3 ms·

Another thing I would like to know is: how is stress associated with damage vs. relaxation? Is it: 1 day stress means you need 1 day of relaxation and 40 days

Another thing I would like to know is: how is stress associated with damage vs. relaxation? Is it: 1 day stress means you need 1 day of relaxation and 40 days of stress means you need 40 days of relaxation? Or is the relationship quadratic or some square root or log? e.g. stress_in_days = days_of_recovery^2 or stress_in_days = days_of_recovery or stress_in_days = ln(days_of_recovery) Related: I find it interesting that they write about the HPA-axis as I've learned that the HPA-axis was a biological explanation for depression. To be fair, the way burnout was described in the article, it didn't seem to be all that different from depression. Edit: seems I was right, depression and burnout don't seem to be all that different [1]. I do think the name burnout describes more accurately what depression is than the name depression. (I secretly hope we have a medical professional reading this) [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30087493 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30087493

taurath 7y ago
Not all relaxation is equal, so I imagine it will be tough to quantify.
lionhearted 7y ago
Super interesting question. Quick take — it 100% can't be linear. Take as an analogue a strain injury — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_(injury) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_(injury) — a first degree strain can heal quickly with minimal invasiveness; a third degree strain might never fully heal even with surgery and rehabilitation. Some of stress is happening on a biochemical level — if your hormones get sufficiently out of balance, and especially if it leads to a downward spiral of short-term behaviors (alcohol, junk food, etc) then you might wind up in a seriously diseased state that takes a serious regimen to recover from. On the other hand, if you never get above some threshold of unhealthy biochemistry and avoid downward spirals of behavior, recovery should be expected to be quicker. There's so so many variables that it's heavily confounded and hard to math out, but the relationship for sure has to be non-linear.
js8 7y ago
Apparently, negative experience affects us roughly 5x more than positive experience. So if the burnout is caused by accumulation of negative experiences, then I gather, you would have to take 5x as much non-stress days than stress days. But whether the day is stress or not depends on your emotions, not on what the day is objectively. You can have a no-stress day which is really busy or even under pressure. I had some of the most productive days at work when I was solving a critical customer issue, simply because of the excitement (you can't do that everyday, though).
lloeki 7y ago
Slightly tangential: anger, created by the violation of one's values, releases cortisol, the "stress hormone", which is very impactful on the nervous system, destroying neurons to carve neural pathways fast in order to learn that something is dangerous. 1 min of anger generates enough cortisol for the immune system to work for 1 hour in order to clear the whole thing. Imagine the damage of time spent reading (and possibly responding to, even if it's only in one's own mind) a random thread of enraging comments on the Internet. Imagine the impact of having one's values constantly challenged in a professional setting, generating inordinate amounts of anger 8 hours a day. It's really no wonder that this quickly generates constant, taxing fight-or-flight reactions due to abnormal anxiety, leading to irrational decisions and ultimately burnout and depression, where the untamed beast feeds unto itself in an uncontrolled feedback loop, even when the initial source of stress is removed. This short, funny (yet well researched) video about emotions has been enlightening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DakEvdZWLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DakEvdZWLk
gillesjacobs 7y ago
In Western Europe, general practitioners are instructed to prescribe relaxation and not working starting with 3 months up to 6 or 7 months. Six months of non-activity seems to be the average recovery period prescribed after burnout. However, every person is different. External factors such as family, lifestyle and responsibilities can aid or halt recovery. Same goes for personality and internal factors. I know of cases of burnout turned depression where the person took 2 years to start working. There is no universal function for how long a person suffers from chronic stress and the recovery duration. Obtaining such a function entails fully understanding and measuring all factors and dimensions involved in burnout. And that would merit a publication in Nature.
- dnautics 7y ago
  I find that the best thing to do is to reassociate labor and effort with reward by doing lots of low-risk primary reward work after a high risk, high effort push (doing refactorings, code cleanup, etc), and that resting after high burnout risk made recurrence more likely due to rewarding not laboring; I haven't burned out at my primary job as a result (can't say I haven't periodically burned out in other pursuits like dating lol) in several years.

taurath 7y ago

Not all relaxation is equal, so I imagine it will be tough to quantify.

lionhearted 7y ago

Super interesting question. Quick take — it 100% can't be linear. Take as an analogue a strain injury — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_(injury) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strain_(injury) — a first degree strain can heal quickly with minimal invasiveness; a third degree strain might never fully heal even with surgery and rehabilitation. Some of stress is happening on a biochemical level — if your hormones get sufficiently out of balance, and especially if it leads to a downward spiral of short-term behaviors (alcohol, junk food, etc) then you might wind up in a seriously diseased state that takes a serious regimen to recover from. On the other hand, if you never get above some threshold of unhealthy biochemistry and avoid downward spirals of behavior, recovery should be expected to be quicker. There's so so many variables that it's heavily confounded and hard to math out, but the relationship for sure has to be non-linear.

js8 7y ago

Apparently, negative experience affects us roughly 5x more than positive experience. So if the burnout is caused by accumulation of negative experiences, then I gather, you would have to take 5x as much non-stress days than stress days. But whether the day is stress or not depends on your emotions, not on what the day is objectively. You can have a no-stress day which is really busy or even under pressure. I had some of the most productive days at work when I was solving a critical customer issue, simply because of the excitement (you can't do that everyday, though).

lloeki 7y ago

Slightly tangential: anger, created by the violation of one's values, releases cortisol, the "stress hormone", which is very impactful on the nervous system, destroying neurons to carve neural pathways fast in order to learn that something is dangerous. 1 min of anger generates enough cortisol for the immune system to work for 1 hour in order to clear the whole thing. Imagine the damage of time spent reading (and possibly responding to, even if it's only in one's own mind) a random thread of enraging comments on the Internet. Imagine the impact of having one's values constantly challenged in a professional setting, generating inordinate amounts of anger 8 hours a day. It's really no wonder that this quickly generates constant, taxing fight-or-flight reactions due to abnormal anxiety, leading to irrational decisions and ultimately burnout and depression, where the untamed beast feeds unto itself in an uncontrolled feedback loop, even when the initial source of stress is removed. This short, funny (yet well researched) video about emotions has been enlightening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DakEvdZWLk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DakEvdZWLk

gillesjacobs 7y ago

In Western Europe, general practitioners are instructed to prescribe relaxation and not working starting with 3 months up to 6 or 7 months. Six months of non-activity seems to be the average recovery period prescribed after burnout. However, every person is different. External factors such as family, lifestyle and responsibilities can aid or halt recovery. Same goes for personality and internal factors. I know of cases of burnout turned depression where the person took 2 years to start working. There is no universal function for how long a person suffers from chronic stress and the recovery duration. Obtaining such a function entails fully understanding and measuring all factors and dimensions involved in burnout. And that would merit a publication in Nature.

dnautics 7y ago
I find that the best thing to do is to reassociate labor and effort with reward by doing lots of low-risk primary reward work after a high risk, high effort push (doing refactorings, code cleanup, etc), and that resting after high burnout risk made recurrence more likely due to rewarding not laboring; I haven't burned out at my primary job as a result (can't say I haven't periodically burned out in other pursuits like dating lol) in several years.