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Burnout

kristinn.ghost.io

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Re: Burnout

#61

Post by ddoolin »

dkhenry wrote: post #59

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 wou…

No. I can't speak for the author, but I can empathize. I'm VERY satisfied with my career. I honestly couldn't imagine doing anything else...but I couldn't do it anymore either. The late nights, always being in front of the computer, always working on something. People burn out, even doing things they love to do. I still do what I love, I just have more of an appropriate balance.

I think you're just odd, like you said.

Re: Burnout

#62

Post by agentultra »

My theory is that "burnout" is a symptom of the endemic "hero" meme of our culture. Think about all the movies you've seen since the 1980s, the shows you've watched, the books you've read. Embedded in the majority of them is the simple idea that there's something special inside you that can set you apart from everyone else. It whispers seductively to that part of your brain that lies to you about how important you are. Any story or idea that fills the need to feel different, special, and unique passes through our scrutiny without a second thought. We want to believe it's true even as we examine our motivations for doing so because it's hard wired into our brains.

The problem is that this weakness is easily exploited. Writers, motivational speakers, game designers, poets... they're all in the business of hacking our brains. We've been doing such a good job of it since the sixties that our popular culture is unconsciously driven by it.

And it manifests as burnout when it clashes with other popular memes like the Protestant Work Ethic. If you just put in a little elbow grease and work harder you will stand out. If you write that amazing library to make programmers' lives easier they will shower you with praise on the Internet and invite you to speak at conferences so that you may shower the masses with your brilliant message. Burnout happens when all of the rewards of those fantasies fail to materialize despite all of the effort and hard work you've put into chasing them.

Worked 60 - 80 hour weeks for the last six months and still got overlooked for that promotion? Burnout.

Put off investing time with your family in order to work on that semi-popular open source library and pimp it out at every conference you can submit a proposal to... and you STILL aren't getting the accolades and recognition you deserve? Burnout.

My advice for avoiding burnout? Figure out where your desires and ambitions are coming from. Why do you want to work so hard for recognition? Why do you feel you need to be recognized? What's so important about it? Start from there.

Re: Burnout

#63

Post by MAGZine »

equalarrow wrote: post #25
teacup50 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From someone in his 30s for whom this also resonates: The list never gets smaller. If anything, it not only gets longer, but the list items themselves grow even more ambitious and far reaching. I've done great things. I've started sustainable companies, released a prodigious amount of code, and some of it has shifted the course of industry and secured my position in it. At the same time, I'm exhausted. I'm tired of n…

"The list never gets smaller. If anything, it not only gets longer, but the list items themselves grow even more ambitious and far reaching." Well put. Just wait until your 40's. Or wait until you have kids! (If you plan on that). Sure, the list may get longer, but once you have that feeling of time is running out - that's when it gets freaky. My wife and I had this discussion over the weekend. There's the rotten und…

> If I could give the 20 year old me some advice it would have been to apply at Netscape when I had the chance. :)

Can you give a 20 year old ME some insight into what this means exactly? Unfamiliar with Netscape's culture, they were on their way out while I was on my way in!

Re: Burnout

#64

Post by tracker1 »

jshen wrote: post #53
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?

Location has a lot to do with it... It also factors in heavily with cost of living differences, and quality of life for a single guy vs. a family.

I'm in Phoenix, which has a lot of developer work, though most of it is fairly boring line of business stuff. Compared to say San Francisco, which has a little more developer work, but the pay is the same or not enough more for most positions I've looked at and the cost of living is a lot more. There are other trade offs as well that favor SF over Phx, for example Phx is hot 3 months a year, and hotter than hell another 4.

There's a few more rural communities in southwest Oregon I'd like to live in, but there's not really any tech/dev work near what I'd need to make there. Being a software developer outside the top 10-15 major metro areas in the U.S. is a lot harder, and the pay is significantly less.

I'd honestly suggest the guy consider relocating... it's rough for everyone, but Houston, Austin, Phoenix and a few other spots have a pretty nice income to cost of living ratio, and plenty of developer work.

Re: Burnout

#65

Post by gamegoblin »

agentultra wrote: post #62

My theory is that "burnout" is a symptom of the endemic "hero" meme of our culture. Think about all the movies you've seen since the 1980s, the shows you've watched, the books you've read. Embedded in the majority of them is the simple idea that there's something special inside you that can set you apart from everyone else. It whispers seductively to that part of your brain that lies to you about how important you ar…

Hanging out on sites like this definitely doesn't help. In every thread it seems like there is someone who is a perfect expert on whatever being discussed.

Need to diagnose a problem in a defunct modem using only an oscilloscope? Someone can. Strange behavior of the JVM? Oh, someone has implemented their own JVM on a 4kb machine as a hobby project.

Then you get username delineation and there is this idea of some abstract "hacker" of hackernews (or whatevertechsite.com) that can do everything with ease.

Because after seeing all that I think if I can't debug modems with oscilloscopes or implement the JVM I'm behind and subpar.

Re: Burnout

#66

Post by wprl »

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 ?

There's nothing wrong with "going hard" to reach a short-term goal. Burnout comes when "going hard" becomes a lifestyle. You need to make sure to allow plenty of time for resting afterwards, or your intellect and will wear out.

Re: Burnout

#67

Post by derefr »

agentultra wrote: post #62

My theory is that "burnout" is a symptom of the endemic "hero" meme of our culture. Think about all the movies you've seen since the 1980s, the shows you've watched, the books you've read. Embedded in the majority of them is the simple idea that there's something special inside you that can set you apart from everyone else. It whispers seductively to that part of your brain that lies to you about how important you ar…

"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires."

--temporarily-embarrassed millionaires who, I might add, all know that it is their "destiny," their Heroic Tale to tell, to "regain" those millions through Hard Work, Grit and Stick-To-It-iveness. (But not Cunning. Cunning is for villains, like that guy who got the promotion instead of you.)

Re: Burnout

#68

Post by sehr »

EC1 wrote: post #8
napsterbr wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to that blog post

Mine was mainly about nutrition, and how I formed a super rigid and efficient routine. I have recordings of all my daily commutes, how many calories I ate every day, when, how much, every macronutrient, every coffee, beer, everything. Every movie, every "distwraction", every second I'm actually working. All of these things I've been working to decrease to as small as possible. I'll write it up ASAP.

Definitely interested in this as well, are you using any specific applications to track all the data?

Re: Burnout

#69

Post by tracker1 »

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…

I used to be fairly similar.. usually chewing through a book a weekend, and working on learning something new every other week. It gets old after a while. I actually make myself take lunches away from my desk most days. I try to live about 20-40 minutes from work so I can wind-up/down well. I tend to veg most evenings, but do a fair amount of reading still.

I actually took my first real vacation in about 7 years this past year. I left my laptop/tablet behind and my phone had no cell service most of the trip, it was actually in airplane mode most of the time. As an aside, it's amazing how long a cell phone will last with the antennas off.

I'm turning 40 at the end of the year, and still love programming. I'm still learning, and working with newer technologies, and now have the experience to see a lot of issues I may have glossed over, or ambitiously tried to circumvent when I was younger. My life is far more pragmatic now, and I assign value into down time. You should too.

My brain is still working through problems to be solved, and solutions to be worked through when I am at lunch, and in my off hours. The difference is that now I am much better prepared to deal with them during the on time.

Re: Burnout

#70

Post by EC1 »

sehr wrote: post #68
EC1 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine was mainly about nutrition, and how I formed a super rigid and efficient routine. I have recordings of all my daily commutes, how many calories I ate every day, when, how much, every macronutrient, every coffee, beer, everything. Every movie, every "distwraction", every second I'm actually working. All of these things I've been working to decrease to as small as possible. I'll write it up ASAP.

Definitely interested in this as well, are you using any specific applications to track all the data?

iPhone logger that I wrote myself which I'll be releasing the source code + app to.
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