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What's tricky is the feeling of burnout even in the absence of specific obvious work stress. After a year long pandemic where people thought about life a lot a

What's tricky is the feeling of burnout even in the absence of specific obvious work stress. After a year long pandemic where people thought about life a lot and spent time alone, even a job that isn't a white shoe finance law firm or a vicious finance company or mean startup where people sleep under their desks - even a 9-6 or whatever, with a nice boss, can have the symptoms just as described in the comments below. Indifference, unrefreshed sleep, easily stressed by small things, unmotivated outside of work and within it... cynical. A feeling of meaninglessness inside and outside work. Small problems become exasperating annoyances. Too fuzzy-brained to even plan a vacation or decide which bed to buy. Stagnation. Or so I'm told. What in the world causes this? Boredom? Routine? We speak of the stresses that cause burnout (abso-fucking-lutely) but what about the dull routines, the blah-ness of being on a treadmill and staring at the distance ticking. A lack of meaning? This happens to people with families and children, too. I'd love to hear some subjective experiences of the "non-stressed-as-much-but-still-burnt-out" burnout victims. Add to it the guilt.

logicslave 5y ago
I am glad I am not alone in feeling this. Professionally I am doing better than ever and accomplishing my goals, but personally I am burning to do something else, even if it means forgoing career success.
- mancerayder 5y ago
  I 100% understand. I sometimes wonder if it's an age thing. Or is it a pandemic thing. Is it connected to a mix of burned out people in a firm, and an influx of new people in the firm who don't seem burned out. Is it the existential dread of wondering, What If I don't try something else, take the risk, and risk regretting it if I don't.
tnzm 5y ago
>What in the world causes this? Boredom? Routine? Unfreedom.
- Balgair 5y ago
  One wonders how prisoners deal with this then.
  - srswtf123 5y ago
    Generally speaking, I believe they become more damaged mentally over time, and over the long term become unable to interact with “normal” society.
  - blaser-waffle 5y ago
    Shankings, sodomy, damaged sanity. Also, not really sympathetic. Some of these people deserve the misery
  - tnzm 5y ago
    To add to the sibling comments, and with the risk of sounding cheesy - at least prisoners are aware that they are unfree: they are physically confined against their will by a well-defined entity for a clearly stated reason and duration. That doesn't help much with their mental degradation, except maybe making it less unexpected (although people are still surprised by the idea that prison just hardens criminals so idk.) Outside of a penal institution, your freedom is limited by a multitude of varying affordances: behavioral nudges, implicit value judgements, unstated social conventions, and so on, which automatically limit your behavioral options. Many of these pressures contradict each other, and handling the cognitive dissonance every waking moment can slowly add up to decision fatigue. So it is very easy to end up chasing whatever you sincerely believe to be "success", yet do it unnaturally and in spite of yourself. To compare with the prison example: it's very easy to get stuck in a situation where there is no obvious "enemy" who's keeping your stuck, and no obvious reason things are like this besides "they randomly ended up like this". And you can keep doing this for longer than the whatever the average prison term is, because you don't realize your idea of "success" is not really yours at all, it's a label you put on an unstable compromise with the totality of your being. This is your brain on misaligned incentives. If you've ended up in such a situation, you're also probably in an environment that censures the kind of thinking required to realign them, and which offers no support with the work involved in getting out of the trap. So it's also very easy to start feeling like there's something wrong with you in particular, and slip into more chronic forms of burnout, depression, and more or less permanent mental dysfunction. It's especially bad when a society runs on unresolved internal contradictions for a few generations - everyone's burnout adds up to a form of pervasive malaise, and the reactions can be quite brutal and senseless. Germany in the 1930s Germany or Russia in the 1990s Russia come to mind - historical periods whose horrors are usually downplayed in favor of romanticizing the struggle for survival in a society which offers no hope for a good life. It can be draining. IMHO that's one reason why religions, ideologies, conspiracy theories, pyramid schemes, and other arbitrary value systems (including the monetary one!) manage to motivate people so well, regardless of having no ultimate basis in physical reality. They offer you a chance to extinguish all your self-doubts and replacing innumerable fickle sensors with a single value scale, so instead of suffering impostor syndrome and burnout, you end up happily believing that you're always right, and blind to any actual harm you might be causing. So if you're currently having your brain fried by the world, remember that it's not your fault, and please do whatever it takes to resist and get yourself back to the clarity of a healthy mental state - even if that means letting go more preconceptions than you're comfortable with.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
agf 5y ago
Personally, I think there is a lot of truth to the autonomy, mastery, and purpose framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab... Another way to say it would be that I think it's about the job not aligning with people's intrinsic motivators. Doesn't necessarily require the job to be at all stressful. When people don't have enough of those things, they get burnout. Some people get them from other parts of their lives, so they're unphased by lacking them at work as long as they make "enough" money. Some people just need less than others, for a variety of reasons.

logicslave 5y ago

I am glad I am not alone in feeling this. Professionally I am doing better than ever and accomplishing my goals, but personally I am burning to do something else, even if it means forgoing career success.

mancerayder 5y ago
I 100% understand. I sometimes wonder if it's an age thing. Or is it a pandemic thing. Is it connected to a mix of burned out people in a firm, and an influx of new people in the firm who don't seem burned out. Is it the existential dread of wondering, What If I don't try something else, take the risk, and risk regretting it if I don't.

tnzm 5y ago

>What in the world causes this? Boredom? Routine? Unfreedom.

Balgair 5y ago
One wonders how prisoners deal with this then.
- srswtf123 5y ago
  Generally speaking, I believe they become more damaged mentally over time, and over the long term become unable to interact with “normal” society.
- blaser-waffle 5y ago
  Shankings, sodomy, damaged sanity. Also, not really sympathetic. Some of these people deserve the misery
- tnzm 5y ago
  To add to the sibling comments, and with the risk of sounding cheesy - at least prisoners are aware that they are unfree: they are physically confined against their will by a well-defined entity for a clearly stated reason and duration. That doesn't help much with their mental degradation, except maybe making it less unexpected (although people are still surprised by the idea that prison just hardens criminals so idk.) Outside of a penal institution, your freedom is limited by a multitude of varying affordances: behavioral nudges, implicit value judgements, unstated social conventions, and so on, which automatically limit your behavioral options. Many of these pressures contradict each other, and handling the cognitive dissonance every waking moment can slowly add up to decision fatigue. So it is very easy to end up chasing whatever you sincerely believe to be "success", yet do it unnaturally and in spite of yourself. To compare with the prison example: it's very easy to get stuck in a situation where there is no obvious "enemy" who's keeping your stuck, and no obvious reason things are like this besides "they randomly ended up like this". And you can keep doing this for longer than the whatever the average prison term is, because you don't realize your idea of "success" is not really yours at all, it's a label you put on an unstable compromise with the totality of your being. This is your brain on misaligned incentives. If you've ended up in such a situation, you're also probably in an environment that censures the kind of thinking required to realign them, and which offers no support with the work involved in getting out of the trap. So it's also very easy to start feeling like there's something wrong with you in particular, and slip into more chronic forms of burnout, depression, and more or less permanent mental dysfunction. It's especially bad when a society runs on unresolved internal contradictions for a few generations - everyone's burnout adds up to a form of pervasive malaise, and the reactions can be quite brutal and senseless. Germany in the 1930s Germany or Russia in the 1990s Russia come to mind - historical periods whose horrors are usually downplayed in favor of romanticizing the struggle for survival in a society which offers no hope for a good life. It can be draining. IMHO that's one reason why religions, ideologies, conspiracy theories, pyramid schemes, and other arbitrary value systems (including the monetary one!) manage to motivate people so well, regardless of having no ultimate basis in physical reality. They offer you a chance to extinguish all your self-doubts and replacing innumerable fickle sensors with a single value scale, so instead of suffering impostor syndrome and burnout, you end up happily believing that you're always right, and blind to any actual harm you might be causing. So if you're currently having your brain fried by the world, remember that it's not your fault, and please do whatever it takes to resist and get yourself back to the clarity of a healthy mental state - even if that means letting go more preconceptions than you're comfortable with.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

agf 5y ago

Personally, I think there is a lot of truth to the autonomy, mastery, and purpose framework: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_About_What_Motivates_Us https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drive:_The_Surprising_Truth_Ab... Another way to say it would be that I think it's about the job not aligning with people's intrinsic motivators. Doesn't necessarily require the job to be at all stressful. When people don't have enough of those things, they get burnout. Some people get them from other parts of their lives, so they're unphased by lacking them at work as long as they make "enough" money. Some people just need less than others, for a variety of reasons.