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I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical. Ultimately, I think it stems from the shame arising out of the realization that giving 110% instea

I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical. Ultimately, I think it stems from the shame arising out of the realization that giving 110% instead of 70% at your job accomplishes little but making things harder for yourself. A software engineer doesn't get more money giving 110%, and if they work to finish something quicker they're just rewarded with more work. Often engineers (being human) will want to do a good job, give 110% on an important project, and when its over and their pay and work hours are exactly the same, they get angry with themselves for giving 110% instead of the bare minimum. They have this "I just wasted a month of my life because I'm a fool" feeling that completely zaps their motivation to do anything.

paulddraper 10y ago
> I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical Since programming is mental and not physical....yes?
- alexmingoia 10y ago
  No, I mean that burnout is not caused by physical things like lack of sleep, improper diet, lack of exercise, etc.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    yeah! It's amazing how much people give fixing these things as a remedy for burnout, and yet (in my anecdata) it never works. One common advice is taking an unplanned vacation, but tha can be even worse, because it reinforces your brain's burnout by rewarding the burnout feedback cycle at a meta-level.
diegorbaquero 10y ago
It is starts psychologically, but psychological problems can then turn into physical illnesses. A burnout can be stressful and slowly consume you life away with stress and anxiety until you hit rock bottom.
- lobotryas 10y ago
  A million times this. Anything from ulcers, headaches, to heart attacks and even cancer can manifest if you are over-stressed and psychologically malnourished. Getting enough or too little sleep is also huge so if you're reading this, make sure you get your (average of) 8 hours tonight. Think of it as a small way to unsure you live long enough to enjoy retirement.
dnautics 10y ago
You're right, but it's not shame. It's just a raw reinforcement feedback cycle. If you repeatedly put a lot of effort into things that fail (or fail to achieve an expected reward - monetary, status, etc...), and then you train your brain to associate labor with failure, so it creates a mechanism to avoid labor. It's why scientists burn out regularly. 9/10 experiments fail - and that's for a highly skilled scientist.
- jk4930 10y ago
  When scientists burn out, that has probably more to do with the continuous grant hunting, bureaucratic nonsense, and backstabbing they're exposed to. When PhD students or postdocs burn out, it's because of underpaid boredom, lack of communication about their research or job uncertainties, and a generally ungrateful and passionless environment. I've never seen scientists burn out over failed experiments. They know upfront that (basic) research is hard and that 90% of their stuff is not working.
  - dnautics 10y ago
    > I've never seen scientists burn out over failed experiments. It's never a single failed experiment. I can't think, off the top of my head, of a scientist that I've known professionally that I didn't see burn out at some point or another (besides the PIs). For those that I have been watching their experiments, it usually happens after a slew of experiments fail (anywhere from 1 month - 6 months worth). I've probably met about 75-ish scientists that I've watched burn out.* Of these, about 25 or so I have working knowledge of what they were doing around the time of burnout. *one guy, after three successive failed projects that his PI gave to him, had a very characteristic pattern. He would come in really late (4pm or so), then play game boy tetris on a java applet for about 3-4 hours, then do a little bit of science, and come back and do more tetris. Some of the things he would do - using pipette tips in geometric patterns. I mean it makes sense. These little achievements provide dopamine hits reinforcing self-worth after completion of a minor task.
mtrimpe 10y ago
There's burnout and there's burnout. Some burnout is basically your mind slowly coming to associate some (class of) activity with negative feelings eventually building up to the point where it basically becomes an emotional net negative to the degree you can't push yourself to work on it anymore and you (have to) disengage. Then there's the kind of burnout where you've been marinating your nervous system with extreme amounts of stress hormones for extended periods of time (months or more likely years on end) and when your performance starts to degrade due to this, as it inevitably will, you keep pushing yourself to maintain your expected standard of productivity up to the point where your body is basically trashed and your productivity suddenly drops precipitously to virtually non-existent levels which generally takes years to recover from. The former is mostly psychological; the latter starts psychologically but most definitely crosses into the territory of the physical. As an aside; the book The Upside of Stress [1] is a really good book on dividing 'good stress' which basically trains up your body and 'bad stress' which bathes you in damaging hormones. Many burnouts happen when someone with a high workload unwittingly switches from good to bad stress. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23281639-the-upside-of-stress https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23281639-the-upside-of-s...
paganel 10y ago
I've been writing code for a living for 11 years now and I don't think I've ever set out myself to give "110% on an important project", apart from the couple of tight deadlines which used to show up every 6 to 9 months (which required some weekend work). I regard laziness, "less is more" and YAGNI as real virtues for programmers.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  > I regard laziness, "less is more" and YAGNI as real virtues for programmers. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slack http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slack
blablabla123 10y ago
An additional problem is a vicious circle: when there are first signs of burnout, even if you give 110%, you're just at your "normal" 50% or less. I'm through some kind of burn-out experience and I realize it's really important to make myself feel good and that that is just fine. When I'm overworked I explain that I have limited time and stop working. When colleagues flood me with issues and problems I eventually stop talking to them if that's the only way.
edblarney 10y ago
It's a mental thing that I believe has real physical side-effects.

paulddraper 10y ago

> I speculate that burnout is more psychological than physical Since programming is mental and not physical....yes?

alexmingoia 10y ago
No, I mean that burnout is not caused by physical things like lack of sleep, improper diet, lack of exercise, etc.
- dnautics 10y ago
  yeah! It's amazing how much people give fixing these things as a remedy for burnout, and yet (in my anecdata) it never works. One common advice is taking an unplanned vacation, but tha can be even worse, because it reinforces your brain's burnout by rewarding the burnout feedback cycle at a meta-level.

diegorbaquero 10y ago

It is starts psychologically, but psychological problems can then turn into physical illnesses. A burnout can be stressful and slowly consume you life away with stress and anxiety until you hit rock bottom.

lobotryas 10y ago
A million times this. Anything from ulcers, headaches, to heart attacks and even cancer can manifest if you are over-stressed and psychologically malnourished. Getting enough or too little sleep is also huge so if you're reading this, make sure you get your (average of) 8 hours tonight. Think of it as a small way to unsure you live long enough to enjoy retirement.

dnautics 10y ago

You're right, but it's not shame. It's just a raw reinforcement feedback cycle. If you repeatedly put a lot of effort into things that fail (or fail to achieve an expected reward - monetary, status, etc...), and then you train your brain to associate labor with failure, so it creates a mechanism to avoid labor. It's why scientists burn out regularly. 9/10 experiments fail - and that's for a highly skilled scientist.

jk4930 10y ago
When scientists burn out, that has probably more to do with the continuous grant hunting, bureaucratic nonsense, and backstabbing they're exposed to. When PhD students or postdocs burn out, it's because of underpaid boredom, lack of communication about their research or job uncertainties, and a generally ungrateful and passionless environment. I've never seen scientists burn out over failed experiments. They know upfront that (basic) research is hard and that 90% of their stuff is not working.
- dnautics 10y ago
  > I've never seen scientists burn out over failed experiments. It's never a single failed experiment. I can't think, off the top of my head, of a scientist that I've known professionally that I didn't see burn out at some point or another (besides the PIs). For those that I have been watching their experiments, it usually happens after a slew of experiments fail (anywhere from 1 month - 6 months worth). I've probably met about 75-ish scientists that I've watched burn out.* Of these, about 25 or so I have working knowledge of what they were doing around the time of burnout. *one guy, after three successive failed projects that his PI gave to him, had a very characteristic pattern. He would come in really late (4pm or so), then play game boy tetris on a java applet for about 3-4 hours, then do a little bit of science, and come back and do more tetris. Some of the things he would do - using pipette tips in geometric patterns. I mean it makes sense. These little achievements provide dopamine hits reinforcing self-worth after completion of a minor task.

mtrimpe 10y ago

There's burnout and there's burnout. Some burnout is basically your mind slowly coming to associate some (class of) activity with negative feelings eventually building up to the point where it basically becomes an emotional net negative to the degree you can't push yourself to work on it anymore and you (have to) disengage. Then there's the kind of burnout where you've been marinating your nervous system with extreme amounts of stress hormones for extended periods of time (months or more likely years on end) and when your performance starts to degrade due to this, as it inevitably will, you keep pushing yourself to maintain your expected standard of productivity up to the point where your body is basically trashed and your productivity suddenly drops precipitously to virtually non-existent levels which generally takes years to recover from. The former is mostly psychological; the latter starts psychologically but most definitely crosses into the territory of the physical. As an aside; the book The Upside of Stress [1] is a really good book on dividing 'good stress' which basically trains up your body and 'bad stress' which bathes you in damaging hormones. Many burnouts happen when someone with a high workload unwittingly switches from good to bad stress. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23281639-the-upside-of-stress https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23281639-the-upside-of-s...

paganel 10y ago

I've been writing code for a living for 11 years now and I don't think I've ever set out myself to give "110% on an important project", apart from the couple of tight deadlines which used to show up every 6 to 9 months (which required some weekend work). I regard laziness, "less is more" and YAGNI as real virtues for programmers.

cr0sh 10y ago
> I regard laziness, "less is more" and YAGNI as real virtues for programmers. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slack http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Slack

blablabla123 10y ago

An additional problem is a vicious circle: when there are first signs of burnout, even if you give 110%, you're just at your "normal" 50% or less. I'm through some kind of burn-out experience and I realize it's really important to make myself feel good and that that is just fine. When I'm overworked I explain that I have limited time and stop working. When colleagues flood me with issues and problems I eventually stop talking to them if that's the only way.

edblarney 10y ago

It's a mental thing that I believe has real physical side-effects.