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Burnout

johnnyrodgers.is

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Re: Burnout

#41

Post by lanstin »

slips wrote: post #29
didgeoridoo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you actually feel fine, then of course therapy isn’t likely to do much for you. The idea is if you’re feeling terrible enough to evaluate yourself, but it turns out you likely aren’t suffering from burnout, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look into therapy. Often people think they are suffering from burnout, but it turns out they actually have underlying trauma, anxiety, depression, etc. unrelated to work stress.

Everyone, even healthy people, should attend therapy if able. There's a lot of tricky ground to navigate as a person and you don't have to be experiencing trauma to get help.

It is a technology to get more satisfactory outcomes from life. Not sure why you wouldn't use it.

Re: Burnout

#42

Post by lanstin »

agumonkey wrote: post #13
kd5bjo wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“A soldier does not become a shrewd general merely by endorsing the strategic principles of Clausewitz; he must also be competent to apply them.” “Knowing how to apply maxims cannot be reduced to, or derived from, the acceptance of those or any other maxims.” — Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (1949) I started reading this a couple of weeks ago after seeing it referenced in Peter Naur’s “Programming as Theory Build…

I hit that wall somehow hard. There's a very odd cognitive notion about 'know how'. Even stupid simple obvious things, when you've never done them, good chances you will feel weirdly stuck for tiny and absurd reasons.

Which is why trying new stuff you don't know how to do and also to do stuff you like but are bad at is so cognitively beneficial.

Re: Burnout

#43

Post by chucksmash »

metalgearsolid wrote: post #31

I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression? Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexpla…

> Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexplaining how my software works to the product person during every product meeting, trudging along under leadership that doesn't understand the costs of all the manual things I'm not being empowered to automate and not having new features to show off every 2 weeks is what is making me feel like I'm burnt out.

The common thread of each of the examples you give above sounds like, "other people are incompetent."

Applying principle of charity and assuming they are all actually that bad, you've got to meet people where they are if you want to work effectively with them. Lots has been written on the responsibility of senior engineers in guiding and improving their teams without necessarily having a specific mandate from management to do so.

Perhaps you might also apply a bit of that charity IRL too though. Examine your perceptions and interactions critically.

There's no requirement in life that you have to make things work with any given team, anyway. The clueless and the checked out exist too. If you're surrounded by them and your not married to the org, consider other work.

Re: Burnout

#44

Post by rzzzt »

coffeefirst wrote: post #18
jacknews wrote: post #7

Is this really burnout, or just overheating? To me burnout is more the psychological state of "why am I even doing this anymore?", loss of enthusiasm, perhaps even some degree of despondency and hopelessness about the future, etc. This seems more like just temporary over-exertion, under-nutrition/exercise/etc, which can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting.

Two things surprised me about burnout: 1. It has physical symptoms. 2. It doesn't go away when you stop. Vacation is good. But two weeks after my vacation I had a rough couple of days, nothing that I couldn't handle before, and I was right back where I started. I've come to think of it like a mental equivalent of a torn muscle. Recovery takes time—probably far more time than I expect, and if you overexert it, even a…

I'd like to try and take GP's analogy a bit further:

- thermal paste dries out and becomes brittle due to sustained overheat

- resulting in bad contact between heatsink and CPU

- CPU (returns from vacation and) finds that even small efforts makes core temperature rise quickly, thermal throttles constantly

Re: Burnout

#45

Post by cityzen »

westoncb wrote: post #36
dawhizkid wrote: post #15

I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family an…

> more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. That rings true to me. My speculation as to why: at the most general level, our 'work' in life resembles a hierarchical optimization process--goals and sub-goals (and so on) forming a structure defined by nested utility functions. Our professional goals (and their day-…

What would you tell your kids today? I have 2 boys, 7 and 10, and I don't want to lead them into the same trap. We are already dealing with the fear that the schools put into kids about tests. The pressure on kids to be in "performance" mode all the time is really disappointing to me.

Re: Burnout

#46

Post by Aaargh20318 »

metalgearsolid wrote: post #31

I think I'm burning out because my job is too easy. I like working. Satisfaction of completing a good job makes me happy. Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work? Am I conflating burnout with something else like depression? Writing up UI designed by a designer who doesn't understand my domain's interface guidelines, reexpla…

> Is anyone else experiencing burnout as a result of numbingly boring tasks rather than from intense bursts of mentally challenging work?

For me it’s boring, meaningless and ill-defined tasks. Especially if you have many of those assigned without clear priorities.

I actually like a good crisis at work. E.g. a major production system suddenly going down. Suddenly, there is focus, interrupts go away, the desired result is completely clear and you feel like doing something that matters.

On the other end of the spectrum, working on some meaningless feature (e.g. adding some performance metrics to the system management decided could possibly be useful as if they actually bothered to look at them) has me completely exhausted at the end of the day.

Re: Burnout

#47

Post by situational87 »

There is some incredibly obnoxious script on this page that won't let you resize the text. First time I've seen that.

I often feel like the web couldn't possibly get any worse, and every day it finds a new way to surprise me and get worse.

Re: Burnout

#48

Post by high_5 »

blinkingled wrote: post #34
dawhizkid wrote: post #15

I think there's two types of work-induced burnout. "White collar" burnout is generally self-inflicted, and to me less about working oneself to exhaustion and more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. My hypothesis on why this seems to be happening at higher rates is because without a focus on raising a family an…

> because without a focus on raising a family and/or participation in organized religion, our careers/workplace have become the "things" that we now try to put all this meaning behind, and what was once separated from our "life" (e.g. work/life balance) has become our life, and the psychological burden of being forced to be 100% emotionally invested/devoted to our work has consequences. This resonates with me a 100%.…

We don't only need variation, we need rhythm. We live in an a-rhythmic world where in the evening the morning events feel like yesterday, where weeks whoosh by like days, rattled with the constant flurry of calls, messages, notifications and whatnot. There is no pace if one does not set it by himself.

Re: Burnout

#49

Post by westoncb »

cityzen wrote: post #45
westoncb wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> more about working any amount of hours on something that you subconsciously believe is fundamentally misaligned with your core principles/true self. That rings true to me. My speculation as to why: at the most general level, our 'work' in life resembles a hierarchical optimization process--goals and sub-goals (and so on) forming a structure defined by nested utility functions. Our professional goals (and their day-…

What would you tell your kids today? I have 2 boys, 7 and 10, and I don't want to lead them into the same trap. We are already dealing with the fear that the schools put into kids about tests. The pressure on kids to be in "performance" mode all the time is really disappointing to me.

I don't know that there's any particular message I would substitute those with. I think I'd mostly just avoid setting unreasonable expectations. My guess is that the common phrases/sentiments echoed as a I was growing up were so prevalent because some ideas then vogue about how it would develop a child's drive/ambition, or prevent them from artificially limiting themselves (it's a nice idea). My personal view is that honesty is better and that sort of manipulation is a kind of 'technical debt' that will come back to bite later.

Another aspect of it I was reminded of today by a good twitter post (I went back looking for it but it has disappeared from my feed!) has to do with sources of value. It was basically theorizing that lot of people who end up running into issues with generalized anxiety and depression as (young) adults, do so because they place all their self-value in their work and accomplishments (socially defined). He was cautioning people against viewing themselves exclusively as creators of products (in a general sense), and only valuing themselves as such. It's a common trap for folks sort of over-embracing capitalist ethos.

Maybe just making it known that it's _okay_ if they are 'merely' an ordinary person. I bet a lot of this isn't even verbal, but just comes down to whether parents actually are or are not okay with their kids being less than extraordinary.

If you're aware of the issue you're probably already fine though--the rest will follow from that.

(Of course I'm not a professional of any kind on this matter, so, you know--generous grain of salt!)

Re: Burnout

#50

Post by voidhorse »

I hope someone will (or has?) conducted a historical and geographical analysis of the concept of “burnout”. I’m curious about where precisely it emerges (hypothesis, predominantly America) and when (hypothesis, the 21st century).

It’s a peculiar concept in that it seems to capture the idea that we’ve reached a stage in human development in which we shouldn’t really have to work that much, but do so anyway. It a sort of paradoxical situation in which we’ve eliminated the conditions which necessitated or fostered overwork with material ends (must produce xyz units of consumable goods, food etc) for overwork with largely frivolous ends (the sustainment of online systems which don’t actually create any material value—only abstract or cultural value—not true in every case, of course) enter the “burnout” concept—the big boss no longer needs to forcibly push his workers to the edge, they’ll do it for him through some odd sense of pride or ridiculous notions of performance which are enforced not through punishment but through the allocation of “benefits” like respect, small bonuses, etc etc. —the workplace “culture” (though the social dynamics which emerge at workplaces are not worthy of the name) is an effective system for ensuring people overextend themselves.

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