5 ms·

What wartime ‘munitionettes’ teach us about burnout

45 points by rubinelli 7y ago

AndrewKemendo 7y ago
I'm getting "burned out" of these nihilistic work life balance articles. Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life. True, productivity drops after 40 hours. But not to zero. You are 2/3 as productive at 60 hours a week. That's still more productive than not working at all. People literally worked to death during The Apollo program to get to the moon. Same with every major Infrastructure project like the Hoover dam, disease eradicating efforts like the Salk polio project etc. Do you think spacex is launching space internet satellites built by people who have plenty of time for their hobbies? It's ok to be obsessed. Find something you actually believe in and if you're being worked to death on something you don't care about well, quit. Can't "afford" to quit? Then reevaluate your life to figure out what's worth risking being homeless to do. Or continue to work towards some milquetoast weekend hedonism, but stop shaming the idea of being obsessed.
- human20190310 7y ago
  > Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life Watson and Crick didn't work very hard, but managed to infer the structure of DNA from data that their competitors had well before them (necessarily, because Watson and Crick basically swiped it). EDIT: And for that matter Rosalind Franklin, whose data they used, had an active life outside of work as well.
  - AndrewKemendo 7y ago
    Sorry no, Watson was completely obsessed. I doubt their "toxic" work environment would be lauded today. The whole point here is not to find one or two nitpicking examples of some lounging geniuses that stumbled into something but rather the larger trend that massive impacts take narrow person to work. Sometimes that even allows for you to take a bike ride everyday. The point is the same.
    - jjulius 7y ago
      >Show me anything... Sure. >The whole point here is not to find one or two nitpicking example... Oh, OK then.
    - gerbilly 7y ago
      Just what do you want to convince us of anyway? To work hard (presumably for you) or what? We'll get back to you on that...
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  >Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life. Newton invented calculus in a few months goofing off on his family farm while avoiding the plague. This "work yourself to death" mentality is moronic. It's about 1000x more moronic when you're working on some dumb ass app which makes life worse and which makes someone else rich, which is, realistically what most of you are working on.
  - hollerith 7y ago
    >Newton invented calculus in a few months goofing off I'm not disputing your overall point, but I don't think the example of Newton helps your case. Newton accumulated writings at the time of his death run to about ten million words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Alchemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Alchemy 10 million words on science, philosophy, religion and combating counterfeiting during his 33-year tenure with the Royal Mint is a lot even for a long life. (Newton lived to 84.) And Newton never had sex. (He boasted of the fact on his death bed.) And look at all the serious things he pursued after he invented calculus (intro to the same Wikipedia page): >Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. . . . Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02. He . . . spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1700) and Master (1700–1727) of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703–1727). Given all he did after inventing calculus combined with the fact that he was ambitious and from a poor family, I'm inclined to think he worked his ass off when he was a student unless you can present strong evidence to the contrary.
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      What, do you think sex-havers waste more time or something? I don't know what point you're trying to make here. The fact that Newton did a lot of stuff doesn't mean he burned himself out with Travis Bickle hours the way modern ding dongs do to excuse not having a life. Let's use another example of a great man who accomplished a lot without working real hard: Winston Churchill. A day drinker who was fond of long meals, boozy parties and who took a daily hour and a half long nap. Somehow he managed to take up painting, write a couple dozen encyclopediac books, ran many important government offices and defeated Hitler. I'll go out of my way to notice that the great ancient Greek and even Roman types were all unconscionably lazy by modern American standards, and Aristotle did his best work relaxing in a bath. Darwin was lazy as was da Vinci. Being lazy is civilized and normal. The insane "I must eat soylent and snort modafinil to maximize my productivity" calvinist mindset of contemporary American upper middle class strivers is the deviation from the mean of the human race. And don't try to tell me things are particularly amazing in current year because all these strivers are working bugman hours: this lifestyle is wretched and disgusting and our era is marked by stupidity, vice and lack of technical or cultural progress. Laziness is aristocratic; if people would relax and smell the roses more, well, most of them won't do anything like what Newton did, but they'll have more time to be thoughtful.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- klyrs 7y ago
  > True, productivity drops after 40 hours. But not to zero. You are 2/3 as productive at 60 hours a week. That's still more productive than not working at all. Sounds to me like you're equally productive working 40 hours, so you'd have 20 more hours to yourself with equal output. I've burned out before. Productivity fell to nearly zero for several years. If I was employed, not in grad school, I'd have been homeless. I succeeded by changing gears and finding something else to work on, which evolved into a job doing something I love. At my job, I avoid burnout by working reasonable hours and tackling problems before they get deadlines attached to them. And yeah. Occasionally I BURN with passion to solve a problem. I can't turn off until I've achieved perfection or proven that I've achieved the upper bound on perfection. I burn the midnight oil. Give my kid as much love as I can but all else falls by the wayside until I SOLVE THAT PROBLEM. But I only do that with passion. Never for the wage
- jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
  It's okay to be indifferent too. I think it's important to ask "At what point will the value I provide be returned to me?" If that value is not coming back, is it at least being paid forward? Or is it just being stashed away in an off-shore tax-haven? No one has ever offered to pay me with a second life; so I'm not just going to hand over the one I have now for some job.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  And in your mind, this obsession is necessary for achieving your revolutionary ideas? That seems obviously false on its face, a ridiculous assertion. The timelines may have been longer for some of the things you mentioned, but you think they simply would not have happened without people putting in long hours each week? > I'm getting "burned out" of these nihilistic work life balance articles. Can you explain why Nihilistic? It seems like the opposite -- you should be enjoying your life, your family, your friends, your hobbies, your job. I see articles like this as a valuable counterpoint to the oppressively common idea that we all should be working ourselves to death every day.
- journalctl 7y ago
  Life’s too short to give a crap about working myself to death. I’m alive and I’m happy, and I clock out at 40 hours. I have friends and hobbies that I love, and that’ll matter infinitely more to me in my final moments than spending a few more hours toiling away for some faceless money machine that only cares when I’m gone because of the paperwork it creates.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  Counterpoint: there are literally tens of millions of people working 60-80 hour weeks. How many of them are producing anything even remotely useful, never mind being outstandingly competent and successful?
  - hef19898 7y ago
    Perspective. These people probably would not work as much if they had a choice. So the useful thing for them is food on the table and a roof above their heads.
    - PeterStuer 7y ago
      Which is somehow, even though we have plenty to go round regardless, withheld from them if they don't work themselves to dead.
- hevi_jos 7y ago
  "Do you think spacex is launching space internet satellites built by people who have plenty of time for their hobbies?" SpaceX is not revolutionary, it is evolutionary, as rocket's discipline was already well known when they started. You know who was revolutionary with rockets? This man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun As a child, he was playing with friends launching rockets(and burning crop fields when they failed), actually as a hobby. I call hobby studding something freely just for the sake of it. Hoover dam is a terrible example, because almost 100 people died building it, and it should not be necessary killing people for building things like a dam, it is actually much better building things without casualties, the project runs smoothier and faster. And it is a known discipline that Romans already did 2000 years ago. Cinema, in the words of the Lumiere brothers was just a hobby with no real monetary value. Most of Newton time was studying freely esotericism and alchemy. Most of it gave nothing to the world, like philosophy, it was done for the sake of it(science and all sciences come from it, so a very small portion of it paid off). Mr Boole spent enormous amount of time trying to prove the existence of God, and invented Boole algebra as a result. It was of no practical use until more than one century later. The neuron was discovered because of the photography hobby of Ramón y Cajal, staining cells so you can see it. Most of the greatest discoveries in things like Mathematics were done by outsiders, like lawyers that were only interested on a very narrow part of it. And it was a hobby.
- wiggler00m 7y ago
  >Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life. The discovery of DNA (Watson & Crick).
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- gerbilly 7y ago
  > You are 2/3 as productive at 60 hours a week. That's still more productive than not working at all. Not if what you're working on is a false path because you're too tired to notice you made a mistake. What a bumptious comment. Stop telling us what to do. Every authoritarian regime since the beginning of time has glorified hard work. I wonder why that is?
- leetcrew 7y ago
  you might be right to an extent. maybe working on "great" projects does require a pretty extreme grind. but most people don't actually work on anything so important that they need to totally abandon any sense of work/life balance. if they want to work this hard anyway, that's fine! the point is that most people shouldn't feel like they need to. the world will be fine if your software ships a month late; it lasted this long without it.
- oxide 7y ago
  I disagree wholeheartedly, this kind of sentiment is what results in sickening concepts like 'stress casualties' becoming commonplace and even an accepted norm. The concept of a work life balance exists for a reason, because people need downtime.
georgebarnett 7y ago
One of the greatest tragedies is how we lie to ourselves about productivity. I mean that in the sense of “I understand what the science says, but I feel like I’m getting more done.” I know I’m more productive when I step away from my work for downtime, and yet at the same time I have times when I feel it’s near impossible to do. This is an incredibly hard habit to break.
dredmorbius 7y ago
I'm rather stunned there's no mention in the paper of the Chilwell canaries. http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/eastmidlands/series2/blast_chilwell_somme.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/eastmidlands/series2/blast_ch...
Merrill 7y ago
Working long hours continuously on something you don't like with people you despise will burn you out. Working on multi-year projects is especially bad. On the other hand, working long hours for a few months on something you like with people you admire won't burn you out. I was raised on a farm where you worked hard at different things depending on the season, with slack periods between. This was much healthier than engineering.

45 points by rubinelli 7y ago

I'm getting "burned out" of these nihilistic work life balance articles. Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life. True, productivity drops after 40 hours. But not to zero. You are 2/3 as productive at 60 hours a week. That's still more productive than not working at all. People literally worked to death during The Apollo program to get to the moon. Same with every major Infrastructure project like the Hoover dam, disease eradicating efforts like the Salk polio project etc. Do you think spacex is launching space internet satellites built by people who have plenty of time for their hobbies? It's ok to be obsessed. Find something you actually believe in and if you're being worked to death on something you don't care about well, quit. Can't "afford" to quit? Then reevaluate your life to figure out what's worth risking being homeless to do. Or continue to work towards some milquetoast weekend hedonism, but stop shaming the idea of being obsessed.

human20190310 7y ago
> Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life Watson and Crick didn't work very hard, but managed to infer the structure of DNA from data that their competitors had well before them (necessarily, because Watson and Crick basically swiped it). EDIT: And for that matter Rosalind Franklin, whose data they used, had an active life outside of work as well.
- AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  Sorry no, Watson was completely obsessed. I doubt their "toxic" work environment would be lauded today. The whole point here is not to find one or two nitpicking examples of some lounging geniuses that stumbled into something but rather the larger trend that massive impacts take narrow person to work. Sometimes that even allows for you to take a bike ride everyday. The point is the same.
  - jjulius 7y ago
    >Show me anything... Sure. >The whole point here is not to find one or two nitpicking example... Oh, OK then.
  - gerbilly 7y ago
    Just what do you want to convince us of anyway? To work hard (presumably for you) or what? We'll get back to you on that...
scottlocklin 7y ago
>Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life. Newton invented calculus in a few months goofing off on his family farm while avoiding the plague. This "work yourself to death" mentality is moronic. It's about 1000x more moronic when you're working on some dumb ass app which makes life worse and which makes someone else rich, which is, realistically what most of you are working on.
- hollerith 7y ago
  >Newton invented calculus in a few months goofing off I'm not disputing your overall point, but I don't think the example of Newton helps your case. Newton accumulated writings at the time of his death run to about ten million words: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Alchemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton#Alchemy 10 million words on science, philosophy, religion and combating counterfeiting during his 33-year tenure with the Royal Mint is a lot even for a long life. (Newton lived to 84.) And Newton never had sex. (He boasted of the fact on his death bed.) And look at all the serious things he pursued after he invented calculus (intro to the same Wikipedia page): >Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology, but most of his work in those areas remained unpublished until long after his death. . . . Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge, in 1689–90 and 1701–02. He . . . spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden (1696–1700) and Master (1700–1727) of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society (1703–1727). Given all he did after inventing calculus combined with the fact that he was ambitious and from a poor family, I'm inclined to think he worked his ass off when he was a student unless you can present strong evidence to the contrary.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    What, do you think sex-havers waste more time or something? I don't know what point you're trying to make here. The fact that Newton did a lot of stuff doesn't mean he burned himself out with Travis Bickle hours the way modern ding dongs do to excuse not having a life. Let's use another example of a great man who accomplished a lot without working real hard: Winston Churchill. A day drinker who was fond of long meals, boozy parties and who took a daily hour and a half long nap. Somehow he managed to take up painting, write a couple dozen encyclopediac books, ran many important government offices and defeated Hitler. I'll go out of my way to notice that the great ancient Greek and even Roman types were all unconscionably lazy by modern American standards, and Aristotle did his best work relaxing in a bath. Darwin was lazy as was da Vinci. Being lazy is civilized and normal. The insane "I must eat soylent and snort modafinil to maximize my productivity" calvinist mindset of contemporary American upper middle class strivers is the deviation from the mean of the human race. And don't try to tell me things are particularly amazing in current year because all these strivers are working bugman hours: this lifestyle is wretched and disgusting and our era is marked by stupidity, vice and lack of technical or cultural progress. Laziness is aristocratic; if people would relax and smell the roses more, well, most of them won't do anything like what Newton did, but they'll have more time to be thoughtful.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
klyrs 7y ago
> True, productivity drops after 40 hours. But not to zero. You are 2/3 as productive at 60 hours a week. That's still more productive than not working at all. Sounds to me like you're equally productive working 40 hours, so you'd have 20 more hours to yourself with equal output. I've burned out before. Productivity fell to nearly zero for several years. If I was employed, not in grad school, I'd have been homeless. I succeeded by changing gears and finding something else to work on, which evolved into a job doing something I love. At my job, I avoid burnout by working reasonable hours and tackling problems before they get deadlines attached to them. And yeah. Occasionally I BURN with passion to solve a problem. I can't turn off until I've achieved perfection or proven that I've achieved the upper bound on perfection. I burn the midnight oil. Give my kid as much love as I can but all else falls by the wayside until I SOLVE THAT PROBLEM. But I only do that with passion. Never for the wage
jacobwilliamroy 7y ago
It's okay to be indifferent too. I think it's important to ask "At what point will the value I provide be returned to me?" If that value is not coming back, is it at least being paid forward? Or is it just being stashed away in an off-shore tax-haven? No one has ever offered to pay me with a second life; so I'm not just going to hand over the one I have now for some job.
Pfhreak 7y ago
And in your mind, this obsession is necessary for achieving your revolutionary ideas? That seems obviously false on its face, a ridiculous assertion. The timelines may have been longer for some of the things you mentioned, but you think they simply would not have happened without people putting in long hours each week? > I'm getting "burned out" of these nihilistic work life balance articles. Can you explain why Nihilistic? It seems like the opposite -- you should be enjoying your life, your family, your friends, your hobbies, your job. I see articles like this as a valuable counterpoint to the oppressively common idea that we all should be working ourselves to death every day.
journalctl 7y ago
Life’s too short to give a crap about working myself to death. I’m alive and I’m happy, and I clock out at 40 hours. I have friends and hobbies that I love, and that’ll matter infinitely more to me in my final moments than spending a few more hours toiling away for some faceless money machine that only cares when I’m gone because of the paperwork it creates.
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Counterpoint: there are literally tens of millions of people working 60-80 hour weeks. How many of them are producing anything even remotely useful, never mind being outstandingly competent and successful?
- hef19898 7y ago
  Perspective. These people probably would not work as much if they had a choice. So the useful thing for them is food on the table and a roof above their heads.
  - PeterStuer 7y ago
    Which is somehow, even though we have plenty to go round regardless, withheld from them if they don't work themselves to dead.
hevi_jos 7y ago
"Do you think spacex is launching space internet satellites built by people who have plenty of time for their hobbies?" SpaceX is not revolutionary, it is evolutionary, as rocket's discipline was already well known when they started. You know who was revolutionary with rockets? This man: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wernher_von_Braun As a child, he was playing with friends launching rockets(and burning crop fields when they failed), actually as a hobby. I call hobby studding something freely just for the sake of it. Hoover dam is a terrible example, because almost 100 people died building it, and it should not be necessary killing people for building things like a dam, it is actually much better building things without casualties, the project runs smoothier and faster. And it is a known discipline that Romans already did 2000 years ago. Cinema, in the words of the Lumiere brothers was just a hobby with no real monetary value. Most of Newton time was studying freely esotericism and alchemy. Most of it gave nothing to the world, like philosophy, it was done for the sake of it(science and all sciences come from it, so a very small portion of it paid off). Mr Boole spent enormous amount of time trying to prove the existence of God, and invented Boole algebra as a result. It was of no practical use until more than one century later. The neuron was discovered because of the photography hobby of Ramón y Cajal, staining cells so you can see it. Most of the greatest discoveries in things like Mathematics were done by outsiders, like lawyers that were only interested on a very narrow part of it. And it was a hobby.
wiggler00m 7y ago
>Show me anything revolutionary that was done by a group of people that weren't obsessed to the point of neglecting the rest of their life. The discovery of DNA (Watson & Crick).
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gerbilly 7y ago
> You are 2/3 as productive at 60 hours a week. That's still more productive than not working at all. Not if what you're working on is a false path because you're too tired to notice you made a mistake. What a bumptious comment. Stop telling us what to do. Every authoritarian regime since the beginning of time has glorified hard work. I wonder why that is?
leetcrew 7y ago
you might be right to an extent. maybe working on "great" projects does require a pretty extreme grind. but most people don't actually work on anything so important that they need to totally abandon any sense of work/life balance. if they want to work this hard anyway, that's fine! the point is that most people shouldn't feel like they need to. the world will be fine if your software ships a month late; it lasted this long without it.
oxide 7y ago
I disagree wholeheartedly, this kind of sentiment is what results in sickening concepts like 'stress casualties' becoming commonplace and even an accepted norm. The concept of a work life balance exists for a reason, because people need downtime.

georgebarnett 7y ago

One of the greatest tragedies is how we lie to ourselves about productivity. I mean that in the sense of “I understand what the science says, but I feel like I’m getting more done.” I know I’m more productive when I step away from my work for downtime, and yet at the same time I have times when I feel it’s near impossible to do. This is an incredibly hard habit to break.

dredmorbius 7y ago

I'm rather stunned there's no mention in the paper of the Chilwell canaries. http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/eastmidlands/series2/blast_chilwell_somme.shtml http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/eastmidlands/series2/blast_ch...

Merrill 7y ago

Working long hours continuously on something you don't like with people you despise will burn you out. Working on multi-year projects is especially bad. On the other hand, working long hours for a few months on something you like with people you admire won't burn you out. I was raised on a farm where you worked hard at different things depending on the season, with slack periods between. This was much healthier than engineering.