19 ms·

Burnout can exacerbate work stress, further promoting a vicious circle

311 points by rustoo 6y ago

sleepysysadmin 6y ago
Been in this case a couple jobs; both MSP jobs naturally. When you're burnt out you just don't see it. In both of my previous jobs the burnout also had a boss who was consistently micromanaging and saying you aren't working hard enough. This is one of the weaknesses of government. A fundamental law that governments should have is that your employer cannot harm your health. Even in mental cases like burnout, the employer is almost certainly trading the employee's health for money. An employee's health is not something an employer should be allowed to trade. In more physical injury, someone lifting 200lbs hurting their back or some ancient machine that lacks any safety features leading to injury. The employer is trading their employee's health in place of profits in not having safety. Even with workplace safety measures, who ultimately pays is the government and therefore tax payers for these injuries. These bad employers get to keep their $.
- dcolkitt 6y ago
  Plenty of jobs trade their employees' health for money. If they didn't, the economy would literally cease to function. Oil rig workers, miners, lumber workers, fishermen, roofers, pilots, farmers, even truck drivers have significantly elevated mortality rates. The reality is that there are many jobs that require a sacrifice in terms of health and safety. Until we're living in a post-scarcity economy, they always will. We can do things like make those jobs as safe as practically possible. Or make sure workers are aware of the risks before they sign up. But, it's unrealistic utopian thinking to believe that no one will ever be asked to sacrifice their health or safety for their job.
  - sleepysysadmin 6y ago
    >Plenty of jobs trade their employees' health for money. If they didn't, the economy would literally cease to function. Oil rig workers, miners, lumber workers, fishermen, roofers, pilots, farmers, even truck drivers have significantly elevated mortality rates. You're completely right. >The reality is that there are many jobs that require a sacrifice in terms of health and safety. Until we're living in a post-scarcity economy, they always will. We can do things like make those jobs as safe as practically possible. Or make sure workers are aware of the risks before they sign up. I disagree. The point I am making is that we must make that illegal. We should require the employers to solve that problem. All of these have known hazards that which can be solved. We simply decide that we let employers profit off it. That's wrong. >But, it's unrealistic utopian thinking to believe that no one will ever be asked to sacrifice their health or safety for their job. There are some exceptions that obviously do need to exist. Military or law enforcement for example will have harms in their life that are by definition. I look at your list of examples of higher mortality employers and I agree they exist, I even understand what makes them dangerous. Truck drivers for example is simply the Diesel Exhaust. Electric semi trucks is a thing now, but HEPA filters have existed for how long? There's a fix for every single one of those industries.
    - ed312 6y ago
      I think truck drivers its more a function of 1. driving lots of miles (the more you're on the road, the more risk you're in) plus 2. sedentary job. There is definitely not a fix for every industry - and some people are happy with taking that risk for more money than a lower risk job/profession. "Just make dangerous job conditions illegal" is a naïve view of the world. Even if you could pass such laws, you'd get a massive skills drain and/or black market work to get those jobs done.
- TheDong 6y ago
  > This is one of the weaknesses of government. A fundamental law that governments should have is that your employer cannot harm your health I think there's a better way to deal with this. Rather than legislate that certain abuses of health aren't okay, let's instead make it so people aren't stuck working jobs if they don't think it's worth it. Right now, the main reason workplaces can abuse employees so much is that employees can't quit, or else they'd starve on the street. If we had a livable universal basic income, that would allow anyone to, at any time, decide if their job's extra income + the meaning it gave them was worth the stress and other issues. We already have good evidence that this wouldn't result in no one working since, well, quite a few of the people born wealthy enough to never need to work do work anyway.
  - eeZah7Ux 6y ago
    > Rather than Why not both?
  - sleepysysadmin 6y ago
    >I think there's a better way to deal with this. Rather than legislate that certain abuses of health aren't okay, let's instead make it so people aren't stuck working jobs if they don't think it's worth it. Right now, the main reason workplaces can abuse employees so much is that employees can't quit, or else they'd starve on the street. I know where you're going and I'm a fence sitter. >If we had a livable universal basic income, that would allow anyone to, at any time, decide if their job's extra income + the meaning it gave them was worth the stress and other issues. Here in Canada we have tried basic income systems and even have a current system for some of our people. It's a disaster. It single handedly increases poverty and crime like no other policy. Have you ever heard of a negative income tax rate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM >We already have good evidence that this wouldn't result in no one working since, well, quite a few of the people born wealthy enough to never need to work do work anyway. Only when you exclude systems that arent by name which is common for socialist/communist/collectivist/postmodernist or whatever the new brand is that they go by today as the old name becomes tarnished. There's tremendous evidence that welfare system in general have never been successful. When we have a problem that which the welfare system is proposed as the fix. The problem gets worse as the welfare system is implemented. Then the fix is that the welfare system needs more money and as they get more money the problem becomes worse. In fact many of these systems are not designed to help the poor even though by name they are supposed to be.
- kaybe 6y ago
  > A fundamental law that governments should have is that your employer cannot harm your health. A small note: Germany does have a law like this. (I cannot find anything about it in English though.) https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%25C3%25BCrsorgepflicht https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
  - sleepysysadmin 6y ago
    >A small note: Germany does have a law like this. (I cannot find anything about it in English though.) The more I know about Germany's government the more I like about it.
    - dasKrokodil 6y ago
      There have been worse German governments than the current one.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Pretty sure the Health & Safety at Work Act (UK) [1] meets this requirement. There's various common law things related to duty of care and negligence that probably apply less specifically too. I'd really expect every democratic country to have some form of law requiring employers take care of their employees -- they should expect to do something in return for leeching off ones production of value. [1] https://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm https://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm
    - Pyramus 6y ago
      That is correct, but the bar for enforcement is very high when it comes to mental health. E.g. I remember a case of a police officer suffering from depression (?) but "only" stressing folks out is not enough unfortunately. In addition, you have to show a causal relationsship, which again is a lot more difficult for mental health as there are usually several factors at play even though work might be the pre-dominant one.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  who ultimately pays is the government At least in the US, I believe that employers are required to pay for workers' compensation insurance to cover injuries on the job.
- pqoek 6y ago
  I'm in the reverse situation, I'm free to do whatever I please and plan work myself, nobody really track my work besides the item that I placed there myself, the burn out is mostly coming from having too many meetings, not being able to relate to the product, and not being supported or having peers to exchange ideas with.
gjvc 6y ago
...from the department of the bloody obvious.
motohagiography 6y ago
Clicked for me recently that working hard is like driving in first gear. Necessary initially, but if you don't shift up into higher gears, you're probably not doing it right, and not getting as far as fast as you probably should. If I'm tired, it's necessarily because I'm mismanaging my work and time, and that's a signal it's time to step back and figure out what's wrong. Some people are really good at that initial torque boost on projects and can sustain it longer than others, but if work doesn't get easier it's because you're doing something wrong. From a market-fit perspective, I think startups that drive around in first gear never get very far either. Things are only hard because we're being stupid. Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day." I'm guilty of this as much as anyone, but burnout is my body intervening to tell me I'm being stupid.
- fakedang 6y ago
  > Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day." I'm saving this quote to tell people this later on.
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    the twist is to make others wash dishes obviously
    - rabidrat 6y ago
      dish-washing is a cost-center, not a profit-center, so really the solution is to cut costs by washing dishes as little as possible :)
      - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
        Sign up for my dishes-as-a-service subscription NetDish. Get clean dishes until you stop paying. Also check out my dishwasher-sharing service Dishdash.
dirtybirdnj 6y ago
Its like being a cat trapped in the washing machine on spin cycle. The only hope for escape is a power failure and mercy of someone who is aware you are inside. Stuck in a job completely burned out, there is nothing worse than the realization of the futility in any struggle to either escape or improve. The knowledge that your output has dropped, the feeling that it's your fault combined with nobody interested in helping you because they are annoyed about your lack of output. There are no doorhandles on the inside of this washing machine. My only advice is to meow as loud as you can.
- amelius 6y ago
  Sleep as long as you can.
  - NortySpock 6y ago
    Sure, if you can sleep.
    - tachyonbeam 6y ago
      For those of us who are working from home right now, sleeping is easier than ever.
      - mancerayder 6y ago
        Insomnia is pretty high on the list of pandemic lockdown issues at the moment, not to mention burnout symptoms. Some people I know can sleep sitting on a plane, and others can scarcely sleep at night, horizontal, in a quiet room, on a soft bed.
        yters 6y ago
        A hard workout, waking up early and avoiding caffeine help me a lot with insomnia.
        6y ago
29athrowaway 6y ago
If you are burned out watch the talk "Pushing through friction" by Daniel Na. That talk inspired me and saved my job.
- ajb 6y ago
  That's interesting, but its not the only cause of burnout.
- christophergs 6y ago
  Thanks for the recommendation, talk was indeed banging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxZuzDKoI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxZuzDKoI0
  - tayo42 6y ago
    IDK if i totally agree with some of the examples. Like the new guy coming in and saying how everything can be different and better, just listen to me. That is irritating, unhelpful usually because you don't have all the information yet. It makes two assumptions, that the team isn't competent enough to realize it, and that your current view of whats on fire is more important then everything else going on. The other example of the guy saying from the outside, their fix will only take 2 weeks. That's an estimate from someone who doesn't have the whole picture, if your asking another team. The resolution was to pester people and write up long docs to convince them its worth it. This is immediately adding on to your estimate of time. This idea of friction seems like its more a question of trade offs and prioritizing work. Is it worth going through all this effort and context switching to try to see if this thing can be done. Is it worth distracting other people. I think calling it friction means we could possibly be undervaluing work that is prevented by this friction. Ill have to think about it more
- andrewem 6y ago
  Can someone summarize the lessons or approach of that talk?
  - 29athrowaway 6y ago
giantg2 6y ago
I have to support my family somehow. Who cares if that means I'm burnt out.
- echelon 6y ago
  A lot of millennials will never have families because of this.
  - rychco 6y ago
    Myself and most of my millennial peers feel this way exactly. Some are still hopeful that they'll own a home & raise a large family like their parents and grandparents did, but the rest of us aren't so sure.
    - UseStrict 6y ago
      Millennial peer, I feel like it's been a treadmill, forever running but no progress. Living in first in Ottawa then Toronto, I watched affordability of housing slip from attainable in 3-5 years after graduating to virtually impossible without being extremely house poor. That's excluding the crazy high cost of living in general, and the feeling like employers are working to crush an ever-increasing amount of time out of employees. Why bring a kid into this prison? So they can work harder and fall even further behind than I am?
      - giantg2 6y ago
        I do wonder if it was a mistake to have a kid. They do bring some joy, and especially a lot of joy to the grandparents. But what kind of life will they have in this world?
      - titanomachy 6y ago
        Toronto is a grind. The work culture is punishing and affordability sucks. Not all cities are like that. Montreal and Vancouver are both better in some ways. Vancouver is still wildly unaffordable (especially if buying a house is important to you) but the lifestyle is much nicer and more conducive to mental health than Toronto's.
echelon 6y ago
I just want a no-pay sabbatical. Three months, total reset of energy levels. We should all have that option. I would take a lot less money (-$50k or more) if I got to take a quarter off every year. Four day work weeks would be another compelling alternative. Two days a week are not enough time to get chores done. There's no time for relaxing. If I ever create a company, I'd love to offer these options.
- nprz 6y ago
  I was laid off near the tail end of a very stressful, deadline driven project and it actually came as a huge relief. Luckily I had money saved and took my time (about 3 months) looking for the next job. Was also given 2 months severance, so I didn't even end up losing much income. By end of my time off I was getting bored and happy to be working on something new. Highly recommended.
  - tartoran 6y ago
    A layoff could come as a blessing sometimes, especially if you're not in the middle of other problems. As devs we're still privileged to be able to do this. For many a layoff comes as dreadful news.
- tartoran 6y ago
  Absolutely. We need to carve a new normal. I personally would be a lot more productive after a 3 months of rest. I asked my former employer if I could take some unpaid time off, and of course I was flexible on timing so that their impact was at a minimum. The answer was no.
  - diffrinse 6y ago
    Continuous delivery, amirite?
- thelean12 6y ago
  Plenty of big companies allow you to do this. I know several people who have taken 1-3 month long unpaid vacation while at FAANG companies. Sure, it takes some planning. You can't just do it tomorrow. But it seemed pretty easy for them.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
forgotmypw17 6y ago
One of the most frustrating parts about it for me was that I'd seen the trope many times in fiction, non-fiction, and with my own eyes, and I could see all the parallels, knew logically what was happening, and I still found myself pushing harder into the cliff. A real mindfuck.
- lovehashbrowns 6y ago
  There are so many things like that which can affect you, you see it happening, and there's nothing you can do about it. I have occasional manic episodes, and ADHD. I can see both happening, I know what they are logically, and I just get to see myself walk closer and closer to the cliff's edge.
  - forgotmypw17 6y ago
    I think my helplessness and inaction were learned behaviors, and I managed to kick the habit... for the most part. I wish you the best of luck, don,t give up. At some point it will click. Be grateful when it happens.
meaydinli 6y ago
I am going through this right now. I have constant tension headaches and doc says I should stay away from stress, stress triggers and chocolate/coffee/etc. How am I supposed to do that with work/life/COVID and everything 2020? I have a big project on me, and there is no way I can get the rest I need to recover properly. I took 2 days off, and my colleagues are rallying to help as much as they can, but some of the info is silo'd on me so I need to work on it.
- tenebrisalietum 6y ago
  > but some of the info is silo'd on me What's preventing you from sharing this information or making it accessible to your other colleagues?
  - meaydinli 6y ago
    Thank you, that is a good question. I haven't thought of it from that POV. Nothing is preventing me aside from my work-load, and the feeling that I am letting everybody down every second this project is further delayed.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      I'm paraphrasing a story whose origin I can't remember at the moment, but basically if you have 6 hours to chop down a very large tree, you should spend 5 of those hours sharpening your axe.
      - IggleSniggle 6y ago
        I'm suddenly feeling a little better about all the time I spend investigating better/different ways to approach technical problems, even when I know that I can't apply them to the problem that is immediately in front of me. I mean, obviously at some point you need to cut down the tree, and sometimes you're just carving down your ax without making it any sharper, but still.
        6y ago
mkl95 6y ago
Every time I approach burnout my body reacts with some funny symptom I had never suffered before. The human brain can be really imaginative at asking you to stop.
- tachyonbeam 6y ago
  Can you elaborate?
  - mkl95 6y ago
    It's often some kind of skin itch, weird spot, etc. It quickly goes away when my stress levels stay low for a few days.
baxtr 6y ago
I quit my stressful job end of August. Luckily I have a smartwatch. By chance I checked my resting heart rate recently. I was quite shocked to see a stunning continuous 20% drop since then. I guess it was the right decision to quit.
- thejackgoode 6y ago
  This is the case for me as well. I have noticed similar increase (~52 => ~62 avg sleeping BPM) for the last two months and last week have been diagnosed with anxiety/depression and I am also burnt out. I love the objectivity it provides.
  - baxtr 6y ago
    I went almost exactly the other way, from 65 down to 52. Fascinating that stress is visible in the data.
codecamper 6y ago
If you are reading this make sure you get a colonoscopy before 40, but also a 23andme to see if you have genetic susceptibility to colon cancer. If you have susceptibility, then don't smoke and a colonoscopy by 30 or smoke and a colonoscopy by 25. Don't drink a lot of sugary drinks either. Writing this because too many young people are getting colon cancer & it's a completely preventable cancer.
- outworlder 6y ago
  I upvoted this because, even though it's not on topic, it's an important recommendation. That said, I don't see colon cancer listed in 23andme's website. Are you sure they screen for that?
- mottosso 6y ago
  And just like that you added the stress of worrying about cancer to my list. Thank you stranger!
bird_monster 6y ago
I've wanted to write about my (only; last) experience as a manager for a long time, as I think it's a pretty textbook definition of the trap that is getting burnt out by a shitty job. My mood worsened because I felt like I was failing all the time. Being in a shitty mood and feeling deeply ashamed made the quality of my work (meaning: the way I treated my team and stakeholders) worse. It was this terrible loop of failure and frustration and shame. My bosses were inept but empathetic to my position for a while, until they also succumbed to the burnout/failure process that shitty companies usually cascade downward. My team hated me, because I was tasked with firing some of them and fundamentally changing the way that they worked. My manager, who I replaced as my team's manager, was very open that he didn't have it in him to fire anyone, and that my job was awful mostly because of the amount of things he didn't feel comfortable addressing while he was in my role (but needed addressed). This meant some employees had spent literal years exhibiting bad behavior, and I (a new hire) was being tasked with addressing it. It was awful. To make matters worse, as soon as my manager stopped managing the team, he seemed to totally forget what it was like working with that team, which meant that my requirements and performance were measured off of totally unobtainable feats of success with the team we had. I was expected to get a team that couldn't ship a feature in 10 weeks, to ship features in 2. Ultimately it culminated with a meeting between me and my grand-manager, where I told her there was an opening as an IC on a neighboring team/product and I intended to take it, and she responded by saying "Maybe, I'm not sure we'll be able to accommodate that request." Which I responded for the first and only time in my career with the ultimatum of "In 30 days I will not be on this team, one way or the other." I felt sick going into that meeting because it felt like I was admitting that I was a total failure, but also that sickness was 1/1000th of the sickness I felt waking up every day getting crushed by my actual job. Now, some time out, I am on good terms with everyone other than that grand-manager, who I haven't spoken with since. I even work at a new company founded by former coworkers.
- 127 6y ago
  Both shame and failing are such a huge things for me. From my perspective it's a miracle how well you handled it.
- lostdog 6y ago
jofer 6y ago
In my experience, most of burnout is being held responsible for things you don't have control over. That may not be true for everyone, but it's been consistently true for me. As a result, the "work more efficiently" comments from management/etc are just incredibly unhelpful. Most of the discussion so far seems to center on "work more efficiently", not "find a way to be supported". The latter is usually the only thing that will help, in my experience.
- prawn 6y ago
  That would hold true for one of the most extreme periods of stress/burn-out I've had in my past. A project with technical demands set by a non-technical person who had no interest in budging. I thoroughly detested that project (and that person)! In comparison, I've had periods of greater workload but where I've had full control, and enjoyed the challenge.
firecall 6y ago
This happened to me, slowly. I didnt realise it at the time, or as it was happening. I have ADHD, and can be amazing at work. But over time corporate offices destroyed me. I sought help for depression, and my ADHD. But no one suggested burnout. I had to have a fully nervous breakdown and six months off work to even work out what was going on. It's taken a full two years of recovery, and now I guard my mental health like the crown jewels! But I'll never be the same again. I'll never fully commit to another company, manager, workplace or team again. I choose to validate myself outside of what makes me money, and choose my friends and acquaintances carefully. I don't assume people I work with are my 'friends', and I certainly am very careful who I trust! (which is never anyone at work!)
- jb_s 6y ago
  It's tough with ADHD - like another layer to the feedback loop. Not only does ADHD substantially increase workplace stress, but stress and overwork also substantially exacerbate ADHD symptoms.
- nullsense 6y ago
  As a fellow ADHDer I feel like it makes me a lot better at what I do because I do it all the time because I just can't switch off. By the same token it constantly makes me run myself into the ground. It's especially bad if there are deadlines that mean not only can I not compartmentalize work and switch off, I feel the feelings a lot more too, but can never be sure if the random desire to rage quit due to $todays_small_yet_significant_grievance is signal or just noise from the emotional dysregulation. Currently getting properly burnt out for real right now and debating whether to stay and try get things back to normal after this project or just leave early next year with this job having been nothing more than a shitstain on my career. I'm so torn.
staysaasy 6y ago
Burnout really sucks and it can have major business consequences to say nothing of the more significant personal ones. A management lesson that I almost learned the hard way is that some people will push themselves to burnout without intervention, especially in high stakes environments or if they care really deeply about their work (or care deeply about getting ahead). If you're managing a team it is literally your job to monitor workloads, make sure that your team is taking enough vacation, help junior employees say No to clear their schedules, etc.
- layoric 6y ago
  I wish more managers were aware of this, especially in fields where there is a lot of intrinsic motivation beyond the money. I'm definitely guilty of this, I know its not worth my health and yet I kept pushing myself beyond breaking point several times to support company/team, now at the point where I have little to no motivation for anything. Thankfully I will be taking 2+ months off to try find my motivation again and try something new.
el_dev_hell 6y ago
I found this to be the case in my own life. Once I hit burnout (which I can easily pinpoint in retrospect but couldn't see in the moment), work stress started accelerating. Tangentially related, I can't believe how much a role can contribute to burnout. When I was going through my own journey of burnout, I thought it was all a "me" problem (I often quoted the saying: "wherever I go, there I'll be" as an excuse to stay and "work" on myself). I wish I could go back in time and slap myself. Once I left the role that was killing me (long hour, no appreciation, shit product -- the usual), I was at least 80% happier and was able to recover from my battle with burnout. tl;dr: burnout sucks. If you're in a shit job, leave. It might help you heal (maybe rapidly).
wfbarks 6y ago
I'm too burnt out to read this article that might help me understand my burnout, its a vicious circle.
danschumann 6y ago
if burn out: add more fuel Oxygen + solid matter. What is oxygen? Rejuvinating: maybe vacation, maybe relax more in the work day. What is solid? The "why", though I don't think I quite got the phrasing. Seems too easy just to have direction and motivation- although, what else could it be? In not too old medical books, they often referred to a man's "fire" as part of his overall well being. His hearth and happiness, et cetera. In some sense his gall; or gaul: how he carries fire... or his gall bladder?
seige 6y ago
I wanted a no-pay sabbatical for a few months but unfortunately my company had no policy for one. After 4.5 years, my well had run dry. I really struggled to get help and was left with no option but to quit.
jointpdf 6y ago
Ok, so you burned out (maybe not for the first time) and you took an unpaid leave from work. As more time goes on, you convince yourself that your brain is atrophying as you fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. The time comes where you have to go back. How do you do it? How do you shed this feeling of being broken goods in the eyes of yourself and (most likely) others? How do you heal the infected wounds of burnout? I can’t figure it out.
- waihtis 6y ago
  What line of work are you in?
  - jointpdf 6y ago
    Data science, which I think makes this harder for me because a) things move so fast that you’re out of date within months and b) there is so much surface area of knowledge (math, stats, programming, visualization, ...) that impostor syndrome is an inevitability.
    - nikonyrh 6y ago
      Well in addition to all that Data Science stuff I have become quite knowledgeable about several related fields. At least these topics come to mind: - Data Engineering: various DB technologies' pros and cons (AWS Athena, Snowflake, MS Sql Server, Elasticsearch, Redis), Airflow, AWS S3 - ML Engineering: AWS autoscaling clusters, EC2, Spark cluster set-up & management, IO/CPU bottle neck identification, optimizing workloads (like how large chunks, how many Spark worker processes, how many threads on Python's libraries, ...) - Umm Web Engineering?: HTTP API design, load balancing, Docker & Kubernetes, partial results caching for real-time responses I have understood that on larger organizations each of these could have a dedicated team behind it. Anyway I've been lucky to find this company & role and gotten an opportunitu to learn and apply so many technologies, but I must admit it is getting a bit tricky to keep (shall I say pickle) all that in my brain :D
- pqoek 6y ago
  Are you unemployed right now? Because there is really no stress in not working, unless you can't financially sustain yourself. I would recommend moving to a cheap country in Asia to make it last longer and meet new people. Hell go back to school in some cheap country to learn the local language for 6month.
rubicon33 6y ago
I wonder if one cause of burnout is the slot machine nature of the internet these days. What do I mean? YouTube, HackerNews, GoogleNews, Facebook, TikTok, etc... Every time you hit one of these websites, it's like rolling the dice at a casino. Sometimes, you roll the dice and you win. So you want to roll more. Similarly, sometimes you load up YouTube, and it recommends you a good video. So you come back, looking for more. The same hook applies to nearly all websites these days, it's not just "social media". So how does this mess with your motivation? Well, it's seriously messing with your reward system. Instead of seeking long poll rewards, like one gets from reading, and investing in themselves... things necessary for growth in ones career... We're becoming more and more attuned to seeking short term pulls of the dopamine lever. And it's all over the internet. Even your E-Mail to some extent! My suggestion to anyone suffering burnout is to try something dramatic, which I am about to try myself: Cut out all internet except what is required for your job or essential life services (like banking). Everything else, certainly all forms of recreation on the internet, you cut out of your life right NOW. Try it for a week. I'm going to.
- Pyrodogg 6y ago
  Social media induced "doom scrolling" almost needs a Surgeon General warning like nicotine packaging.

311 points by rustoo 6y ago

Been in this case a couple jobs; both MSP jobs naturally. When you're burnt out you just don't see it. In both of my previous jobs the burnout also had a boss who was consistently micromanaging and saying you aren't working hard enough. This is one of the weaknesses of government. A fundamental law that governments should have is that your employer cannot harm your health. Even in mental cases like burnout, the employer is almost certainly trading the employee's health for money. An employee's health is not something an employer should be allowed to trade. In more physical injury, someone lifting 200lbs hurting their back or some ancient machine that lacks any safety features leading to injury. The employer is trading their employee's health in place of profits in not having safety. Even with workplace safety measures, who ultimately pays is the government and therefore tax payers for these injuries. These bad employers get to keep their $.

dcolkitt 6y ago
Plenty of jobs trade their employees' health for money. If they didn't, the economy would literally cease to function. Oil rig workers, miners, lumber workers, fishermen, roofers, pilots, farmers, even truck drivers have significantly elevated mortality rates. The reality is that there are many jobs that require a sacrifice in terms of health and safety. Until we're living in a post-scarcity economy, they always will. We can do things like make those jobs as safe as practically possible. Or make sure workers are aware of the risks before they sign up. But, it's unrealistic utopian thinking to believe that no one will ever be asked to sacrifice their health or safety for their job.
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  >Plenty of jobs trade their employees' health for money. If they didn't, the economy would literally cease to function. Oil rig workers, miners, lumber workers, fishermen, roofers, pilots, farmers, even truck drivers have significantly elevated mortality rates. You're completely right. >The reality is that there are many jobs that require a sacrifice in terms of health and safety. Until we're living in a post-scarcity economy, they always will. We can do things like make those jobs as safe as practically possible. Or make sure workers are aware of the risks before they sign up. I disagree. The point I am making is that we must make that illegal. We should require the employers to solve that problem. All of these have known hazards that which can be solved. We simply decide that we let employers profit off it. That's wrong. >But, it's unrealistic utopian thinking to believe that no one will ever be asked to sacrifice their health or safety for their job. There are some exceptions that obviously do need to exist. Military or law enforcement for example will have harms in their life that are by definition. I look at your list of examples of higher mortality employers and I agree they exist, I even understand what makes them dangerous. Truck drivers for example is simply the Diesel Exhaust. Electric semi trucks is a thing now, but HEPA filters have existed for how long? There's a fix for every single one of those industries.
  - ed312 6y ago
    I think truck drivers its more a function of 1. driving lots of miles (the more you're on the road, the more risk you're in) plus 2. sedentary job. There is definitely not a fix for every industry - and some people are happy with taking that risk for more money than a lower risk job/profession. "Just make dangerous job conditions illegal" is a naïve view of the world. Even if you could pass such laws, you'd get a massive skills drain and/or black market work to get those jobs done.
TheDong 6y ago
> This is one of the weaknesses of government. A fundamental law that governments should have is that your employer cannot harm your health I think there's a better way to deal with this. Rather than legislate that certain abuses of health aren't okay, let's instead make it so people aren't stuck working jobs if they don't think it's worth it. Right now, the main reason workplaces can abuse employees so much is that employees can't quit, or else they'd starve on the street. If we had a livable universal basic income, that would allow anyone to, at any time, decide if their job's extra income + the meaning it gave them was worth the stress and other issues. We already have good evidence that this wouldn't result in no one working since, well, quite a few of the people born wealthy enough to never need to work do work anyway.
- eeZah7Ux 6y ago
  > Rather than Why not both?
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  >I think there's a better way to deal with this. Rather than legislate that certain abuses of health aren't okay, let's instead make it so people aren't stuck working jobs if they don't think it's worth it. Right now, the main reason workplaces can abuse employees so much is that employees can't quit, or else they'd starve on the street. I know where you're going and I'm a fence sitter. >If we had a livable universal basic income, that would allow anyone to, at any time, decide if their job's extra income + the meaning it gave them was worth the stress and other issues. Here in Canada we have tried basic income systems and even have a current system for some of our people. It's a disaster. It single handedly increases poverty and crime like no other policy. Have you ever heard of a negative income tax rate? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtpgkX588nM >We already have good evidence that this wouldn't result in no one working since, well, quite a few of the people born wealthy enough to never need to work do work anyway. Only when you exclude systems that arent by name which is common for socialist/communist/collectivist/postmodernist or whatever the new brand is that they go by today as the old name becomes tarnished. There's tremendous evidence that welfare system in general have never been successful. When we have a problem that which the welfare system is proposed as the fix. The problem gets worse as the welfare system is implemented. Then the fix is that the welfare system needs more money and as they get more money the problem becomes worse. In fact many of these systems are not designed to help the poor even though by name they are supposed to be.
kaybe 6y ago
> A fundamental law that governments should have is that your employer cannot harm your health. A small note: Germany does have a law like this. (I cannot find anything about it in English though.) https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%25C3%25BCrsorgepflicht https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
- sleepysysadmin 6y ago
  >A small note: Germany does have a law like this. (I cannot find anything about it in English though.) The more I know about Germany's government the more I like about it.
  - dasKrokodil 6y ago
    There have been worse German governments than the current one.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Pretty sure the Health & Safety at Work Act (UK) [1] meets this requirement. There's various common law things related to duty of care and negligence that probably apply less specifically too. I'd really expect every democratic country to have some form of law requiring employers take care of their employees -- they should expect to do something in return for leeching off ones production of value. [1] https://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm https://www.hse.gov.uk/legislation/hswa.htm
  - Pyramus 6y ago
    That is correct, but the bar for enforcement is very high when it comes to mental health. E.g. I remember a case of a police officer suffering from depression (?) but "only" stressing folks out is not enough unfortunately. In addition, you have to show a causal relationsship, which again is a lot more difficult for mental health as there are usually several factors at play even though work might be the pre-dominant one.
nitrogen 6y ago
who ultimately pays is the government At least in the US, I believe that employers are required to pay for workers' compensation insurance to cover injuries on the job.
pqoek 6y ago
I'm in the reverse situation, I'm free to do whatever I please and plan work myself, nobody really track my work besides the item that I placed there myself, the burn out is mostly coming from having too many meetings, not being able to relate to the product, and not being supported or having peers to exchange ideas with.

gjvc 6y ago

...from the department of the bloody obvious.

motohagiography 6y ago

Clicked for me recently that working hard is like driving in first gear. Necessary initially, but if you don't shift up into higher gears, you're probably not doing it right, and not getting as far as fast as you probably should. If I'm tired, it's necessarily because I'm mismanaging my work and time, and that's a signal it's time to step back and figure out what's wrong. Some people are really good at that initial torque boost on projects and can sustain it longer than others, but if work doesn't get easier it's because you're doing something wrong. From a market-fit perspective, I think startups that drive around in first gear never get very far either. Things are only hard because we're being stupid. Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day." I'm guilty of this as much as anyone, but burnout is my body intervening to tell me I'm being stupid.

fakedang 6y ago
> Nobody ever looks at a person driving a ferrari and thinks, "wow, they must have washed a lot of dishes to afford that car," and yet we still think "if I just wash these dishes hard enough I'll drive a ferrari one day." I'm saving this quote to tell people this later on.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  the twist is to make others wash dishes obviously
  - rabidrat 6y ago
    dish-washing is a cost-center, not a profit-center, so really the solution is to cut costs by washing dishes as little as possible :)
    - tenebrisalietum 6y ago
      Sign up for my dishes-as-a-service subscription NetDish. Get clean dishes until you stop paying. Also check out my dishwasher-sharing service Dishdash.

dirtybirdnj 6y ago

Its like being a cat trapped in the washing machine on spin cycle. The only hope for escape is a power failure and mercy of someone who is aware you are inside. Stuck in a job completely burned out, there is nothing worse than the realization of the futility in any struggle to either escape or improve. The knowledge that your output has dropped, the feeling that it's your fault combined with nobody interested in helping you because they are annoyed about your lack of output. There are no doorhandles on the inside of this washing machine. My only advice is to meow as loud as you can.

amelius 6y ago
Sleep as long as you can.
- NortySpock 6y ago
  Sure, if you can sleep.
  - tachyonbeam 6y ago
    For those of us who are working from home right now, sleeping is easier than ever.
    - mancerayder 6y ago
      Insomnia is pretty high on the list of pandemic lockdown issues at the moment, not to mention burnout symptoms. Some people I know can sleep sitting on a plane, and others can scarcely sleep at night, horizontal, in a quiet room, on a soft bed.
      - yters 6y ago
        A hard workout, waking up early and avoiding caffeine help me a lot with insomnia.
        6y ago

29athrowaway 6y ago

If you are burned out watch the talk "Pushing through friction" by Daniel Na. That talk inspired me and saved my job.

ajb 6y ago
That's interesting, but its not the only cause of burnout.
christophergs 6y ago
Thanks for the recommendation, talk was indeed banging: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxZuzDKoI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bxZuzDKoI0
- tayo42 6y ago
  IDK if i totally agree with some of the examples. Like the new guy coming in and saying how everything can be different and better, just listen to me. That is irritating, unhelpful usually because you don't have all the information yet. It makes two assumptions, that the team isn't competent enough to realize it, and that your current view of whats on fire is more important then everything else going on. The other example of the guy saying from the outside, their fix will only take 2 weeks. That's an estimate from someone who doesn't have the whole picture, if your asking another team. The resolution was to pester people and write up long docs to convince them its worth it. This is immediately adding on to your estimate of time. This idea of friction seems like its more a question of trade offs and prioritizing work. Is it worth going through all this effort and context switching to try to see if this thing can be done. Is it worth distracting other people. I think calling it friction means we could possibly be undervaluing work that is prevented by this friction. Ill have to think about it more
andrewem 6y ago
Can someone summarize the lessons or approach of that talk?
- 29athrowaway 6y ago

giantg2 6y ago

I have to support my family somehow. Who cares if that means I'm burnt out.

echelon 6y ago
A lot of millennials will never have families because of this.
- rychco 6y ago
  Myself and most of my millennial peers feel this way exactly. Some are still hopeful that they'll own a home & raise a large family like their parents and grandparents did, but the rest of us aren't so sure.
  - UseStrict 6y ago
    Millennial peer, I feel like it's been a treadmill, forever running but no progress. Living in first in Ottawa then Toronto, I watched affordability of housing slip from attainable in 3-5 years after graduating to virtually impossible without being extremely house poor. That's excluding the crazy high cost of living in general, and the feeling like employers are working to crush an ever-increasing amount of time out of employees. Why bring a kid into this prison? So they can work harder and fall even further behind than I am?
    - giantg2 6y ago
      I do wonder if it was a mistake to have a kid. They do bring some joy, and especially a lot of joy to the grandparents. But what kind of life will they have in this world?
    - titanomachy 6y ago
      Toronto is a grind. The work culture is punishing and affordability sucks. Not all cities are like that. Montreal and Vancouver are both better in some ways. Vancouver is still wildly unaffordable (especially if buying a house is important to you) but the lifestyle is much nicer and more conducive to mental health than Toronto's.

echelon 6y ago

I just want a no-pay sabbatical. Three months, total reset of energy levels. We should all have that option. I would take a lot less money (-$50k or more) if I got to take a quarter off every year. Four day work weeks would be another compelling alternative. Two days a week are not enough time to get chores done. There's no time for relaxing. If I ever create a company, I'd love to offer these options.

nprz 6y ago
I was laid off near the tail end of a very stressful, deadline driven project and it actually came as a huge relief. Luckily I had money saved and took my time (about 3 months) looking for the next job. Was also given 2 months severance, so I didn't even end up losing much income. By end of my time off I was getting bored and happy to be working on something new. Highly recommended.
- tartoran 6y ago
  A layoff could come as a blessing sometimes, especially if you're not in the middle of other problems. As devs we're still privileged to be able to do this. For many a layoff comes as dreadful news.
tartoran 6y ago
Absolutely. We need to carve a new normal. I personally would be a lot more productive after a 3 months of rest. I asked my former employer if I could take some unpaid time off, and of course I was flexible on timing so that their impact was at a minimum. The answer was no.
- diffrinse 6y ago
  Continuous delivery, amirite?
thelean12 6y ago
Plenty of big companies allow you to do this. I know several people who have taken 1-3 month long unpaid vacation while at FAANG companies. Sure, it takes some planning. You can't just do it tomorrow. But it seemed pretty easy for them.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

forgotmypw17 6y ago

One of the most frustrating parts about it for me was that I'd seen the trope many times in fiction, non-fiction, and with my own eyes, and I could see all the parallels, knew logically what was happening, and I still found myself pushing harder into the cliff. A real mindfuck.

lovehashbrowns 6y ago
There are so many things like that which can affect you, you see it happening, and there's nothing you can do about it. I have occasional manic episodes, and ADHD. I can see both happening, I know what they are logically, and I just get to see myself walk closer and closer to the cliff's edge.
- forgotmypw17 6y ago
  I think my helplessness and inaction were learned behaviors, and I managed to kick the habit... for the most part. I wish you the best of luck, don,t give up. At some point it will click. Be grateful when it happens.

meaydinli 6y ago

I am going through this right now. I have constant tension headaches and doc says I should stay away from stress, stress triggers and chocolate/coffee/etc. How am I supposed to do that with work/life/COVID and everything 2020? I have a big project on me, and there is no way I can get the rest I need to recover properly. I took 2 days off, and my colleagues are rallying to help as much as they can, but some of the info is silo'd on me so I need to work on it.

tenebrisalietum 6y ago
> but some of the info is silo'd on me What's preventing you from sharing this information or making it accessible to your other colleagues?
- meaydinli 6y ago
  Thank you, that is a good question. I haven't thought of it from that POV. Nothing is preventing me aside from my work-load, and the feeling that I am letting everybody down every second this project is further delayed.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    I'm paraphrasing a story whose origin I can't remember at the moment, but basically if you have 6 hours to chop down a very large tree, you should spend 5 of those hours sharpening your axe.
    - IggleSniggle 6y ago
      I'm suddenly feeling a little better about all the time I spend investigating better/different ways to approach technical problems, even when I know that I can't apply them to the problem that is immediately in front of me. I mean, obviously at some point you need to cut down the tree, and sometimes you're just carving down your ax without making it any sharper, but still.
      - 6y ago

mkl95 6y ago

Every time I approach burnout my body reacts with some funny symptom I had never suffered before. The human brain can be really imaginative at asking you to stop.

tachyonbeam 6y ago
Can you elaborate?
- mkl95 6y ago
  It's often some kind of skin itch, weird spot, etc. It quickly goes away when my stress levels stay low for a few days.

baxtr 6y ago

I quit my stressful job end of August. Luckily I have a smartwatch. By chance I checked my resting heart rate recently. I was quite shocked to see a stunning continuous 20% drop since then. I guess it was the right decision to quit.

thejackgoode 6y ago
This is the case for me as well. I have noticed similar increase (~52 => ~62 avg sleeping BPM) for the last two months and last week have been diagnosed with anxiety/depression and I am also burnt out. I love the objectivity it provides.
- baxtr 6y ago
  I went almost exactly the other way, from 65 down to 52. Fascinating that stress is visible in the data.

codecamper 6y ago

If you are reading this make sure you get a colonoscopy before 40, but also a 23andme to see if you have genetic susceptibility to colon cancer. If you have susceptibility, then don't smoke and a colonoscopy by 30 or smoke and a colonoscopy by 25. Don't drink a lot of sugary drinks either. Writing this because too many young people are getting colon cancer & it's a completely preventable cancer.

outworlder 6y ago
I upvoted this because, even though it's not on topic, it's an important recommendation. That said, I don't see colon cancer listed in 23andme's website. Are you sure they screen for that?
mottosso 6y ago
And just like that you added the stress of worrying about cancer to my list. Thank you stranger!

bird_monster 6y ago

I've wanted to write about my (only; last) experience as a manager for a long time, as I think it's a pretty textbook definition of the trap that is getting burnt out by a shitty job. My mood worsened because I felt like I was failing all the time. Being in a shitty mood and feeling deeply ashamed made the quality of my work (meaning: the way I treated my team and stakeholders) worse. It was this terrible loop of failure and frustration and shame. My bosses were inept but empathetic to my position for a while, until they also succumbed to the burnout/failure process that shitty companies usually cascade downward. My team hated me, because I was tasked with firing some of them and fundamentally changing the way that they worked. My manager, who I replaced as my team's manager, was very open that he didn't have it in him to fire anyone, and that my job was awful mostly because of the amount of things he didn't feel comfortable addressing while he was in my role (but needed addressed). This meant some employees had spent literal years exhibiting bad behavior, and I (a new hire) was being tasked with addressing it. It was awful. To make matters worse, as soon as my manager stopped managing the team, he seemed to totally forget what it was like working with that team, which meant that my requirements and performance were measured off of totally unobtainable feats of success with the team we had. I was expected to get a team that couldn't ship a feature in 10 weeks, to ship features in 2. Ultimately it culminated with a meeting between me and my grand-manager, where I told her there was an opening as an IC on a neighboring team/product and I intended to take it, and she responded by saying "Maybe, I'm not sure we'll be able to accommodate that request." Which I responded for the first and only time in my career with the ultimatum of "In 30 days I will not be on this team, one way or the other." I felt sick going into that meeting because it felt like I was admitting that I was a total failure, but also that sickness was 1/1000th of the sickness I felt waking up every day getting crushed by my actual job. Now, some time out, I am on good terms with everyone other than that grand-manager, who I haven't spoken with since. I even work at a new company founded by former coworkers.

127 6y ago
Both shame and failing are such a huge things for me. From my perspective it's a miracle how well you handled it.
lostdog 6y ago

jofer 6y ago

In my experience, most of burnout is being held responsible for things you don't have control over. That may not be true for everyone, but it's been consistently true for me. As a result, the "work more efficiently" comments from management/etc are just incredibly unhelpful. Most of the discussion so far seems to center on "work more efficiently", not "find a way to be supported". The latter is usually the only thing that will help, in my experience.

prawn 6y ago
That would hold true for one of the most extreme periods of stress/burn-out I've had in my past. A project with technical demands set by a non-technical person who had no interest in budging. I thoroughly detested that project (and that person)! In comparison, I've had periods of greater workload but where I've had full control, and enjoyed the challenge.

firecall 6y ago

This happened to me, slowly. I didnt realise it at the time, or as it was happening. I have ADHD, and can be amazing at work. But over time corporate offices destroyed me. I sought help for depression, and my ADHD. But no one suggested burnout. I had to have a fully nervous breakdown and six months off work to even work out what was going on. It's taken a full two years of recovery, and now I guard my mental health like the crown jewels! But I'll never be the same again. I'll never fully commit to another company, manager, workplace or team again. I choose to validate myself outside of what makes me money, and choose my friends and acquaintances carefully. I don't assume people I work with are my 'friends', and I certainly am very careful who I trust! (which is never anyone at work!)

jb_s 6y ago
It's tough with ADHD - like another layer to the feedback loop. Not only does ADHD substantially increase workplace stress, but stress and overwork also substantially exacerbate ADHD symptoms.
nullsense 6y ago
As a fellow ADHDer I feel like it makes me a lot better at what I do because I do it all the time because I just can't switch off. By the same token it constantly makes me run myself into the ground. It's especially bad if there are deadlines that mean not only can I not compartmentalize work and switch off, I feel the feelings a lot more too, but can never be sure if the random desire to rage quit due to $todays_small_yet_significant_grievance is signal or just noise from the emotional dysregulation. Currently getting properly burnt out for real right now and debating whether to stay and try get things back to normal after this project or just leave early next year with this job having been nothing more than a shitstain on my career. I'm so torn.

staysaasy 6y ago

Burnout really sucks and it can have major business consequences to say nothing of the more significant personal ones. A management lesson that I almost learned the hard way is that some people will push themselves to burnout without intervention, especially in high stakes environments or if they care really deeply about their work (or care deeply about getting ahead). If you're managing a team it is literally your job to monitor workloads, make sure that your team is taking enough vacation, help junior employees say No to clear their schedules, etc.

layoric 6y ago
I wish more managers were aware of this, especially in fields where there is a lot of intrinsic motivation beyond the money. I'm definitely guilty of this, I know its not worth my health and yet I kept pushing myself beyond breaking point several times to support company/team, now at the point where I have little to no motivation for anything. Thankfully I will be taking 2+ months off to try find my motivation again and try something new.

el_dev_hell 6y ago

I found this to be the case in my own life. Once I hit burnout (which I can easily pinpoint in retrospect but couldn't see in the moment), work stress started accelerating. Tangentially related, I can't believe how much a role can contribute to burnout. When I was going through my own journey of burnout, I thought it was all a "me" problem (I often quoted the saying: "wherever I go, there I'll be" as an excuse to stay and "work" on myself). I wish I could go back in time and slap myself. Once I left the role that was killing me (long hour, no appreciation, shit product -- the usual), I was at least 80% happier and was able to recover from my battle with burnout. tl;dr: burnout sucks. If you're in a shit job, leave. It might help you heal (maybe rapidly).

wfbarks 6y ago

I'm too burnt out to read this article that might help me understand my burnout, its a vicious circle.

danschumann 6y ago

if burn out: add more fuel Oxygen + solid matter. What is oxygen? Rejuvinating: maybe vacation, maybe relax more in the work day. What is solid? The "why", though I don't think I quite got the phrasing. Seems too easy just to have direction and motivation- although, what else could it be? In not too old medical books, they often referred to a man's "fire" as part of his overall well being. His hearth and happiness, et cetera. In some sense his gall; or gaul: how he carries fire... or his gall bladder?

seige 6y ago

I wanted a no-pay sabbatical for a few months but unfortunately my company had no policy for one. After 4.5 years, my well had run dry. I really struggled to get help and was left with no option but to quit.

jointpdf 6y ago

Ok, so you burned out (maybe not for the first time) and you took an unpaid leave from work. As more time goes on, you convince yourself that your brain is atrophying as you fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. The time comes where you have to go back. How do you do it? How do you shed this feeling of being broken goods in the eyes of yourself and (most likely) others? How do you heal the infected wounds of burnout? I can’t figure it out.

waihtis 6y ago
What line of work are you in?
- jointpdf 6y ago
  Data science, which I think makes this harder for me because a) things move so fast that you’re out of date within months and b) there is so much surface area of knowledge (math, stats, programming, visualization, ...) that impostor syndrome is an inevitability.
  - nikonyrh 6y ago
    Well in addition to all that Data Science stuff I have become quite knowledgeable about several related fields. At least these topics come to mind: - Data Engineering: various DB technologies' pros and cons (AWS Athena, Snowflake, MS Sql Server, Elasticsearch, Redis), Airflow, AWS S3 - ML Engineering: AWS autoscaling clusters, EC2, Spark cluster set-up & management, IO/CPU bottle neck identification, optimizing workloads (like how large chunks, how many Spark worker processes, how many threads on Python's libraries, ...) - Umm Web Engineering?: HTTP API design, load balancing, Docker & Kubernetes, partial results caching for real-time responses I have understood that on larger organizations each of these could have a dedicated team behind it. Anyway I've been lucky to find this company & role and gotten an opportunitu to learn and apply so many technologies, but I must admit it is getting a bit tricky to keep (shall I say pickle) all that in my brain :D
pqoek 6y ago
Are you unemployed right now? Because there is really no stress in not working, unless you can't financially sustain yourself. I would recommend moving to a cheap country in Asia to make it last longer and meet new people. Hell go back to school in some cheap country to learn the local language for 6month.

rubicon33 6y ago

I wonder if one cause of burnout is the slot machine nature of the internet these days. What do I mean? YouTube, HackerNews, GoogleNews, Facebook, TikTok, etc... Every time you hit one of these websites, it's like rolling the dice at a casino. Sometimes, you roll the dice and you win. So you want to roll more. Similarly, sometimes you load up YouTube, and it recommends you a good video. So you come back, looking for more. The same hook applies to nearly all websites these days, it's not just "social media". So how does this mess with your motivation? Well, it's seriously messing with your reward system. Instead of seeking long poll rewards, like one gets from reading, and investing in themselves... things necessary for growth in ones career... We're becoming more and more attuned to seeking short term pulls of the dopamine lever. And it's all over the internet. Even your E-Mail to some extent! My suggestion to anyone suffering burnout is to try something dramatic, which I am about to try myself: Cut out all internet except what is required for your job or essential life services (like banking). Everything else, certainly all forms of recreation on the internet, you cut out of your life right NOW. Try it for a week. I'm going to.

Pyrodogg 6y ago
Social media induced "doom scrolling" almost needs a Surgeon General warning like nicotine packaging.