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Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

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Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#51

Post by czbond »

mod wrote: post #49
aerovistae wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you speak Spanish??

Not GP, but I moved to Costa Rica for a few months in 2013. Depending where you go, you can get away with very little to no English. I was in a (tiny) surfing town, Playa Grande. It gets a lot of foreign surfers, and so all the locals speak English. Many ex-pats live there year-round. Nearby is Tamarindo, very similar there, and a much bigger town. I can order food and ask for directions and have basic conversations…

Hey Thanks for posting - I'm thinking of doing the same in Costa Rica from Dallas,TX for a bit. What would a decent house to rent go for in the area?

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#52

Post by chdir »

begriffs wrote: post #2

I'd say chill out, the project is probably not that big of a deal in the scheme of your life. I've been in a situation like that and most of the problem is your own thoughts reinforcing themselves. In reality you can pause work at any time. You can drop out of the project entirely. All it takes is saying "sorry, I'm not going to work on this any more." So talk with your marketing partner and tell them you're working…

> most of the problem is your own thoughts reinforcing themselves

This has often helped me in dire situations when you need some validation on the choices you've made.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#53

Post by stingraycharles »

forgotpasswd3x wrote: post #33
nso wrote: post #7

I quit my job, sold my house, sold all my stuff and moved to a lazy beach town near the equator. Never felt happier, never felt more rested, never thought as clearly as I do now. Totally not answering you question when it comes to finishing the project, but sometimes you just have to call it quits because your health is more important than yet-another-website. If you are ever in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca, Mexico -- gi…

What kind of income would I need to bring in to move to a place like that and live comfortably? How is your internet connection?

I live in Cambodia. I pay $250 a month for a villa, electricity is around $20 a month and water is free. Food costs me around $5 a day -- which is a lot. You could live off $2 a day if you want.

For internet I use a sattelite connection, which gives me 4mbit full duplex for $25 a month.

Life is great, but after 10 months spending time here I feel like I'm still recovering from the rat race back home. I'm spending my full time on hacking away on Haskell projects, just learning for the sake of learning, and I feel that slowly I am starting to miss home again, so I'll probably return somewhere at the end of the year.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#55

Post by graeme »

stingraycharles wrote: post #53
forgotpasswd3x wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of income would I need to bring in to move to a place like that and live comfortably? How is your internet connection?

I live in Cambodia. I pay $250 a month for a villa, electricity is around $20 a month and water is free. Food costs me around $5 a day -- which is a lot. You could live off $2 a day if you want. For internet I use a sattelite connection, which gives me 4mbit full duplex for $25 a month. Life is great, but after 10 months spending time here I feel like I'm still recovering from the rat race back home. I'm spending my…

How did you arrange it? And is someone cooking/cleaning/shopping for you, or do you do that yourself?

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#56

Post by Hytosys »

>On top of that, I'm the only one expected to work these ridiculous hours

If you're anything like me, that's just a self-imposed expectation. Otherwise, you should tell your partner that you're going to work fewer hours. Maybe 6 hour days.

Whatever you need to stay healthy. I think you hold a lot of leverage that you need to exercise.

I was recently in the exact same position with my partner (I'm also the only programmer) and it was all resolved by being open and honest. Talk it out.

Also, take a break for an entire week. Try your best to not think about the project. Your life doesn't depend on it :)

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#57

Post by hncomment »

From the description of your situation, there's no single-step answer.

Phase 1 has to be to recover some balance & perspective: take a week off, and if/when you resume work, cap your working hours to a more traditional schedule to allow variety and recharge time in your days/weeks.

Phase 2 is to use the balance/perspective/distance to evaluate whether the partnership/team is right, the development goals are reasonable, and the schedule expectations realistic. Abandonment of a project that hasn't matched original hopes is always an option.

If you choose re-dedication to the same project, be sure you know what will be different. You likely need a technical collaborator, for both mutual-review and task-sharing, far more than any amount of 'encouragement' from someone whose skills aren't applicable or even yet needed.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#58

Post by ffn »

Partner, I know exactly how you feel (except in my case, my partner is my mom, lol. And I run masterrace ember-on-rails instead of plebian angular on node), and I completely agree, sometimes it really is too much. We see the other people in our industry, folks like jashkenas, wycats, our benevolent overlord Linus Torvalds, and the host of other celebrities and we marvel at their productivity; we hear stories of how ninja-hackers build their entire business working 24 hours straight over a hackathon and come out with an amazing business like Cloudflare; we look towards folks like Zuckerberg, Ohanian, Poole, etc. and seethe with envy at how they can build amazing products that not only scale to massive size but also actually do it all part-time while going to school or whatnot.

And then we look at ourselves, at our own handiwork, at the small handful of shoddy projects we have under our belt (most of which probably are ignored because of their incompleteness), and feel frustration.

"Why am I not as good as they are?"

"I should be better than this!"

"I need this done by X or else I'm going to lose this opportunity forever"

"Why am I not making money yet?"

If this describes you in anyway, then congrats, you're a workaholic passionate about your craft. Me too, actually. But unless you enjoy irreparably wrecking your health, and dying of colon cancer at 40, you need to temper that fire in your heart. Here is what I did to help me get out of my own emotional hellhole some time ago:

1. I admitted to myself I am not a "code-ninja", "programming rockstar", "chief-architect", or even "senior-level programmer". Despite the fact there are plenty of people (some younger than me) who can make software happen overnight, I am not one of those people; whatever I do will take time and often I will make mistakes.

2. I admitted this to my partner (aka my mom) and accepted her disappointment in me, but asked her to nevertheless bear with me as I slowly get better. I also admitted this to my investor, who didn't mind too much because he was well-diversified against my (no doubt) imminent failure.

3. I accepted the fact I am not Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, or any other likely-to-be-invested-in-by-union-a16z-yc candidate going at a break-neck pace to change the world. I'm happy learning about and doing js, web, css, and programming at my own pace and if my works will one day be appreciated by society, then great, but if not, that's okay too.

Those 3 realizations helped me fix my attitude and improve my lifestyle, hopefully, they can help you too.

A disclaimer: Some may read the above as saying "don't have ambition, don't try to push yourself, don't achieve". I'm not saying that at all; instead, I'm saying to temper your ambitions with patience, and if you wish to overcome your weaknesses, then the first step is to accept them. Life is long and not as fast-paced as the media makes it seem, nor is it a competition to see who can succeed earlier / faster, so go at the fastest pace you can while still managing to enjoy your work.

Re: Ask HN: What to do if you are ridiculously burnt out?

#59

Post by astockwell »

While it sounds like you're in a product startup, I was recently in a similar situation with a client service focus: A partner and I (he was design/light dev, I was heavy dev/ops) struck out on our own. After a few months of ramp up we signed six figures of contracts in a single month. Giddy as we were, we had worked together for years and knew deep down it wasn't manageable. But dollars are very effective beer-goggles.

We laid out work-life expectations; mutual desires to work The biggest problem I blame myself for was the self-inflicted up-spiral of expectations, which sounds like what's happening with you. It started with replying to one of my partner's emails at 10pm, then turned into email conversations until 1am many nights/week with him and the clients. Emails about where I was, followed by texts and Slacks about if I got the emails, on and on.

I cannot speak for my partner, but in hindsight I would say that we had different business priorities and in the end, pleasing clients trumped balance for him and it didn't for me. We never really had that candid conversation, and it basically became a toxic 3 months that ended with us dissolving the partnership and likely permanently scarring our friendship.

I'd encourage you to have a dedicated, private face-to-face with your partner, and have an open discussion about what you've been doing, how you're feeling, how they're feeling, and what you want/need from this partnership. And if they're wants/needs are incompatible, time to say goodbye.

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