Greatest book I've ever read
Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
51–60 of 189 posts
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#52As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
Academia is a recipe for burnout. It’s like pro sports, unless you are the top 1% of the top 1% you may be able to keep eeking by but will never be in a comfortable position. There is always more to do and you do not get paid well for your time. You are surrounded by people who pour their lives into their work and it will be expected of you. The culture is extremely toxic and dysfunctional. Your lack of imagination a…
The problem in Academia is that its too crowded. With crowding, in many fields, the de facto way to progress has become to play corridor and department politics. I know completely clueless and incompetent researchers that made an effortless transition to faculty positions at top 10 universities, whereas some great postdocs were stuck forever, burnt out, and left. Ironically, some of said postdocs did the work the others took credit for in order to be promoted.
Some fields are more prone to this kind of behavior and power structures than others. Plus, in the past, it was much easier for recent PhD graduates to progress to tenure-track positions, without needing to do a postdoc (or many!) in between.
Actually, some countries have established regulations to try to prevent postdoc abuse, as faculty is typically interested in getting them to do all work, giving them little credit, etc. Some of my postdoc friends were supervising students, designing studies, and writing grants but their names were never officially on paper! Their PI used this as a way to getting them trapped. Without e.g. supervision experience, they would not be able to move to tenure-track positions, thereby getting stuck with him (as cheap labor) forever.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#53As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
I'm in a similar position. At the end of my PhD I feel like I want to drop out. I do ML research and I just lost faith in the academic system. Research is my absolute favorite thing to do but everything else surrounding it I just absolutely hate and it feels draining and worthless. Ideas get dismissed without explanations (even after asking), publication process is incredibly noisy and when you get a nonsensical revi…
Sounds like we are in a similar boat :-/
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#54I see a parallel to short vs long term thinking here that applies to R&D.
When quarterly results are the priority, innovation is stifled but what's insidious is that this only becomes evident over a long time span.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#55As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
Before I left academia, I felt that I would be a terrible failure. The people I was surrounded by looked at leaving the academy as a sad admission of defeat. In retrospect, I think this was largely a reflection of their own insecurity and lack of perspective because most had never been outside of the academic bubble.
Life on the outside is different. Having been gone over a decade, there are some things I miss and that are definitely hard to find in other environments. On the other hand, I feel immeasurably better about myself not having to beg to toil away on projects of questionable significance that happen to have funding and be stuck in the precarity of borderline poverty in the service of supposedly higher ideals.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#56Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#57As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
As academic with the tenure job, I don't think it gets easier with the tenure -- you'll have to do more non-research stuff, admin, teaching, supervisions, grading, grant writing etc. (some people like it, but I just prefer research)
I do have burn-out certainly that appeared after I had a faculty job for a few years. That mostly has affected my overtime research work, which previously would take most of my free-time, but now I try to spend more of my free time on hobbies.
My advice is that unless you can overcome burnout somehow, not to try tenure positions in the states, because there you'll have to work really hard to get to tenure. I think positions in Europe tend to be often tenured from the beginning (i.e. UK) so it may be easier.
(throwaway account)
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#58As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
I'm in a similar boat. Not a postdoc yet, but will be starting a postdoc in July (assuming I graduate in May, which I'm on track for). I've always been interested in the intersection of AI and interactive storytelling. Worked in the game industry for a while, then came back for a PhD when ML really started taking off. With the current frenzied climate in NLP research, I just feel demotivated. Mainly because I think m…
I started my postdoc in August, but the burnout started earlier, a few months before writing my dissertation. Congrats on finishing your degree (almost)!
I also have kind of esoteric interests in my field but it mostly hasn’t bothered me. It certainly doesn’t help with matters though when sometimes I’m trying to motivate myself and go “what’s the point?”
I will say that one thing I’ve learned as a researcher is that it’s hard to know what people will and will not like. I’ve received compliments on some of my least favorite papers I’ve written. My advisor always told this story about how, as a student, he won a best paper award for a paper that almost decided not to publish because they thought the results weren’t strong enough.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#59I'm not a mental health connoisseur or anything, but removing your own pressure to perform seems like good advice regardless of your circumstances. If you're tired or stressed or whatever, labeling yourself as "a burned out person" seems to me like the only good thing it does is add more pressure. Because how can you do well if you're "damaged" in some way? It's important to not just do old style sweep it under the r…
Makes sense, we are taught that being “mindful” of our mental state is key to mental health, but it also means everyone walks around with a handful of self diagnosed mental deficits.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, I recommend that and his other book.
What's the other book?
The other book is, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?"
https://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/03933...
I particularly liked it for the in depth discussion of how Appendix F came to be written.