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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, fr

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...
- tomatsu 10y ago
  As someone who's completely burnt out, I think the whole idea of doing any job 40 hours a week for several decades of your life is super scary. It's too much routine. Too much auto pilot. Too many identical days and weeks which get compressed into nothing. Few new memories will be made. Your life will feel much shorter and uneventful. Doing random blue collar part-time work (I currently work as a gardener) and working on interesting projects in my spare time works much better for me. I can think about my fun project during work, not think about my work when I'm off the clock.
  - james-watson 10y ago
    > Too many identical days and weeks which get compressed into nothing. Few new memories will be made. Your life will feel much shorter and uneventful. It is profound that I'm not the only one who quit a day job because of this exact reason. This is a biological fact. Your brain compresses memories that are too similar down into the smallest size possible. The result is that a year can often feel like a week, with a few memorable weekends and absolutely nothing else. This is utterly frightening, and can feel like you've hit the fast forward button on your life and are careening towards the end.
    - dasmoth 10y ago
      This, I think, is why it's so frustrating when occupations which have historically been fairly flexible and creative start to gain a lot of process and become more formulaic.
  - tripzilch 10y ago
    > As someone who's completely burnt out, I think the whole idea of doing any job 40 hours a week for several decades of your life is super scary. During university I honestly could never imagine myself working more than 20h a week. And this issue was really on my mind, it worried me, I really couldn't imagine how, but whenever I brought this up people always said "you'll get used to it". Nearing the end of my study funding, I took a part-time job programming in an office. Two days, 16 hours per week for two months was enough to wreck me for nearly a decade now. I won't ever trust people that tell me I'll "get used to" anything ever again. I don't know how they do it, I guess I'm just a different species or something.
curun1r 10y ago
> ... Left to your own devices ... I'm going to take one small phrase you wrote entirely out of context because I think there's a point to make. I'm suffering from burnout at the moment and trying to figure out a way past it. I recently attended a 10-day silent meditation training and one of the requirements was to surrender all my devices (phone, computer, etc) and any other forms of distraction (books, pen and paper, playing cards). Basically, I was alone with only my mind for 10 days, unable to speak or communicate with others for the entire period. It was hell for the first couple days, but by the third day I was really starting to enjoy it. As I've re-integrated my devices again, the burnout and stress has returned and I've lost a lot of the benefit I found at the meditation center. I'm already planning to go back to try to refind it and be much more conscious about reintegrating my devices afterwards. I'm starting to believe that, at least for me, burnout is an overstimulation, and things that I didn't even realize were forms of stimulation were contributing. But the biggest forms of stimulation, Internet, computers, phones and television are all things that I now realize I have to use incredibly judiciously. I think we'll look back at this time, when we introduced all these devices into our society without any concept of the damage they cause, very similarly to the times when we used lead paint on our walls or asbestos in our ceilings. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but once we study the effect it has on our health, we'll be horrified. P.S. On the doing nothing front, having spent 10 days being forced to do nothing but think in between the meditation sessions, it's really underrated and I wonder whether you've given it a fair shot. You really have to go days of doing literally nothing but thinking before it starts to give you any benefit. But once you do, you can just feel the stress melting away. The hard part is making it through the initial stage and then maintaining that benefit once you start to reintegrate with the rest of society.
- Naomarik 10y ago
  Funny was thinking something similarly. As much as I enjoy working when I want to, deadlines and avoidance of failure is killing me. I would never give up programming but for the past week it's a struggle to bring myself to spend even a half hour of writing code. The need to get things done has blocked me from getting into other things but the frustration I feel from a single problem when I sit down is causing me to get nothing done. A shepherd's flock is essentially his passive sustenance. A lifestyle where you're physically active every day and don't have to answer to anyone all the time is my idea of freedom. We've all succumbed to tech and toys and while I can simulate reality on my phone I don't think I'm living a better life than people 200 years ago. I think there is a boredom that sometimes arises if we cannot exert our intellect to create something, but life costs too much to work at a leisure pace. http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-lambs/ http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-lambs/ Look liberating that looks.
jrs235 10y ago
I think I've been on the border of burnout for a few months now myself. Out of curiosity I wonder if personalities are more prone to burnout. I know some of folks aren't big fans of the pseudoscience of personality types but I'm still interested if there's some correlation. I like the Myers-Briggs type personality indicator/test at http://www.16personalities.com http://www.16personalities.com (I'm not affiliated in any way) as they add another dimension called identity which resolves to either assertive or turbulent. My results when I last took this a few weeks ago were INTP-T. Perhaps there's a correlation to strategy?... mine is constant improvement.
- rimantas 10y ago
  > Myers-Briggs That's pseudoscience at its best.
tr33house 10y ago
Ellen White, a very progressive health advocate and founder of the sda church actually recommended moving away from cities and working out in nature in tasks like farming. This prophetic insight has actually helped a lot of people. The church still runs a number of health resorts that do this and the results are off the charts.
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tripzilch 10y ago
> been through burnout several times Wait--what?! How? I don't want to discount your story or make light of it, but are you sure you've been "through" it? Maybe you meant to say you have closely avoided actual burnout several times? You don't go "through" it without traumatic damage. The title doesn't say "minds turned to ash" for nothing. I can't imagine anybody going through burnout twice, you have to be extremely unlucky AND stupid because the trauma turns up the alarm bells to eleven if you even get close to it (which is also lot sooner than before). This is some existential dread level of avoidance we're talking about here, the kind you need immense willpower to overcome. I'd do anything to avoid having to go through that again (maybe if I had children).

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...
tomatsu 10y ago
As someone who's completely burnt out, I think the whole idea of doing any job 40 hours a week for several decades of your life is super scary. It's too much routine. Too much auto pilot. Too many identical days and weeks which get compressed into nothing. Few new memories will be made. Your life will feel much shorter and uneventful. Doing random blue collar part-time work (I currently work as a gardener) and working on interesting projects in my spare time works much better for me. I can think about my fun project during work, not think about my work when I'm off the clock.
- james-watson 10y ago
  > Too many identical days and weeks which get compressed into nothing. Few new memories will be made. Your life will feel much shorter and uneventful. It is profound that I'm not the only one who quit a day job because of this exact reason. This is a biological fact. Your brain compresses memories that are too similar down into the smallest size possible. The result is that a year can often feel like a week, with a few memorable weekends and absolutely nothing else. This is utterly frightening, and can feel like you've hit the fast forward button on your life and are careening towards the end.
  - dasmoth 10y ago
    This, I think, is why it's so frustrating when occupations which have historically been fairly flexible and creative start to gain a lot of process and become more formulaic.
- tripzilch 10y ago
  > As someone who's completely burnt out, I think the whole idea of doing any job 40 hours a week for several decades of your life is super scary. During university I honestly could never imagine myself working more than 20h a week. And this issue was really on my mind, it worried me, I really couldn't imagine how, but whenever I brought this up people always said "you'll get used to it". Nearing the end of my study funding, I took a part-time job programming in an office. Two days, 16 hours per week for two months was enough to wreck me for nearly a decade now. I won't ever trust people that tell me I'll "get used to" anything ever again. I don't know how they do it, I guess I'm just a different species or something.

curun1r 10y ago

> ... Left to your own devices ... I'm going to take one small phrase you wrote entirely out of context because I think there's a point to make. I'm suffering from burnout at the moment and trying to figure out a way past it. I recently attended a 10-day silent meditation training and one of the requirements was to surrender all my devices (phone, computer, etc) and any other forms of distraction (books, pen and paper, playing cards). Basically, I was alone with only my mind for 10 days, unable to speak or communicate with others for the entire period. It was hell for the first couple days, but by the third day I was really starting to enjoy it. As I've re-integrated my devices again, the burnout and stress has returned and I've lost a lot of the benefit I found at the meditation center. I'm already planning to go back to try to refind it and be much more conscious about reintegrating my devices afterwards. I'm starting to believe that, at least for me, burnout is an overstimulation, and things that I didn't even realize were forms of stimulation were contributing. But the biggest forms of stimulation, Internet, computers, phones and television are all things that I now realize I have to use incredibly judiciously. I think we'll look back at this time, when we introduced all these devices into our society without any concept of the damage they cause, very similarly to the times when we used lead paint on our walls or asbestos in our ceilings. It may have seemed like a good idea at the time, but once we study the effect it has on our health, we'll be horrified. P.S. On the doing nothing front, having spent 10 days being forced to do nothing but think in between the meditation sessions, it's really underrated and I wonder whether you've given it a fair shot. You really have to go days of doing literally nothing but thinking before it starts to give you any benefit. But once you do, you can just feel the stress melting away. The hard part is making it through the initial stage and then maintaining that benefit once you start to reintegrate with the rest of society.

Naomarik 10y ago
Funny was thinking something similarly. As much as I enjoy working when I want to, deadlines and avoidance of failure is killing me. I would never give up programming but for the past week it's a struggle to bring myself to spend even a half hour of writing code. The need to get things done has blocked me from getting into other things but the frustration I feel from a single problem when I sit down is causing me to get nothing done. A shepherd's flock is essentially his passive sustenance. A lifestyle where you're physically active every day and don't have to answer to anyone all the time is my idea of freedom. We've all succumbed to tech and toys and while I can simulate reality on my phone I don't think I'm living a better life than people 200 years ago. I think there is a boredom that sometimes arises if we cannot exert our intellect to create something, but life costs too much to work at a leisure pace. http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-lambs/ http://modernfarmer.com/2013/12/10-things-learned-lambs/ Look liberating that looks.

jrs235 10y ago

I think I've been on the border of burnout for a few months now myself. Out of curiosity I wonder if personalities are more prone to burnout. I know some of folks aren't big fans of the pseudoscience of personality types but I'm still interested if there's some correlation. I like the Myers-Briggs type personality indicator/test at http://www.16personalities.com http://www.16personalities.com (I'm not affiliated in any way) as they add another dimension called identity which resolves to either assertive or turbulent. My results when I last took this a few weeks ago were INTP-T. Perhaps there's a correlation to strategy?... mine is constant improvement.

rimantas 10y ago
> Myers-Briggs That's pseudoscience at its best.

tr33house 10y ago

Ellen White, a very progressive health advocate and founder of the sda church actually recommended moving away from cities and working out in nature in tasks like farming. This prophetic insight has actually helped a lot of people. The church still runs a number of health resorts that do this and the results are off the charts.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tripzilch 10y ago

> been through burnout several times Wait--what?! How? I don't want to discount your story or make light of it, but are you sure you've been "through" it? Maybe you meant to say you have closely avoided actual burnout several times? You don't go "through" it without traumatic damage. The title doesn't say "minds turned to ash" for nothing. I can't imagine anybody going through burnout twice, you have to be extremely unlucky AND stupid because the trauma turns up the alarm bells to eleven if you even get close to it (which is also lot sooner than before). This is some existential dread level of avoidance we're talking about here, the kind you need immense willpower to overcome. I'd do anything to avoid having to go through that again (maybe if I had children).