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Burnout

kristinn.ghost.io

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Re: Burnout

#31

Post by biscarch »

jotm wrote: post #12
EC1 wrote: post #3

> A few years ago I wanted to know everything. I spent the day at work thinking about what I would do when I got home and then spend the evening studying various things as hard as I could. I would stress over how there werent enought hours in the day to do what I wanted to do. There was rarely an hour in the day where I wasnt productive in some way. Oou, this resonates with me. For the past year I've been trying to o…

That sounds great - but don't you get tired? After 6-8 hours of mental work (incl. learning), my ability to understand things is severely diminished. I can go on working on simple tasks, physical work or something that I already know, but not on something new or anything that requires extensive of thinking/planning. Using any drugs?

I do something very similar (although with an approach that is different) and I find that doing harder intellectual work has to be balanced by doing harder physical work (roughly speaking).

As an example, some of my recent intellectual work (and "distractions") included writing a book on Haskell web development, building out a product, some Android contracts and casually reading new papers. This is balanced in my life by training to compete at a professional athletic level (beach volleyball/high jump training. Roughly: Oly lifting, sprint workouts, plyos, etc) and music (Playing drums, guitar, bass and covering songs on my own).

Both training for athletics and playing music have a mental states that lend themselves to "recovery" from intellectual pursuits.

Re: Burnout

#32

Post by mattgreenrocks »

SDGT wrote: post #6

> I might not be as good today as I would have been if I had kept grinding away. That is my overriding problem. If I stop, it means possible stagnation. There is no greater fear than becoming irrelevant.

But solid, foundational skills in any area of life do not make you irrelevant. Learn those, and you can adapt to whatever fashion is currently en vogue.

Software is no different, there's only the clamor of employers refusing to train, along with the copious free time of privileged white males making you feel like it is.

The media loves to tell you that you aren't working hard enough. Western culture defines itself by work, regardless of the consequences.

Re: Burnout

#33

Post by mattgreenrocks »

daGrevis wrote: post #24

Here's a theory — an ideal job is a job that fulfills your desire to code to a level in which you don't want to do any coding after work hours. There's so much challenging tasks and new things you learn right away by doing things you are paid for that you don't need to search for something new after work.

Indeed, this is far more sustainable than burning the candle from both ends. It may seem like a bit of a unicorn job; but the current SV boom tends to overvalue inexperienced engineers so much that it can seem like there are no interesting jobs in tech left.

After ten years, you start wanting something different from work. Nothing wrong with that, you just need to find somewhere that will keep you intellectually fed.

Re: Burnout

#34

Post by ihsw »

stevenkovar wrote: post #23
thu wrote: post #18

What do you do if chilling out is not an option ? If your day job is maddening (and you feel like any other job would probably be maddening too) and the only alternative you have is to start your own company ? What do you do if you need to keep the day job to pay bills and work on your own product in the evening and the week-end until it can bring money ? When it seems that you can either burn out or succeed ?

Learn to enforce boundaries. If you let your job walk all over you, it will.

It's not that it will walk all over you, but that it will keep taking away from every other part of your life until there is nothing left to take away. You'll feel helpless precisely because you will have nothing left to give. Everybody has their limits.

You will be straining your mind all the time, never able to let your guard down for a second. The only hope you have is that someone else will save you by taking your job from you.

Re: Burnout

#35

Post by chadillac »

daGrevis wrote: post #24

Here's a theory — an ideal job is a job that fulfills your desire to code to a level in which you don't want to do any coding after work hours. There's so much challenging tasks and new things you learn right away by doing things you are paid for that you don't need to search for something new after work.

I've found the contrary to be true lately. I was a serial burnout case. I'd crank hard for 3 or 4 months and it'd take me 6 months to recover. I've found more recently that it wasn't the projects at home or at work, it was a lack of diversity. Doing the same thing when I got home that I did all day burned me out because it wasn't any different. Coming home and working of stuff I can't work on at work be it new languages, games, new ideas, whatever, just so long as it's different than what I did for 8 hours then I don't get burnt. Now the problem is I don't have enough hours in the day to do it all and working until 4 am and being up at 7 isn't sustainable.

Re: Burnout

#36

Post by morganherlocker »

JamesBaxter wrote: post #14

I'm nearly two years into my programming career and I'm really struggling with this balance. Every day at work I face a new programming challenge. Every night I feel guilty about not being able to motivate myself to work on either of the two side projects I've started. Video games work well as something mindless that clears my head at the end of the day. The problem is stopping playing before I've wasted my whole eve…

I have always found music good for this sort of thing. It is very relaxing, uses the creative part of your brain, and you get a skill that stays with you for the rest of your life. While it is engaging, it somehow gets boring after about an hour or two, so it is unlikely to suck away an entire evening. Over the years I have learned to play dozens of instruments just by devoting an hour here and there.

Re: Burnout

#37

Post by goalieca »

jscheel wrote: post #16

I am finding that it's better to just leave the stupid computer off when I get home. It gives me more time with my wife and daughter, and I feel more rested and ready for the next day. For example, last Saturday was filled with bike rides, walks, and playing outside. That's it. Yes, I have a list of about 10,000 different things I'm interesting in learning and doing, and another list that size of things that actually…

Sometimes I find that instead of reading about tech and trying little hobby things at home, I'm better off trying to fit that into my work somehow. Even a full 8 hours of programming 5 days in a row can be enough to mentally drain you if you're actually working the whole time.

Re: Burnout

#38

Post by vvvVVVvvv »

stevenkovar wrote: post #19

No matter how sharp your blade, your steel must be tempered. Life is about balance. You will break if you don't give your mind and body the rest it deserves. Often, great ideas find me when I am cooling down.

I'm sorting my day out when in the morning shower. There's no better place / moment to think.

No distraction, just your mind clearing up the midst.

Re: Burnout

#39

Post by sdegutis »

> For the first time in years I had time to do silly stuff like playing video games, going out for a walk or watch movies. For the first time in years I didnt grit my teeth and churn out that little bit of code that would help me develop my skills further.

> It feels great.

I can totally relate. A few months ago, I started giving up on my open source projects, as a side-effect of burnout. Admittedly part of the solution was working hard to give up the hubris inside me that made me think my code and my ideas were vital to the world. But now that it's given up, I really do have a lot more free time. Last night, I was under a blanket on the couch, reading two full Sherlock Holmes[1] stories to my wife and children, who were just drawing or cuddling on the couch or whatever. We just kicked back and relaxed, and we all enjoyed it.

The downside is that I now have a hard time keeping the motivating excitement going for new ideas I have. Just the other week I had an idea for a node-webkit-like idea based on JSCocoa, but it involved rewriting major parts of JSCocoa to get it to work properly. I've gotten pretty far[2] but I'm losing steam quickly and falling back into the "meh" state of life in which I'm now more interested in playing Starcraft 2 for an hour or two, or drawing some doodles. So it's a weird balance that I can't figure just yet.

[1]: Later that night I read The Purloined Letter to my wife as she painted some walls, and we both enjoyed it but thought it was a little bit long-winded for what it had to say.

[2]: http://github.com/sdegutis/chaos

Re: Burnout

#40

Post by [deleted] »

morganherlocker wrote: post #36
JamesBaxter wrote: post #14

I'm nearly two years into my programming career and I'm really struggling with this balance. Every day at work I face a new programming challenge. Every night I feel guilty about not being able to motivate myself to work on either of the two side projects I've started. Video games work well as something mindless that clears my head at the end of the day. The problem is stopping playing before I've wasted my whole eve…

I have always found music good for this sort of thing. It is very relaxing, uses the creative part of your brain, and you get a skill that stays with you for the rest of your life. While it is engaging, it somehow gets boring after about an hour or two, so it is unlikely to suck away an entire evening. Over the years I have learned to play dozens of instruments just by devoting an hour here and there.

[deleted]
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