Burnout
johnnyrodgers.is
Burnout
1–10 of 74 posts
Re: Burnout
#2I like the note in the end about his advice:
This advice doesn’t get you very far. In the abstract, it’s just more self-help cliché. For me these are hard-won lessons, and it’s unlikely I would have done anything differently if someone had told me this when I was 26 or 30.
I feel like the cause of burnout generally lies much deeper than not asking for help or not putting health first. It's more about certain values embedded in you from your past. Those values make you feel responsible for things you aren't, and might make you push yourself. Which might also bring you good things in life, but you have to wonder where those values came from and if they are indeed true for you and helping you.
Re: Burnout
#3This is good post on experiencing burnout (and avoiding it).
Written by an early programmer at Slack, and someone involved with their recent desktop app rewrite project.
For me, "team marathon running" on software projects means only rarely "sprinting".
As the author suggests, sacrificing sleep, body, and hours eventually catches up with you. But, it's very easy to do and we've all been there. This is part of the reason that medical residents are burnt out on medicine even though they love medicine. It doesn't matter that you're doing what you love -- that's only the top little self actualization triangle of Maslow's heirarchy/pyramid of needs. You need all the base components of Maslow's heirarchy satisfied, too -- financial health, bodily health, emotional health.
Re: Burnout
#4This was the hardest one for me and caused me a burnout a couple times, especially when working remote from home.
Separate your work and personal life. This was a major change for me. I’ve always identified very closely with my work. I’m learning to separate my sense of self-worth and purpose from my professional self.
Re: Burnout
#5Well, burning out building the first version of Slack is probably materially different than the burnout most others experience, but sure.
Re: Burnout
#6That was a great read. I think the most important thing is letting go when stressful problems become a danger to your health. Just think "I'm not that important in the grand scheme of things" and take a few steps away from the problem (obviously that's not always possible, but it's more often possible than people think). What will happen is the following:
- Maybe you're right, and things go on nicely without you
- Maybe things go not so well, so your coworkers have to learn redundancy and that they cannot pile all the problems on one person
- Often, you come back from your break (be it going home early, or taking a few days off, etc.) refreshed and you look at the problem from a new perspective. Potential emotions like anger and impatience have worn off, enabling you to act calmly and rationally.
Re: Burnout
#7Is this really burnout, or just overheating?
To me burnout is more the psychological state of "why am I even doing this anymore?", loss of enthusiasm, perhaps even some degree of despondency and hopelessness about the future, etc.
This seems more like just temporary over-exertion, under-nutrition/exercise/etc, which can be fixed with a lazy holiday, safe in the knowledge that all those Slack shares are vesting.
Re: Burnout
#8I like the note in the end about his advice: This advice doesn’t get you very far. In the abstract, it’s just more self-help cliché. For me these are hard-won lessons, and it’s unlikely I would have done anything differently if someone had told me this when I was 26 or 30. I feel like the cause of burnout generally lies much deeper than not asking for help or not putting health first. It's more about certain values e…
“A soldier does not become a shrewd general merely by endorsing the strategic principles of Clausewitz; he must also be competent to apply them.”
“Knowing how to apply maxims cannot be reduced to, or derived from, the acceptance of those or any other maxims.”
— Ryle, Gilbert. The Concept of Mind (1949)
I started reading this a couple of weeks ago after seeing it referenced in Peter Naur’s “Programming as Theory Building”, and this point of his in particular keeps coming up in all sorts of contexts: there’s a fundamental difference between knowing how something is done and knowing how to do it. The former is what you get from any sort of how-to or advice article, but the latter comes from experience. It’s unclear if there’s any internal transfer at all between these two kinds of knowledge.
Re: Burnout
#9The bit about ending up in hospital with an obstructed bowel from diverticulitis? I call misdiagnosis - either on his part or mine.
I had an uncannily similar experience, except in my case it was about a week a month (sometimes much more, sometimes less) that I lost to the vomiting, the nausea, the delirium, the totally immobile bowel. In my case, the stress went on for years, and years, utterly relentlessly, day and night, incessantly, and so did the gut attacks. I’d get angry when people mentioned they’d slept badly, because at least they’d got to sleep. I’d spend a sleepless week shivering and roasting and dripping sweat and reeling with nausea, unable to make words or thoughts, then finally suddenly recover, and the moment I was capable of any movement or coherent thought, I’d be writing apologetic emails and heading back to the office, where I’d get a barrage of abuse from both clients and cofounder for my absence.
After multiple hospitalisations they’d decided I had everything from diverticulitis to gallstones to salmonella to a brainstem injury. They took my gallbladder out, did exploratory surgery, every endoscopy you care to name. It kept happening, nothing worked.
Then, I quit my business. Two months later, I had my last “attack”, as I’d come to call them, and it’s now been three years.
So... I wonder if the author had diverticulitis, or was having the same violent physiological reaction to stress that I had apparently developed.
Re: Burnout
#10Great advice if you’re already a millionaire.