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Getting rid of burnout permanently

kentnguyen.com

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Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#61

Post by pessimizer »

dsirijus wrote: post #25

> there were times when I got completely burnt out as often as once every few days Hm, maybe we call two different things a burnout . I had it twice, one ending in a visit to ER, the other one blasting a single song at max volume for 20h then crying and trying to quit my job. I don't think the author actually had one, at least not by my definition of it. That aside, my main cause of burnouts was working extremely har…

I would quit my job long before anything like that happened. A psychotic break may be something that burnout could lead to, but I'm sure that that's not a minimal requirement to say you're 'having a burnout' in most people's usage.

To be honest, that's just not the way I react to stress. I'm more likely to get a bit of insomnia and be overly critical towards my coworkers.

edit:

"The term 'burnout' was coined in the 1970s by the American psychologist Herbert Freudenberger. He used it to describe the consequences of severe stress and high ideals experienced by people working in 'helping' professions. Doctors and nurses, for example, who sacrifice themselves for others, would often end up being 'burned out' – exhausted, listless, and unable to cope."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0050545/

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#62

Post by arbitrage »

reitanqild wrote: post #49

Isn't burnout originally something way worse than exhausted and demotivated? Examples: I burnt out once, it left me crying everytime I where alone and took me months to get through the first phase. Anything that reminded me about the old job, e.g. a faulty drive-train, could trigger stomach pain etc. It took 5 full years before I was really myself again even though I studied and had normal jobs during those years. I…

I had a similar experience. I left a very high stress job, and it took me well over a year to stop having anxiety attacks for a job I wasn't even employed at, anymore. I didn't even have a cell phone, and I was getting phantom phone syndrome for at least 18 months. Almost sounds like PTSD.

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#63

Post by phazmatis »

Interesting article. I think burnout can be caused by a number of things, but I don't think everyone has a different burnout trigger. When faced with non-ideal conditions/expectations, burnout is inevitable. Sone people can cope with different burnout causes better than others, but if, say, your work is soul-scorching then it'll eventually get to you.

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#64

Post by sliverstorm »

littleweep wrote: post #57
FiatLuxDave wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also coming from outside the bubble. From a different viewpoint, though, programmers aren't so bad about this. Try hanging out with some medical doctors and nurses, instead. I might think my 60 hour weeks are bad, but i just can't complain about it to my wife when she gets home from her 80 hour weeks. Burnout is a completely accepted part of nursing, and many nurses take it into account in career planning. Not sa…

The nurses I know have schedules that cap at three 12-hour days per week (36 hours/week). What kind of nurses work 80 hours a week?

There's a whole lot of different work schedules for nurses. I never knew until I started rubbing shoulders with a large number of them.

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#66

Post by pessimizer »

Kabacaru wrote: post #32
throwawayaway wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

both of those sound like nervous breakdowns.

Which is what a bad burnout is.

If that's what you want to call it. I always thought of burnout as not being able or not having the desire to continue keeping up the professional pace that you've been keeping over a long period of time. It doesn't have to include any irrational element, or even explode into a cathartic moment to be burnout as far as I've heard it discussed.

'Succumbing to burnout' I get - 'having a burnout' is not a phrasing that I'm even familiar with.

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#67

Post by driverdan »

normloman wrote: post #22

Um... Not work so hard? I'm not a programmer, so I'm viewing the stuff on hacker news from outside the bubble, so to speak. And from here, y'all look crazy. To the average person, spending extra hours at work with no overtime pay is absurd, but you all discuss it like it's no big deal. Your industry needs a huge cultural overhaul. People must be trained not to accept burnout as normal.

Long hours may contribute to burnout but are not a cause in and of themselves. I tend to work less than 40h a week on my own terms and am still burned out right now.

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#68

Post by [deleted] »

normloman wrote: post #22

Um... Not work so hard? I'm not a programmer, so I'm viewing the stuff on hacker news from outside the bubble, so to speak. And from here, y'all look crazy. To the average person, spending extra hours at work with no overtime pay is absurd, but you all discuss it like it's no big deal. Your industry needs a huge cultural overhaul. People must be trained not to accept burnout as normal.

[deleted]

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#69

Post by logfromblammo »

paulhauggis wrote: post #41
cylinder wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a programmer, but I burnout from being bored and unsatisfied with my work, I even get burnt out from feeling like I'm not doing enough. If I'm doing something engaging and exciting I'm more than happy to work long hours.

the problem is that there is really boring work in every project.

One man's grind is another man's passion.

I'm usually the only one on any team that is willing to sit down with "that tool", written by some guy who left the company years ago (maybe using VBA Excel or Access macros because he wasn't actually a trained programmer), and understand it to the point that I can fix just one piece of it without rewriting the whole thing from scratch.

And then I can recommend ways to wean the company's process away from that sort of fragile dependence on unmaintainable code.

But that kind of work is not for everyone. A lot of the time, people don't even like the smell of the code they wrote themselves only a few months ago, so slogging down in the sewers of the ex-COO's magic Excel spreadsheet would be absolute torture. I see it less like an undercity diver busting up grease clots in the drains, and more like a surgeon carefully and methodically removing colon polyps before they go malignant.

And I am burning out here because I have been explicitly ordered to not fix anything without prior permission. Ordinarily, I would be spending some time every day safely refactoring old code and eliminating dead code. But SLoC is a management metric here. Reducing the total lines of code would upset the applecart.

Re: Getting rid of burnout permanently

#70

Post by angersock »

normloman wrote: post #22

Um... Not work so hard? I'm not a programmer, so I'm viewing the stuff on hacker news from outside the bubble, so to speak. And from here, y'all look crazy. To the average person, spending extra hours at work with no overtime pay is absurd, but you all discuss it like it's no big deal. Your industry needs a huge cultural overhaul. People must be trained not to accept burnout as normal.

After a nasty brush with burnout, I've been doing as much as I can to try and steer clear of it and overwork...and also to encourage my team to do the same.

It's a little tricky, because the "work work work" bug in your ear makes you feel like you should be putting in more cycles, but honestly the long-term get-shit-done factor is way better if you calmly plan and execute and take your time.

I just wish there were more people locally to compare notes with.

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