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I really wish I could figure this trick out. I envy people who are able to say this. Having gone through multiple burnout angry mood swings over the last few ye

I really wish I could figure this trick out. I envy people who are able to say this. Having gone through multiple burnout angry mood swings over the last few years, I would love to be able to do this. My basic problem (I think) is that I get bored of this disposition. I like to be creatively engaged. But it’s 8+ hours of 5/7s of my waking time!! I don’t spend anywhere near that time sating my appetite, and my hindbrain wants to be the “breathing specialist” on the team, so I cede that to him. I just struggle to go on autopilot and do the disengaged worker bee thing, watching the day go by, caring only as much as needed to deliver nominal output. Every time I try this approach to save my sanity, the “newness” is cool for a couple of days, and then I find myself gradually reinvesting again, because 8 hours of “it doesn’t mean anything to me, I’m just sitting here wiling the time away pondering what interesting things I might be able to do in the scant remaining non-work hours” robot mode just bores the heck out of me and sucks my soul dry. If you’ve got advice on how to get to this mode that doesn’t involve an IV drip of alcohol induced euphoria, I would love to hear it.

strgcmc 4y ago
Set aside work/career for now. What do you do in your personal life? Have you had any experience with celebrating small (even tiny) milestones or "achievements? Recent example: I recently moved house. Many of my books and lower-urgency work resources are still in moving boxes. I think I need a new bookshelf, so that I can unbox some stuff. I take pleasure in the act of putting together the bookshelf. It is a 30-60min task, it is trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I feel accomplished about doing this proactive step to improve my working environment. Plus I like the new shelf I picked, I like the way it looks, the design itself gives me some small amount of pleasure. Rinse and repeat. Maybe not every day, but every week, there will be some small/tiny/insignificant victory like this. Learning to appreciate them, will not necessarily bring you lifelong joy or self-actualization on its own, but it will do wonders for improving your relationship and emotional balance with respect to work. Sometimes a big project goes wrong, everything is on fire, my boss is asking me to do some crazy unreasonable thing (but at least, a good boss doesn't ask this unnecessarily, and only very rarely), whatever... but still there are always some minor victories to celebrate, or at least partial progress: - hey I stopped the bleeding on that production outage -- at least other teams know where to look for deeper fix - hey I sketched out an outline for that documentation that everyone keeps asking about -- even if the content isn't there, at least people know this is where new content should go - hey I wrote down all my tasks for tomorrow -- so even though I didn't finish things today, I can still log off and forget about them, then pick them up again in the morning EDIT: Or, to put it another way: - don't think about the problem as, "how do I learn to accept tedium or chores, and not get bored/frustrated/angry about them?" - instead the problem should be, "how do I find contentment in the small details of life, that I previously overlooked as simply being tedious or boring?"
bckr 4y ago
I think it's just different dispositions and values. It sounds like you value doing work that brings you to life. Instead of finding a way to subvert that value, perhaps you can find a way to live that value.
molsongolden 4y ago
You probably have room to set some boundaries with work here but I don't believe everybody is capable of "disengaged worker bee". Like you said, it's too many hours out of your day/week/year/life. Some tips that might or not be helpful depending on how similar our brains are: - Stick to a routine - start your day with an activity of your choice instead of diving into your inbox (slow coffee, short walk, read for 20min, etc.) - laptop open and closed at specific times - no "popping on just to do a little" after your cutoff - turn off phone notifications (unless on-call) - if something doesn't get done by the end of the work day then it becomes a tomorrow work problem It takes a while but you'll slowly build more of a door in your mind where you're able to step away from work and move on to other activities - Make an effort to build relationships and activities outside of work so that work becomes a smaller piece of your overall life - Reflect on how emotionally invested you're getting (in work issues) and catch yourself when this happens. It's just work. - Brainstorm your larger career or personal development arc and walk it back to things you need to learn to get from here to there. Figure out how to work these into the projects you take on or request. If you can't check out then make your current work part of your journey and be intentional about your activities.
scarface74 4y ago
Simple. In 25+ years of working professionally, I know two things. 1. No company has ever gone out of business because I left. 2. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, my employer would send my wife “thoughts and prayers” and they would have a req open for my position before my body was in the ground. My job affords me the ability to work from anywhere in the US and I am going to be taking advantage of that for at least the next few years to fly across the country and do the “digital nomad” thing. But I also “live in a position of f%%% you” (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI). It’s been over 15 years that I haven’t been confident that if the pay/bullshit ratio got too low that I could get another job.

strgcmc 4y ago

Set aside work/career for now. What do you do in your personal life? Have you had any experience with celebrating small (even tiny) milestones or "achievements? Recent example: I recently moved house. Many of my books and lower-urgency work resources are still in moving boxes. I think I need a new bookshelf, so that I can unbox some stuff. I take pleasure in the act of putting together the bookshelf. It is a 30-60min task, it is trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I feel accomplished about doing this proactive step to improve my working environment. Plus I like the new shelf I picked, I like the way it looks, the design itself gives me some small amount of pleasure. Rinse and repeat. Maybe not every day, but every week, there will be some small/tiny/insignificant victory like this. Learning to appreciate them, will not necessarily bring you lifelong joy or self-actualization on its own, but it will do wonders for improving your relationship and emotional balance with respect to work. Sometimes a big project goes wrong, everything is on fire, my boss is asking me to do some crazy unreasonable thing (but at least, a good boss doesn't ask this unnecessarily, and only very rarely), whatever... but still there are always some minor victories to celebrate, or at least partial progress: - hey I stopped the bleeding on that production outage -- at least other teams know where to look for deeper fix - hey I sketched out an outline for that documentation that everyone keeps asking about -- even if the content isn't there, at least people know this is where new content should go - hey I wrote down all my tasks for tomorrow -- so even though I didn't finish things today, I can still log off and forget about them, then pick them up again in the morning EDIT: Or, to put it another way: - don't think about the problem as, "how do I learn to accept tedium or chores, and not get bored/frustrated/angry about them?" - instead the problem should be, "how do I find contentment in the small details of life, that I previously overlooked as simply being tedious or boring?"

bckr 4y ago

I think it's just different dispositions and values. It sounds like you value doing work that brings you to life. Instead of finding a way to subvert that value, perhaps you can find a way to live that value.

molsongolden 4y ago

You probably have room to set some boundaries with work here but I don't believe everybody is capable of "disengaged worker bee". Like you said, it's too many hours out of your day/week/year/life. Some tips that might or not be helpful depending on how similar our brains are: - Stick to a routine - start your day with an activity of your choice instead of diving into your inbox (slow coffee, short walk, read for 20min, etc.) - laptop open and closed at specific times - no "popping on just to do a little" after your cutoff - turn off phone notifications (unless on-call) - if something doesn't get done by the end of the work day then it becomes a tomorrow work problem It takes a while but you'll slowly build more of a door in your mind where you're able to step away from work and move on to other activities - Make an effort to build relationships and activities outside of work so that work becomes a smaller piece of your overall life - Reflect on how emotionally invested you're getting (in work issues) and catch yourself when this happens. It's just work. - Brainstorm your larger career or personal development arc and walk it back to things you need to learn to get from here to there. Figure out how to work these into the projects you take on or request. If you can't check out then make your current work part of your journey and be intentional about your activities.

scarface74 4y ago

Simple. In 25+ years of working professionally, I know two things. 1. No company has ever gone out of business because I left. 2. If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, my employer would send my wife “thoughts and prayers” and they would have a req open for my position before my body was in the ground. My job affords me the ability to work from anywhere in the US and I am going to be taking advantage of that for at least the next few years to fly across the country and do the “digital nomad” thing. But I also “live in a position of f%%% you” (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xdfeXqHFmPI). It’s been over 15 years that I haven’t been confident that if the pay/bullshit ratio got too low that I could get another job.