Ask HN: Post Burnout Ideas

I burnt my self out a few years back after spending 3 years working full-time on a startup. Since then I've been working for a FAANG.

One thing I've never really recovered is the passion I had for side projects. Worse than that, I can't actually think of anything worth building, or even tinkering with, which is sad, as spending some of my free time on side projects was something I really enjoyed.

If you've found yourself in a similar position, how have you dealt with it?

Did you ever recover from burnout or just recover enough to continue functioning?

Small steps, little projects that can be done in a few days.

Trying to have fun over getting results.

Maybe getting into some different things that involves new people and subjects.

Picking up other hobbies got me back into software side projects but not as an end in themselves as they used to be (and I'm pretty tired of "learning" new tech at this point -- it's just the same things over and over and over again, usually with even more complexity); rather, I feel compelled to write little pieces of software that vastly improve my experience of the new, interesting hobbies.

Avoid competitiveness and "getting ahead" -- pursue mastery the same way a zen gardener does. It's very enjoyable to be good at useless things.

Was tempted to make a throwaway account for this, but what the hell, burnout is really nothing to be ashamed of.

I'm in a somewhat similar situation to you, but replace the 3 years with 10 years. I had many periods of 'minor' burnout along the way that I ignored or ploughed through, which in hindsight was a pretty big mistake.

Around August last year I just couldn't continue. I wasn't sleeping, I was frequently run down, and I was self-medicating more and more with drugs and alcohol. It eventually got to the point where simply opening my laptop would elicit a fight or flight response.

I was lucky enough to be in a secure enough financial situation to largely take 6 months off. If you're in a position to do this, I highly recommend it.

I uninstalled gmail, slack, etc. from my phone. I considered getting a dumb phone, but settled for turning off push notifications for everything instead. I went away with my girlfriend for a week and left all my tech at home except for my kindle (literally the first time I've been disconnected for more than a couple of days in probably 20 years). I exercised as much as possible and spent time in nature going for walks, etc.

I've been back at it part time for the last few months. Gradually I felt the feelings of burnout being replaced with feelings of boredom, which is hopefully my brain's way of saying that it's starting to repair itself and ready to slowly return to work.

I'm still nowhere near back to peak productivity, but I'm starting to come to terms with the fact that I may never get back there. I'm 36 and probably would have dropped dead of overwork by 50 if I kept up the tempo of the last 10 years anyway.

I'm not 'cured' by any means, but I believe things are slowly getting better.

My advice to you is to be kind and patient with yourself. Try not to stress about not having a side-project, and instead just focus on self-care for a while. Someone posted this on HN a few weeks back and it really hit close to home for me: http://www.robinhobb.com/blog/posts/38429