14 ms·

The psychology of stress and burnout

318 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

woliveirajr 10y ago
> Dealing with stress over time can break down the body’s ability to deal with short bursts of stressful situations, he says. For what I could get from the article, under (mild) stress your thinking becomes sharper, but as it lasts longer, it breaks you down and you can't handle stressful spikes. So, perhaps, not being stressed all day long is the key? I mean, just surf the stressful spikes, don't have a light stress constantly, because you won't be able to deal with those hard moments of stress (and yes, they will come someday and all you've gained from the light-stress-boost will be thrown away because you'll burn out).
- alexgotoi 10y ago
  I think it's a price you decide to pay or not. If you want to think sharper, you need to pay with the side affects. Very similar to Limitless (the movie and tv show), if you saw it.
- Swizec 10y ago
  Acute stress is good (adrenaline -> fight or flight), chronic stress is bad. So, worrying about money or being fired or <insert real life problem> all day every day will wear you down and limit your ability to reason. There's not much brainpower left over. This is why it's, for example, difficult to be super productive at work when you're going through a divorce or dealing with a breakup. And why it's never a good idea to launch a new product while moving house. But, going bungee jumping or downhill mountain biking or racing cars or just driving too fast on the freeway. That's relaxing. Gives you focus, gets you away from the chronic stressors and into the immediate. Wonderful.
  - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
    > Acute stress is good (adrenaline -> fight or flight) citation needed
    - erikbye 10y ago
      Acute stress keeps you alive. It's a response to esp. novel and potentially harmful events. Its effects on cortisol/insulin -> diabetes however, seems to be contentious.
    - aivosha 10y ago
      https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/dp/0805073698 https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/...
    - simosx 10y ago
      The purpose of stress is to quickly adapt the body to survive a fight. A set of changes happen to the body. For example, the blood becomes thicker in order to clot faster when you are bleeding. However, with chronic stress, this can cause thrombosis. Under stress, the stomach stops the digestion so that the energy goes into running to flee the danger. With chronic stress, your stomach is messed up and you get all sort of indigestion. And so on. Many examples of changes that have a simple explanation but are hazardous in chronic stress situations. For reference, read the Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers or anything by Robert Sapolsky.
      - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
        In the context of the article it looked like "Acute stress is good" was referring to episodes of acute stress on the workplace.
- allemagne 10y ago
  The implication I see (I am not an expert) is that stress was/is used to get our ancestors and other mammals out of short-term problems, i.e. to escape a predator. It's not useful or healthy as a lifestyle, or else evolution would have favored the "baseline" of modern humans to be closer to what our "stressed" state is. It seems to follow that stress is useful when it's really needed to make you sharper, but one should prioritize getting out of that state as soon as possible.
alexgotoi 10y ago
I would add music and workout. Music help get distressed very easy. And workout help bringing more oxygen in the system.
- cr1895 10y ago
  >Music help get distressed very easy. You mean de-stressed, not distressed: the captain of the Titanic sent out a distress call because his ship was sinking, while the string quartet played music in hopes of de-stressing the ill-fated passengers.
  - alexgotoi 10y ago
    Thank you for correcting me. Wont blame the autocorrect :)
emilburzo 10y ago
It's all in your head, for better or worse. Extreme sports or intense physical exertion have been key, for me, in dealing with daily stress. And no, I'm not some superstar adrenaline pumped athlete, just an amateur that loves skydiving/paragliding/fast motorcycles/hiking/etc over the weekend. I didn't realize how much these activities help me, until I had to take a break from them for whatever reason (e.g.: winter where it's cold enough that you can't do most sports, but with not enough snow to go skiing or something). I could almost measure the effects: the longer the break, the lower the threshold for daily stress -- from feeling slightly irritated to almost angry over the simplest triggers, if enough time had passed. Then I'd do one skydive and it would make all the difference in the world, whatever daily stressful thing would happen "in the real world" it just felt like it didn't register as dangerous/stressful in the brain. My feeling is that you can raise your tolerance threshold for what counts as stress, you just have to find out what works for you. I'm guessing it also has something to do with these activities being very focused, so you're kinda disconnected from what's happening in the world and just truly "in the moment". Maybe that pause from stress is what does it? Has anyone else had similar experiences?
- oarsinsync 10y ago
  Yes, exactly this. By increasing the regularity with which I exercise and engage in other non-IT pursuits, my ability to deal with bullshit at work has grown tremendously. I think it boils down to this: The more you value your out-of-the-office life and the more enjoyment you gain from it, the less negative impact your job can have on your life. Of course that's dependent on having a job that permits you to have a life outside of work, being able to schedule regular out of work activities, and if not, finding the motivation to go do random stuff ad-hoc. Now I visit a farm every week for ~30mins to see some animals, go ice skating regularly, gym regularly, and give my friends a break from parenting by taking their kids to the park to play. When I stopped going to the gym regularly, when I started going to bars after work more, drinking more, and my life became more "sleep, work, drink, repeat", my mental state deteriorated, my ability to cope with bullshit at work reduced. Getting something resembling a routine of Good Things I Enjoy outside of work resulted in a near instant turnaround. Thank you for posting this, I love reading other people having similar life experiences as myself, and I hope you feel the same from this too.
known 10y ago
Drink hot water and go for one hour early morning walk;
- douche 10y ago
  I don't know about the hot water, but definitely taking my dog for a 3-4 mile walk around town every morning helps me out. Days that it's crappy outside or I get rushed up and don't have time to do it, I'm considerably more irritable and less willing to put up with the bs.
- simosx 10y ago
  These are empirical remedies and there are many of them. As discussed in other comments, stress has a very simple and intuitive explanation.
dschiptsov 10y ago
Are they trying to say that exercises are good to us, until it is too much? What does not kill us makes us stronger.
- maxxxxx 10y ago
  Not always. Things that don't kill you immediately may kill you in the long run.
  - throwanem 10y ago
    In the long run, we all die anyway. It's not necessarily unreasonable to evaluate one's options on a quality vs. quantity basis.
- saiya-jin 10y ago
  you can screw up your body in numerous ways if you overdo it, ie grow enlarged heart, screw up joints or spine and end up semi-disabled relatively young. just look at pro lifters, most of them after career end up obese with various health issues, some barely able to walk or lift anything more than sheet of paper. it's a think line to walk, unique to each of us, where you try to grow as much as you can without crossing it
  - dschiptsov 10y ago
    That is what I failed to emphasize - it must be "just right" - not too much and not too little - optimal - slightly better than good-enough.)
Kenji 10y ago
I love how people are like "go for a walk" or "work out" or "sleep more" or "it's all in your head" (maybe you should tell someone who has pancreatic cancer "Oh it's all in your belly"). It seems to me like most people don't understand the incredible destructiveness and pain of an actual burnout. How trapped you are and how you do not see any way out anymore. I nearly got there and I have seen people who have been crippled for life by it.
- emilburzo 10y ago
  > (maybe you should tell someone who has pancreatic cancer "Oh it's all in your belly") Well... isn't it? I actually phrased it as "it's all in your head" to highlight that you _can_ do something about it, unlike cancer, it's something you can control by power of mind/will (not saying it's easy). - formerly burned out.
  - qntty 10y ago
    The fact that something is "all in your head" doesn't imply much about how much control you might have over it. Schizophrenia is "all in your head." Some people do have a reasonable amount of control over the situation, but many people have little control.
    - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
      > The fact that something is "all in your head" doesn't imply much about how much control you might have over it. Schizophrenia is "all in your head." So is a brain tumor or glaucoma, in a literal sense, but I doubt many people would seriously use the expression "all in your head" for any of those. In my experience it's overwhelmingly used for anxiety and depression, with the implication being that there's no hard physical problem and that you just need to change your habits/attitude/beliefs (which, incidentally, is an approach that is notably ineffective for schizophrenia, apart from being done with others as a harm reduction mechanism).
- oarsinsync 10y ago
  > How trapped you are and how you do not see any way out anymore. I was there, and then one of my friends died, which triggered me to quit my job, which ultimately led to me being able to get enough mental acumen back and make good decisions to lead myself out of the hole I'd dug myself into. Over 15 months before I was capable of getting myself back into the workforce properly. Fortunately I have very understanding family who let me live with them rent free, and had saved enough that I was able to do this. Not everyone is this fortunate.
aivosha 10y ago
Highly recommend Robert Sapolsky's work on this. You can find his lectures on youtube, very educational and entertaining on Human Behavioural Biology. And more to the point his book, https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/dp/0805073698 https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/...
- simosx 10y ago
  Frankly, this! You can read from the other comments that it is not common knowledge yet what stress actually does to you. Stress as a facility is useful for humans and other animals. It helps the body to focus on the threat and increase the chance to escape and survive. Stress makes a tiny damage to the health but once you survive, the body returns to health. However, there are cases where you have long-term continuous stress, without any release. It is common with social animals like humans, and an example is the burn-out. The tiny damage becomes major damage and can be irreversible.
madaxe_again 10y ago
A large part of why I left my business after eleven years six months ago was because I mismanaged stress to the degree that it had severe consequences upon my health. At the time, like a frog in warming water, I constantly normalised it - working 20 hours a day for a year isn't stressful, it's heroic! I enjoy this! I thrive on stress. The booze? Oh, that's just to help keep me awake. About four years ago I stopped eating and sleeping properly - I mean, previous to that I hadn't done either properly either, but four years ago it ceased to be voluntary. I lost huge amounts of weight. I told people I was on a diet. I started having bouts of delirium and puking that would put me out of action for days or weeks on end, unable to sip water even, slipping in and out of sweaty consciousness. I told myself I was just really unlucky with food poisoning. About six months ago I just stopped - couldn't go on, couldn't face another day in the hell I'd created for myself, stomach knotted from anxiety and hunger but not hunger. Went on sabattical. Watched mountains for months. Read. Cried. Ranted and raved. Began to heal. Got medical help. Discovered that I had given myself a stress driven syndrome not really seen since children in fucking Victorian workhouses - cyclical vomiting syndrome. Gave notice. Sold equity to company, made orderly transition. Three months on, I'm still coming to terms - beginning to remember wanting things, having desires, not feeling like every moment not spent working was a betrayal - being able to feel something like joy. Above everything else, I haven't puked in months and I'm even beginning to have to watch my weight. The main thing I've learned on reflection is that I did this to myself. I chose roles and responsibilities that crushed me, and I failed to emotionally disinvest in the company as it grew. I also habituated stress to the degree that I didn't even perceive it as stress, and denied it to myself even as I ground my teeth to aching stumps. In hindsight, I can of course aim to not put myself in the same situation again, but at the time I had nothing to really check my reality against. People around me were supportive - but rather than saying "hey, you're killing yourself", it would be "want another coffee? Need smokes? You work so hard." - so essentially enabled the behaviour rather than confronting it. There's an almost dangerously cultish obsession with industriousness in our society. I digress. The other thing I learned that I hadn't really understood was that stress can ruin your physical, not just mental, health.
- toothbrush 10y ago
  Wow, thanks for sharing. I hope your recovery goes well, that sounds harsh.
quickben 10y ago
I have a friend that is to damn good as a developer and allowed one of the big Canadian companies failed projects to burn him out thoroughly. He is looking into opening a bakery now, and by the look of it, no amount of convincing is going to change his mind. So no matter what you do, your mental robustness and coherency comes first. Don't let anybody every come close at touching that. Btw opening a bakery is an amazing prospect if you go into it full force ahead, with happy thoughts and planning. Opening one as a result of a burnout, well I guess it can be therapeutic, but not sure about the validity of the idea in that case. Taking half a year off everything can probably bring you more life force at your disposal.
- Stauche 10y ago
  Stressed and burned out so he is opening a food business? What?? I operate a restaurant and I know about 50 people who do. Believe me - there is no shortage of stress and your just as likely, if not more so, to get burned out. Tell your friend to seriously think twice...
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    It's well known that food industry is stressful, but maybe the nature is different. It's more physical and less mental. Also more social (you interact with customers, kids, families, birthday cakes paint a different mindset) One of the hardest job I took, digging trenches (summer) which made me cry the first week, was one of the less stressful mentally too.
    - CocaKoala 10y ago
      There's plenty of mental stress working in a bakery. You have a 100# mix of french bread, and it isn't rising properly. Will it continue to rise if you leave it in the proofer long enough, because the water it was mixed with was too cold? Maybe the guy doing the mix forgot the salt, or the yeast (because trust me, unless you're doing the mixes yourself, those things are going to happen). If the mix will rise eventually, how long will it take? How are you going to change the schedule of the bakes so that the oven is at the right temperature and the bread is finished baking before the local restaurant comes to pick up their daily order? If the mix is missing an ingredient, do you have time to make a new mix? Do you have room in the freezer for the dead dough, so you can save it to stretch out other mixes? Do you have anything delicate in the freezer that might melt when you dump a hundred pounds of warm dough into the same space? If you're making a new mix, do you need to order more flour now, because you're using more than you expected? How is this going to impact the rest of the mix schedule? Repeat that chain of thought for every kind of bread or pastry your bakery sells. It's exhausting as hell, mentally.
snarfy 10y ago
Burnout is caused by a series of failures. Your brain is quick to pick up patterns and will assume your next attempt will be a failure. To get over burnout, you need a series of successes. Create small, attainable goals and complete them. Engineers in particular need a sense of accomplishment. This way you will look forward to you next endeavor instead of dread it.
- oarsinsync 10y ago
  My personal experience here disagrees. I had a series of failures resulted in me feeling like I was on tilt, and after identifying that, designed a series of simple easy wins which helped get over that. Those easy wins then made it easier to focus and successfully complete a major 9 month infrastructure overhaul without any downtime(!), and while the sense of accomplishment from completing that successfully was huge (and the bonus wasn't bad either), the stress during that period was extremely high, and the resulting burnout was very real. A few months later, as that became obvious, I quit my job. It took more than 15 months off work before I began to feel even slightly recovered. EDIT: and to tie this in to my other post[0], it's also worth noting that all I was doing during this period was "sleep, work, drink, repeat", which no doubt contributed to it. # [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12986124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12986124
- woodchuck64 10y ago
  > Burnout is caused by a series of failures. Your brain is quick to pick up patterns and will assume your next attempt will be a failure. I like the simplicity and elegance of that definition. It means work, pressure, "stress", pain, etc., are all completely irrelevant as long as there are enough successes over some interval of time.
- graeme 10y ago
  I don't think this is necessarily true. I had a light burnout earlier this year because I went through a very busy, successful period with my business. I taught and recorded an online course over a 2.5 month period, and this recorded course became my product. It went great! But, it was very busy, and I couldn't hit pause because i was teaching a live class. Took me 3-4 months to recover, and I got almost nothing done. I was running over capacity, and I knew it (I also knew it was temporary, which is why I did it). Yet it was anything but a failure!
dilemma 10y ago
The best professional skill is compartmentalizing. Leave work at work.
- digitalsushi 10y ago
  That advice is about as useful to me as "you're depressed, so snap out of it!" I don't mean that as an attack, it's just that what is obvious to some people is very, very difficult for others to do so simply.
  - dilemma 10y ago
    No, it's extremely useful, and no different than other people in the thread who express how exercise or hobbies have helped them cope with work stress. They're implying compartmentalization too, because having a hobby shows that there's more to life than work life.
    - digitalsushi 10y ago
      You're right! I just didn't have the ability to see that. Thanks for your insights.
      - SticksAndBreaks 10y ago
        You can replace work thoughts with work on your sideproject thoughts. That helps... a little bit
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  The only time I think about work is if I'm angry at someone. I never think about a tech problem at work in my spare time.
- VyseofArcadia 10y ago
  Keep in mind that's not an option at every job. In my case, not being able to leave work at work has been one of the factors in my decision to leave academia.
0xmohit 10y ago
From DOES16 London - Better Faster Cheaper .. How? (slide #29) [0] [1]: Recipe for burnout is inverse of recipe for success Word Overload: Job demands exceed human limits. Lack of control: Inability to influence decisions that affect your job. ... Also: Understanding Burnout [2]. [0] http://www.slideshare.net/botchagalupe/does16-london-better-faster-cheaper-how http://www.slideshare.net/botchagalupe/does16-london-better-... [1] https://imgur.com/a/5yrMm https://imgur.com/a/5yrMm [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs
binalpatel 10y ago
I'm in the midst of a light burnout right now - and I realize it's partly my expectations, and partly the expectations of my company. As part of a start-up you're expected to be insanely productive at all times - so much so - that "normal" productivity feels like you're spinning your wheels and not getting anything done. The other side is the company encouraging being a "hero". Being the one who can do anything, who gets X, Y, Z done on time, even if it takes all night. The praise and recognition fades quickly - as you realize you've set the expectation such that you can function at 200% at all times. (And you start feeling stressed as you fall to 150%, to 120%, to 100%.) Some of the comments in this thread are spot on. For the level where I'm at (not full-bore burnout), I'm trying to prioritize my life outside of work again (aka have a life outside work). Sleep well, exercise, pick up hobbies again, go for hikes again, and so on. Burning out to me - is letting work take up a disproportionate amount of your time and mental energy - so much so that the microcosm of work starts feeling like the most important thing. Getting out of it (for me) is all about regaining that perspective.
- std_throwaway 10y ago
  One thing for a some perspective. Many people struggle to even achieve 100% most of the time. Work consumes such great amounts of energy that not much fun can be had on evenings or weekends. Going out with friends? Forget it. Laying down is most that can be done. Even though that work is only 8-10 hours each day (not much considering how much many people work) there is nothing left at the end of the day. All energy is spent on just keeping oneself alive and getting by. Sometimes even that is too much and after years of a seemingly good job, everything is gone. Quitting is not an option since there is not much money saved. Working less won't provide the money needed to keep on going. Changing jobs won't cut it since all other jobs would be worse. With friends forgotten and family dead, there is no point to keep on going.
gmfawcett 10y ago
I recommend Christina Maslach's books on the subject of burnout. Her research tends to focus on institutional and group-dynamic causes of burnout, which is a nice counterpoint to the self-care and personal-wellness discussions that people often have around the subject.
deleted 10y ago
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clifanatic 10y ago
I'm in one of those (inescapable) open-office nightmares right now. All day, every day, people are talking right next to me, making it impossible to concentrate. They're not even talking about work, they're talking about cars, or kids, or movies, or inane bullshit. I don't care that they're talking (and apparently management doesn't either, because since we're in a panopticon, if I know it, they know it too), but when they do it five feet away from me, I can't block it out or concentrate. I can concentrate well enough to write this post on Hacker News, but I can't concentrate well enough to put together a workable recommendation on centralized identity and access management. But I'll be asked for a recommendation on identity and access management anyway, because I'm expected to know every answer to every question off the top of my head instantaneously, even though I haven't been able to concentrate on anything effectively for the past ten years. Yeah, team work makes the dream work. BRB, going to set the building on fire.
- rexpop 10y ago
  Sounds like something to tell your manager.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    Managers are usually completely powerless because office design decisions are almost always made by (or at the recommendation of) executives. Here is what it comes down to: you can put a dollar figure on the money saved from going with an open office plan. You can't easily put a dollar figure on lost productivity due to conversations going on around you.
- novia 10y ago
  Sounds like your company cares more about their bottom line than your well being.
  - clifanatic 10y ago
    Wait there's another kind?
koga-ninja 10y ago
Burnout happens when you're doing what you don't like. Grinding down, going against the grain. The techniques I use to deal with stress are: Zazen - Japanese Zen meditation. If it was good enough For Japanese samurai fighting duels, then my life is So easy compared to this. Painting - very relaxing and fun, but then you need to like It. Mileage may vary.
- Archimedes_52 10y ago
  I was getting extreme, severe panic attacks and had become agoraphobic. Tai Chi and meditation changed my life.
ultrasandwich 10y ago
For anyone interested in the wider philosophical questions around stress and burnout, I recommend reading "The Burnout Society" by Byung-Chul Han [1], a contemporary Korean-born German philosopher. Very little of his work has been translated to English, but it's written really well. Makes a compelling case that the pressure for positivity and achievement lead to self- or auto-exploitation [2]. If anyone has additional reading recommendations around this, I'm interested! [1] - http://sup.org/books/title/?id=25725 http://sup.org/books/title/?id=25725 [2] - http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/01/we-have-become-exhausted-slaves-in-a-culture-of-positivity.html http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/01/we-have-bec...
kinokino 10y ago
Please don't go to hookers if you are burnout. I was using alot of hookers and now going through very painful stds.
rd108 10y ago
Stress is such a huge killer of productivity and even, at chronic levels, people. We're trying to put a dent in it - Shameless plug, support our Kickstarter! https://getlief.com https://getlief.com
UhUhUhUh 10y ago
The real problem I see, and experience myself, is a form of addiction to stress whereby one's cortisol levels eventually raise one's baseline. This translates into a need for more stress to reach the baseline, which is perceived as the resting-point. This is achieved easily with quick acting hormones boost such as adrenaline (base jumping...) but just perpetuates the problem as it does nothing to lower the baseline... Similarly, one can also counter cortisol with other hormones, such as oxytocin (love, music), serotonin (empathy, pride) or endorphins (exercise) or trick the system with mimicking substances, but that won't solve the problem either. There are also available options to lower the cortisol baseline (e.g. phosphorylated serine) but I am afraid that the only way to achieve a permanent normalization is a change in lifestyle. Even if a profession is stressful in itself (e.g. restaurant/bakery) it might not be as stress-inducing to me as it is to you. Reasons for these individual differences are complex and not easily solvable. No silver bullet. Cortisol can be measured easily with saliva tests. If these levels are high, including at night, you're stressed out, that you feel so or not.
icc97 10y ago
This is an interesting side to HN. The BBC article is pretty dull, the comments are far more interesting.
TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago
Probably unpopular, but has anyone tried psychedelics? I always use it to "reformat" some terrible behaviors due to stress. Definitely not the answer to anyone's problems, but perhaps gives a new perspective.
davesque 10y ago
I'm in full-blown burnout mode right now, but it's more related to dissatisfaction with the work I'm doing. I'm fucking sick and tired of building web apps and I want to work in more interesting/technical topics such as computer vision. But the time investment needed to build the background and experience required to be useful working on those kinds of problems seems impossible to manage while working full-time. I'm really at a loss as for what to do. What's worse is that this longing for more meaningful work has begun morphing into a pretty serious case of depression and is impacting my ability to do my job. Anyone ever found themselves in this kind of a situation? What did you do?
- unfamiliar 10y ago
  As someone who just transitioned from university to a pretty much unrelated programming job, it occurs to me that I could have gone into either web development or computer vision, to use your example. Either way I would have been joining a team as a junior developer with only hobbyist experience and expected to learn on the job. Perhaps if you lowered your salary expectations and were willing to accept a relatively junior level role you would be able to break into that area of work, and with your existing experience would be able to work your way up more quickly than a truly junior dev like myself.
  - davesque 10y ago
    I probably would be willing to take a salary hit. Thanks for the advice.
BrianMickeyD 10y ago
Stress is a state of mind and a function of how much you have practiced stress.
chhum 10y ago
I saw John Willis, Director of Ecosystem Development for Docker, talk about this at QCon London in the context of our industry. First time I've ever cried at a tech conference; it was an absolutely amazing session. There is a video here: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/it-burnout https://www.infoq.com/presentations/it-burnout

318 points by pmcpinto 10y ago

> Dealing with stress over time can break down the body’s ability to deal with short bursts of stressful situations, he says. For what I could get from the article, under (mild) stress your thinking becomes sharper, but as it lasts longer, it breaks you down and you can't handle stressful spikes. So, perhaps, not being stressed all day long is the key? I mean, just surf the stressful spikes, don't have a light stress constantly, because you won't be able to deal with those hard moments of stress (and yes, they will come someday and all you've gained from the light-stress-boost will be thrown away because you'll burn out).

alexgotoi 10y ago
I think it's a price you decide to pay or not. If you want to think sharper, you need to pay with the side affects. Very similar to Limitless (the movie and tv show), if you saw it.
Swizec 10y ago
Acute stress is good (adrenaline -> fight or flight), chronic stress is bad. So, worrying about money or being fired or <insert real life problem> all day every day will wear you down and limit your ability to reason. There's not much brainpower left over. This is why it's, for example, difficult to be super productive at work when you're going through a divorce or dealing with a breakup. And why it's never a good idea to launch a new product while moving house. But, going bungee jumping or downhill mountain biking or racing cars or just driving too fast on the freeway. That's relaxing. Gives you focus, gets you away from the chronic stressors and into the immediate. Wonderful.
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago
  > Acute stress is good (adrenaline -> fight or flight) citation needed
  - erikbye 10y ago
    Acute stress keeps you alive. It's a response to esp. novel and potentially harmful events. Its effects on cortisol/insulin -> diabetes however, seems to be contentious.
  - aivosha 10y ago
    https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/dp/0805073698 https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/...
  - simosx 10y ago
    The purpose of stress is to quickly adapt the body to survive a fight. A set of changes happen to the body. For example, the blood becomes thicker in order to clot faster when you are bleeding. However, with chronic stress, this can cause thrombosis. Under stress, the stomach stops the digestion so that the energy goes into running to flee the danger. With chronic stress, your stomach is messed up and you get all sort of indigestion. And so on. Many examples of changes that have a simple explanation but are hazardous in chronic stress situations. For reference, read the Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers or anything by Robert Sapolsky.
    - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
      In the context of the article it looked like "Acute stress is good" was referring to episodes of acute stress on the workplace.
allemagne 10y ago
The implication I see (I am not an expert) is that stress was/is used to get our ancestors and other mammals out of short-term problems, i.e. to escape a predator. It's not useful or healthy as a lifestyle, or else evolution would have favored the "baseline" of modern humans to be closer to what our "stressed" state is. It seems to follow that stress is useful when it's really needed to make you sharper, but one should prioritize getting out of that state as soon as possible.

alexgotoi 10y ago

I would add music and workout. Music help get distressed very easy. And workout help bringing more oxygen in the system.

cr1895 10y ago
>Music help get distressed very easy. You mean de-stressed, not distressed: the captain of the Titanic sent out a distress call because his ship was sinking, while the string quartet played music in hopes of de-stressing the ill-fated passengers.
- alexgotoi 10y ago
  Thank you for correcting me. Wont blame the autocorrect :)

emilburzo 10y ago

It's all in your head, for better or worse. Extreme sports or intense physical exertion have been key, for me, in dealing with daily stress. And no, I'm not some superstar adrenaline pumped athlete, just an amateur that loves skydiving/paragliding/fast motorcycles/hiking/etc over the weekend. I didn't realize how much these activities help me, until I had to take a break from them for whatever reason (e.g.: winter where it's cold enough that you can't do most sports, but with not enough snow to go skiing or something). I could almost measure the effects: the longer the break, the lower the threshold for daily stress -- from feeling slightly irritated to almost angry over the simplest triggers, if enough time had passed. Then I'd do one skydive and it would make all the difference in the world, whatever daily stressful thing would happen "in the real world" it just felt like it didn't register as dangerous/stressful in the brain. My feeling is that you can raise your tolerance threshold for what counts as stress, you just have to find out what works for you. I'm guessing it also has something to do with these activities being very focused, so you're kinda disconnected from what's happening in the world and just truly "in the moment". Maybe that pause from stress is what does it? Has anyone else had similar experiences?

oarsinsync 10y ago
Yes, exactly this. By increasing the regularity with which I exercise and engage in other non-IT pursuits, my ability to deal with bullshit at work has grown tremendously. I think it boils down to this: The more you value your out-of-the-office life and the more enjoyment you gain from it, the less negative impact your job can have on your life. Of course that's dependent on having a job that permits you to have a life outside of work, being able to schedule regular out of work activities, and if not, finding the motivation to go do random stuff ad-hoc. Now I visit a farm every week for ~30mins to see some animals, go ice skating regularly, gym regularly, and give my friends a break from parenting by taking their kids to the park to play. When I stopped going to the gym regularly, when I started going to bars after work more, drinking more, and my life became more "sleep, work, drink, repeat", my mental state deteriorated, my ability to cope with bullshit at work reduced. Getting something resembling a routine of Good Things I Enjoy outside of work resulted in a near instant turnaround. Thank you for posting this, I love reading other people having similar life experiences as myself, and I hope you feel the same from this too.

known 10y ago

Drink hot water and go for one hour early morning walk;

douche 10y ago
I don't know about the hot water, but definitely taking my dog for a 3-4 mile walk around town every morning helps me out. Days that it's crappy outside or I get rushed up and don't have time to do it, I'm considerably more irritable and less willing to put up with the bs.
simosx 10y ago
These are empirical remedies and there are many of them. As discussed in other comments, stress has a very simple and intuitive explanation.

dschiptsov 10y ago

Are they trying to say that exercises are good to us, until it is too much? What does not kill us makes us stronger.

maxxxxx 10y ago
Not always. Things that don't kill you immediately may kill you in the long run.
- throwanem 10y ago
  In the long run, we all die anyway. It's not necessarily unreasonable to evaluate one's options on a quality vs. quantity basis.
saiya-jin 10y ago
you can screw up your body in numerous ways if you overdo it, ie grow enlarged heart, screw up joints or spine and end up semi-disabled relatively young. just look at pro lifters, most of them after career end up obese with various health issues, some barely able to walk or lift anything more than sheet of paper. it's a think line to walk, unique to each of us, where you try to grow as much as you can without crossing it
- dschiptsov 10y ago
  That is what I failed to emphasize - it must be "just right" - not too much and not too little - optimal - slightly better than good-enough.)

Kenji 10y ago

I love how people are like "go for a walk" or "work out" or "sleep more" or "it's all in your head" (maybe you should tell someone who has pancreatic cancer "Oh it's all in your belly"). It seems to me like most people don't understand the incredible destructiveness and pain of an actual burnout. How trapped you are and how you do not see any way out anymore. I nearly got there and I have seen people who have been crippled for life by it.

emilburzo 10y ago
> (maybe you should tell someone who has pancreatic cancer "Oh it's all in your belly") Well... isn't it? I actually phrased it as "it's all in your head" to highlight that you _can_ do something about it, unlike cancer, it's something you can control by power of mind/will (not saying it's easy). - formerly burned out.
- qntty 10y ago
  The fact that something is "all in your head" doesn't imply much about how much control you might have over it. Schizophrenia is "all in your head." Some people do have a reasonable amount of control over the situation, but many people have little control.
  - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    > The fact that something is "all in your head" doesn't imply much about how much control you might have over it. Schizophrenia is "all in your head." So is a brain tumor or glaucoma, in a literal sense, but I doubt many people would seriously use the expression "all in your head" for any of those. In my experience it's overwhelmingly used for anxiety and depression, with the implication being that there's no hard physical problem and that you just need to change your habits/attitude/beliefs (which, incidentally, is an approach that is notably ineffective for schizophrenia, apart from being done with others as a harm reduction mechanism).
oarsinsync 10y ago
> How trapped you are and how you do not see any way out anymore. I was there, and then one of my friends died, which triggered me to quit my job, which ultimately led to me being able to get enough mental acumen back and make good decisions to lead myself out of the hole I'd dug myself into. Over 15 months before I was capable of getting myself back into the workforce properly. Fortunately I have very understanding family who let me live with them rent free, and had saved enough that I was able to do this. Not everyone is this fortunate.

aivosha 10y ago

Highly recommend Robert Sapolsky's work on this. You can find his lectures on youtube, very educational and entertaining on Human Behavioural Biology. And more to the point his book, https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/dp/0805073698 https://www.amazon.ca/Why-Zebras-Dont-Ulcers-Stress-Related/...

simosx 10y ago
Frankly, this! You can read from the other comments that it is not common knowledge yet what stress actually does to you. Stress as a facility is useful for humans and other animals. It helps the body to focus on the threat and increase the chance to escape and survive. Stress makes a tiny damage to the health but once you survive, the body returns to health. However, there are cases where you have long-term continuous stress, without any release. It is common with social animals like humans, and an example is the burn-out. The tiny damage becomes major damage and can be irreversible.

madaxe_again 10y ago

A large part of why I left my business after eleven years six months ago was because I mismanaged stress to the degree that it had severe consequences upon my health. At the time, like a frog in warming water, I constantly normalised it - working 20 hours a day for a year isn't stressful, it's heroic! I enjoy this! I thrive on stress. The booze? Oh, that's just to help keep me awake. About four years ago I stopped eating and sleeping properly - I mean, previous to that I hadn't done either properly either, but four years ago it ceased to be voluntary. I lost huge amounts of weight. I told people I was on a diet. I started having bouts of delirium and puking that would put me out of action for days or weeks on end, unable to sip water even, slipping in and out of sweaty consciousness. I told myself I was just really unlucky with food poisoning. About six months ago I just stopped - couldn't go on, couldn't face another day in the hell I'd created for myself, stomach knotted from anxiety and hunger but not hunger. Went on sabattical. Watched mountains for months. Read. Cried. Ranted and raved. Began to heal. Got medical help. Discovered that I had given myself a stress driven syndrome not really seen since children in fucking Victorian workhouses - cyclical vomiting syndrome. Gave notice. Sold equity to company, made orderly transition. Three months on, I'm still coming to terms - beginning to remember wanting things, having desires, not feeling like every moment not spent working was a betrayal - being able to feel something like joy. Above everything else, I haven't puked in months and I'm even beginning to have to watch my weight. The main thing I've learned on reflection is that I did this to myself. I chose roles and responsibilities that crushed me, and I failed to emotionally disinvest in the company as it grew. I also habituated stress to the degree that I didn't even perceive it as stress, and denied it to myself even as I ground my teeth to aching stumps. In hindsight, I can of course aim to not put myself in the same situation again, but at the time I had nothing to really check my reality against. People around me were supportive - but rather than saying "hey, you're killing yourself", it would be "want another coffee? Need smokes? You work so hard." - so essentially enabled the behaviour rather than confronting it. There's an almost dangerously cultish obsession with industriousness in our society. I digress. The other thing I learned that I hadn't really understood was that stress can ruin your physical, not just mental, health.

toothbrush 10y ago
Wow, thanks for sharing. I hope your recovery goes well, that sounds harsh.

quickben 10y ago

I have a friend that is to damn good as a developer and allowed one of the big Canadian companies failed projects to burn him out thoroughly. He is looking into opening a bakery now, and by the look of it, no amount of convincing is going to change his mind. So no matter what you do, your mental robustness and coherency comes first. Don't let anybody every come close at touching that. Btw opening a bakery is an amazing prospect if you go into it full force ahead, with happy thoughts and planning. Opening one as a result of a burnout, well I guess it can be therapeutic, but not sure about the validity of the idea in that case. Taking half a year off everything can probably bring you more life force at your disposal.

Stauche 10y ago
Stressed and burned out so he is opening a food business? What?? I operate a restaurant and I know about 50 people who do. Believe me - there is no shortage of stress and your just as likely, if not more so, to get burned out. Tell your friend to seriously think twice...
- agumonkey 10y ago
  It's well known that food industry is stressful, but maybe the nature is different. It's more physical and less mental. Also more social (you interact with customers, kids, families, birthday cakes paint a different mindset) One of the hardest job I took, digging trenches (summer) which made me cry the first week, was one of the less stressful mentally too.
  - CocaKoala 10y ago
    There's plenty of mental stress working in a bakery. You have a 100# mix of french bread, and it isn't rising properly. Will it continue to rise if you leave it in the proofer long enough, because the water it was mixed with was too cold? Maybe the guy doing the mix forgot the salt, or the yeast (because trust me, unless you're doing the mixes yourself, those things are going to happen). If the mix will rise eventually, how long will it take? How are you going to change the schedule of the bakes so that the oven is at the right temperature and the bread is finished baking before the local restaurant comes to pick up their daily order? If the mix is missing an ingredient, do you have time to make a new mix? Do you have room in the freezer for the dead dough, so you can save it to stretch out other mixes? Do you have anything delicate in the freezer that might melt when you dump a hundred pounds of warm dough into the same space? If you're making a new mix, do you need to order more flour now, because you're using more than you expected? How is this going to impact the rest of the mix schedule? Repeat that chain of thought for every kind of bread or pastry your bakery sells. It's exhausting as hell, mentally.

snarfy 10y ago

Burnout is caused by a series of failures. Your brain is quick to pick up patterns and will assume your next attempt will be a failure. To get over burnout, you need a series of successes. Create small, attainable goals and complete them. Engineers in particular need a sense of accomplishment. This way you will look forward to you next endeavor instead of dread it.

oarsinsync 10y ago
My personal experience here disagrees. I had a series of failures resulted in me feeling like I was on tilt, and after identifying that, designed a series of simple easy wins which helped get over that. Those easy wins then made it easier to focus and successfully complete a major 9 month infrastructure overhaul without any downtime(!), and while the sense of accomplishment from completing that successfully was huge (and the bonus wasn't bad either), the stress during that period was extremely high, and the resulting burnout was very real. A few months later, as that became obvious, I quit my job. It took more than 15 months off work before I began to feel even slightly recovered. EDIT: and to tie this in to my other post[0], it's also worth noting that all I was doing during this period was "sleep, work, drink, repeat", which no doubt contributed to it. # [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12986124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12986124
woodchuck64 10y ago
> Burnout is caused by a series of failures. Your brain is quick to pick up patterns and will assume your next attempt will be a failure. I like the simplicity and elegance of that definition. It means work, pressure, "stress", pain, etc., are all completely irrelevant as long as there are enough successes over some interval of time.
graeme 10y ago
I don't think this is necessarily true. I had a light burnout earlier this year because I went through a very busy, successful period with my business. I taught and recorded an online course over a 2.5 month period, and this recorded course became my product. It went great! But, it was very busy, and I couldn't hit pause because i was teaching a live class. Took me 3-4 months to recover, and I got almost nothing done. I was running over capacity, and I knew it (I also knew it was temporary, which is why I did it). Yet it was anything but a failure!

dilemma 10y ago

The best professional skill is compartmentalizing. Leave work at work.

digitalsushi 10y ago
That advice is about as useful to me as "you're depressed, so snap out of it!" I don't mean that as an attack, it's just that what is obvious to some people is very, very difficult for others to do so simply.
- dilemma 10y ago
  No, it's extremely useful, and no different than other people in the thread who express how exercise or hobbies have helped them cope with work stress. They're implying compartmentalization too, because having a hobby shows that there's more to life than work life.
  - digitalsushi 10y ago
    You're right! I just didn't have the ability to see that. Thanks for your insights.
    - SticksAndBreaks 10y ago
      You can replace work thoughts with work on your sideproject thoughts. That helps... a little bit
bbcbasic 10y ago
The only time I think about work is if I'm angry at someone. I never think about a tech problem at work in my spare time.
VyseofArcadia 10y ago
Keep in mind that's not an option at every job. In my case, not being able to leave work at work has been one of the factors in my decision to leave academia.

0xmohit 10y ago

From DOES16 London - Better Faster Cheaper .. How? (slide #29) [0] [1]: Recipe for burnout is inverse of recipe for success Word Overload: Job demands exceed human limits. Lack of control: Inability to influence decisions that affect your job. ... Also: Understanding Burnout [2]. [0] http://www.slideshare.net/botchagalupe/does16-london-better-faster-cheaper-how http://www.slideshare.net/botchagalupe/does16-london-better-... [1] https://imgur.com/a/5yrMm https://imgur.com/a/5yrMm [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kLPyV8lBbs

binalpatel 10y ago

I'm in the midst of a light burnout right now - and I realize it's partly my expectations, and partly the expectations of my company. As part of a start-up you're expected to be insanely productive at all times - so much so - that "normal" productivity feels like you're spinning your wheels and not getting anything done. The other side is the company encouraging being a "hero". Being the one who can do anything, who gets X, Y, Z done on time, even if it takes all night. The praise and recognition fades quickly - as you realize you've set the expectation such that you can function at 200% at all times. (And you start feeling stressed as you fall to 150%, to 120%, to 100%.) Some of the comments in this thread are spot on. For the level where I'm at (not full-bore burnout), I'm trying to prioritize my life outside of work again (aka have a life outside work). Sleep well, exercise, pick up hobbies again, go for hikes again, and so on. Burning out to me - is letting work take up a disproportionate amount of your time and mental energy - so much so that the microcosm of work starts feeling like the most important thing. Getting out of it (for me) is all about regaining that perspective.

std_throwaway 10y ago
One thing for a some perspective. Many people struggle to even achieve 100% most of the time. Work consumes such great amounts of energy that not much fun can be had on evenings or weekends. Going out with friends? Forget it. Laying down is most that can be done. Even though that work is only 8-10 hours each day (not much considering how much many people work) there is nothing left at the end of the day. All energy is spent on just keeping oneself alive and getting by. Sometimes even that is too much and after years of a seemingly good job, everything is gone. Quitting is not an option since there is not much money saved. Working less won't provide the money needed to keep on going. Changing jobs won't cut it since all other jobs would be worse. With friends forgotten and family dead, there is no point to keep on going.

gmfawcett 10y ago

I recommend Christina Maslach's books on the subject of burnout. Her research tends to focus on institutional and group-dynamic causes of burnout, which is a nice counterpoint to the self-care and personal-wellness discussions that people often have around the subject.

deleted 10y ago

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clifanatic 10y ago

I'm in one of those (inescapable) open-office nightmares right now. All day, every day, people are talking right next to me, making it impossible to concentrate. They're not even talking about work, they're talking about cars, or kids, or movies, or inane bullshit. I don't care that they're talking (and apparently management doesn't either, because since we're in a panopticon, if I know it, they know it too), but when they do it five feet away from me, I can't block it out or concentrate. I can concentrate well enough to write this post on Hacker News, but I can't concentrate well enough to put together a workable recommendation on centralized identity and access management. But I'll be asked for a recommendation on identity and access management anyway, because I'm expected to know every answer to every question off the top of my head instantaneously, even though I haven't been able to concentrate on anything effectively for the past ten years. Yeah, team work makes the dream work. BRB, going to set the building on fire.

rexpop 10y ago
Sounds like something to tell your manager.
- enraged_camel 10y ago
  Managers are usually completely powerless because office design decisions are almost always made by (or at the recommendation of) executives. Here is what it comes down to: you can put a dollar figure on the money saved from going with an open office plan. You can't easily put a dollar figure on lost productivity due to conversations going on around you.
novia 10y ago
Sounds like your company cares more about their bottom line than your well being.
- clifanatic 10y ago
  Wait there's another kind?

koga-ninja 10y ago

Burnout happens when you're doing what you don't like. Grinding down, going against the grain. The techniques I use to deal with stress are: Zazen - Japanese Zen meditation. If it was good enough For Japanese samurai fighting duels, then my life is So easy compared to this. Painting - very relaxing and fun, but then you need to like It. Mileage may vary.

Archimedes_52 10y ago
I was getting extreme, severe panic attacks and had become agoraphobic. Tai Chi and meditation changed my life.

ultrasandwich 10y ago

For anyone interested in the wider philosophical questions around stress and burnout, I recommend reading "The Burnout Society" by Byung-Chul Han [1], a contemporary Korean-born German philosopher. Very little of his work has been translated to English, but it's written really well. Makes a compelling case that the pressure for positivity and achievement lead to self- or auto-exploitation [2]. If anyone has additional reading recommendations around this, I'm interested! [1] - http://sup.org/books/title/?id=25725 http://sup.org/books/title/?id=25725 [2] - http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/01/we-have-become-exhausted-slaves-in-a-culture-of-positivity.html http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/01/we-have-bec...

kinokino 10y ago

Please don't go to hookers if you are burnout. I was using alot of hookers and now going through very painful stds.

rd108 10y ago

Stress is such a huge killer of productivity and even, at chronic levels, people. We're trying to put a dent in it - Shameless plug, support our Kickstarter! https://getlief.com https://getlief.com

UhUhUhUh 10y ago

The real problem I see, and experience myself, is a form of addiction to stress whereby one's cortisol levels eventually raise one's baseline. This translates into a need for more stress to reach the baseline, which is perceived as the resting-point. This is achieved easily with quick acting hormones boost such as adrenaline (base jumping...) but just perpetuates the problem as it does nothing to lower the baseline... Similarly, one can also counter cortisol with other hormones, such as oxytocin (love, music), serotonin (empathy, pride) or endorphins (exercise) or trick the system with mimicking substances, but that won't solve the problem either. There are also available options to lower the cortisol baseline (e.g. phosphorylated serine) but I am afraid that the only way to achieve a permanent normalization is a change in lifestyle. Even if a profession is stressful in itself (e.g. restaurant/bakery) it might not be as stress-inducing to me as it is to you. Reasons for these individual differences are complex and not easily solvable. No silver bullet. Cortisol can be measured easily with saliva tests. If these levels are high, including at night, you're stressed out, that you feel so or not.

icc97 10y ago

This is an interesting side to HN. The BBC article is pretty dull, the comments are far more interesting.

TheOneTrueKyle 10y ago

Probably unpopular, but has anyone tried psychedelics? I always use it to "reformat" some terrible behaviors due to stress. Definitely not the answer to anyone's problems, but perhaps gives a new perspective.

davesque 10y ago

I'm in full-blown burnout mode right now, but it's more related to dissatisfaction with the work I'm doing. I'm fucking sick and tired of building web apps and I want to work in more interesting/technical topics such as computer vision. But the time investment needed to build the background and experience required to be useful working on those kinds of problems seems impossible to manage while working full-time. I'm really at a loss as for what to do. What's worse is that this longing for more meaningful work has begun morphing into a pretty serious case of depression and is impacting my ability to do my job. Anyone ever found themselves in this kind of a situation? What did you do?

unfamiliar 10y ago
As someone who just transitioned from university to a pretty much unrelated programming job, it occurs to me that I could have gone into either web development or computer vision, to use your example. Either way I would have been joining a team as a junior developer with only hobbyist experience and expected to learn on the job. Perhaps if you lowered your salary expectations and were willing to accept a relatively junior level role you would be able to break into that area of work, and with your existing experience would be able to work your way up more quickly than a truly junior dev like myself.
- davesque 10y ago
  I probably would be willing to take a salary hit. Thanks for the advice.

BrianMickeyD 10y ago

Stress is a state of mind and a function of how much you have practiced stress.

chhum 10y ago

I saw John Willis, Director of Ecosystem Development for Docker, talk about this at QCon London in the context of our industry. First time I've ever cried at a tech conference; it was an absolutely amazing session. There is a video here: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/it-burnout https://www.infoq.com/presentations/it-burnout