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Ask HN: Working through burnout?
31–40 of 96 posts
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#32Does your team have a project manager? If so, he or she is the person to go to when you think a project is in jeopardy.
How did it come to this? Were the original time estimates way off? Was there significant scope creep? Were there blockers that were beyond your control (ie. tech problems with dev environments, specs were delivered late, etc.)
More than likely, the release date can be pushed.
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is useless advice. More so, it is hurtful advice. "Get a long night sleep" is not always an option. And the person above is clearly asking "When a long night of sleep is not an option, what else can I do?" We all know there are professions (fire fighters, police, soldiers, nurses, doctors, computer programmers, etc) where it is sometimes necessary to work extreme hours. And the question being asked is clearly, h…
I see no reason for extreme hours for programmers, it's just wasted time. More companies should embrace 6 hour work days and 4 day work weeks, as people are then forced to work on only the important things and not do any busywork. Go get a good long sleep. Rest. Get a hammock and sleep on parks. Enjoy life. Work is not life. Work is means to an end but not life.
Do you realize that the question being asked has nothing to do with what you are suggesting? The question is clearly about those situations where "Go get a good long sleep" is not an option. Are you going to argue that "Go get a good long sleep" is always an option, under all circumstances? if so, make that argument: detail the cases where the whole company was depending on you to reach some crucial deadline, and you felt able to go home and have a long night of sleep.
Please understand, I think your advice is good whenever it is possible. We should all try to get a good night of sleep, whenever we can. But sometimes it is not possible, and this thread is about those situations.
I assume you are intelligent enough to know that sometimes sleep is impossible. If I doubted your intelligence, then I might list the many situations where you advice does not apply. I will offer just one anecdote from my experience: in 2003 myself and my business partner were going to meet with investors on a Wednesday, to ask for $250,000. We were out of money, so we had to impress the investors, or we were doomed. I started getting ready for the demo on Monday, and I kept running into bugs, more and more bugs, endless bugs. I ended up working for 20 hours, then getting 2 hours of sleep, then working for 20 more hours, so that we could give a demo on that Wednesday that was bug free.
Sometimes sleep is not an option. That is what this thread is about.
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#34Honestly? Refuse. In my experience, there are very few situations where crunch time affects the bottom line. There are some, to be sure, but chances are slim that you have stumbled upon it. More likely, someone higher up got impatient and is driving this. I have worked many a Saturday nights until 3-4 am to try to launch a site on Monday, just to learn that there was going to be a month long delay because someone els…
This makes a lot of sense to me, and has happened a few times. Very rarely is the crunch worth it, and almost always "burning the midnight oil" results in bad code/bad work. To the point where it might have been better to have been fresh and made a decision that resulted in 5 minutes work, or no work, versus slogging away at a waste of time because you're doggedly doing something that makes no sense.
On top of that, there seems to be a theme of employers trying to expect that lately, or "well, its IT, you're expected to work out of hours for free". Just refuse that and find a better employer, is my advice, if that happens too often.
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#35Be sure you covered all your supplements. If you work indoors, you almost certainly don't get enough vitamin D. Also, multivitamins. Additionally, I take fish oil, ginkgo, and saffron and find my brain fog to be improved. But I think the Vitamin D is essential. There is good information about supplements on examine.com
If only burnout could be fixed with food supplements...
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#36If you are burned out, it may very well be that you will miss that 'hard deadline'. However, very few deadlines in life are really 'hard' (as in you will lose your life if you don't meet the deadline.) Talk to the folks who have set the deadline to see if it can be rescheduled. If they cannot or will not reschedule your deadlines, then resign yourself to the consequences of the missed deadline and start thinking of y…
^^ this. When you try and control things, you only let them control you. Ignore the deadline and focus on writing good code.
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#37What will happen if you release in 8 days instead of 3? What will happen if you release in 3 days but with a major bug? What will happen if you release in 3 days, but you cut features that don't work?
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#38Many people are telling you that discipline is the solution. They're not necessarily wrong, but the most disciplined person in the world cannot squeeze blood from a stone. Sometimes you're mentally fatigued, discouraged, and the task at hand seems overwhelming.
For me, progress is the solution to burnout. Stop whatever hard problem you're working on for a bit and work on something simple -- layout tweaks, small bug fixes, code cleanup, automated tests. This usually gives me the extra boost of dopamine I need to handle the larger task at hand.
Your mileage may vary of course but it's something that has worked wonders for me.
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#39I totally know the feeling and have had to really dig deeply in the past year. Here are some things that worked.
1) Be ruthless about what you need to accomplish. This means choosing what to "do poorly" at. Sure everything is "important" but it's time to secretly throw a few things overboard.
2) Do whatever you can to optimize your wellbeing. Go to bed early and sleep enough. (1/3 dose of melatonin if you have trouble falling asleep.) Plan simple healthy meals that don't require much thinking or prep. A media fast is really good. Try to throw in a tiny bit of exercise (20 minutes) and 10 minutes of meditation here and there. (ex: when you arrive at the office)
3) Do the work in cycles so you get time to think between bursts. As we get older, the work wears us down so I treat screen time as "toxic exposure" and set a daily maximum. That doesn't mean you have to stop working...Just step away from the desk and visualize what you're going to do. Then get in there and work quickly and efficiently and get out and plan the next burst.
Bonus: In a real pinch, you need to work every day of the week. Though extra cycles and wellbeing make this pretty easy. If you're working too hard, the weekends are necessary to recover.
Re: Ask HN: Working through burnout?
#40> but how do you keep your brain operative and your mind focused enough to read and write code for those intervening 3 days Adderal, Ritalin or Captagon can be used to get you out of a bad situation. But you should be very careful not to use them for longer periods because you will regret it. Talk to your doctor and then go talk to your employer. I know where I live at least you can take a permanent medical leave for…
Such a US response hehe. I don't mean that much offense, but your first solution is to go to a pill? Its a hideous idea to me.