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Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

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Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#81

Post by oldandboring »

ryandv wrote: post #42

The pandemic burned me out pretty hard after a lifelong obsession with computers, tinkering around with technology back when it was more of a hobby than a commercial pursuit. It was nice to be able to parley my passion into a career, but contact with the world of business tends to corrupt what I always viewed as a form of play and artistic expression. I like simple technologies like IRC. You don't need K8s clusters o…

This is the closest comment I could find to how I experience my burnout. Nothing makes me more anxious than realizing that I fall further behind every day I'm not spending (unbillable) time becoming an expert in all the dev/ops tooling that somehow became indispensable the past 5-10 years. It's funny because I used to LOVE computers as a teenager because I loved setting up and configuring Unix systems. Now, as a developer, the idea of writing configurations instead of code just makes my hair stand on end.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#83

Post by kevinsync »

hathawsh wrote: post #16

While this passage is inspiring, it boils down to: 1. Get good at something 2. Get paid for doing it 3. Get burned out by doing it 4. Return to the fun way of doing it 5. ??? 6. Win a Nobel prize or similar How repeatable is that pattern? Is that one of the patterns we want to teach the next generation? Serious question. I don't know the answer. Feynman is obviously rather exceptional. Should we encourage people to f…

When I read the OP link, #4 is both the eureka moment of your list AND the last item on the list.

There is no #5 and #6. You can't predict what happens next.

The lesson is to let go of your ego and self-imposed, prescriptive ideas of 'importance' and realize that while important things do matter, they also simultaneously often don't matter at all (in the grand scheme of things)

This is a function of time; in the moment, stuff that feels intractable and overwhelming often can be seen in hindsight with enough clarity to realize that what you were feeling at the time and what was objective reality were two completely different things.

Anyways, not trying to get all "The Dude" about it, but in my experience, as long as you continue to show up, and be patient, present and available for opportunities, things you weren't even looking for have a way of finding you and lead to stuff that you could never have forced into existence through sheer willpower alone. If you can find a way to let all the baggage go and reboot to a place of genuine curiosity, you might be surprised where you eventually find yourself.

YMMV of course.

(and no, I'm not preaching "manifestation" / "law of attraction" bullshit -- just advocating for people who hit a wall creatively to consider stepping off the treadmill, releasing the pressure valve, and seeing where they end up)

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#84

Post by tnecniv »

borroka wrote: post #62
tnecniv wrote: post #13

As 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…

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

Well I should clarify. There are jobs that I can do certainly, but very few that I’ve thought would given me the internal satisfaction of what academia used to give me (and I think could give me again). Before I was hired as a postdoc I applied for various research scientist positions at places that would still let me publish, but then all the hiring freezes happened. Whether that counts as academia is in the eye of the beholder but at least they pay better.

The only other gig I can think of that would excite me is being a statistical analyst for a baseball team. I know more than one person who made that transition after getting their PhD. Something else is probably out there, too, but I haven’t discovered it for myself yet.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#85

Post by smugglerFlynn »

ryandv wrote: post #42

The pandemic burned me out pretty hard after a lifelong obsession with computers, tinkering around with technology back when it was more of a hobby than a commercial pursuit. It was nice to be able to parley my passion into a career, but contact with the world of business tends to corrupt what I always viewed as a form of play and artistic expression. I like simple technologies like IRC. You don't need K8s clusters o…

Just some random thoughts, but I've started during the era of J2EE monoliths still being on the rise, when Web 1.0 -> 2.0 was only starting its transition, Python still being niche etc. Amount of insanely boring and inefficient stuff like digging through all the XML APIs and CORBA was self-evident.

It was fun to build totally new (and much simpler) tools, shortcutting quite literal man-years of work with each solution. Like rewriting half of some insanely expensive and over bloated million-dollar Oracle enterprise product into web app that we crunched out in a weekend over pizzas, and then demoed and validated with our clients before next week ended.

Over the years all this exciting new way of doing things has somehow evolved into what feels very much like the older dig-through-XML-schemas-for-hours world.

What I miss the most is the shared mindset of focusing on the problem, using simple tools that were build for purpose. That mindset was commonplace back then, at least in my circle. Maybe that's just a phase (cycle?) the industry goes through.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#86

Post by tnecniv »

dexwiz wrote: post #64
tnecniv wrote: post #13

As 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 think there is a kind of grief associated with growing up that people don’t talk about. When you are young and inspired it seems like life is long and you can do anything, branching paths with unlimited doors. Once you're an adult, your past choices narrow down your future paths, and your sense of age starts to set in. In some way you mourn the paths not taken. This is called mortality, and can be a nasty combo wit…

Coincidentally, I was rewatching the first season of True Detective last night and they were talking about this in the show. I almost turned it off because it was too real for me at the moment.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#87

Post by godelski »

hathawsh wrote: post #16

While this passage is inspiring, it boils down to: 1. Get good at something 2. Get paid for doing it 3. Get burned out by doing it 4. Return to the fun way of doing it 5. ??? 6. Win a Nobel prize or similar How repeatable is that pattern? Is that one of the patterns we want to teach the next generation? Serious question. I don't know the answer. Feynman is obviously rather exceptional. Should we encourage people to f…

My takeaway is a bit different. My takeaway is that the system has been killing researchers' passion for research for decades (I think it's only gotten worse) and turns them into less effective researchers. That the solution here is to make a system that encourages the things that got people so passionate in their field in the first place. At some point, nearly everyone that does a PhD is doing it out of passion (I say nearly because money, jobs, and immigration are certainly other important influences). Those big advancements often come out of that love and play. Which should make sense that when you're trying to create or discover something that no one else has ever done before that you have to... explore. You have to play, you have to question, you have to push the bounds and reject established beliefs and do things that might not even make sense. Because if you did do the status quo, then we'd have figured out those things previously. Clearly to advance we have to do something different. But I think very few people want to be open about the absurdity of the system that we have. I think part of this is due to the fact that it is easier to place blame for lack of success on yourself when you see others succeeding around you (I certainly know I do. I just don't think that I'm the only thing that is a failure).

My literal solution is to just say fuck it to the journal/publishing system and to the publish or perish paradigm. Papers are simply a means to communicate to other researchers, and we already know how to find one another on arxiv, semantic/google scholar, and so many other platforms. Research is ambiguous and you never know where leaps and bounds are going to come out of, even if you know the general direction. The devil is in the details because nuance is the essence of what makes things work, especially as we've advanced. We have all these admins at universities, why are they not doing all the bureaucratic bullshit that is draining to researchers and let the researchers focus on what they love and do best?

What Feynman is saying is that researchers are the other side of "fuck around and find out." So you want effective researchers? Let them fuck around and they will find things out.

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#88

Post by tnecniv »

bdowling wrote: post #78
tnecniv wrote: post #13

As 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…

You could try going on an adventure, ideally a real one that is a little bit dangerous.

That does always seem to work in the movies

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#89

Post by fritzo »

hathawsh wrote: post #16

While this passage is inspiring, it boils down to: 1. Get good at something 2. Get paid for doing it 3. Get burned out by doing it 4. Return to the fun way of doing it 5. ??? 6. Win a Nobel prize or similar How repeatable is that pattern? Is that one of the patterns we want to teach the next generation? Serious question. I don't know the answer. Feynman is obviously rather exceptional. Should we encourage people to f…

Seems similar to Feynman's classic problem solving technique:

    1. Write down the problem
    2. Think very hard
    3. Write down the solution
https://wiki.c2.com/?FeynmanAlgorithm

Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)

#90

Post by borroka »

etrautmann wrote: post #76
borroka wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…

This is true for a surprisingly large number of people. It's very easy to lose time in a post doc that's not either fun science or advancing your career in a high ROI way. Many post docs don't have the experience and diversity of perspective required to recognize this trap, and nobody around them is incentivized to help. This is true whether you're planning to stay in academia or not.

This is one of the reasons I stopped informally mentoring postdocs. It was an exercise in frustration. It was like telling someone who had only had one husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend in their life (and now has left or is leaving) that there were many other people in the world with whom they could have been as happy as they were with their ex (willy-nilly), and even much happier, if only they had allowed themselves to experience their new world.

"They (the research/partner) are all I have loved in my life," "I can't imagine myself with anyone else/with any other job." The arguments were remarkably similar and equally frustrating to deal with.

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