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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, y

by 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!

by snarfy 10y ago

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!