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My favourite HN comment was about burnout: Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fai
by superasn 6y ago
My favourite HN comment was about burnout:
Burnout is caused when you repeatedly make large amounts of sacrifice and or effort into high-risk problems that fail. It's the result of a negative prediction error in the nucleus accumbens. You effectively condition your brain to associate work with failure.
Subconsciously, then eventually, consciously, you wonder if it's worth it. The best way to prevent burnout is to follow up a serious failure with doing small things that you know are going to work. As a biologist, I frequently put in 50-70 and sometimes 100 hour workweeks. The very nature of experimental science (lots of unkowns) means that failure happens. The nature of the culture means that grad students are "groomed" by sticking them on low-probability of success, high reward fishing expeditions (gotta get those nature, science papers) I used to burn out for months after accumulating many many hours of work on high-risk projects. I saw other grad students get it really bad, and burn out for years.
During my first postdoc, I dated a neuroscientist and reprogrammed my work habits. On the heels of the failure of a project where I have spent weeks building up for, I will quickly force myself to do routine molecular biology, or general lab tasks, or a repeat of an experiment that I have gotten to work in the past. These all have an immediate reward. Now I don't burn out anymore, and find it easier to re-attempt very difficult things, with a clearer mindset.
For coders, I would posit that most burnout comes on the heels of failure that is not in the hands of the coder (management decisions, market realities, etc). My suggested remedy would be to reassociate work with success by doing routine things such as debugging or code testing that will restore the act of working with the little "pops" of endorphins.
That is not to say that having a healthy life schedule makes burnout less likely (I think it does; and one should have a healthy lifestyle for its own sake) but I don't think it addresses the main issue.
link to comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630618 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5630618
- nullsense 6y agoWow. Thanks for sharing this.
- not_the_nsa 6y agoThanks for sharing this. Right now I'm burnt out beyond words, having delivered a phase of a huge project, followed by upper management actions that make me feel extremely devalued and dehumanized. I've already written a list of personal development tasks for the three weeks' leave ahead - I need to up-skill, then find a new employer - which I'll restructure into little wins.
- malux85 6y agoTake a break, you must. I know it always feels like you can’t, but you can’t keep working, you will snap. Programmers are hard to replace, it hard to find a good one, and it takes time to ramp up a new one with a codebase. You have more negotiating power than you think. Your comment struck me because I have been in that position before, and I know it really really hurts. But you gotta look out for yourself. Please take a week or two off
- greenyoda 6y ago> You have more negotiating power than you think. That assumes that their manager (1) is aware of how hard it is to find a good programmer, and (2) is rational.
- malux85 6y agoIf either of those conditions is satisfied then imo it's time to go. Who wants to work for an irrational manager? (actual lol)
- nullsense 6y agoFor a second I thought I wrote this comment, then I realized I didn't, but it's just so familiar. The burnt out feeling is coming mainly from the feeling of how much prep is required to switch jobs even. I'm just hoping the promotion actually comes through and I don't need to but at the same time I'm preparing now so that 6 months from now I can leave on a dime if I want.
- non-entity 6y agoCan life be considered a high risk project? I haven't particularly failed any high risk problems in my career unless my career itself counts.
- godelski 6y agoWell if you fail bad enough you die. So I'd say the stakes are pretty high.
- noneeeed 6y agoThis makes a lot of sense, and chimes with my gut feel based approach of following up a long and difficult bit of work with some quick wins or bug fixes before thinking about starting anything else big.