Burnout
kristinn.ghost.io
Burnout
1–10 of 138 posts
Re: Burnout
#2As someone that has always found many things interesting, boiling it down to only a few things is very hard. Over the past year I've been slowly doing the same. I'm down to spending time with my family, web dev, marketing, and gaming. Choosing between web dev and marketing will be one of the hardest choices I make yet.
Re: Burnout
#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 optimize my life as best I could. This meant cutting out time for food + commuting which were my biggest factors in sucking away time, as well as distractions. I moved about 10 meters from my place of work, and I cook all 7 days worth of food on Sunday nights. Now I can work 7am - 4pm at my day job, then 4:10pm - 11pm I can work on my own side projects. Been doing this for a year now and it's working out great, the revenue I make from my side company is almost level with my salary, then I can quit and truly be free, working entirely under my own vision.
I don't feel like I will ever burn out. I have a list of topics I want to know before I die, and they're sorted by priority. Any time I am distracted, I read a bit from the top item of my list. Now when I'm working and become distracted, my "distraction" is reading material based around the project I'm working on. If I don't want to get back to that material, I choose something else and drag it to the top of my list, I prioritize pretty much my entire life with the "Clear" app.
It's been going great, I'm thinking of writing a very in depth blog post about the way I've optimized my life and how it has helped me out. I've read more than 30 books this year, I have 6 developers working for me full-time, I have learned SO MUCH. I hope to keep going like this for the rest of my natural life.
I rather sacrifice my 20's to live it up in my 30's. I cannot stand wasting any minutes on anything, I don't know when the switch flipped, but at some point, it did. I used to love spending hours on video games or jerking around, now, there is absolutely nothing in this world that I wouldn't give just to buy me some more time. This mentality has engrained itself in my brain now.
I find myself ecstatic if I can make a new hour or free up some time somewhere just so I can read or learn more.
People often compliment me on how motivated and ambitious I am, but honestly, it's just how I am, I don't wake up every morning saying "okay you're going to be motivated today". It just is.
Re: Burnout
#4> 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…
Looking forward to that blog post
Re: Burnout
#5As someone that has always found many things interesting, boiling it down to only a few things is very hard. Over the past year I've been slowly doing the same. I'm down to spending time with my family, web dev, marketing, and gaming. Choosing between web dev and marketing will be one of the hardest choices I make yet.
I do not practice what I preach as effectively as I would want to but the best thing to do is to run them in sprints. In other words, a week worth of coding is complimented by a week of marketing regardless whether you employ people to do work for you or not. The same applies for life in general. You need to mix and match but also not to do too many things at the same time.
Some days you will finish your tasks sooner than you expect. Do not bother starting anything else cuz you will drift into something and then realise that you have almost burned out. Don't do it! Instead let boredom grow on you for a little bit. Getting bored is good for you.
Re: Burnout
#6> I might not be as good today as I would have been if I had kept grinding away.
That is my overriding problem. If I stop, it means possible stagnation. There is no greater fear than becoming irrelevant.
Re: Burnout
#7That's true... but there's also the flip side to the coin.
Finishing things is good; but if you have a project you want to finish, you'll never finish it if you halfheartedly look at it once a week for an hour.
If you spend more than certain amount of time not looking at something or not working on it, you forget how it works and it takes all of that available time you have to get into 'the zone' where you're actually making progress on the task.
So, I guess if you have an amazing forfulling job that is exactly what you're interested in, and you spend your days working on your interesting projects... sure.
I'll be over here with my cup of 10pm coffee and a pile of rust code; blissfully hacking (and reading hacker news while head compiles :).
Re: Burnout
#8> 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…
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.
Re: Burnout
#9That's true... but there's also the flip side to the coin. Finishing things is good; but if you have a project you want to finish, you'll never finish it if you halfheartedly look at it once a week for an hour. If you spend more than certain amount of time not looking at something or not working on it, you forget how it works and it takes all of that available time you have to get into 'the zone' where you're actuall…
If hacking away makes you happy, go for it :) I can only relate my own experiences. I do tend to code for hours on end on whatever catches my interest. The point was trying to make is to relax once in a while :) (Never expected this to reach nr.1 on hacker new, even if it is only for a couple of minutes)
Re: Burnout
#10> 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…
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 never taking breaks. My wife feels like she has to beg me to just go for a walk, or do something "non-productive". I view everythig through the lens of productivity, and barely know how to unwind anymore.
There are experiences I'm missing out on. Outdoor activities -- 20s and 30s are the best years for them. Making friends -- it's well known that this gets harder to do as you get older, and many friends you make when younger will be your friends for decades.
If I could give 20 year old me some advice, it would be to pick something off that list of mine, make my work on it economically sustainable, figure out how to get other people working on it, and live a balanced life.
People like us may be able to do the work of 10 engineers, but if you hire 10 engineers, you'll have an economic engine capable of hiring 10 more. If you have the level of energy I do for solving problems, treat sustainability and scale as a problem to be solved; don't try to implement your entire list yourself.