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Burnout

kristinn.ghost.io

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Re: Burnout

#51

Post by goalieca »

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 ?

If your job sucks, be patient and make a long term plan to improve it/get out. Find/make something awesome outside of work to look forwards to and focus on. All work ends up being boring to some extent, so focus on the good things in life like your nephew or perhaps that microbrew taste testing night with your old friends.

Re: Burnout

#52

Post by bovermyer »

mathattack wrote: post #46
goalieca wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's self development, and very few folks have 8 hours of continuous concentration in them.

I seem to remember reading somewhere that the average person can concentrate on one thing for a maximum of 30 minutes. After that, attention wavers and efficiency declines.

No idea where I read that, though. It might be rumor only.

Re: Burnout

#53

Post by jshen »

quaffapint wrote: post #50

I've got a crappy dev job that I've been in for over a decade that only gets worse with less pay. I don't bring home enough money and have my family living paycheck to paycheck. I stress over it and keep trying side stuff to bring in more, which mostly fail. I'm working hard right now trying to get this next side project out the door in the next month. I'm in my 40s and no one in the area has raised their dev salarie…

are you in a big city? All the devs I know make good money, and their salaries have been steadily rising for over a decade. Also, all the devs I know can get a new job in a week or so.

Then I hear stories like yours and wonder what the difference is. Maybe location?

Re: Burnout

#54

Post by jwmoz »

I got burnt out on a contract a few years ago, was a horrible feeling, continually tired and falling asleep, no enthusiasm for the role. Switched to a different contract and halved my commuting time and turned into a different person.

Now when I finish work I'm out of here, no more coding or hacking at home, instead, I train at the gym or go out for food or more recently chill a lot.

Re: Burnout

#55

Post by karterk »

quaffapint wrote: post #50

I've got a crappy dev job that I've been in for over a decade that only gets worse with less pay. I don't bring home enough money and have my family living paycheck to paycheck. I stress over it and keep trying side stuff to bring in more, which mostly fail. I'm working hard right now trying to get this next side project out the door in the next month. I'm in my 40s and no one in the area has raised their dev salarie…

Depending on the terms of your employment, this might not even be possible, but you should try augmenting your primary source of income with some part-time consulting. While the lure of the profitable side project is hard to resist, it's much easier to become financially independent by doing consulting than through a side project. Bootstrapped SaaS projects grow very very slowly in terms of monthly recurring revenue (also known as the Long, Slow, SaaS Ramp of Death [1]).

[1]: http://businessofsoftware.org/2013/02/gail-goodman-constant-...

Re: Burnout

#56

Post by cfontes »

quaffapint wrote: post #50

I've got a crappy dev job that I've been in for over a decade that only gets worse with less pay. I don't bring home enough money and have my family living paycheck to paycheck. I stress over it and keep trying side stuff to bring in more, which mostly fail. I'm working hard right now trying to get this next side project out the door in the next month. I'm in my 40s and no one in the area has raised their dev salarie…

I know it's not for everybody. But sometimes moving to another city is the best option.

I've done it myself 2x and it payed of somehow. My job is boring like hell right now( it wasn't like that some months ago), but the paycheck for my country standards is ok. Also the city I am at right now has plenty of other jobs so if I get pissed of I can get away from it.

Think about it...

Re: Burnout

#57

Post by [deleted] »

shadowmint wrote: post #7

That's true... but there's also the flip side to the coin. Finishing things is good; but if you have a project you want to finish, you'll never finish it if you halfheartedly look at it once a week for an hour. If you spend more than certain amount of time not looking at something or not working on it, you forget how it works and it takes all of that available time you have to get into 'the zone' where you're actuall…

[deleted]

Re: Burnout

#58

Post by marcosdumay »

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 ?

Well, first, you run away from fast growing startup business. You may want to start consulting first, instead of creating products. If you insist in products, do something that can be lucrative right at the beginning (Patio11 is famous for having lots of material on that).

Anyway, that advice is hard to follow. If you can't, I can't really blame you, I'm still unable to follow it either. But I've failed enough times to know that it's the right way to do it...

Re: Burnout

#59

Post by dkhenry »

I am not happy doing nothing. I don't understand how you can be do content just "chilling". Now don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with recreation and spending time with your family, there isn't even anything wrong with doing nothing, if its for a purpose, but just wasting time because you can is a waste of time. You should be optimizing your time to get the most value out of it.

Maybe I am just odd, but I would much rather be hacking on my side projects then playing games and watching movies. I guess that the difference between your vocation being your passion and it just being something to pay the bills. Perhaps the author needs to find a different career that provides some fulfillment to him so he doesn't feel the need to waste his life decompressing from his job.

Re: Burnout

#60

Post by MAGZine »

a3voices wrote: post #49
goalieca wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I work for a Fortune 500 company as a programmer and I've spent probably 70-80% of my time at work over the last four years reading random tech news.

Pretty bold statement for someone who has their full name + location + place of work in twitter handle in their profile ;-)
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