12 ms·

Minds Turned to Ash: Burnout is more than working too hard

349 points by xhrpost 10y ago

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
erlehmann_ 10y ago
> Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.
- ACow_Adonis 10y ago
  If its worth anything, you only need to whitelist www.1843magazine.com. The rest can all be blocked and it works fine.
  - stewbrew 10y ago
    It's a usability failure to not display anything when JS is turned off -- it's also a testimonial of the sad state today's WWW is in. IMHO its a valid complaint in a community a large part of which is devoted to the development of web-based apps. I don't think the OP asked for a workaround.
- ashitlerferad 10y ago
  Not if you turn off CSS too.
- draven 10y ago
  Try uMatrix instead of NoScript, it allows first-party js by default if the domain is not black-listed. I've found that to be a great compromise.
bpchaps 10y ago
My experience with burnout is that it's almost identical to worry, with a sense of not feeling "good enough". I've had the feeling of burnout from being the sole sysadmin and devops at an HFT firm. An identical feeling happened during a streak of rational paranoia (I discussed it with my doc who agreed that it was rational, fwiw) during the final and post stages of a lawsuit for Chicago's mayor's phone records. The not-feeling-good enough there came from having to constantly convince others that the work was worth it. Burnout sucks, but the more near-overwhelming work I get into, the more I realize how complicated it really is. That comes with learning to avoid it, though.
b34r 10y ago
Avoiding burnout is about setting boundaries for both yourself and your coworkers to avoid unhealthy expectations. If your job _expects_ you to work more than 50 hours a week max, you need to have a talk with the relevant manager. It's a two way street though, because you must also be willing to limit your own involvement and not go overboard working if you have a type A personality.
rrecuero 10y ago
I definitely experienced this at the last stages of my first startup. In my opinion, your own psychology is probably the hardest thing to manage. Ben Horowitz refers to this stage as The Struggle. He talks about how when you start your company you do it with a clear vision of how success looks like. You are going to create an amazing company with the smartest people, build a great product and make the world a bit better. After working day and night, you realize things are not going as planned. The market isn't quite what you thought it would be. Your employees are losing confidence, some are quitting. You are running low on cash. You lose a loyal customer and walls start closing in and you find yourself in the struggle. The struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. When you are in the struggle nothing is easy and nothing feels right.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
paulvs 10y ago
> limitless choice debilitates far more than it liberates This, is one of the main sources of time waste and stress in everyday life. Take choosing a car insurance policy, each insurer will provide many options with only minor or irrelevant differences, making comparing competing offers hard. Look at foodstuffs in supermarkets, many times, packaging will come in a many different sizes in many different brands, leaving comparison a challenge. I admire what some supermarkets in Australia did when they introduced info on price per 100g for all weighable items.
- lobotryas 10y ago
  Don't even get me started on electronics when it comes to the overabundance of choice. I only buy Apple laptops now specifically because the choice is so limited and I can be sure that I'm getting "the best" laptop. Right now I'm trying to actively force myself to make more choices during my downtime. Where do I want to go? Where do I want to eat? What do I want to do? It's tough going sometimes given the overabundance of options and information. However the feeling that you know you are doing something because that's what you want is worth it. Don't know how much others can empathize with this post. I'll say that the article hit me incredibly hard and I already ordered a print of "Melancholy I" to hang in my office.
  - dilemma 10y ago
    >Don't even get me started on electronics when it comes to the overabundance of choice. I only buy Apple laptops now specifically because the choice is so limited and I can be sure that I'm getting "the best" laptop. A large part of Apple's success is that they've made it so easy to buy. Until recently there was only on phone, and you know exactly when the new model would come out. Other brands, including Samsung though they've gotten better, are a mess and make decision making very difficult.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
    - simplemath 10y ago
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
freetime 10y ago
Whenever I hear stories about people regularly putting in 80+ hour weeks it just blows my mind. I could never do that, and the mere thought of it is almost enough to send me into a spiral of depression. For anyone who currently finds themselves in that situation: if you are in love with your work and happy with your lifestyle, then good for you. The world needs smart, dedicated people. But if you're feeling burnt out or otherwise unhappy with the hours: know that there tons of interesting and well paying jobs out there that don't demand such crazy hours. - SF Bay Area Software Engineer working 40 hrs a week... often less.
- lobotryas 10y ago
  Not all people work long hours because that's the role they ended up with or they feel they "have to". I work more than 40 hours a week as an escape from other tasks and problems in life (similar to how people use alcohol, food or gaming for that purpose).
  - Sharlin 10y ago
    That's not... extremely healthy either.
  - cgriswald 10y ago
    My ex-wife worked long hours because she always wanted the acceptance of everyone. It cost her a marriage, a job, and ultimately, I think it will cost her the respect of our child. Anyone who is motivated to work long hours for the wrong reasons is doomed to pay a heavy cost.
    - chronic81 10y ago
      She sounds like my kind of woman. Where can I find her? I have a disdain for average 40 hour/week workers. (to 9-5 workers about to comment: there are plenty of people on earth, I can easily skip you and move onto the next one)
  - freetime2 10y ago
    Honestly in comparison to other options - working too hard is probably a much better form escapism than most. Earning money, producing things that other people need, developing relationships with coworkers are all positive things. And to be fair - there are plenty of people who attack their leisure pursuits with the same level of unhealthy obsession that workaholics bring to their job. Ultra-marathon runners for example. (Apologies to any actual ultra-marathon runners who might read this... I don't actually presume to know whether your level of commitment to your hobby is healthy or not, and would be interested to hear any opinions on matter).
dnautics 10y ago
Why do I find so few hypothesis driven experiments on this subject?
- tedks 10y ago
  Burnout isn't interesting to organizational psychologists because it was relatively well-understood in 90s. There's only so much you can study in this space and all the low-hanging fruit is gone. It's still a popular topic for some, but the reason you don't see the actual research is probably because you expect it to be covered in blogs. Go to a university library, get on the wifi, and download some proceedings of organizational and cognitive psychology journals.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    Or Google Scholar + Sci-Hub. Seriously, for any research, an absolute godsend. Thank you, Alexandra.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    using google scholar, I don't see any hypothesis-driven research, just clinical accounts and non-hypothesis-based psychology. This is probably the closest. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3796712/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3796712/
    - infinite8s 10y ago
      Hypothesis driven psychology is tough to perform because of the difficulty of controlling external factors.
    - tedks 10y ago
      Well, it isn't the 70's anymore, even if you had an IRB that would let you induce burnout in a randomly assigned experiment you couldn't publish it. I don't see how the study you linked is "hypothesis-based," exactly; it's just an imaging study and thus is likely wrong because of the fMRI bug.
eliboy 10y ago
I'd recommend the book "The Truth About Burnout" [0]. It talks about 6 sources of burnout: work overload, lack of control, insufficient reward, breakdown of community, absence of fairness and conflicting values. For a long time I had burnout (or only a beginning). After a while, I suspected I might be burned out and it might be because of hard work, I work part-time and go to school too. It don't think it helped now that summer has come and I don't go to school, so I read the book. I think it's because lack of control, absence of fairness, conflicting values and insufficient reward. Note that it doesn't have to be true, it's enough for you to feel unpaid, that you don't have control, etc. [0] - https://amzn.com/1118692136 https://amzn.com/1118692136
- microcolonel 10y ago
  Fitting 100% of those contributing factors; I feel suitably burnt out.
  - visarga 10y ago
    I read the list of burnout symptoms and that makes me think: maybe this problem could also be considered from the perspective of Reinforcement Learning, as it is applied in AI. In RL, there has to be a balance between exploration and exploitation. Burnout seems to be a condition where exploitation is prioritized too much over exploration. It is true that in exploration there is no guarantee that a better reward will be found, but unless we explore, it's much harder to get to learn anything new and cut our future options. Our sorely missing downtime is exploration time, random choice time, free of expectations, liberated from the need to always make the greedy choice. We need more of that in order to explore the space of possibilities that exist beyond our experience. When we cut ourselves from randomness we box ourselves into the small space of known strategies, and burnout is just a negative reward signal to let us know we are being suboptimal even as we strive so much to excel.
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      Can't too much exploration results in exhaustion too ? A drownout...
thinkloop 10y ago
There's a weird pride in working long hours. I see it a lot in nyc, and when I hear it I always wonder what combination of stimulus were able to generate that willful want of it. I prefer to calculate and maximize dollars per hour. If you're working a lot, then at least have it be at a high hourly rate.
- TuringNYC 10y ago
  I worked at Goldman Sachs for one year and saw this a lot. People even put bottles of Paxil on their desk, as if depression was sign of commitment to the job. A large percent of these people were working at the firm for other people's approval. I left, quickly. Not only did I work at lot less at my next job, a hedge fund, but I found a set of people that liked to work and get the heck out. Everyone had other things they were doing after work, whether it was socializing or coaching baseball or open source projects. Burnout includes context. People at Goldman Sachs were burnt out often, because for most, the premise of working there was irrational. People at my next job were working just as much but it was more meaningful and for the right reasons, so I saw little burnout.
- sotojuan 10y ago
  I've had experiences like these at tech companies (long hours + expected to work on the weekends). No thanks. I'm glad my current NYC employer doesn't ask any more than 40 hours. But yeah, finance is another scary world.
- rwallace 10y ago
  It's past time this was said: we need to start shaming people who voluntarily work long hours. Not those for whom the alternative is unemployment, of course; they are victims to be pitied. But those who work long hours when they could have chosen otherwise, are harming not only themselves and their employers, but everyone who has to interact with the economy, which means pretty much everyone. That behavior needs to stop being considered socially acceptable.
  - dasmoth 10y ago
    I get what you're saying, but it seems pretty dictatorial. Would you apply it to startup founds? Lone inventors tinkering in their basements? Musicians practising to be the best? It would seem to exclude trades like "work hard for 10 years with a reasonable hope of stashing way enough to retire", which are probably rational for some (60 hours/week of wage labour may be bad, but 40 isn't exactly wonderful either).
cyberferret 10y ago
Having skirted around the edge, and been through burnout several times, I urge especially solo entrepreneurs to set up a support group with other colleagues, friends or family to keep watch on their mood and performance. It is all too easy too rationalise some of the symptoms of burnout as @eliboy stated in this thread as being 'other things' and ignoring the bigger picture. For example, if you are feeling tired and sad, is it depression or early onset burnout, or are you just suffering lack of sleep? Or just dehydration? Or is it because you had a late night out a couple of days ago? Left to your own devices (especially when you are already burning out), it is all too easy to diagnose it as the latter causes, especially as your reasoning ability will be diminished. Many times I have felt overwhelmed to the point of paralysis, thinking that it was because I couldn't say "No" to new projects, but it ended up being pure burnout. Oh, and the frequent 'cure' for burnout from many of my colleagues is to force me to take a break and do nothing for a while. That actually makes it worse for me. I find that my best solution for burnout is to actually WORK HARD at another passion of mine - for example, If programming gets me down, I will go off and learn a fiendishly difficult piece on classical guitar instead. Others are horrified that I am putting my brain through more gruelling stress, but I find that thinking about music rather than programming for a while tends to help me feel creative and refreshed again.
- orthoganol 10y ago
  > if you are feeling tired and sad, is it depression or early onset burnout, or are you just suffering lack of sleep? Or maybe you're just not that into working in tech, and you're only doing it because x,y,z circumstance 'pushed' you into it when you were younger. There's nothing wrong with career change, doing something different with your life, if you feel like programming or startups or whatever might be making you miserable.
  - cyberferret 10y ago
    No, actually I LOVE programming and creating new stuff with software too. Sometimes the cure for impending burnout for me is just to start another quick side project. I did that recently. Spent 4 months single handedly building a SaaS HR app, and when I felt myself losing my energy, I spent a weekend writing a small & simple side app project that integrates with the main app. It worked in that I felt re-energised to tackle the main app again after that. There are days though, that I cannot bear to even look at a computer screen at all, and those days, I take up my guitar or another activity to focus my passion on...
SFJulie 10y ago
Burn out also looks like the effect of a constant bullying. I mean, I have a wife, I work 9~16h paid 8 for 70$ I can't enjoy her on week end, nor the sun. It was the same when I was a coder except I was earning more money. In society it has become common to forget about punch clocks. The limit between a safe haven you can protect yourself and mend your mind has been constantly shrinking: commutation, seminar, social events, excessive work hours, extra load (like being a sysadmin when you code or repairing unsafe truck when you are a mover) ... I dare say: «burn out» is just the medicalisation of a social problem. In the worst of European glory and exploitation scheme USA used to abhor but are now embracing there used to be something called «professional fatigue». This «fatigue» disappeared after the social struggle and the imposition of effective decent work hours. Burn-out is just a pitiful way for employers to blame workers for the result of their actions on which they don't want to take responsibilities. It is a counter productive management harming globally the society as much as jails are breaking humans. Have you tried to ask at your job a strict workhours compensation? Your job will laugh at you. Oh, I already can guess there are some exceptions out there that will answer I live in a world they don't see. But, how much of you when counting commuting, extra activities work related (like reading news to stay up to date, going to user groups), reading mails do actually have less than 48hr/week that are work related?
brador 10y ago
Is it possible that the solution to working hard is acquiring resources so you can stop working hard and this is done by working hard? Hence, creating a loop. IMO Burnout is a loop spiralling out of control. Solution is a break out of the loop. But how? Mass acquisition of resources?
- hehheh 10y ago
  Pretty much. I'm saving up for an early retirement which, for me, means "do similar work (softdev) but at my own pace and only for as long as I feel it the project is viable."
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  Take a vacation regularly
- xamluser 10y ago
  It's actually the exact opposite. Mindfulness and not wanting things.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- sixtypoundhound 10y ago
  Preservation of agency. Know why you are there, what you want to accomplish, and what you are willing to do to accomplish it. And remember you have the option to walk away if your goals aren't met. The latter is key - making a reasonable CHOICE to be in the situation is a big step towards making it bearable.
sklivvz1971 10y ago
Can someone please summarize the 3000+ words down to a paragraph? Overly prolix articles make my mind turn to ash too!
- caseymarquis 10y ago
  Haiku: People work too much. Why. Underdeveloped self. Know oneself or burn.
plg 10y ago
what font is used for the main text?
- avacariu 10y ago
  Milo Serif Pro
bernardlunn 10y ago
I find small breaks throughout the day are best. Can be 5 mins or 30 mins. Grab it when you can and return refreshed. Or just switch tasks. The idea of recovering after all day - let alone months - is a big trap. Easier if you love your work as I am fortunate enough to do.
sverige 10y ago
This reminded me of a couple of very bad times in my life where I was caught in that awful loop of being unable to meet all the demands on my life and feeling that it would be impossible to not continue to try to go on anyway. It's strange in retrospect how liberating divorce, unemployment, bankruptcy, and foreclosure can be. Don't get me wrong: going through all that absolutely sucked, and I wouldn't want to do it again. There were a few times when I genuinely went hungry and had no place to stay. But having survived it, I no longer feel any need to keep up appearances or have the latest gadget or have a lot of stuff at all. A lot of the pressure I used to feel is simply gone because I don't give a shit what other people think about my life any more. (Well, I care about what my wife (same one, we are back together) and daughter think, but that's it.) I especially liked the references to ancient descriptions of the condition. It's nothing new.
- aswanson 10y ago
  Been through similiar experiences, with same outcome. You just learn not to give a fuck about bullshit. You don't have enough energy for it.
  - mlvljr 10y ago
    If you make it. If it effs you up, then things go a much scarier way.
    - tripzilch 10y ago
      Yup if I had lived in the US, I'd probably be dead. "Crazy" > homeless > addiction > burning bridges > dead. I probably wouldn't have been part of the survivor bias on the streets.
- Shank 10y ago
  So many comments like this usually end in sorrow. It's somewhat reassuring and human to hear that you're back together with your wife and helping raise your daughter again. It sounds like going through those things led to a better overall ending than trying to forge ahead in the first place. It's great to hear you pulled through.
kaitai 10y ago
Tying together a few comments I'm seeing here (farms, meditation, electronic device & information overload), I'll bring out the importance of nature. Some ideas: if you like running, try trail running do find a friend with a farm or garden and spend some time working there weekend camping is often possible, whether in desert or forest, and sometimes it's easy to make it a 3-4 day trip. if you really need something hard that's not programming, push your physical boundaries a little on the hike. Nothing to clear and focus the mind like "it's 5 pm, the sun sets in an hour, bad weather is coming in, we have 4 kilometers of canoeing until we get to the campsite and then we need to set up the tent!" Maybe I shouldn't really "recommend" this as any good wilderness type will have tried to avoid this situation. I just took a long trip to the countryside and the lack of nature even in my tree-filled neighborhood was a shock when returning. And you can learn a lot from observing nature: trees just grow, animals do what they do; in their environment they don't fight their own nature and try to do something else.
tripzilch 10y ago
To anyone suffering from ACTUAL long-term burnout, in the sense that a "Mind turned to ash" doesn't sound like hyperbole at all, and trying to recover: Do NOT bother with this article. Save yourself the emotional drain (maybe go outside for a bit ;) ) It contains NO actionable advice, just a few anonymised stories, some academic and pop-psych ideas. Also conspicuously absent is any mention of these patients' recovery or future. Maybe this article does serve as a nice warning for those heading towards burnout. I wrote the above, to help others already suffering. As a warning it's way too long for the crowd that is too busy working too many hours. Now trust me you can get it from working as little as 16h/wk! If that sounds like you--best of luck. Yes the stories are so recognizable. Especially when he contrasted the first story with the second because the first one hit most of the main factors and then got convoluted with a whole bunch of other psychodevelopmental factors that the second story demonstrated have nothing to do with burnout. The article could have been about 1/3rd it's length and I'm a bit bummed about this. Normally I wouldn't complain about that but this guy is a psychiatrist and I truly wonder what he was trying to achieve with this article, if it is anything besides self-promotion he would have written a disclaimer like above as a summary to help sufferers. Myself, burnt out in 2007. Never got better. I don't actually want to read anonymized burnout-stories. It's an emotional drain with no reward (I'll page through a few in this thread, because this burnt-out husk of my former self is compassionate). I read it on the off-chance that maybe it'd contain some info or idea that I haven't tried in the past 9 years. So, that was my mental energy for the day. I don't have answers either, but maybe some ehrm, burnout pro-tips. The web is full of stories to serve as warnings before burnout, but hardly anything for after, especially for sufferers where a few months rest just does not cut it. So here's a few things, maybe it'll help someone: - Meditation is really nice. Maybe even more important was finding a group to do it with[0], it adds a dimension, mine are the kindest people I know in the world, and it helps motivate to do it daily . For mindfulness meditation, I found I need at least 2-3 sessions/week, for the exercise to carry on outside the actual moments of practising it. Apart from sitting, occasionally try a walking meditation (look it up) just like with physical exercise, changing up the practice helps if/when you get stuck. And don't forget there's more kinds besides mindfulness. One that is quite orthogonal to mindfulness is compassion meditation or "metta" meditation[1]. - Physical exercise is also really nice. I like running. I only found out I'm actually good at sports during the first half year of acute symptoms when I literally couldn't use a computer for more than 10 minutes. I used to do strength exercises too (various pullups mainly), liked the results but the exercises carried that scary burning feel in it. Maybe you're different, try it because I hear that stuff is really healthy :) Figure out what's nice for you. - Something creative that gets you (even just sometimes) into flow. I like drawing and singing. If you play a live instrument that's probably good too. Unfortunately for me, computer programming doesn't quite fit this category any more. Not even democoding :'-( I still do it anyway because I really really want to and my creativity wants to get out and some things you can only express in code. - Keeping a positive attitude is probably the hardest but it's also nice. I'm not sure if the start of this post is a good example but that came from the heart and I hope the tips make up for it :) These are nice things to do when you can't do anything else. I also do volunteer work and teaching kids my otherwise-wasted years of studying computer science, but I don't know if that is for everyone. Other people I know really enjoy working with elderly people, providing company and hearing their stories etc. they love it but don't understand why I like working with kids and vice versa. To each their own :) [0] try http://wkup.org http://wkup.org or http://reddit.com/r/meditation http://reddit.com/r/meditation (the sidebar) to find a meditation group in your area (sometimes called "sangha") [1] if you always practiced both you might think "what, no, they're two sides of the same coin" and you'd be right--for you. because if you've only ever practiced mindfulness, you're in for a treat! you're one of today's lucky 10,000 ;-) (https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/) [2] I like to end on a positive note so I'm hiding this bit in the unreferenced footnote. Ahem. Seriously, fuck this author. The link below the linked article from the same author, "The way out of burnout" would hopefully get flagged for misleading title on HN. I had to page through it because I can't read more of this drivel in detail, but again no actionable advice; "less severe cases of burnout" are advised to take action to avoid actual burnout (great) and actual cases of burnout are advised that this no longer works for them (whoa, my mind is blown, like the ashes in the Lebowski movie)

349 points by xhrpost 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

erlehmann_ 10y ago

> Sorry, you need to enable JavaScript to visit this website.

ACow_Adonis 10y ago
If its worth anything, you only need to whitelist www.1843magazine.com. The rest can all be blocked and it works fine.
- stewbrew 10y ago
  It's a usability failure to not display anything when JS is turned off -- it's also a testimonial of the sad state today's WWW is in. IMHO its a valid complaint in a community a large part of which is devoted to the development of web-based apps. I don't think the OP asked for a workaround.
ashitlerferad 10y ago
Not if you turn off CSS too.
draven 10y ago
Try uMatrix instead of NoScript, it allows first-party js by default if the domain is not black-listed. I've found that to be a great compromise.

bpchaps 10y ago

My experience with burnout is that it's almost identical to worry, with a sense of not feeling "good enough". I've had the feeling of burnout from being the sole sysadmin and devops at an HFT firm. An identical feeling happened during a streak of rational paranoia (I discussed it with my doc who agreed that it was rational, fwiw) during the final and post stages of a lawsuit for Chicago's mayor's phone records. The not-feeling-good enough there came from having to constantly convince others that the work was worth it. Burnout sucks, but the more near-overwhelming work I get into, the more I realize how complicated it really is. That comes with learning to avoid it, though.

b34r 10y ago

Avoiding burnout is about setting boundaries for both yourself and your coworkers to avoid unhealthy expectations. If your job _expects_ you to work more than 50 hours a week max, you need to have a talk with the relevant manager. It's a two way street though, because you must also be willing to limit your own involvement and not go overboard working if you have a type A personality.

rrecuero 10y ago

I definitely experienced this at the last stages of my first startup. In my opinion, your own psychology is probably the hardest thing to manage. Ben Horowitz refers to this stage as The Struggle. He talks about how when you start your company you do it with a clear vision of how success looks like. You are going to create an amazing company with the smartest people, build a great product and make the world a bit better. After working day and night, you realize things are not going as planned. The market isn't quite what you thought it would be. Your employees are losing confidence, some are quitting. You are running low on cash. You lose a loyal customer and walls start closing in and you find yourself in the struggle. The struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place. When you are in the struggle nothing is easy and nothing feels right.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

paulvs 10y ago

> limitless choice debilitates far more than it liberates This, is one of the main sources of time waste and stress in everyday life. Take choosing a car insurance policy, each insurer will provide many options with only minor or irrelevant differences, making comparing competing offers hard. Look at foodstuffs in supermarkets, many times, packaging will come in a many different sizes in many different brands, leaving comparison a challenge. I admire what some supermarkets in Australia did when they introduced info on price per 100g for all weighable items.

lobotryas 10y ago
Don't even get me started on electronics when it comes to the overabundance of choice. I only buy Apple laptops now specifically because the choice is so limited and I can be sure that I'm getting "the best" laptop. Right now I'm trying to actively force myself to make more choices during my downtime. Where do I want to go? Where do I want to eat? What do I want to do? It's tough going sometimes given the overabundance of options and information. However the feeling that you know you are doing something because that's what you want is worth it. Don't know how much others can empathize with this post. I'll say that the article hit me incredibly hard and I already ordered a print of "Melancholy I" to hang in my office.
- dilemma 10y ago
  >Don't even get me started on electronics when it comes to the overabundance of choice. I only buy Apple laptops now specifically because the choice is so limited and I can be sure that I'm getting "the best" laptop. A large part of Apple's success is that they've made it so easy to buy. Until recently there was only on phone, and you know exactly when the new model would come out. Other brands, including Samsung though they've gotten better, are a mess and make decision making very difficult.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - simplemath 10y ago

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

freetime 10y ago

Whenever I hear stories about people regularly putting in 80+ hour weeks it just blows my mind. I could never do that, and the mere thought of it is almost enough to send me into a spiral of depression. For anyone who currently finds themselves in that situation: if you are in love with your work and happy with your lifestyle, then good for you. The world needs smart, dedicated people. But if you're feeling burnt out or otherwise unhappy with the hours: know that there tons of interesting and well paying jobs out there that don't demand such crazy hours. - SF Bay Area Software Engineer working 40 hrs a week... often less.

lobotryas 10y ago
Not all people work long hours because that's the role they ended up with or they feel they "have to". I work more than 40 hours a week as an escape from other tasks and problems in life (similar to how people use alcohol, food or gaming for that purpose).
- Sharlin 10y ago
  That's not... extremely healthy either.
- cgriswald 10y ago
  My ex-wife worked long hours because she always wanted the acceptance of everyone. It cost her a marriage, a job, and ultimately, I think it will cost her the respect of our child. Anyone who is motivated to work long hours for the wrong reasons is doomed to pay a heavy cost.
  - chronic81 10y ago
    She sounds like my kind of woman. Where can I find her? I have a disdain for average 40 hour/week workers. (to 9-5 workers about to comment: there are plenty of people on earth, I can easily skip you and move onto the next one)
- freetime2 10y ago
  Honestly in comparison to other options - working too hard is probably a much better form escapism than most. Earning money, producing things that other people need, developing relationships with coworkers are all positive things. And to be fair - there are plenty of people who attack their leisure pursuits with the same level of unhealthy obsession that workaholics bring to their job. Ultra-marathon runners for example. (Apologies to any actual ultra-marathon runners who might read this... I don't actually presume to know whether your level of commitment to your hobby is healthy or not, and would be interested to hear any opinions on matter).

dnautics 10y ago

Why do I find so few hypothesis driven experiments on this subject?

tedks 10y ago
Burnout isn't interesting to organizational psychologists because it was relatively well-understood in 90s. There's only so much you can study in this space and all the low-hanging fruit is gone. It's still a popular topic for some, but the reason you don't see the actual research is probably because you expect it to be covered in blogs. Go to a university library, get on the wifi, and download some proceedings of organizational and cognitive psychology journals.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  Or Google Scholar + Sci-Hub. Seriously, for any research, an absolute godsend. Thank you, Alexandra.
- dnautics 10y ago
  using google scholar, I don't see any hypothesis-driven research, just clinical accounts and non-hypothesis-based psychology. This is probably the closest. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3796712/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3796712/
  - infinite8s 10y ago
    Hypothesis driven psychology is tough to perform because of the difficulty of controlling external factors.
  - tedks 10y ago
    Well, it isn't the 70's anymore, even if you had an IRB that would let you induce burnout in a randomly assigned experiment you couldn't publish it. I don't see how the study you linked is "hypothesis-based," exactly; it's just an imaging study and thus is likely wrong because of the fMRI bug.

eliboy 10y ago

I'd recommend the book "The Truth About Burnout" [0]. It talks about 6 sources of burnout: work overload, lack of control, insufficient reward, breakdown of community, absence of fairness and conflicting values. For a long time I had burnout (or only a beginning). After a while, I suspected I might be burned out and it might be because of hard work, I work part-time and go to school too. It don't think it helped now that summer has come and I don't go to school, so I read the book. I think it's because lack of control, absence of fairness, conflicting values and insufficient reward. Note that it doesn't have to be true, it's enough for you to feel unpaid, that you don't have control, etc. [0] - https://amzn.com/1118692136 https://amzn.com/1118692136

microcolonel 10y ago
Fitting 100% of those contributing factors; I feel suitably burnt out.
- visarga 10y ago
  I read the list of burnout symptoms and that makes me think: maybe this problem could also be considered from the perspective of Reinforcement Learning, as it is applied in AI. In RL, there has to be a balance between exploration and exploitation. Burnout seems to be a condition where exploitation is prioritized too much over exploration. It is true that in exploration there is no guarantee that a better reward will be found, but unless we explore, it's much harder to get to learn anything new and cut our future options. Our sorely missing downtime is exploration time, random choice time, free of expectations, liberated from the need to always make the greedy choice. We need more of that in order to explore the space of possibilities that exist beyond our experience. When we cut ourselves from randomness we box ourselves into the small space of known strategies, and burnout is just a negative reward signal to let us know we are being suboptimal even as we strive so much to excel.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    Can't too much exploration results in exhaustion too ? A drownout...

thinkloop 10y ago

There's a weird pride in working long hours. I see it a lot in nyc, and when I hear it I always wonder what combination of stimulus were able to generate that willful want of it. I prefer to calculate and maximize dollars per hour. If you're working a lot, then at least have it be at a high hourly rate.

TuringNYC 10y ago
I worked at Goldman Sachs for one year and saw this a lot. People even put bottles of Paxil on their desk, as if depression was sign of commitment to the job. A large percent of these people were working at the firm for other people's approval. I left, quickly. Not only did I work at lot less at my next job, a hedge fund, but I found a set of people that liked to work and get the heck out. Everyone had other things they were doing after work, whether it was socializing or coaching baseball or open source projects. Burnout includes context. People at Goldman Sachs were burnt out often, because for most, the premise of working there was irrational. People at my next job were working just as much but it was more meaningful and for the right reasons, so I saw little burnout.
sotojuan 10y ago
I've had experiences like these at tech companies (long hours + expected to work on the weekends). No thanks. I'm glad my current NYC employer doesn't ask any more than 40 hours. But yeah, finance is another scary world.
rwallace 10y ago
It's past time this was said: we need to start shaming people who voluntarily work long hours. Not those for whom the alternative is unemployment, of course; they are victims to be pitied. But those who work long hours when they could have chosen otherwise, are harming not only themselves and their employers, but everyone who has to interact with the economy, which means pretty much everyone. That behavior needs to stop being considered socially acceptable.
- dasmoth 10y ago
  I get what you're saying, but it seems pretty dictatorial. Would you apply it to startup founds? Lone inventors tinkering in their basements? Musicians practising to be the best? It would seem to exclude trades like "work hard for 10 years with a reasonable hope of stashing way enough to retire", which are probably rational for some (60 hours/week of wage labour may be bad, but 40 isn't exactly wonderful either).

cyberferret 10y ago

Having skirted around the edge, and been through burnout several times, I urge especially solo entrepreneurs to set up a support group with other colleagues, friends or family to keep watch on their mood and performance. It is all too easy too rationalise some of the symptoms of burnout as @eliboy stated in this thread as being 'other things' and ignoring the bigger picture. For example, if you are feeling tired and sad, is it depression or early onset burnout, or are you just suffering lack of sleep? Or just dehydration? Or is it because you had a late night out a couple of days ago? Left to your own devices (especially when you are already burning out), it is all too easy to diagnose it as the latter causes, especially as your reasoning ability will be diminished. Many times I have felt overwhelmed to the point of paralysis, thinking that it was because I couldn't say "No" to new projects, but it ended up being pure burnout. Oh, and the frequent 'cure' for burnout from many of my colleagues is to force me to take a break and do nothing for a while. That actually makes it worse for me. I find that my best solution for burnout is to actually WORK HARD at another passion of mine - for example, If programming gets me down, I will go off and learn a fiendishly difficult piece on classical guitar instead. Others are horrified that I am putting my brain through more gruelling stress, but I find that thinking about music rather than programming for a while tends to help me feel creative and refreshed again.

orthoganol 10y ago
> if you are feeling tired and sad, is it depression or early onset burnout, or are you just suffering lack of sleep? Or maybe you're just not that into working in tech, and you're only doing it because x,y,z circumstance 'pushed' you into it when you were younger. There's nothing wrong with career change, doing something different with your life, if you feel like programming or startups or whatever might be making you miserable.
- cyberferret 10y ago
  No, actually I LOVE programming and creating new stuff with software too. Sometimes the cure for impending burnout for me is just to start another quick side project. I did that recently. Spent 4 months single handedly building a SaaS HR app, and when I felt myself losing my energy, I spent a weekend writing a small & simple side app project that integrates with the main app. It worked in that I felt re-energised to tackle the main app again after that. There are days though, that I cannot bear to even look at a computer screen at all, and those days, I take up my guitar or another activity to focus my passion on...

SFJulie 10y ago

Burn out also looks like the effect of a constant bullying. I mean, I have a wife, I work 9~16h paid 8 for 70$ I can't enjoy her on week end, nor the sun. It was the same when I was a coder except I was earning more money. In society it has become common to forget about punch clocks. The limit between a safe haven you can protect yourself and mend your mind has been constantly shrinking: commutation, seminar, social events, excessive work hours, extra load (like being a sysadmin when you code or repairing unsafe truck when you are a mover) ... I dare say: «burn out» is just the medicalisation of a social problem. In the worst of European glory and exploitation scheme USA used to abhor but are now embracing there used to be something called «professional fatigue». This «fatigue» disappeared after the social struggle and the imposition of effective decent work hours. Burn-out is just a pitiful way for employers to blame workers for the result of their actions on which they don't want to take responsibilities. It is a counter productive management harming globally the society as much as jails are breaking humans. Have you tried to ask at your job a strict workhours compensation? Your job will laugh at you. Oh, I already can guess there are some exceptions out there that will answer I live in a world they don't see. But, how much of you when counting commuting, extra activities work related (like reading news to stay up to date, going to user groups), reading mails do actually have less than 48hr/week that are work related?

brador 10y ago

Is it possible that the solution to working hard is acquiring resources so you can stop working hard and this is done by working hard? Hence, creating a loop. IMO Burnout is a loop spiralling out of control. Solution is a break out of the loop. But how? Mass acquisition of resources?

hehheh 10y ago
Pretty much. I'm saving up for an early retirement which, for me, means "do similar work (softdev) but at my own pace and only for as long as I feel it the project is viable."
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
Take a vacation regularly
xamluser 10y ago
It's actually the exact opposite. Mindfulness and not wanting things.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
sixtypoundhound 10y ago
Preservation of agency. Know why you are there, what you want to accomplish, and what you are willing to do to accomplish it. And remember you have the option to walk away if your goals aren't met. The latter is key - making a reasonable CHOICE to be in the situation is a big step towards making it bearable.

sklivvz1971 10y ago

Can someone please summarize the 3000+ words down to a paragraph? Overly prolix articles make my mind turn to ash too!

caseymarquis 10y ago
Haiku: People work too much. Why. Underdeveloped self. Know oneself or burn.

plg 10y ago

what font is used for the main text?

avacariu 10y ago
Milo Serif Pro

bernardlunn 10y ago

I find small breaks throughout the day are best. Can be 5 mins or 30 mins. Grab it when you can and return refreshed. Or just switch tasks. The idea of recovering after all day - let alone months - is a big trap. Easier if you love your work as I am fortunate enough to do.

sverige 10y ago

This reminded me of a couple of very bad times in my life where I was caught in that awful loop of being unable to meet all the demands on my life and feeling that it would be impossible to not continue to try to go on anyway. It's strange in retrospect how liberating divorce, unemployment, bankruptcy, and foreclosure can be. Don't get me wrong: going through all that absolutely sucked, and I wouldn't want to do it again. There were a few times when I genuinely went hungry and had no place to stay. But having survived it, I no longer feel any need to keep up appearances or have the latest gadget or have a lot of stuff at all. A lot of the pressure I used to feel is simply gone because I don't give a shit what other people think about my life any more. (Well, I care about what my wife (same one, we are back together) and daughter think, but that's it.) I especially liked the references to ancient descriptions of the condition. It's nothing new.

aswanson 10y ago
Been through similiar experiences, with same outcome. You just learn not to give a fuck about bullshit. You don't have enough energy for it.
- mlvljr 10y ago
  If you make it. If it effs you up, then things go a much scarier way.
  - tripzilch 10y ago
    Yup if I had lived in the US, I'd probably be dead. "Crazy" > homeless > addiction > burning bridges > dead. I probably wouldn't have been part of the survivor bias on the streets.
Shank 10y ago
So many comments like this usually end in sorrow. It's somewhat reassuring and human to hear that you're back together with your wife and helping raise your daughter again. It sounds like going through those things led to a better overall ending than trying to forge ahead in the first place. It's great to hear you pulled through.

kaitai 10y ago

Tying together a few comments I'm seeing here (farms, meditation, electronic device & information overload), I'll bring out the importance of nature. Some ideas: if you like running, try trail running do find a friend with a farm or garden and spend some time working there weekend camping is often possible, whether in desert or forest, and sometimes it's easy to make it a 3-4 day trip. if you really need something hard that's not programming, push your physical boundaries a little on the hike. Nothing to clear and focus the mind like "it's 5 pm, the sun sets in an hour, bad weather is coming in, we have 4 kilometers of canoeing until we get to the campsite and then we need to set up the tent!" Maybe I shouldn't really "recommend" this as any good wilderness type will have tried to avoid this situation. I just took a long trip to the countryside and the lack of nature even in my tree-filled neighborhood was a shock when returning. And you can learn a lot from observing nature: trees just grow, animals do what they do; in their environment they don't fight their own nature and try to do something else.

tripzilch 10y ago

To anyone suffering from ACTUAL long-term burnout, in the sense that a "Mind turned to ash" doesn't sound like hyperbole at all, and trying to recover: Do NOT bother with this article. Save yourself the emotional drain (maybe go outside for a bit ;) ) It contains NO actionable advice, just a few anonymised stories, some academic and pop-psych ideas. Also conspicuously absent is any mention of these patients' recovery or future. Maybe this article does serve as a nice warning for those heading towards burnout. I wrote the above, to help others already suffering. As a warning it's way too long for the crowd that is too busy working too many hours. Now trust me you can get it from working as little as 16h/wk! If that sounds like you--best of luck. Yes the stories are so recognizable. Especially when he contrasted the first story with the second because the first one hit most of the main factors and then got convoluted with a whole bunch of other psychodevelopmental factors that the second story demonstrated have nothing to do with burnout. The article could have been about 1/3rd it's length and I'm a bit bummed about this. Normally I wouldn't complain about that but this guy is a psychiatrist and I truly wonder what he was trying to achieve with this article, if it is anything besides self-promotion he would have written a disclaimer like above as a summary to help sufferers. Myself, burnt out in 2007. Never got better. I don't actually want to read anonymized burnout-stories. It's an emotional drain with no reward (I'll page through a few in this thread, because this burnt-out husk of my former self is compassionate). I read it on the off-chance that maybe it'd contain some info or idea that I haven't tried in the past 9 years. So, that was my mental energy for the day. I don't have answers either, but maybe some ehrm, burnout pro-tips. The web is full of stories to serve as warnings before burnout, but hardly anything for after, especially for sufferers where a few months rest just does not cut it. So here's a few things, maybe it'll help someone: - Meditation is really nice. Maybe even more important was finding a group to do it with[0], it adds a dimension, mine are the kindest people I know in the world, and it helps motivate to do it daily . For mindfulness meditation, I found I need at least 2-3 sessions/week, for the exercise to carry on outside the actual moments of practising it. Apart from sitting, occasionally try a walking meditation (look it up) just like with physical exercise, changing up the practice helps if/when you get stuck. And don't forget there's more kinds besides mindfulness. One that is quite orthogonal to mindfulness is compassion meditation or "metta" meditation[1]. - Physical exercise is also really nice. I like running. I only found out I'm actually good at sports during the first half year of acute symptoms when I literally couldn't use a computer for more than 10 minutes. I used to do strength exercises too (various pullups mainly), liked the results but the exercises carried that scary burning feel in it. Maybe you're different, try it because I hear that stuff is really healthy :) Figure out what's nice for you. - Something creative that gets you (even just sometimes) into flow. I like drawing and singing. If you play a live instrument that's probably good too. Unfortunately for me, computer programming doesn't quite fit this category any more. Not even democoding :'-( I still do it anyway because I really really want to and my creativity wants to get out and some things you can only express in code. - Keeping a positive attitude is probably the hardest but it's also nice. I'm not sure if the start of this post is a good example but that came from the heart and I hope the tips make up for it :) These are nice things to do when you can't do anything else. I also do volunteer work and teaching kids my otherwise-wasted years of studying computer science, but I don't know if that is for everyone. Other people I know really enjoy working with elderly people, providing company and hearing their stories etc. they love it but don't understand why I like working with kids and vice versa. To each their own :) [0] try http://wkup.org http://wkup.org or http://reddit.com/r/meditation http://reddit.com/r/meditation (the sidebar) to find a meditation group in your area (sometimes called "sangha") [1] if you always practiced both you might think "what, no, they're two sides of the same coin" and you'd be right--for you. because if you've only ever practiced mindfulness, you're in for a treat! you're one of today's lucky 10,000 ;-) (https://xkcd.com/1053/ https://xkcd.com/1053/) [2] I like to end on a positive note so I'm hiding this bit in the unreferenced footnote. Ahem. Seriously, fuck this author. The link below the linked article from the same author, "The way out of burnout" would hopefully get flagged for misleading title on HN. I had to page through it because I can't read more of this drivel in detail, but again no actionable advice; "less severe cases of burnout" are advised to take action to avoid actual burnout (great) and actual cases of burnout are advised that this no longer works for them (whoa, my mind is blown, like the ashes in the Lebowski movie)