriously, if someone's in their 20s and want to work/program away while they build their career, just shut up and let them. Maybe that's what they actually want to do over anything else. I know, it must suck for you family guys / slower guys - let's face it, it's more competition because there are people willing to do what you are not: forgo more leisure activities and personal relationships. The point is, however, that this is not a sacrifice for some people, but a preference.
But burnout is not due to "not having a life", it's due to ignoring your physiology. It's due to "eating like a programmer", doing these stupid all-night "hackathons", not exercising, not sleeping, and generally being a moron with your health. I will also add that to avoid burnout, take care of your psyche. Don't skip that 30 min coffee to catch-up with an old friend if it will make you happy, for example. Social isolation creates physiological consequences as well, which can contribute to burnout - but again, this isn't true for everyone, and there's a wide spectrum of acceptable values which many like to ignore.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moderate exercise not only treats, but prevents depression http://media.utoronto.ca/media-releases/moderate-exercise-no... I don't like jogging, so I go for a walk everyday, which includes a lot of hills and stairs. Not only do I meet my 10,000 steps on my step counter, but it's when I come up with my best ideas. Also being grossly overweight does no favors to keeping depression away.
For me, exercise (running, surfing, and lately doing weights -- I've never done the latter before by I'm enjoying it), coupled with my thinking therapy coping mechanisms (CBT works wonders for me) has completely placed my depression into remission for the past year and a half. That's the longest time I've gone without an episode since I was 15, and I'm 23 now. I use antidepressants when I feel an episode starting --…
This is a great point and something I just came to learn as well. If something at the gym is boring, do something else! I couldn't figure out how people loved the gym when I was going to run for an hour every time and was bored out of my mind. Switching to a weight routine instilled a sense of real progress (the weight on the bar, the # of reps) and left me in a state of satisfied exhaustion.
I also think you can fall into a kind of reverse burnout. If you work in a slow beauacratic environment with no stress, no accountability, no change and no challenge then you really do start to notice all of the same symptoms.
> reverse burnout This is also known as "boreout". (However, I can't find evidence that "boreout" is a well-known word outside Germany. So maybe it's just one of our many German inventions of pseudo-english words.)
"5. Work long hours, ignore your life" Anyone else getting sick of this false dichotomy of "long hours" and "having a life"? What am I going to do with that life, visit new restaurants / collect stamps / try new variations of yoga / go out to bars? Alright the last one ain't so bad. Seriously, if someone's in their 20s and want to work/program away while they build their career, just shut up and let them. Maybe that'…
Its easy to view as "not a sacrifice" now, but like everything else, you are more likely than not to view it as a sacrifice later. Listen to those with more experience than you; I personally wish I had, and I'm trying to make up for it now.
> But burnout is not due to "not having a life", it's due to ignoring your physiology
I disagree that burnout is primarily physiological, it's much more a mental ailment - a state of mind that is exceptionally hard to break out of. Not having any other buffer than more work to engage your mind with will very quickly cause you to burn out.
This makes me cringe. If you're a developer, it's your manager's job to assign tasks which can be completed on a reasonable schedule, and to adjust stakeholder expectations if they don't turn out to be achievable on time. If you're facing an impossible deadline, that means that your boss hasn't done their job. It's not your responsibility to dig them out.
And if you do pull through and somehow finish on time, all you've conveyed to your manager is that the status quo is working. You've demonstrated that they can move up deadlines in order to get more work out of you without paying you for it. If your team is understaffed, they can save money by leaving it understaffed. Soft deadlines (the boss has a meeting on Thursday and it would be a feather in their cap to have a feature working by then) turn into hard deadlines when they learn that developers don't push back.